Those who insist upon judging the art of poetry on the hard American "cash basis" ought to be prepared, for the sake of consistency, to apply the same criterion as well to colleges, public schools, symphony orchestras, institutions for scientific research, missions, settlements, libraries, and all other unlucrative educational enterprises. With inexorable logic they should be prepared to insist that people really do not desire or need knowledge or any sort of uplift because they are not prepared to pay its full cost. It is precisely this sort of logic which would treat the Son of Man if He should appear among us, to a bench in Bryant Park, and a place in the bread-line, and send the mounted police to ride down his socialistic meetings in Union Square. No! poetry and most other forms of higher education have always had to be subsidized--and probably always will. When wisely subsidized, however, this art is very likely to repay its support in princely fashion. In fact, I know of no other investment to-day that would bid fair to bring us in so many thousand per cent. of return as a small fresh-air fund for poets. We Americans are rather apt to complain of the comparatively poor, unoriginal showing which our poets have as yet made among those of other civilized nations. We are quietly disgusted that only two of all our bards have ever made their work forcibly felt in Europe; and that neither Poe nor Whitman has ever profoundly influenced the great masses of his own people. Despite our splendid inheritance, our richly mingled blood, our incomparably stimulating New World atmosphere, why has our poetry made such a meager showing among the nations? The chief reason is obvious. _We have been unwilling to let our poets live while they were working for us._ True, we have the reputation of being an open-handed, even an extravagantly generous folk. But thriftiness in small things often goes with an extravagant disposition, much as manifestations of piety often accompany wickedness like flying buttresses consciously placed outside the edifice. We have spent millions on bronze and marble book-palaces which shall house the works of the poets. We have spent more millions on universities which shall teach these works. But as for making it possible for our few real poets to produce works, and completely fulfill their priceless functions, we have always satisfied ourselves by decreeing: "Let there be a sound cash basis."