results of waste of the riches of the dirt, robbery or slow impoverishment of the fields.

Agriculture, therefore, henceforth must be the chief concern of any nation which would flourish and endure.

I shall not have time to-night to discuss remedies. The subject is too vast to be covered in an after-dinner speech. I do insist, though, with all earnestness that we have a real problem and must keep on trying to solve it until we eventually succeed. In this respect I agree with the words of Dr. Edward M. East. Dr. East is not a politician; he is not a farm leader; he is a professor in Harvard University. Listen to his words:

The true financial worry of the farmer comes from having to plant his maximum acreage from six months to a year before he receives his returns, without having any idea of the price he is to receive for his labor. He not only has to plant, but he has to plant pretty much the same crops as he planted the previous year, for proper farming means specialization. He is therefore between the upper and the nether millstones.

Now I am sure I can give no concrete remedy for this problem. It is too big and involved for offhand solution. Yet it must have a solution, even though it be somewhat imperfect, if the nation is going to make the most of its resources. Solutions should be worked out by experts, and Congress forced into line to try them out. Something can certainly be done to give the farmer a return for his products that is based on the cost of production, as in any other business; and that is all he asks.

I realize the fact that there are many earnest men who believe there is no solution. I come across them with increasing frequency. They say that there has been always a conflict between rural and urban civilization; that in this conflict rural civilization always has gone down; that there is no reason why we should be an exception to the rule; that a decaying agriculture always has marked the first stage in the decline of a nation's greatness, and that we are helpless in the grip of this relentless law of the rise and fall of nations. I cannot yield to this gloomy view.

I do agree that our rural civilization is in a perilous state. I agree with them when they say our nation cannot long survive the decay of its agriculture. I cannot follow them, however,

in their despair of finding some power somewhere that will arrest this decay. I have more faith in the capacity of society to save itself. Our civilization as contrasted with all previous civilizations has been marked by an increasing control of man over the forces of nature and a subjection of them to his own use. I believe we are entering upon a new era in the domain of the social sciences. Just as in the material world man has increased his dominion over the forces of nature, so in the world of men we shall learn more and more how to make the institutions of men respond to the needs of men. The instruments of the complex civilization which we have evolved are all the creations of man. If these instruments are unequal to their task, then we must contrive better ones.

We are hearing more and more of a conflict between the agricultural West and the industrial East. This, in my opinion, bodes ill for both. Nothing but evil in all our history has ever come from sectional differences. And there is no instance in which a sectional difference has arisen where the injury has not extended to all parts of our common country. In the long run, no national policy can benefit Illinois and hurt New York. The interests of our great country are so interwoven and interdependent that an injury to one part will sooner or later react throughout the breadth and length of the land.

There need be no such conflict if we but take a long-time view of the future of our common country. If it were otherwise, the concept of the Fathers who formed the United States of America was a mistaken one. If California and Iowa and New York and New England cannot live under the same flag with benefit to all, the dream of the Fathers will have failed to come true. If there are not common interests of all the states great enough to submerge mere local interests, the entire theory of a great and powerful and permanent nation covering a wide territory with great diversity of resources can never be an accomplished fact.

If we but raise our eyes above the level of the present and look into the long future, regarding not ourselves alone but the generations who shall come after us, we shall see, I think, a perfect identity of interest between the East and the West in the prosperity and therefore the preservation of American agriculture.

AMY LOWELL

POETRY AND CRITICISM

The death of Miss Amy Lowell in 1925 robbed American Literature of a commanding personality. A poet of distinction whether she wrote in free verse or in the more traditional measures, she exercised a great influence on other writers through her independence, originality and fearlessness. In addition to writing poetry, she often lectured on poetry. The following speech was made at the banquet of the Authors' League of America, New York City, April 11, 1916.

LADIES AND Gentlemen:-I consider it an honor to be invited here to-night, and a still greater honor to be invited to speak. An Authors' League seems to me a very fortuitous thing, but indeed I am constantly struck by the true brotherhood of letters. Officially we may differ from each other in every possible way, but personally we are one great family. "Authors' League" is a cold name for your society: The "Brotherhood of American Letters" would more perfectly express its spirit.

Being a poet, I presume you expect me to talk about poetry. Indeed, it is as inexperienced to expect a lover to forego mentioning his mistress, as to expect a poet to talk of anything but his art. Poetry in America is taking on a renewed activity. It is really surprising what a number of young men and women are devoting themselves to it. And here "devoting" is not a figure of speech; it is a fact. For of all poorly paid work, poetry is surely the worst paid.

In a recent interview in the New York Times, I am quoted as saying that I wished no man could expect to make a living by literature, that I wished our magazines did not pay for contributions. Now I did say both of these things, but in the cold impersonality of print, without explanatory phrases, they sound quite differently from what I intended. One moment I

regret that poetry is so underpaid; the next I desire that it be not paid at all. How reconcile these two propositions? The reconciliation is not so far to seek, after all. There are plenty of analogies to be drawn from life, lying to our hand. If I say: It is a most undesirable thing that any one should spend his life as a jailer to criminals, the proposition obtains immediate assent. If I say: It is most desirable that the grade of jailers be raised so that only men of high quality hold these responsible positions, that proposition also admits of no adverse opinion. The reconciliation lies in the qualifying admission that, circumstances being as they are, some modifying of each proposition has got to be made. Again: most of us, probably, abhor militarism; but most of us believe in the necessity for preparedness.

My statement about the payment of poets is quite as simple of application. I regret the necessity of art trafficking itself for dollars and cents. I regret that the world misconceives the value of art so greatly as to universally underpay it. Other arts eventually become self-supporting, poetry practically never does. And here my strange paradox brings me back again, for to this failure of the golden lure I believe we owe it that poetry is so single minded, so prone to follow out its dreams unhindered by public opinion.

Also, I am not aware that I have said anything against the poet earning his living by some other work than that of poetry. History has shown us many examples of poets of the first rank filling practical positions at the same time. Chaucer was a hard-worked magistrate, Shakespeare was an actor and hack playwright to a popular theater, Spenser was secretary to the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Mallarmé was Professor of English in a boys' school, Samain was a government functionary-I could go on enumerating such cases. To take a momentary glance at other arts, we have only to remember that Pierre Loti and Rimsky-Korsakoff were naval officers, and that another great Russian composer, Borodine, was a physician and of unusual eminence in his profession.

No, it is only minor poets who are too unpractical to do anything else well, I am convinced. When I suggested that poetry should not be paid, I had no such idea as that poets should starve in a garret on a crust of bread. I expected them, rather,

to make a living in some other way, which should remove from them the necessity of lowering their art to the tastes of that part of the public which pays well for its pleasures. But indeed so gayly have poets flung aside this temptation that it can hardly be considered as such at all. They have certainly earned the right to better payment, if strenuous, self-sacrificing endeavor constitutes a right.

But how shall they get this pay? What will make the public read poetry and care for it as they do for fiction? Perhaps it is a beautiful dream to suppose that they will ever care for it as much as that-the great mass of people. But one way to bring about a more intelligent attitude towards it, and a more lively interest in it, is by a serious body of criticism devoting itself to it. I can hardly speak too strongly upon this subject. I can hardly urge upon you too insistently the great need that America has for trained criticism. The so-called "reviews" in our newspapers doubtless serve some good purpose, but it is the purpose of the publishers and the bookseller, not of the poet or of literature. The poet seeking to learn his art finds not one hint in the various discussions of contemporary verse to help him on his way. He is treated as a news item, or he is not treated at all. Of course, there are exceptions to this, but I will name no names, you can all think of them for yourselves. On the other hand, the few trained and eager critics that we have, devote themselves almost exclusively to works of authors dead and of assured fame.

"They order this matter better in France," indeed. When I was preparing my book on the French poets, I read some twenty or thirty volumes of criticism all dealing with contemporary French poetry. The field of fiction is full to overflowing, the field of poetry is filling rapidly, but the field of criticism has still many tempting corners to offer. It is along this branch that I wish to see our literature grow. We, the poets, need the critics to point out to us what we might otherwise miss, or seeing, fail to understand.

It used to be said that no artist could live in America. I do not believe that is true to-day. But America will be a more sympathetic soil for the growth of art when her people take it a little more seriously.