generated by shabby feelings and salaciousness.

But Mrs. Smalley is a woman of exquisite feeling and high-minded discrimination, combined with a gift for keeping the preachment in a photoplay so delicately balanced that the dramatic integrity is never seriously threatened.

To be sure, her play on Birth Control, called "Where Are My Children?" has not entirely satisfied the Birth Control League. The members of this organization have no quarrel with the statement that the production is done with force and seriousness, but they would have liked to see the emphasis put in another place.

I expected Mrs. Smalley to rise in wrath when I told her that the propagandists were not at all satisfied with it. But she patiently heard me out, while I expatiated on their objections -that the play puts all the emphasis on abortion and the birth control movement, which is antagonistic to the general practice of abortion is, by inference, put in the position of defending it.

The Birth Control League simply asks the human race not to shirk the study of the human family. It has the civilized creed that instead of accident and natural selection, human selection and reason shall govern the size of families. It makes a stand for better babies, and in the long run that does not even mean fewer babies, for no one can dispute the statistics on child mortality.

Mortality increases as the number of children per family increases, until we have a death rate in families of 8 and more, which is 21⁄2 times as great as that in families of 4 and under. A record case is that which came under the observation of Miss Jane Addams. An Italian woman in the neighborhood of Hull House bore 22 children, and raised two of them. The records of all nations show conclusively that there is a startlingly lower mortality rate in small families than in large ones.

Mrs. Smalley's picture starts in the slums, and shows the dreadful condi

tions under which child bearing and rearing constantly menace the human race. She introduces a doctor, a highminded idealist, who has come to believe in birth control through a study of these conditions. He is sentenced to imprisonment. In contrast to this physician is the abortionist whose clientele is among wealthy women who refuse to accept motherhood.

"The Birth Control League," said Mrs. Smalley, "would have all the emphasis on the first part. Well, say to them that when the National Board of Censorship gets through with a photoplay the beautiful balance which may have been in the original production is apt to be destroyed, and the whole thing wobbles over to one side or the other. Then there are State and city boards of censorship, and by the time they have each taken a fling at a play it may have lost all resemblance to the original. For example, in my native State of Pennsylvania the entire first part of the play was excised by the censors. The scenes in the slums, and all the incidents going to prove that under certain conditions birth control was justifiable, were entirely cut out, and any believers in birth control who happened to see the play in that State would not give me credit for stating their cause at all.

"But I'll admit that the play just as I produced it would not entirely satisfy an ardent propagandist. The propagandist who recognizes the moving picture as a powerful means of putting out a creed, never seems to have any conception of the fact that an idea has to come to terms with the dramatic if it is to be a successful screen drama. Very few propagandists can think in pictures, and they would have us put out a picture that no one in the world but the people already interested in a subject would ever go to see!"

The fact that Mrs. Smalley has made such an enviable and honorable place for herself as a director in the photoplay world opens up vistas for other women who are willing to bring to it constant study and hard work in addition to creative talent.

TH

HE light from a dozen fires flickered upon a line of men strung out across a gravel bar. The men faced a boulder strewn clearing at the farther side of which stood an old log cabin; beyond the cabin a wild mountain stream roared upon the frosty night air.

The line wavered and swayed as the men danced and swung their arms, fighting the bitter cold, for in spite of the ice and snow upon the ground the men were very lightly dressed, bare calves showing below some of the overcoats or mackinaws that hung about their shoulders. On the ground before each man, or held in his hands, were a hammer and a small piece of board with a paper tacked upon it; into each board a nail was started ready to be driven.

In the rear shadows a number of warmly clad men talked and laughed. among themselves, and forced unwelcome advice upon the shivering ones in front.

Down at the very end of the line a small man with a little pointed cap pushed back upon his close-cropped gray head, rubbed a stinging ear with his knarled hand. Impatiently he reassured a pestering group.

"Sure, I'm all right," he growled. "Now, you boys, just quit worrying about me. It's going to be just as easy."

"Don't you forget big Mell Daskin," cautioned a friend. "He's a tough one if he is a college kid. And he's knocked around this country over a year now. Made his brags, he has, how he's going right away from you."

"Huh!" the little man snorted. "He ain't got a chance. Them kids is all right on a nice level track with a lot

of girls to yell and throw flowers. But when it comes to the real thing like this is going to be No, sir, he'll

find this ain't none of his Marathon picnics."

"He says you're too old, Jack-says you can't stand the grind."

"Old!" Iron Jack Ruddy straightened. "Well, I am old. Sixty-one, I am. But I'm still a better man than that big kid. Why, I've hiked these mountains all my life. That's what'll count. Oh, they's nothing to it. He won't last to the summit."

Up near the end of the line a tall man held a watch to the lantern that he carried.

"Five minutes!" he called sharply. Half way down the rank a lean, boyish giant towered above the heads of an admiring court. He laughed and joked, and refused to give serious attention to warnings or advice.

"Too late," he bantered. "I can't do any more training. It's all right, though, boys. All my life I've run long cross-country races and I've never been beaten."

"You look out for Iron Jack," admonished a pessimist. "He's the real old-timer of this bunch, and he's harder than that name of his. He's been making fun of your chances all the time."

The young man laughed good-naturedly.

"Poor old chap. It would be a joke if it wasn't so pathetic. Why, boys, he's an old man. He may have been an iron man once, and he may have the nerve now, but age will tell. He hasn't a chance. Youth and years of scientific training-that's what he has against him."

"That's all right," admitted the self

constituted coach; "but he's a mountaineer. He got that 'Iron' nickname packing hundred-pound loads on his back into the Devil's Slide country. He may be old, but you mind what I say: he's the one you've got to beat."

"The man with the watch hooked his left arm through the handle of the lantern and drew a revolver.

"Two minutes!" He walked briskly to the center of the line and addressed the men:

"Now, remember, boys! This is the north line of the Crazy Ann. You run straight ahead five hundred feet to the cabin and nail your notice anywhere on the outside walls. Then you're off, and for God's sake don't shove each other off that footlog."

He looked at his watch. "Forty seconds!"

The men in the line threw off their surplus clothing and prepared for action. Each gripped his hammer and board, and felt to see that another piece of paper was secure in pocket.

its

The starter trotted back and raised

his gun.

"Ten seconds! Ready!"

The men stood tense and grim. Some leaned forward, others crouched hands touching the ground in the manner of sprinters, but mostly they stood erect, waiting.

At the crack of the gun the line broke into a scrambling mob. Men collided with each other and fell, those behind stumbling over their bodies. Jostling and struggling, they swept across the clearing.

Well ahead of the squirming mass darted the tall figure of the athlete. Anticipating the riot that would ensue when ninety-seven men attempted, at the same time, to nail a board upon that cabin wall, he had "beaten the gun" in the manner of the experienced runner. Sprinting easily, he reached. the cabin and tacked the first notice upon the logs. Falling into a slow trot he crossed the swaying footlog and shot up the farther bank.

Iron Jack Ruddy was not a sprinter. When he reached the cabin it was

deep in a swarm of swearing men.

"Not any of that for me," muttered the old man, and waited until the crowd thinned. When he saw an opening he slipped in, nailed up his board and ran down to the river. He was nearly the last to cross the footlog.

Up the bank from the crossing the men turned into a rough trail. They trotted a few steps until the gaps were closed, then all settled into a longstepped, shambling walk.

There was no need now for sprinting, or hurrying, or crowding. For their destination was Reeka, the countyseat, sixty-three miles over the snowcapped Cold Creek Divide.

Old Sam Grout was queer in a number of ways, but the fact that he located the Crazy Ann back in the fifties and then never worked the rich gravel, was evidence enough to prove it.

The Crazy Ann really was rich. The bar was the best on Indian River, the claim above Grout's having yielded a quarter of a million, while the one below was said to have been even richer.

But Sam Grout just squatted there and never mined the claim. And he refused to sell or lease, although he had some frantic offers as the years passed and good placer ground became scarce. Each year he did his assessment work, wheeling into sluiceboxes set in a little side stream. Just one hundred dollars worth of work he did, never a day more. From that assessment work he took out enough gold for his living-how much more nobody knew.

After following this strange course for over fifty years Sam Grout disappeared. Just dropped out, no one knew how nor where. He had no relatives that any one in the Indian River District had ever heard of, and his friends, owing to his crabbed, solitude-loving nature, were very few. So his neighbors poked through the thicket above the cabin, and looked in the big pool below, then put the matter out of their minds.

A few days later, however, another phase of the situation popped into every one's head at the same time. "What about the Crazy Ann ?”

Old Grout was first missed in August. His assessment work was not done, for it was his custom to wait for the water of the first fall rains. The assessment work had to be done before January 1st, or the claim would revert to the government and become open for location.

As the months passed and the old man did not re-appear, the whole country became deeply interested in the Crazy Ann. As early as October a number of the Indian River miners began planning to be on the ground at midnight of December 31st. Many others gave up the idea at the second thought, for to make the location good it was necessary for the locator to record his duplicate notice at the countyseat. And Reeka was sixty-three miles distant over an eight thousand foot mountain range.

During seven months of the year the whole Indian River country was shut off from the east by the barrier of the Cold Creek Mountains. To reach Reeka in winter meant a detour of several hundred miles by way of the coast, or a dangerous, heart-breaking snow-shoe climb across the range. So only the hardy ones thought seriously of trying for the Crazy Ann, for it was plain that it would mean a race -a winter race over Cold Creek Divide. It took nerve even to think of it.

When it became evident that there was small chance of old Grout returning, and that the location surely would be made, several of the district's oldtimers got together and called a mass meeting. Rules were agreed upon, and arrangements were made for the run to be conducted by a committee. Though possible to use horses over twenty miles of the distance, it was finally decided to prohibit their use, and to let human endurance alone determine the outcome.

Ninety-seven men faced the starter on that cold winter night, but only a

half-dozen were recognized as having a chance. Among this handful were Mell Daskin, a young college athlete, who was learning quartz mining in the Blue Lead, and Iron Jack Ruddy, oldtime miner and prospector. Both Daskin and Ruddy were men of proven nerve and strength, the qualities that would be drawn upon in such a test of endurance. Each possessed limited confidence in his own physical powers, and looked upon the possibility of losing as a joke. The feeling caused by the rivalry between the two had been fanned by well meaning friends into a flame of bitter antagonism that threatened to blaze into downright enmity.

un

men

So in the raw chill of that January morning ninety-seven strong raced for the Crazy Ann. Snake-like, the shadowy line wound up through the rocks and chaparral clumps of a steep ridge. Behind lay the dark gash of Indian River, above, gleaming white in the starlight, hung the saw-tooth summit of Cold Creek Divide.

The men kept together, for the race I was not to the swift, but to the man who possessed the will to drive his body for thirty endless hours. They knew that long before the summit was reached the God of Defeat would begin taking his toll, and each man was well content to hold his place in the line.

At snow line, fifteen miles out, friends of the contestants had pitched a camp to furnish coffee and lunch. A short stop was made while the men stamped about a big fire eating sandwiches and gulping hot coffee. Then they were off again, each man carrying upon his back a pair of "webs," for within the next few miles they would be forced to begin the dreaded battle with twenty miles of snow.

The first beams of sunlight were glimmering on Norcross Peak when Jack Ruddy clumped in a wide sweep around Swede Alf, and slipped into the tracks of the leader, Mell Daskin.

The old man darted a sharp glance at his rival. The athlete was going strong, but he had maintained his