HAT will Congress do at the present session for the

WHA relief of the people and the "clinching" of the Roose

velt reform politics? This is the great question which all sections of the country are eagerly discussing and upon which the correspondents at the capital have been speculatively seeking to throw light. President Taft is committed to the progressive policies, and there is much to be done. There are the questions connected with the conservation movement, especially in its anti monopoly aspect (the pevention of "grabbing" of water sites and oil land, for example), and the questions of further trust legislation, additional railroad legislation, employers' liability, labor injunctions, the increasing cost of living, the threatening strikes and the means of enforcing arbitration without violating constitutional liberties.

Congress is in one respect exceptionally free to devote time and attention to these related questions. The tariff, all agree, will not be revised again to any considerable extent for some years to come. The small tariff commission is investigating foreign customs and rates, and incidentally obtaining information concerning the cost of production abroad; there is a sort of tacit understanding that the information being gathered by this body will serve as a basis for a more scientific and more liberal revision of the tariff. But just now there is no likelihood of any attempt at change, although the dissatisfaction with the new tariff is wide and deep. On the other hand, Congress cannot take up the complex question of currency and banking reforms because the national currency commission that has been studying the

subject at home and in Europe is not ready to report or to make definite recommendations. There is a vague tendency toward a Central Bank of the United States, of somewhat different functions and a different complexion from those of our historic central banks, but nothing has been even informally presented for discussion by the commission. Thus Congress is in a position to attack the "burning" problems above indicated. But wil it do so?

There is a general feeling that it will not-first, because the business community is opposed to further "agitation," and secondly because of the admitted complexity of the questions that are pressing for solution. If little is done by Congress, the administration will be blamed by many, for Mr. Taft's methods are already being compared with those of his more strenuous predecessor and the conclusion is being reached by "insurgents" or progressives of the militant sort that the constant use of "the big stick" is needed to secure legislation in the interests of the people, Already magazines are canvassing their readers to determine whether they are satisfied with the Taft administration as far as it has gone, and already there is talk-whether founded or unfounded-of "conspiracies" on the part of ardent Rooseveltians to discredit Mr. Taft and prepare a spectacular "return from Elba." By this is meant the starting of an agitation for the nomination and election of Mr. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1912.

In conjunction with these developments there was the agitation that has forced Congress to undertake an investigation of Secretary Ballinger and his land policy, it being charged that he has favored monopoly rather than conservation, and the demand for an investigation of the sugar trust and other corporations that have defrauded the government in the payment of customs duties. Again, there is a demand for an investigation of the causes of the increasing cost of living, on the theory that the tariff and the trusts are largely responsible for that disquieting phenomenon. Finally, there is much dissatisfaction in and out of Congress with what is called "the rule of Cannon and Aldrich," the respective

leaders of the dominant party in the two houses, who are accused of obstructing progressive legislation. Thus there is much unrest in the country, and particularly in the West. The Republicans are told every day by correspondents and editors that they will be defeated in the next congressional election if they fail to continue and extend the Roosevelt policies, and many of their own representatives candidly repeat the warning.

There is little likelihood of open rupture in the present House between the anti-Cannon insurgents and the supporters of the Speaker, but the truce between them is of the armed kind, and any delay or failure in what is known as the progressive program will be vigorously used in argument as a weapon against the conservatives. This program by the way, includes postal savings banks and a parcels post. Mr. Taft has strongly advocated a postai savings bank system, but the bankers of the country, with few exceptions, are bitterly opposed to the innovation, and they have considerable influence with the committee chairman and leaders in Congress. That question may perhaps furnish the first test of strength between the progressives and the conservatives.

The American Physical Type and Immigration

There are moral and mental traits which the whole world recognizes as American. Our environment, our institutions, our economic conditions, our history are collectively credited with the development of these traits. Philosophers have predicted a splendid, unique American type as the result of the free mixture of races and stocks which is encouraged by our laws and policies. But is there already an American physical type? The tentative and cautious conclusions of Prof. Franz Boas of Columbia University, who has made an investigation for the national immigration commission of the physical characteristics of 26,000 children of immigrants in New York, point to an affirmative

answer.

The investigations seem to show that a change of type takes place in the first generation of children of foreign parents on our soil. Even the shape of the head undergoes a striking change. The children of the long-headed Sicilians, for example, are more round-headed, while the children of round-headed Jews from Roumania or Russia are more long-headed than their parents. There is, in other words, a marked tendency in all children of foreigners in America to an intermediate head form.

It does not follow, of course, that climate and physical environment change the shape of the skull. The mixture of types, intermarriage of races, would probably account for that observed tendency, and this question of mixture has not yet been studied by our anthropologists. In fact, Prof. Boas himself suggests that the children of immigrants in the middle and far west should be measured and studiedand in rural sections as well as in cities and towns-and that the effect of intermarriage should be particularly inquired into. Meantime the tentative conclusions are suggestive enough as far as they go, especially when we reflect that food, habits of life and work, the amount of sunshine enjoyed, and like factors, undoubtedly influence physical structure and complexion. Immigrants in America live better and certainly in every way differently-than at home, and the new conditions and forces which face them, and to which they must adapt themselves, may produce physical differences in their offspring even apart from the question of marrying into other races and types. In commenting on the Boas report, the New York Evening Post says, not too seriously:

If there is something about the air of America that makes Americans, and makes them so quickly, a new light is shed both on the story of our past and on the prospects of Our future. Such national traits, for example, as the stoical endurance of hardships, which is common to us with the North American Indians, find an explanation over and above that furnished by the experiences of pioneer life; and that power of welding heterogeneous elements into one homogeneous national body, which has been the marvel of all observers, may be counted on for the future with more confidence than ever. That this power rests primarily on the influence of the national spirit we shall have no reason to doubt, but it will be extremely interesting and import