The Project Gutenberg eBook of Watson’s Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 1, March, 1906, by Various.

Application made for Entry as Second-Class Matter, February 17, 1906, at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.

Down in Georgia

A national magazine can do no better work than to take a hand in a local fight, when the issues involved are national.

As explained in previous articles, the state of Georgia has been completely conquered by a Wall Street combination. Morgan, Belmont and Ryan are our masters. They rule Georgia through the Democratic party just as they rule New Jersey through the Republican party, and New York through both the old parties.

In New York, the tools of this Wall Street combination are such men as Murphy, Pat McCarren, Judge Parker, and Bill Sheehan. In Georgia the tools are such men as Hamp McWhorter, Joe Terrell, Clark Howell.

These men call themselves Democrats, but they work for Morgan the Republican as earnestly as they work for Belmont the Democrat. The Wall Street Railroad Kings rule and rob our state, and they do it by means of the men who control the machinery of the Democratic party.

Hoke Smith is leading a great revolt against this Wall Street domination, and he is doing it superbly. He is going to win, because the people know he is right. He is going to win, because the people know that they are being foully mistreated by the railroads. He is going to win because the people can no longer be driven by the party lash. He is going to win because the people have at last determined to vote for what they want.

In the January number of this magazine, I specified the wrongs which the people of Georgia suffer at the hands of the railroads. Mr. Clark Howell, the Corporation Candidate for Governor, tried to answer me, and probably flatters himself that he did so.

I made the statement that the railroads had violated our Constitution by “a joint ownership of competing lines, thus establishing the monopoly which the Constitution forbids.”

That is a serious charge. If it be true that the railroads have trampled the Constitution under foot and established a monopoly in defiance of law, that fact alone should damn them. No man, no set of men, no corporation, no combination of corporations, should be allowed to make law for themselves in Georgia. We should compel all persons, natural and artificial, to respect and obey our laws.

Does he deny that the Morgan-Ryan-Belmont interests work together in beautiful harmony in Georgia?

By no means. On the contrary, he parries the blow by saying that if any unlawful combination exists, Hoke Smith was the lawyer who represented the law-breakers in court.

According to that kind of logic we must not enforce the law against people who steal because Hoke Smith, as a lawyer, has actually defended thieves. Logic of that sort would compel me to antagonize the law against murder because as a lawyer, I defended dozens of men charged with that crime.

Hoke Smith’s position as a candidate for governor is one thing; his position as attorney in law cases is another; and there is no use trying to fool the people about it. If the railroads have made an illegal combination we must smash it, no matter who the lawyers were that represented the railroads at that time.

My editorial states that the railroads treated our Railroad Commission with contempt by refusing to obey its rules, its decisions, its orders.

As an example, I cited the case of the town of Flovilla, Georgia, where the railroads had for two years refused to provide the accommodations for passengers on their way to the Indian Spring.

Mr. Howell jumped on this statement with the triumphant crow of a bantam rooster.

He had caught me telling what was not true. No wonder the little rooster crowed. Not many men have upset statements made by me.

Clark says: “The truth of the matter is, the Railroad Commission ordered the building of a new depot at Flovilla, and the records of the commission show that the order was complied with.”

If the records of the commission show that, Somebody has fooled the Commission cruelly, for there has been no new depot built at Flovilla!

In 1904 the railroad made an addition to its freight room, at Flovilla, and stopped.

Hon. Pope Brown, Chairman of the Railroad Commission, had his talk with me after we came back from the New Orleans Cotton Convention. I think it was in the last week in January, 1905. It was not later than Feb., 1905. At that time the railroads had done nothing for the passengers at Flovilla. For a number of years the people of the community had been clamoring for decent accommodations without success. The Mayor had tried, and failed. The Railroad Commission had issued orders, and had been treated with contempt.

The thunder of the Anti-Corporation Campaign began to rumble. Hoke Smith’s stern voice began to be heard calling the Railroads to judgment. The Corporation law-breakers and Commission-Scorners began to tremble in their boots.

And in the Spring of 1905, after Brown’s talk with me, the railroad men got a move on and ran down to Flovilla, built a little shed for passengers near the old depot and put some water-closets in the old depot.

In the letter just quoted, Hon. Pope Brown repeats the statement that the railroads did treat with contempt the order of the Commission; and he relates a conversation he had with one of the representatives of the Southern Railroad, in which that official gave, as a reason for not making the required improvements at Flovilla, that the people of that county had given verdicts against the Railroad.

Yet the railroad candidate for Governor has deliberately tried to deceive the people of Georgia into believing that when the Railroad Commission ordered a new depot for Flovilla, the railroads promptly obeyed the order and built a new depot right away.

In my article, it was stated that the Flovilla case was but one out of many that could be mentioned. Since Clark Howell undertakes to prove to the people of Georgia that the railroads are good, law-abiding citizens, I will mention some other instances in which they violate the law every day of their lives, persistently, deliberately, insolently, contemptuously.

The law requires them to post bulletins of delayed trains at every station in advance of the delayed train, in order that passengers may be put upon notice. This law is of great consequence to the traveler. If the train is one, two, or three hours late, and the traveler can learn that fact upon his arrival at the depot, he can dispose of himself to the best advantage during the interval. But suppose the train is three hours late and the passenger does not know it? Suppose he asks the agent, and gets his head bit off with a sharp, curt, offensive, indefinite answer? He then hangs around in the waiting room; he is afraid to leave the depot for fear the train will come while he is away; yet he may have to sit there, anxious and suffering, for three mortal hours; when, if the bulletin had been posted, he could have escaped some of the inconveniences of the situation.

The law puts a penalty of twenty dollars upon the railroad for each violation of this rule; and there isn’t a day when hundreds of violations of it do not occur in Georgia. Not ten per cent of the agents of the railroads obey this law. Ninety per cent of them constantly violate it. Ask any drummer who travels through the state! Talk about obedience to the little one-hoss Railroad Commission? Why, here is a statute of the Code of Georgia, passed by the sovereign Legislature and signed by the Governor, and the railroads treat it as a dirty piece of waste paper.

In his letter, ex-Chairman Brown says that the railroads have never put into operation an order of the Commission as to freight rates, unless that order was absolutely satisfactory to themselves. He gives an instance, at Pitts, Georgia, where the railroads went directly to the contrary of the orders of the Commission. While Judge Atkinson was Chairman of the Commission, an order was passed requiring trains to quit stopping one or two hundred feet away from the depot, and to stop at the station, for the convenience of passengers.

Ex-Chairman Brown says that this order “has been absolutely ignored by all the roads that have come under my observation.”

In Chairman Brown’s official report, he calls attention to instance after instance where the railroads had ignored the rules, the decisions, the orders of the Commission.

What Georgian doesn’t remember with indignant shame the threat of the[5] Southern Railroad, voiced by its lawyer, Mr. Ed. Baxter, when he “served notice” on the Railroad Commission that the Railroads were tired of being pestered by our little one-hoss Commission?

Said Mr. Baxter: “The Railroad Commission may well understand that they have reached the length of their tether; henceforth we will put ourselves under the ægis of the Federal Court.”

Here were these Wall Street law-breakers, who had for two years been defying the Commission on the Flovilla matter, who had ignored their rulings on the stoppage of passenger trains, who had continually refused to obey the law requiring them to post bulletins of delayed trains, who, at Pitts, had acted contrary to the orders of the Commission, and who had never accepted a freight rate decision which was not just what they wanted—and their lawyer had the insolence to serve notice on the Commission that if it bothered his Wall Street clients further, he would turn his back upon it and seek that unfailing haven of Corporate rascality, the Federal Courts!

As to the illegal charges made by the roads, in the manner explained by me[6] in the 3rd specification of my article, I stand my ground, and I say that the Supreme Court has never declared that such a discrimination against a town on the main line was legal. On the contrary, it was held to be illegal.

As to specification number 4, that the Corporations rob the people of the state by compelling them to pay dividends upon fictitious capitalization, who can deny it?

Every privately owned railroad in this state has had all the water poured into it that it would hold. The fixed charges are based upon this fraudulent capitalization. The people pay dividends upon it. The freight and passenger rates are kept up, and accommodations kept down, and labor squeezed, and safety appliances neglected, and bridges allowed to stand till they fall beneath a load of screaming, bleeding, dying passengers, because the Wall Street rascals who watered the stock demand dividends upon the millions which they created out of ink and paper.

Clark Howell dares to say that the Central is capitalized for less now than before the war.

One must be awfully hard up for an office before he can bring himself to make a statement like that for a railroad.

The Capital stock of the Central was $7,500,000 before the war; and General Toombs declared that half of it was water. The Capital stock of the Central proper is perhaps 75,000 shares, as it was before the war. It may be even less. But that’s a matter of no consequence whatever.

The really important question is, How much capitalization does the Central carry upon which it has to pay revenue?

Everybody remembers how Pat Calhoun got control of the Central, and everybody knows how thick Clark Howell was with Pat. Wanted to put him in the Senate, you know.

Well, Pat and his Wall Street friends slapped a debt of sixteen million dollars on the Central during the gay time they had control of it.

Then the road was wrecked in the most approved Wall Street manner, and many a genuine widow and real orphan wept bitterly in their grief, for they had gone to bed in comfort and woke to poverty.

It was one of the nastiest, cruelest, completest pieces of Wall Street rascality that was ever worked upon an unsuspecting people, and Clark Howell could tell some queer things about it, if he would.

The Central fell into the Federal Courts, was put through the form of a sale, and that international scoundrel, J. Pierpont Morgan, appeared on the scene as “reorganizer.” When the Central had been properly Morganized, it was laden with fictitious capital to the tune of $55,000,000; and upon this fictitious capital the people of Georgia are made to pay revenue.

When Clark Howell stated that the Central was capitalized for less than before the war, he did not, perhaps, tell a falsehood in a strict technical sense; but, in the impression which he knew his language would make, and which he intended it to make, he was as far from the truth as when he pictured the railroads trotting down to Flovilla, promptly and dutifully to build that town a nice, new depot—“one of the most attractive and best equipped depots.”

As to the $10,000 campaign fund furnished by the railroads to elect Terrell, Mr. Howell says “it’s denied by everybody involved.” Ah, indeed? When did “everybody involved” deny it? Who are the “everybody involved”?

Will Joe Terrell go before a notary and make oath that the railroads did not contribute $10,000, or other large sum, to his campaign fund?

If he can make an affidavit of that sort, let him do it. His own honor and the honor of the state demand it. Let Joe swear it was not done, and I will publish his denial prominently in this magazine.

At the same time, however, I want him to explain to the people of Georgia why he, their Chief Magistrate, offered a seat on our Supreme Bench to that notorious railroad lobbyist and corruptionist, Hamp McWhorter. I would like to have this explanation attached as exhibit A, to the affidavit denying the railroad Campaign fund.

The other specifications in my article Mr. Howell meets with merely a general denial. Of course, there’s nothing to discuss where a general denial is made to a specific statement.

So far from the record of the Legislature showing that the railroads do not dominate it, those records prove that very thing.

No. The railroads oppose it. It is the cheapest, most effective method of bribery, and they mean to keep it. They will keep it.

Can you pass a law compelling the railroads to equip all passenger stations with water-closets; and to keep the waiting rooms open at night?

No. It would cost too much. They couldn’t do that, and pay dividends on watered stock also.

If they had to spend money providing accommodations for passengers, such “lawyers” as Hamp McWhorter and Tom Felder might lose fat corporation fees.

No indeed; you couldn’t pass a bill requiring the railroads to treat our wives and daughters decently at the stations where they have to wait for trains. It would cost too much.

Yonder sits an elderly lady on a pile of cross-ties. She is sick. She has been brought to the station to take an early train to the city where a specialist can be consulted about her case. It is cold. A heavy fog almost as bad as a drizzle of rain, hangs in the air. The door of the waiting room is locked. There is no fire, no light, no shelter at the station. The aged woman sits upon the cross-ties awaiting the coming of the train—sick, cold and suffering.

Is that your mother, my son? No. But it might be. Just such a scene was witnessed by a friend of mine some weeks ago; and the railroad which treats its customers in that beastly manner is one of these same Wall Street gangs of thieves that rob the state of Georgia through the Hamp McWhorters, the Joe Terrells, the Clark Howells who pose as the Democratic Party.

Great God! Are the people never to wake up to the fact that the machinery of the Democratic Party in Georgia belongs to a lot of Wall Street rascals?

Don’t they know that the platform of the Democratic State Convention is never handed out till Hamp McWhorter marks it “O. K.”?

Don’t they know that the majority of the daily papers belong to the railroads and are controlled by the railroads?

The Hon. Clark Howell closes his feeble editorial by making a side-thrust at this Magazine as “a subsidiary company to Town Topics.”

Not a line can go into it to which I object. Not a line can be kept out of it to which I put my approval. My contract gives the control of the Magazine to me completely. What more could anybody exact? That Town Topics owns a majority of the stock is true. But Town Topics has no more rights over the Magazine itself than the Atlanta Constitution has.

Tom Lawson, or H. H. Rogers, or Judge Parker, or W. J. Bryan might buy a majority of the stock. I could not prevent that. But nobody can interfere with my control of the Magazine.

I have no doubt that Mr. Clark Howell envies me my independence.[8] It is extremely doubtful whether he can say for himself and his paper what I have said for myself and the magazine.

I shouldn’t wonder if he held his place upon the condition that his paper must be railroad. He wouldn’t dare to have an opinion unfavorable to railroad. When he sits down to write editorials, I compare him in my own mind to the little girl going to the piano to practice her music-lesson. She is a good little girl, and she follows the notes. She improvises no music. She puts out her trained fingers and she touches, one by one, with painful fidelity, the notes written down on the score. She couldn’t think of striking any note which was not written down on the score. Dear little thing!

Day after day, month after month, year after year, the trained fingers strike the notes indicated in the lesson. If by chance she hits a chord not on the book, there’s a rap and a sharp word of reproof from the authority which presides over the “practice.”

“What’s that?” comes the cry of the teacher or parent, and the little girl, frightened at the false note, hurriedly gets back to the written score.

Some editors make editorial music that way, and the scores are written in Wall Street.

Pinkerton’s Report to Ye Bankers

Accordingly to the report made by the Pinkerton Detective Agency to the American Bankers’ Association, at its last meeting, there were arrested and prosecuted during the ten years preceding September, 1905, five hundred and fifty-four citizens who had committed crimes against these banks. Some of these erring citizens had committed forgery, others burglary, eleven were classified as robbers, and fourteen were called sneak thieves. These last named probably stole the cashier’s umbrella, or got away with the president’s gold-headed cane.

The Law came down, hard and heavy, upon the citizens who had sinned against the banks, and the transgressors were given sentences aggregating two thousand and one hundred years in prisons, chain-gangs and penitentiaries.

The sum total of the money which the banks lost by the operations of all these criminals, during the entire period of ten years, appears to have been less than one hundred thousand dollars.

Yet the law-breakers who caused the loss must vindicate the law by a penal servitude of more than two thousand years.

During that period of ten years how many banks have gone to smash? How many presidents and cashiers have looted the funds committed to their care?

How many millions of dollars have the common people lost by the rascality of dishonest bank officers? How many times have we seen frantic crowds of men and women gather about the door of some busted bank—men sick at heart because of sudden ruin, women screaming in terror because robbed of every dollar they had on earth?

Yet when an infamous scoundrel like John R. Walsh of Chicago converts to his use the millions of money held in his banks, Leslie Shaw, Secretary of the Treasury, hastens into print to say that it was all right; Mr. Walsh had done no more “than other bankers do.”

There was a Savings Bank in the holy town of Boston, Mass. It gave itself the comfortable name of the Provident Savings Bank. Trusting common people put $200,000 of their money into it. Thieves on the inside stole the money. At one swoop, this particular bank robbed the people of twice as much as the whole of rascaldom had got from the Associated banks in ten years!

He not only looted the bank, but falsified its books. He did not commit the crime upon impulse or sudden temptation. He did it deliberately, systematically, colluding with his cashier to plunder the fools who had trusted him.

The Law went through the form of giving this million dollar thief a sentence of seven years. His penalty is a sham; his “punishment” a mockery. He will be “detained” in comfortable quarters a few months; his health will then “fail”; he will then be pardoned, and will be ready to steal trust funds again.

Woe to the hungry tramp who steals bread to eat. Woe to the ragged woman who snatches food for her starving children.

Woe to the bad men who steal during ten years, one hundred thousand dollars from the Members of the American Bankers’ Association. These five or six hundred bad men will be sentenced, in the aggregate, to a penal servitude of over two thousand years.

But let the President of the Bankers’ Association steal one million and four hundred thousand dollars from the men and women who trusted him with their money, and the highly-connected thief gets off with a nominal punishment and a seven-year term which will never be enforced.

During the last twelve months, dishonest bank officers have stolen more than twelve million dollars from the depositors.

Yes; Frank Bigelow, sometime President of the American Bankers’ Association, laid careful plans, in collusion with his cashier, and stole fourteen hundred thousand dollars of Trust funds.

John Shannon, of Ohio, at about the same time, stole a turkey and a duck; and John Shannon is now serving out in the Ohio penitentiary a penal sentence of five years!

Why didn’t you wear a silk hat, and steal a million dollars from the inside of a bank?

Wayland’s Mistake

One of the most interesting and powerful men of this generation is J. A. Wayland.

For the last fifteen years he has been a wonder of the world, to me. Henry Gronlund was not more unselfish, John P. Altgeld was not more intense, and Arthur Brisbane is not more effectively equipped.

When I first knew of Wayland, he had come down to Tennessee to put his beautiful dream into operation. He had founded a Colony on the basis of Universal Brotherhood. He meant to demonstrate to mankind the ease with which we could make angels out of one another, if we would only set about it in the right way.

As I remember, the name of Wayland’s Happy Land was Ruskin—the name of an English dreamer who wrote many beautiful things and lived one of the saddest lives imaginable.

The vital spark in the Ruskin colony was Wayland’s paper. He called it “The Coming Nation.” The circulation of this paper grew to be enormous, and the soul of the paper was Wayland.

But some of the angels who had drifted into the colony became jealous of Wayland, and they made the point that the paper should not continue to be the property of Wayland—the man who had made it—but should become the common property of everybody who had drifted into the colony.

If my memory serves me right, Wayland yielded to his angel-brothers, and turned his magnificent property over to the Toms, Dicks, and Harrys who had come into Ruskin from the four corners and elsewhere.

After this, the angels found fault with Wayland about something else and then something else; and then some other thing: until the great-hearted, great-minded man threw up his hands in despair.

He surrendered everything to the Colony—paper, shops, farms and all—and went away from there, never to return.

What became of the Colony? The smart fellows who knew so much more than Wayland ran the whole thing into the ground. The brethren had hardly kicked Wayland out before they began to kick each other out. The master-hand and the master-mind being absent, the small men quarreled among themselves, and chaos ensued. The Ruskin Colony went to pieces, and one of the remnants strayed into South Georgia. There it lived a brief, troubled life, and there it died an unlamented death.

Wayland’s genius had made it; by every law of common sense and common justice it belonged to Wayland.

His brethren did not think so. The paper was as much theirs as his. They took it away from him. Then they didn’t know what to do with it. And it died.

With a pluck which nothing could daunt, Wayland opened out in Girard, Kansas, and modestly commenced another paper. This time he called it the “Appeal to Reason,” but in spirit and purpose it was “The Coming Nation” risen from its grave. Patiently, persistently, fearlessly, Wayland hammered away at Girard until he built up a monster circulation, and again was the owner of an extremely valuable property—the product of him, the said Wayland. No other man could have made that paper. No other man could[11] any more be Wayland, and do what Wayland does, than any other man could be Edison, and do what Edison does.

By every sane and just rule, the Appeal to Reason was Wayland’s property. He had gone into a desert, with a handful of type and a bottle of ink, and by the force of his genius had brought forth a finished product—a successful newspaper.

What happened to him then is only a matter of rumor. Conjectures can also be made from some indignant, sorrowful sentences which he published over his own signature.

But it seems clear that his Ruskin experience was repeated. His angel-brothers made him take his own medicine in heroic doses. The men who had not created the paper, claimed an equal share in it—or something of that sort; and there were the usual points made against Wayland which the small would-be leaders make against the leader.

Rumor had it that Wayland went through a Gethsemane of peculiar bitterness, but just how it all was, the outside world was not given to know. The great soldier in the cause of humanity covered the wounds his own men had made, and was too proud to complain.

He is offering land prizes for the largest number of subscribers. He proposes that, as a premium, in a certain competition on subscriptions, he will convey, by deed, a farm in Florida to the fortunate Socialist who gets the greatest number of subscribers to the Appeal to Reason! I can hardly believe what I see in Wayland’s own paper.

What! Is it possible that Wayland has wickedly gone and bought a quantity of land?

And can it be true that other Socialists not only want to share in this “robbery,” but want it so bad they will compete for it?

Dear me! I didn’t know that Socialism was like that. If it is, I believe I’ll take some stock in it myself.

My impression has been that the Socialists were opposed to private ownership of land. I have had forcible reminders of that fact in letters which came hot from the enraged writers. Private ownership is “robbery”; that’s the way they write to me. Did I not see a Socialist orator wave his small, white hand gracefully at all the stores, factories and dwellings in St. Louis, in the summer of 1904, and did I not hear him say in his musical voice to the assembled laborers: “All that is yours; go and take it!” Then, with a silk handkerchief he, with courtly gesture, wiped the moisture from his marble brow, and continued: “Don’t take a part of it, take it all. Don’t be satisfied with a loaf, take the whole bakery.”

Then he froze me and Joe Folk with a glare of merciless severity, and continued, “These men”—indicating me and poor Joe, with a supercilious gesture—“these men talk to you about shorter hours of labor, and the Eight Hour day. I don’t want any Eight Hour day: what I want is to live in the best possible manner on the least possible work.”

And now Wayland is going to spoil all this. He is going to quicken the appetite of Socialists for private property. Instead of feeding a million men on the definite expectation of getting a slice of the Astor Estate, at some indefinite time, he is going to reverse the process and feed as many as qualify, on a definite slice of Florida land right now.

I make this prediction: As fast as Wayland makes home-owners out of his followers he will lose crusaders.

A zealous Socialist, who owns nothing, but who is spurred on by that God-given desire for private property, will eagerly compete for Wayland’s prize and will win it. He will pocket the deed, and move to his land. He[12] will find, perhaps, that it does not quite come up to representation; but it is too late to back out. He settles on his seventy acre tract. If it has no house, he builds. If he has one already, he does all that he can to make it more attractive. It is his. When the storm beats without, he snuggles close to his fireside, and thanks God that this is his shelter from the wild night. His wife will lay her loving touches here and there, and the house will take on a look which reflects the individuality of the owners. Flowers in the front yard, vines clinging about the porch, bright pictures on the wall, ferns and grasses in the vase over the mantel, a climbing rose, perhaps, to race for the cone of the house and to throw out its crimson colors from the roof. Toil which one loves will be freely spent on garden and field, for the toiler is working for those he loves best. In a few years, under the care of home-owners, the neighbors will say, “It doesn’t look like the same place.”

And it isn’t the same place. The owners have transformed it. They have put elements of value and beauty there which nature did not supply. They have so directed their labor, their judgment, their good taste, their tender interests, that the home which they have created is as different from the wild land, as the noble watch-dog at the door differs from the gray wolf of the wilderness.

Do you suppose that this man and his wife and his children can ever be made to believe that they have “robbed” some body of that land, and that it is wrong for them to hold it as private property?

By offering such a prize, he knows he is appealing to one of the strongest human passions—the passion for home-owning.

Every full-sexed girl instinctively feels that her destiny is Motherhood—and she plays with dolls, nurses them, kisses them, hugs them to her little bosom, calls them pet names, fondly dresses them in every beautiful way that her infant fancy can suggest, and rocks them to sleep in the tiny cradle. That is the God-given instinct of Motherhood.

Every full-sexed man, on the other hand, is born with a craving for his mate, and next to that, a home to put her in.

Individualism, crying aloud to me and to you, says “choose your mate and make her yours.” The idea of promiscuous mating is abhorrent. Collective mating would be hideous. You want individual mating. You want to separate your mate from every other woman and from every other man—and if another man invades your individual rights, you slay him like a dog.

There’s the natural feeling, the natural passion, the natural individuality—and everybody knows it.

This craving for individual mating with women, bases itself firmly on the individual home. Give me my mate, and let me take her to my home:—and you have consistency, you have nature, you have a foundation for home-life and all that flows from it—a foundation firm as the everlasting hills.

But the two go together. They are parts of the same system. Surrender one, and you endanger the other.

If you are a Collectivist—your logic will never stop at Collectivism in property only.

If you believe in the one wife, believe also in the home, which shall be yours individually, just as your wife is yours, individually.

Calhoun for Public Ownership

Through the never-failing courtesy of Senator Clay, of Georgia, it was recently my good fortune to come into possession of two bulky volumes issued by the Government, and entitled, “Annual Report of the American Historical Association.” The second volume of this report contains the Private Correspondence[13] of John C. Calhoun, and a most interesting collection of letters it is.

Glancing through these letters hurriedly, I came upon one which Mr. Calhoun wrote to William C. Dawson, of Georgia, in 1835, wherein he declares himself strongly in favor of state-built railroads.

It will be remembered that at that time there was a surplus of revenues in the Treasury.

This surplus was not given away in premiums to bond-holders as Mr. Cleveland gave sixty million dollars a few years ago.

It was not deposited with the National Banks to be used in their business as Mr. Roosevelt now disposes of $56,000,000 of the public funds.

In the days of Calhoun, governmental robbery of the taxpayer for the benefit of the non-taxpayer had not been reduced to a science as it has since been.

In Mr. Calhoun’s day, it was believed that when the Government had collected from the taxpayer a greater sum than was needed for governmental expenses, the excess should, as a matter of common honesty, be returned to the taxpayer.

It being impracticable, however, to restore the money in exact proportion to each individual taxpayer, the Government did the next best thing—it divided the surplus pro rata, among the states.

In his letter to Dawson, Mr. Calhoun estimates the entire amount of the surplus, extending over a series of years, at seventy or eighty million dollars.

Now what does he advise shall be done with this money which has been drawn from the taxpayers of the two states?

He advises that it be spent by Georgia and South Carolina in building railroads to connect those two states with the lines leading to the West and Southwest.

Spent in that manner, the surplus taxes of the two states would be so invested as to benefit all the people of Georgia and South Carolina.

It wouldn’t go to a few pet National banks to be loaned out as private capital.

It being public money, it would be used for a public purpose; and the great public roads which it would build would belong to and benefit all the people of the two states which had paid the taxes into the Federal Treasury.

“To make this great fund available for so important an object, the legislatures of the states interested ought to move forthwith. I hope Georgia will take the lead. The action of no other state could have half the influence.”

Mr. Calhoun, with marvelous foresight, sketched the system of railroads which has since been built. Just where he declared in 1835 that the railroads ought to be, they are now to be found.

Had his counsels been followed, those public highways would now be the property of the public. Folly, stupidity, sordid franchise-grabbing had their own way, however, and the magnificent system of highways which Calhoun laid out for the people belongs to the corporations.

Judge Du Bose’s Letter and the Public Debt

The writer of the letter on the public debt is the author of the “Life and Times of William L. Yancey,” a book which is a treasure-house of varied and valuable information.

That this Magazine has made such a favorable impression upon so able and representative a man, is of itself a great encouragement to us who are devoting our lives to it.

The question asked by the distinguished Alabamian is a spear-thrust into the very vitals of our vicious system of Class-Rule and Special Privileges.

When Alexander Hamilton set out to make our government as English as the Constitution would admit of, he laid the foundations of his work in the English[15] system of Protection, the English system of Finance, and the English system of Funding the Public Debt.

With his Protective system he meant to favor one class of industries at the expense of others: thus rallying to the support of the government those who shaped its laws to fill their pockets with the money which belonged to other people.

With his system of Finance, and his National Bank of issue, he meant to form a co-partnership between wealth and government. To the favored few was to be delegated that tremendous power to create currency which had always been a prerogative of the Crown until Barbara Villiers, the harlot, wheedled from the dissolute Charles II. that concession to the bankers.

With his system of Funding the Public Debt, Hamilton meant to mortgage the Nation, in perpetuity, to the wealthy few, in order that they might always hold their power over the masses, and their advantage over the government.

William Pitt is said to have remarked cynically, when he saw our government copying the British system: “Their independence will not do them much good if they adopt our system of finance.”

We all remember how bitterly Jefferson combated the Hamilton measures. We can turn to his writings now, and read the scathing terms in which he denounced them. We can also read his predictions of the evils which would come upon us if we allowed Hamilton’s class-law system to develop.

The great historic renown won by the Democratic Party and its leaders was gained in combating this class-law system of Alexander Hamilton.

Democrats, and the Democratic Party, always stood in battle array against the Protective System, contending that it was immoral, unjust, oppressive, despoiling the many to enrich the few.

Democrats, and the Democratic Party, always went up against the National Banks to fight them, declaring that such an institution was of deadly hostility to the spirit of republican government.

Democrats, and the Democratic Party, always clamored against the Funding System, and demanded that the Public Debt be paid off.

Those were the memorable, historic principles of Democrats in the years preceding the Civil War—in the years when the Democrats had a mission, a creed; leaders who had convictions, champions, who loved ideas well enough to cherish them more dearly than office.

That he had so cut down Government expenses that the Public Debt would soon be a thing of the past.

The Protective principle had been stricken out of the Tariff, and that infamous system had been reduced to a moderate revenue basis.

The individual citizen amounted to more, as a man, than he does now. Wages were low, but the money commanded a larger amount of the necessaries of life than the higher wages of today.

Strikes and lockouts were unknown. “We have no poor,” was the matter-of-fact statement made in Congress by Hugh S. Legaré of South Carolina.

In the whole world there probably was not a people more contented, progressive, and generally well-off than we were in the Forties.

Where is the bulk of all the immense[16] wealth that has been produced since the Civil War? In the East.

How came it there? Class-law took it from the sections where it was produced, and gave it to those who were more cunning and selfish in framing national statutes.

There is no fouler chapter in the history of crime than that which is to be written concerning the manipulation of our National Debt. How many hundreds of millions have been made out of the government by the rascals who juggled with the bonds, it would stagger faith to state. The starting point, where Belmont, Rothschild, Sherman and the Bank of England compelled Congress to depreciate the Greenback, the exchange of bonds at par for Greenbacks at their full face value, the change of the terms of the bond from lawful money to coin, and from coin to gold, the huge commissions paid to favored bankers, the colossal deposits of public funds to be used in private speculations, the sudden and mysterious fortunes accumulated by Secretaries of the Treasury, like Sherman, and by Senators, like Gorman, the stealthy mission of Ernest Seyd, the covert influence of the Haggard & Buell circulars—all these are but high-points in a long journey of national shame, legalized robbery, ruinous prostitution of the powers of government to gorge the few on the life-blood of the many.

Who does not know that our Public Debt could be paid off at any time if the ruling class wanted it paid?

Who does not realize the anomaly of the richest nation on earth bearing[17] a bonded debt as though it were a luxury?

Who does not recognize the grim irony of wearing a bondholder’s chain as though it were a string of pearls?

Wipe out the Public Debt and there would be no foundation for the National Banks. One form of privilege having been abolished, the other would follow. And then others would follow! The bonds are the keystone to the arch. The Public Debt is the nucleus of the system by means of which Wealth runs the Government for its own benefit.

Who wants the Government to economize? Not the Privileged. By no means. If the Government were to economize there would be such a surplus in the Treasury that the Government, for very shame, would have to pay itself out of debt.

The Privileged are determined to keep the Government in debt, and hence there will be no economy.

The fields of expenditure shall widen, widen, and be kept on widening. Salaries shall increase, and increase, and be kept on increasing. Offices shall be multiplied, and multiplied, and be kept on multiplying.

The Panama Canal can get all it wants; let the Philippines cost what they may; give more to the Navy; give more to the Army; give more to Rivers and Harbors; give more to Pensions; give the Railroads four times as much as it is worth to carry the mails, and then give them a special subsidy to keep the contract; give $45,000 for carrying mail to the Island Tahiti when the “cussed foreigner” offered to do it for $3,500; give with so lavish a hand that even the South will get a pull at the sugar-teat, and shall join in the Hallelujah Chorus of “O, ain’t it good!”

A child ought to be able to see the profound policy which underlies the extravagance of the Federal Government.

The Tariff must not be lowered; the Public Debt must not be paid off; the reign of the Trusts must not be threatened:

That’s the watchword of heartless Plutocracy which has erected its powers upon the three bed-rock measures of Alexander Hamilton.

“Stand Pat!”—blares the bugle-note of Class-law leaders, for they know that a system depends upon all of its component parts. If there should be a leak in the dike, anywhere, the angry ocean might come pouring in.

What lines of battle are forming under the time-honored banners of Jefferson and Jackson?

Alas! The mighty strain and struggle of the Democratic Party during these degenerate days, has been to imitate every bad habit of the Republicans. Democrats vote with the Republicans to continue the National banks, to continue the Public Debt, to continue the Protective system, to embark upon an imperial colonial system, to perpetuate the rule of the Trust, to multiply objects and amounts of National extravagance.

In the rapid awakening of the people to the fact that in the name of Party they are being stripped of everything that makes for the independence and prosperity and happiness of the average citizen.

Talmage in Russia: Fourteen Years Ago

After the downfall of Beecher, Doctor Talmage became the most conspicuous preacher in the United States. His sermons and his writings had an immense audience. “Talmage’s Sermon” was a standing headline, in American Monday morning newspapers, and they were widely known in Europe also. No visitor to New York thought of returning home until he had attended services at the Brooklyn Tabernacle and qualified himself[18] to boast of the fact that he had “heard Talmage.”

The fact that Doctor Talmage had been engaged to furnish articles to any periodical, was sufficient to boost its circulation into the tens of thousands. No Lyceum, no Chautauqua, no Lecture Course was complete without Talmage. Formal banquets, in quest of oratorical attractions, never failed to urge the attendance of Doctor Talmage.

Somehow the man became the fashion, the rage. He was the Caucasian Booker Washington. Everybody having agreed that he was a wonderful man, the ball kept on rolling by the law of inertia.

Nobody could tell you wherein he was great; nobody could quote anything remarkable from his writings or his sermons; nobody knew of anything phenomenal that he had done, or was supposed to be able to do. His capacity for the benevolent assimilation of an indefinite number of voluntary donations was strikingly like Booker Washington’s power in the same direction; but beyond the fact that Talmage preached to a large congregation, and wrote books which many people read, his greatness was hard to define.

However, Talmage had his day. He was the fashion. At home and abroad he was a man whom it was the correct thing to treat with distinguished consideration. Foreign potentates, princes and powers knew Talmage as a mighty man of the pen; likewise as a man of infinite capacity for talk; also as a man who traveled with a photographic outfit. Consequently a man to be handled with care; “this side up,” as it were.

His progress through a foreign land, was not merely an incident; it was an event. He was greeted with dress-parade formalities. Foreign princes, potentates and powers knew that Talmage would write a book about them when he got home; that the book would be read by hundreds of thousands; that public opinion would be influenced by it; and that the photographs of the princes, etc., would appear in the book. Consequently the smiling faces which were turned toward the Talmage Camera by the helpless potentates etc., were almost distressing in their laborious amiability.

As to Russia, Doctor Talmage seems to have gone there by imperial invitation and prearrangement.

“Stepping from the Moscow train on returning to St. Petersburg, an invitation was put in my hand inviting me to the palace.... I had already seen the Crown Prince in his palace.... The royal carriage was waiting, and the two decorated representatives of the palace took me to a building where a suite of three rooms was appointed me, where I rested, lunched, examined the flowers and walked under the trees.” Then the royal carriage came again, took him through the magnificent and beautiful grounds to the palace of the Czar. During his stay, officials crowded around him, lavished attentions upon him, stuffed his ears with glowing accounts of the lovely conditions prevailing in Russia, and made Doctor Talmage feel good generally.

Russian autocracy laid itself out to capture Talmage, and it captured him completely.

From a picture on page 408 of his book, I infer that Russian enthusiasm broke from every restraint, and that he was caught up in the arms of a delirious populace, and borne triumphantly through the streets, on the shoulders of his worshipers. The picture represents Russian citizens (who bear a disconcerting resemblance to New York dandies), waving their hats wildly—(Derby hats)—and shows Doctor Talmage sitting gracefully upon the shoulders of two elegantly dressed enthusiasts; and the silk hat of the Doctor is held aloft in his eloquent right hand, while his left is extended in what I take to be his favorite gesture. The picture represents all the Russians with their mouths shut. It also represents Talmage with his mouth shut—a fact which arouses a suspicion that the picture is spurious. Under such circumstances, Talmage could no more have kept his mouth shut than Bryan could.

Other pictures show Doctor Talmage in the act of responding from his carriage[19] to a street ovation; also of rising to make a few remarks to a grand gathering in a hall draped with the Stars and Stripes; also of making a speech on the arrival of a ship from the United States bringing bread to feed the Russian peasants.

There are, also, pictures showing Talmage seated on one side of a small table and the Czar seated on the other; Talmage in the act of being received into the family circle of the Czar; Talmage standing erect in his carriage, hat outstretched, in the act of returning the salutes of hat-waving crowds which pause and look pleasant, apparently, until Talmage’s picture man can draw his focus, spring his slide, and say, “That’ll do.”

I state all this to show the readers how public opinion is sometimes made to order. The Russian autocracy knew that Talmage was the best possible press-agent they could use. He was intensely vain, easily flattered, a snob to the core, a man whose very soul quivered with delight under the smile of royalty.

There had been a great deal of abuse heaped upon Russia. The newspapers, magazines, political pamphlets had been telling the civilized world a vast deal about the barbarities practiced by the Russian government. George Kennan, the brave American traveler, had risked all the rigors of Siberia to see for himself how prisoners were treated there. His reports had thrilled the hearts of millions with furious indignation against the Czar, and with profound pity for the victims of imperial tyranny. Tolstoy, Stepniak, Kropotkin and many others had been heard.

Russian autocracy was in bad odor throughout the Christian world, and if such a man as Talmage could be enlisted for the defence, it would be a fine thing to do. His voice would carry weight throughout Europe and the United States. Therefore, it is reasonably certain that the Russian government had an axe to grind when it made the Talmage visit an occasion for a series of ovations.

At any rate, the Russian government got from Talmage when he came to write his book of travels, a chapter of the most fulsome, least discriminating praise that you will ever read.

Russia was all right, in every respect. Travelers were never subjected to vexatious delays or examinations—for Talmage had not been delayed or vexed. He actually carried into Russia some books which criticised the government, and the magnanimous officials made no objection. There was no religious persecution in Russia! On the contrary, Jews and Gentiles, of all descriptions, could worship God in any manner that pleased them. The Government never interfered.

If a nobleman conspired against the life of the Czar, he was arrested, put into a carriage, blindfolded, driven about for many hours to make him believe that he was on his way to Siberia, and he was then set down, at his own door, safe, unharmed, free!

If a poet wrote scurrilous verses about the Empress, he was brought into the family circle of the Czar and asked to read the lines in the hearing of the lady. That was the worst.

Siberia was described as a country of Italian softness of climate; and banishment to the Siberian prisons, mines, etc., was altogether better for criminals than ordinary jails.

Doctor Talmage defended Russian autocracy, Russian police, Russian prisons, indignantly hurling back upon the slanderers of Russia their foul accusations.

“But how about the knout, the cruel Russian knout, that comes down on the bare back of agonized criminals? Why, Russia abolished the knout before it was abolished from our American navy.”

Think of reading this stuff at a time when the ears of the world are yet tingling at the sound of the Cossack whips!

Think of reading this when we know that before Talmage’s book was written, and while it was being written, and ever since it was written, Russian peasants, by thousands, have been flogged every year for non-payment of taxes!

“The Emperor received me with much heartiness. And at the first glance, seeing him to be a splendid gentleman, with no airs of pretension and as artless as any man I ever saw, it seemed to me that we were old friends from the start.”

Doctor Talmage did not visit the Russian prisons which he defended; did not go to Siberia, which he compared to Italy; did not make any investigations of peasant-life; did not go among the working classes; did not talk with Tolstoy, nor any man of the dissatisfied elements. In fact, Talmage declares, in effect, that nobody was dissatisfied.

“He who charges cruelty on the imperial family and the nobility of Russia, belies men and women as gracious and benignant as ever breathed oxygen.”

When we read such lines as the above and recall how that gracious and benignant nobility have drenched Russia with blood of peasants, Jews, city workingmen, republican agitators—littering the streets with ghastly heaps of murdered men and women and children—we may well stand amazed at the success with which the wool was pulled over the eyes of the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.

“There are no kinder people on earth than the Russians, and to most of them cruelty is an impossibility.”

“He’s doing the best things possible for the nation which he loved, and which as ardently loved him.... Things are going on marvelously well, and I do not believe that out of 500,000 Russians you will find more than one person who dislikes the Emperor, and so that Calumny of dread of assassination drops so flat it can fall no flatter.”

According to Doctor Talmage the story that the Czar dreaded the assassin was a base Calumny, and he, Talmage, flattened it out in his book “so flat it can fall no flatter.”

I wonder what the present Czar would feel, think and say if he could now read Talmage’s comfortable assurances on the subject of “dread of assassination.”

While in Russia, Doctor Talmage saw the Rulers, and no others. He talked with the governing class, and no others. He saw a ship from the United States bringing bread to the Russian farmers, but it never occurred to his mind that a drouth in one portion of the huge Russian Empire was no good reason why the New World should have to save Russian peasants from starvation.

Looking only on the surface, seeing only what his “old friend” the Czar, wished him to see, he praised the Russian government in terms of the most unqualified eulogy.

Before the Talmage book was ready for the press, Prince Cantacuzene, the Russian Minister Plenipotentiary at Washington, summoned Doctor Talmage to the deck of a Russian man-of-war, in Philadelphia harbor, and presented to the enraptured American “a complete gold-enameled tea service accompanied by a message of love which I cannot now think of without deep emotion, since Emperor Alexander has disappeared from the palaces of earth to take his place, as I believe, in the palaces of heaven.”

In behalf of the Czar, the formalities of a trial on Judgment Day, were waived, it would seem; and the Czar went direct from Peterhof to his mansion in the skies.

The Emperor Alexander, it is well-known, was succeeded by his son Nicholas, the reigning Czar.

That was a very natural inspiration. Talmage had delved into Russian affairs and found conditions ideal.[22] The government was mild, just, progressive. The people were contented, and devoted to the Czar. There was no cruelty in the administration, and no suffering among the peasants, excepting the locality affected by the drought. The bread had been sent to feed the peasants, and all would be well. The Knout had been abolished. The serf, freed, was happy. Religious toleration was in practice; the circulation of political literature unhampered.

There was not a cloud upon the horizon. George Kennan, Stepniak, Tolstoy, Kropotkin had been slandering vilely the most humane Government of Europe—a Government which Talmage compared to ours, to our discomfiture in various respects.

With a Podsnapian wave of his hand, Talmage said to Europe, “Let this international defamation of Russia cease.”

With that Royal welcome fresh in his memory, with those public ovations still ringing in his ears, with that “complete gold-enameled tea service” gladdening his eye, with the “message of love” conveyed by the Prince Cantacuzene still warming his heart, how could Doctor Talmage prophesy otherwise?

The spirit of the occasion demanded prophecy, and there it stands recorded, page 432:

A Prophet Whose Voice Was Not Heeded

Almost in sight of where I live, there is a heap of stones that marks the spot where stood the hut in which George McDuffie was born.

Little George McDuffie was at the cowpen where his mother was milking, and he had a calf by the ears holding it away from the cow. A traveler, in a buggy, drove up and stopped. Seeing the boy, and not realizing the absorbing character of the boy’s job, the wayfaring man called out:

To which the lad replied: “If you’ll come here and hold my calf, I’ll go there and hold your horse.”

According to the story, the traveler was so tickled by the boy’s readiness of wit, that he took a fancy to him and secured him a position as clerk in a store in the city of Augusta.

Well, George McDuffie wasn’t much of a clerk. He loved to read books better than to wait upon customers. It came to pass that his fondness for books attracted the attention of one of the Calhouns—not John C., but his brother, I believe—and Mr. Calhoun placed the boy at the celebrated school of Dr. Waddell to be educated.

The balance is history. McDuffie became one of the greatest legal advocates and political orators this country has ever known.

Later in life he became involved in a newspaper controversy which drew him into two duels. In one of these he received a wound which injured his spine and affected his brain.

In his melancholy decline, and not long before his death, McDuffie was moved by a yearning to come back to Georgia and visit the spot where his boyhood home had stood. He came from South Carolina by private conveyance, and spent the night with my grandfather. Next day he went on down to the Sweet-water Creek neighborhood where the McDuffie hut had been. My father used to tell me that when they led the broken statesman to the spot, pointed out the remaining shade tree and the dismantled chimney, they drew away, leaving him alone with his memories. After awhile they returned to find Mr. McDuffie sitting upon the stones of the ruined hearth, crying like a child.

When the boy, George McDuffie, left the store in Augusta and went over[23] into South Carolina to go to school, he carried all of his earthly possessions in one little pine box.

When he became a man he made much money, owned large estates and moved as a peer among the proudest leaders of his day.

But he never parted with the little pine box. It was a souvenir of the old days of youth and poverty. It was sacred in his eyes, and he treasured it. When his mind was almost gone, he would put his arms about the box, and tell again the story of how it had held all that he owned when he came into South Carolina—a poor boy, on his way to the great battle-field of life.

Did you know that to this almost forgotten statesman, George McDuffie, belongs the distinction of having made the most powerful and most prophetic speech that was ever made in Congress against our damnable Tariff System?

Well, it does. Such men as Nelson Dingley and Joseph H. Walker were good judges in such a matter, and they regarded McDuffie’s argument as the strongest ever made against the New England scheme of enriching its Capitalists by plundering other sections. Dr. Goldwin Smith should also be a competent judge, and you will find that McDuffie’s speech is the one he quotes from in his “Political History of the United States.”

Mr. McDuffie’s great speech against the protective system is too long to be reproduced here; but in the concluding paragraphs he predicted with such clearness of vision the reign of rotten business and rotten politics which now afflicts us that his words read like inspired prophecy:

“Sir, when I consider that, by a single bill like the present, millions of dollars may be transferred annually from one part of the community to another; when I consider the disguise of disinterested patriotism under which the basest and most profligate ambition may perpetrate such an act of injustice and political prostitution, I cannot hesitate, for a moment, to pronounce this system the most stupendous instrument of corruption ever placed in the hands of public functionaries.

“It brings ambition and avarice and wealth into a combination which it is fearful to contemplate, because it is almost impossible to resist.

“Do we not perceive, at this very moment, the extraordinary and melancholy spectacle of less than one hundred thousand capitalists, by means of this unhallowed combination, exercising an absolute and despotic control over the opinions of eight millions of free citizens and the fortunes and destinies of ten millions?

“Sir, I will not anticipate or forbode evil. I will not permit myself to believe that the Presidency of the United States will ever be bought and sold. But I must say that there are certain quarters of this Union in which, if the candidate for the Presidency should come forward with this Harrisburg tariff in his hand, nothing could resist his pretensions if his adversary were opposed to this unjust system of oppression.”

“Indeed, Sir, when I contemplate the extraordinary infatuation which a combination of capitalists and politicians have had the heart to diffuse over more than one-half of this Union—when I see the very victims who are about to be offered up to satiate the voracious appetite of this devouring Moloch, paying[24] their ardent and sincere devotions at his bloody shrine; I confess I have been tempted to doubt whether mankind was not doomed, even in its most enlightened state to be the dupe of some form of imposture, and the victim of some form of tyranny.

“Sir, in casting my eyes over the history of human idolatry, I can find nothing, even in the darkest ages of ignorance and superstition, which surpasses the infatuation by which a confederated priesthood of politicians and manufacturers have bound the great body of the people of the farming States of this Union as if by a spell, to this mighty scheme of fraud and delusion.”

Then look around you and see how prophetically Mr. McDuffie pictured the future.

The Presidency is bought and sold. Congress is bought and sold. The confederated priesthood of politicians and manufacturers do dominate an infatuated people whom it deludes and plunders.

The Trusts are nothing in the world but the legitimate children of Privilege and Protection.

Campaign boodle-funds are nothing in the world but the sop which the Corrupt Combination of Capitalists pay to renew the lease which they hold on the Government.

And, as Mr. McDuffie said, the most astounding feature of the whole diabolical system is the completeness with which the politicians and the Privileged can dupe the victims of Protection into the belief that Privilege benefits the unprivileged.

With the doors of immigration standing wide open vomiting into our industrial world all the cheap white labor of the universe, our Protected capitalists are still able to convince our wage-earners that American capital protects American labor from the competition of foreign “pauper” labor!

Having ground down the price of factory labor to such a low point that they can undersell foreigners in the foreign market, our Privileged and Protected Capitalists can nevertheless convince American laborers that the motive for high tariffs is to enable the Capitalist to pay big wages!

And they swallowed it—the wage-earners swallow it, meekly, blindly, trustfully.

The very factory hands who at Fall River lived off the soup of the Salvation Army devoutly believed that if it hadn’t been for the Protective system they wouldn’t even have got the soup.

The factory girl who is paid five dollars per week, and who, when she complains that she cannot live on the wage, is sardonically advised to get a gentleman friend, actually believes that were it not for Privilege and Protection she would not get the five dollars.

God in heaven! No wonder that George McDuffie expressed his doubt as to whether the masses could ever[25] be enlightened. No wonder his prophetic speech vibrated with an undertone of despair.

Less than one-tenth of the laborers of this country own their homes; yet they have been Protected for a hundred years.

Less than a quarter million men own practically the entire wealth of the whole United States; yet Privilege and Protection are not for their benefit.

You go to the millions of Unprivileged and Unprotected citizens and you point out to them how they are plundered by being made to pay twice as much as they should on every article which they buy.

They understand it; they admit the fact; but the corrupt politician has taught them what to say.

“Yes; we pay twice as much as the goods are worth, but it is patriotic and humane, because we thereby enable millions of American wage-earners to get big wages.”

If the man who repeats that little lesson, and believes it, would go into the districts where Protection is and where the system has been at work longest he will find himself in precisely the places where wages are lowest, where Capitalists are harshest, where squalor and vice are rankest, and where the maddened victims of our soulless wage-system are nursing in their hearts the passions of hell.

The Highest Office

Let seasons come and go, let the sunlight and shadows fall where God’s pleasure puts them—do your duty as conscience and reason reveal it to you. Let no other man measure your work or your responsibilities; let no artful sophistry, in favor of the expedient, veil from your steadfast eyes the summits of Right. Let parties rise and fall; let time-servers flop and flounder, let the heedless praise of the hour lay its withering garlands at the feet of him who will purchase them by bending to every passing breeze, every popular whim, every local prejudice.

Do thou look higher if joy and strength and peace and pride are to be thine. In this brief life (hardly worth the living) know this one thing: that a man’s honor should be just as dear to him as a woman’s virtue is to her. Did the Roman girls not go gladly to the lions, to the bloody death in the arena, rather than to recant their Christian faith, or to accept a lawless lover? Did not the Armenian woman, a few years ago, leap to death over the precipice, rather than to apostatize or to be violated? Isn’t the ground still wet with the life-drops of poor Else Kroegler, who let her white throat be gashed, and gashed, and gashed, by the black devil who assailed her, till her life was gone, rather than to live dishonored? And shall a man be less heroic than a woman? Is there nothing within us that cannot be bought? Is there no Holy of Holies of conviction and principle, into which the corruptor shall not enter? Is there nothing that we hold sacred as the citadel of proud, fearless, upright manhood?

Once upon a time a barbarous peasant worked his way upward and onward, until he wore the imperial purple of Rome; and he said: “I have gained all the honors and none of them have value.” Did not Cæsar, himself, grow sick at heart of the eminence he had wickedly won, and say that he had lived long enough?

If we must bow to what is wrong, flatter what we despise, preach what we disbelieve, and deny what we feel to be true, is success thus won anything but a gilded dishonor?

To be a man, such a man as you know God would have you be—manly, truthful, honest—scorning meanness, hating lies, loathing deceit, meeting the plain duties of life, and shirking none of its plain responsibilities—is not that the highest office you can fill?

Editorial Comment

The Washington Post is generally accurate in its statements of facts, but it erred in saying that one of the legal grounds for divorce in Georgia is insanity occurring after the marriage. Our statute book is not disgraced by a provision of that kind.

Insanity is a misfortune for which, as a rule, the victim is not to blame. Besides, it is a disease which is often cured, or a terrible visitation which sometimes passes away as suddenly as it came.

Suppose the Legislature deprives the afflicted wife of possibly her only protector by granting the husband a divorce; suppose the wife then regains her sanity—would not the situation be horrible?

When I reflect upon the shameful things the Wall Street millionaires have led our Legislature to do, I am by no means certain that some Ryan or Morgan, tired of his old wife, might secure from the Hamp McWhorter machine a legislative license to go and buy a fresh one—but such a deal has not, as yet, been consummated.

Congress is beginning to catch on to the enormous frauds in the weighing of the mails. In the first issue of this Magazine, I called attention to the notorious fact that certain Congressmen, who belong to the railroads, were in the habit of lending to their bosses the frank whose mark on mail matter entitles it to go through the mails without payment of postage.

For example: Suppose the Southern Railroad wants the use of the frank of the Honorable Leonidas F. Livingston, whom “the Democratic Party” of the Atlanta, Ga., District sends to Congress. In that case, the Honorable Leonidas will lend his bosses his rubber stamp which, being inked and pressed upon a sack of mail matter, leaves thereon this inscription:

This inscription being placed upon the sack, the postal authorities are compelled by law to carry the sack to any part of the United States free of charge. The magic letters “M. C.” which stand, of course, for “Member of Congress,” are as good as gold in the postal service. Now why does the Southern Railroad want to use the frank of the Honorable Leonidas?

The Government pays the railroads for carrying the mails, at so much per pound; to get at the “average” for the whole year, the Government weighs the mail for ninety days; therefore it is hugely to the advantage of the railroads to make the “average” as high as possible; and consequently the railroads themselves crowd into the mails, during those ninety days, every God-blessed piece of old junk they can lay their hands on.

But if the railroads had to pay postage on that old junk, their profits would be cut down to just that extent. They would have to pay thousands of dollars to the Government, in postage, during the ninety days.

By getting from the Honorable Leonidas the use of his frank, the railroad can escape payment of postage on the old junk. By the collusion of the Honorable Leonidas, the Southern Railroad is not only enabled to swindle the Government in the creation of a fraudulent “average,” but they even unload on the Government the expense of carrying the bogus mail which constitutes the swindle.

In the first number of this Magazine, I gave Livingston’s name as that of one of the rascals who help the railroad swindle the people.

The Honorable Leonidas is one of the unscrupulous knaves who covers the multitude of his individual sins with the generous, rubber-coat mantle of “the Democratic Party.”

The time is rapidly approaching in this country when a scoundrel will be treated as a scoundrel, regardless of his being a member of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. Thieves[27] and corporation doodles will not forever escape detection and infamy by crying out “I am a Democrat,” or “I am a Republican.”

The gaping world is told that the Princess Ena, of the Royal House of Great Britain, is about to marry Alfonso, the decadent lad who is King of Spain. The Royal House of Great Britain holds the throne upon the Parliamentary Condition that it shall be Protestant. The Act which recognized the Hanoverian succession reads: “The Princess Sophia and the heirs of her body being Protestants.”

But the crown of Spain would not be allowed to rest upon the head of a heretic. No, indeed! The King and Queen of Spain must be Catholics.

But King Alfonso wants the fair Princess Ena, and the ambitious Ena wants to become Queen of Spain.

Is there any way out? Oh, yes. The Princess Ena, of the Royal House whose Protestant faith is a matter of Parliamentary measure, being determined to marry a King whose crown depends upon his being a rigid Catholic, happily solves the problem by “turning” Catholic.

Very well. If to Henry of Navarre “Paris was well worth a mass,” why shouldn’t the throne of Spain be worth as much to the fair Princess Ena?

And, by the way, the Princess Ena has had some illustrious examples set her in the matter of changing one’s creed.

Did not unhappy little Anna Gould “turn” Catholic to ease the conscience of her precious Castellane?

And did not the daughter of the American “house” of Mackay “turn” Catholic when she became an Italian princess?

Human motives are pretty much the same everywhere, and to many people religion is a mere matter of respectable conformity to the manners and customs of those who make up the environment.

John D. Rockefeller is running about from one hiding place to another, to keep from being found by the officers of the law. How silly. Why does he not come into court with a shattered memory and a pack of perjuries like some of the other high-rolling rascals who have been before the courts recently?

As to one-third of the things which might land him in the penitentiary, if he admitted them, he can say, “I decline to answer on advice of counsel.”

Then old John will be in line with Rogers, McCall, McCurdy, Depew and some others who have recently figured in the New York legal proceedings.

While Rockefeller is hiding out like a common criminal, would it not be appropriate for one of his high-priced preachers to come forth in another sermon, or interview, or signed article, explaining to us common mortals, what a good and pious, and benevolent man old John D. is?

The Recording Angel must have a busy time trying to keep straight the accounts of some of our high-priced city preachers.

There was Bishop Potter, for instance, who choked off the Reverend Mr. Chew when that subordinate divine wanted to give us a piece of his mind concerning Life Insurance rottenness in New York. The high-priced Bishop put himself in the attitude of warding off attack from the robbers of widows and orphans.

The Constitution of the United States expressly declares that no money shall be taken from the Treasury without an appropriation by Congress.

Therefore, when Lyman Gage and Leslie Shaw, Secretaries of the Treasury, took $15,000,000 out of the Treasury and placed it in the Standard Oil Bank in New York City they violated the supreme law of the land. The $56,000,000 which Mr. Roosevelt’s administration has been allowing the National Banks to hold and to use is held and used in violation of the Constitution.[28] What do our big men care for the law? Nothing. The law is for the small and the weak.

It was not your mother or sister or wife, but it might have been, and therefore the thing that happened to her should stir your blood.

A lady who is every bit as good, so far as anybody knows or says, as Mrs. Roosevelt, went to the White House to see the President on business. She wanted to plead for her husband, who had been arbitrarily thrown out of a good office at the instance of a very contemptible cur named Hull, who happened to be a Congressman, and chairman of the House Committee on Military Affairs.

A swell-head White House official named Barnes, told the lady that the President was engaged and could not see her.

She remarked that she would wait until the President was disengaged—that she meant to stay until she did see him.

In other words, she placed herself in the position of “the importunate widow.” She was desperately in earnest; her husband had been foully wronged; it was a matter of vital importance to her; and her wifely heart made her brave the rebuff of asinine Barnes.

Mr. Roosevelt had recently returned to the White House from a “progress” through the Southern provinces, during which progress he had exhibited himself to his admiring constituents as the most affable, approachable, genial and generous of men. What was more natural than for Mrs. Morris to think that a little persistence on her part would bring the gallant Teddy to the front, beaming with that glorified grin and extending that cordial hand which had so recently enraptured the people of the South?

Stage-play, however, is one thing and “business” is another. Teddy is a genial democrat when playing to the grand-stand, and a bumptious autocrat in some of his White House moods.

To cut the long story short, the lady was ordered out of the White House, and when she kept her seat she was seized upon by three white men and one negro and forcibly dragged out. Her silk dress was torn, her ornaments scattered, her flesh bruised. The white men pulled her by the arms and shoulders, the negro held her by the legs; she was dragged through the mud to a cab, thrown into it like a common criminal and driven off to a criminal’s resort, the House of Detention.

A more shocking outrage has never been committed at the White House. It was indecent, it was brutal, it was despotic, it was violative of all democratic usage and of every human consideration. The poor lady was so terribly frightened, so rudely handled, subjected to such a public and unprovoked humiliation that she was thrown into a fever and confined to her bed for many days.

No—I have already stated that it was not your sister, or your mother or your wife whose legs were held by Roosevelt’s nigger while his three white ruffians dragged her, screaming, through the mud, and flung her, bruised and frantic, into a cab to be driven off as criminals are driven.

And when you consider the incident from that point of view you will admire the courage with which Senator Ben Tillman denounced the outrage, while you regard with utter scorn the cowardly attitude of the great majority in both branches of Congress who were afraid to say what they thought.

Mr. Roosevelt was not originally responsible for the outrage, but he chose to become so by his refusal to express any regrets at the occurrence, and by his failure to rebuke the brutes who were guilty of such needless violence to a respectable visitor at a public office which belonged as much to her as to anybody else on this earth.

“No, we ain’t a’needin’ any more hands right now,” said Polly Ann in a brisk, business-like voice that discouraged prolixity on the part of the loitering applicant whom Polly knew to be unreliable from a working point of view, for he bore all the outward marks of shiftlessness which her eyes had been trained to discern at one comprehensive glance.

“It won’t do no good to wait, ’cause he ain’t got no work for you,” Polly reiterated with dry patience. “’Sides, the boss is too busy to waste any time outside o’ business.”

“Oh, well, then I’ll call again,” the applicant observed amiably. He shuffled out, hands in pockets, and Polly Ann eased back in her chair behind the railed-in desk that overlooked the long rows of pallid, expressionless faces bowed over the spindles that whirred monotonously through the dull roar of machinery. Polly was used to the noise; its absence, during the brief Sunday rests, made her nerves ache dimly as if their rightful functions had been forcibly suspended, for she had grown up within the mills. Her mother had been first to succumb to the insidious fever which sooner or later fastens upon the unsound, poorly nourished slaves of the great White Despot known to the world as the Southern Cotton Mill industry. Polly’s young sister had followed their mother to her quiet rest within a year, after which the overburdened, inadequate father “aimed” to return to the upland, clayey farm which he had so hopefully abandoned two years before; but before he could save enough money to cover his debts he added to his burdens by marrying a factory widow with four pallid, old-young children. Polly lived with them until they moved to Atlanta in hopes of financial betterment, then she assumed the brunt of home-making for her two undisciplined brothers. Meanwhile, her industry had increased as her thin, deft fingers became more and more proficient. Her interest in her fellow-slaves broadened into a mute, protective supervision which the keen-witted boss recognized and rewarded by placing her in a position of trust which, humble though it was, relieved her of the bitter grind of mill labor.

Spring was in the air. It looked in at the dim windows and drifted through the open doors where the sunlight drenched the worn, splintered floor with fine gold. Polly recognized something familiar—the sweet, far-reaching scent of wild azaleas that grew thick and tall along the distant Chattahoochee hill; she closed her eyes and let her fancy drift back to the green pastures and still waters of the old haunts of her heart’s desire, until her revery was shattered by a human appeal.

It was a sunny young voice that recalled Polly to tangible things, and it belonged to a very young girl of the “cracker” type, with a face of spring-like innocence, who introduced herself as “Mis’ Lomux, from Lumpkin,” with a smile of such irresistible sweetness that Polly’s thin, sallow face lighted with answering pleasure.

“You-all’s got a job fer me this time, ain’t you?” the stranger asked anxiously. “I was here last Chuesday, an’ the boss said he ’lowed he’d have a place fer me by today. I aimed to git here right soon this mornin’ so’s to start work on time, but the chillun give out in spite of all I could do, an’ I was jest obleeged to stop along with[31] ’em at a house where the folks promised to keep ’em till they got rested.”

“The boss is right busy now,” said Polly in very kind voice. “I don’t much believe he needs any more hands, ’cause he tuk in a new batch Saturday, but you can wait an’ see what he says. Set down an’ rest yourself till he comes along.”

“He surely will give me somethin’ to do,” Mis’ Lomux said hopefully, “’cause he done promised he would.”

“No, ’tain’t to say hard, but it’s turrible wearin’,” Polly answered. “You don’t look real stout, nuther.”

“That’s one reason why I come,” Mis’ Lomux admitted frankly, “though I’m stout a’ plenty to putter all day without restin’ any bit. Last fall I was tuk with a spell o’ fever an’ sence then I jest ain’t been able to do like I uster. Plowin’ an’ sech-like beats me plum out in no time. I tried my best to take Tobe’s place after he left, but I jest couldn’t make out no way.”

“Who’s Tobe?” Polly interrupted with deepening interest. “Your brother?”

“Your husband!” Polly echoed surprisedly. “You look dreadful young to be married. How long have you been married?”

“Yes’m.” Mis’ Lomux nodded her blond head solemnly. “He done broke his promise an’—an’ I don’t aim to live with him no more, ever.”

Polly Ann searched the flower-like face with something akin to pity. “You ain’t a’ carin,’ are you?” she asked in a whisper.

Mis’ Lomux’s denial was emphatic, but unconvincing. “I ’lowed all husbands was like pa,” she admitted sadly, “an’ that’s why I married Tobe so quick after he axed me. You see when pa died that throwed me an’ the chillun onto the county, with me not able to do fer ’em like I would a’ been if I hadn’t had the fever. What to do I didn’t know ’cause the chillun couldn’t work by their selves to do any good. When Tobe Lomux sent me word that he’d tak the hull lot of us if I’d have him, I was glad enough to marry him on that account, no matter what come. Not that I got ary thing agin Tobe—no one ain’t fer that matter,” she interrupted herself to say extenuatingly, “for he’s a real steady, honest person. Tobe’s high-tempered, though. Fust thing I knowed his folks come meddlin’ round talkin’ about him havin’ to do fer a’ passel o’ lazy chilluns an’ sech-like an’ it warn’t no time fore Tobe had put the chilluns to work like a gang o’ niggers. Me! Why, I jest couldn’t stand that not fer a minit! I up an’ told Tobe to hire his own niggers or quit us, ’cause them pore chillun warn’t goin’ to be nobody’s slaves. An’ he went”; she finished, growing very white and cold.

“He warn’t much or he wouldn’t a’ acted that way,” was Polly’s stern verdict.

The bride winced. “I aim to show ’im we can git on without him an’ his uppidy folks,” she retorted, with a flame of delicate color. “That’s why I come here, jest to make a livin’ fer us all till I can stouten up agin crap-making time next spring. By that time the two little boys’ll be big enough to help with the plowin’. Boys grows a heap in a year.”

“Yes’m, we all set out together yesterday mornin’. Tain’t to say so dreadful fur—jest eighteen miles—but they ain’t used to travelin’ steady, an’ they give plum out early this mornin’, so I left ’em along with some folks while I come on ahead to git work.”

Polly Ann’s interest was of a keenly personal order, which admitted of vast concessions in favor of the second applicant for the already crowded ranks of mill laborers. She had turned the first comer away almost at sight, but[32] Mis’ Lomux was different—her plaintive needs appealed to Polly Ann’s warm, starved little heart in a fashion quite unknown to her since her mother and sister had passed beyond her faithful care.

“We’re totin’ all we’ve got,” Mis’ Lomux answered frankly. “Pa didn’t have much of anythin’ when he died an’ I sold what little there was to git the chillun fit close to come down here in.”

Polly rose and stepped from the little platform with an air of decision. “You set there while I go hunt the boss,” said she.

So Mis’ Lomux waited hopefully until Polly returned from the fore part of the great building to say that there would be a vacancy in the spindle department the very next day. “You’d better fetch the chillun right along,” Polly advised, “’cause you’ll have to be ready to go to work at seven o’clock tomorrow mornin’. There’s a’ empty shack at the end of Factory Row that you can rent real cheap. I’ll see about rentin’ it while you’re gone.”

Polly saw them pass the mills late that afternoon, a dusty, tired band of wayfarers, each carrying small, queer-shaped bundles which contained the sum of their meager possessions, and felt herself glow with satisfaction as she thought of what she had contrived to put into the rough little shack, in the way of household furnishings. She went over after work hours to assist with the setting to rights.

By the end of the first week Mis’ Lomux and the two little boys, who were to help with the next year’s crop, had obtained steady employment in the mills. Their bright faces gleamed out among the listless, pallid, faded faces of the “old hands,” with primrose freshness that attracted Polly Ann’s eyes many, many times during the long noisy day; but soon their morning glow waned and the difference grew less and less marked except for Mis’ Lomux’s illuminating smile which never dimmed or wavered, early or late, while the little loved faces turned towards hers. The delicately rounded girlish figure grew thin, and Mis’ Lomux drooped more and more just as Polly’s mother and sister had drooped before doom overtook them, yet never a word escaped her patient lips. There was, indeed, no time for self-pity, for all her thoughts were centered upon the children whom she sheltered from every harsh word and look with a maternal zeal that never failed of its loving purpose, in spite of the children’s wilfulness apparent to every one but Mary Lomux. Polly realized shrewdly how it had been with Tobe, whose judgment had lacked the softening influence of love, for although the children were of naturally lovable disposition, Mary had undeniably spoiled them from a man’s view-point.

Every Sunday morning Mis’ Lomux piloted her little flock away to the hills which seemed to beckon her far beyond the noise and smoke and grime of Factory Row to the place of her heart’s desire. Polly Ann often accompanied her friend because the occasion afforded opportunity to add to the meager lunches in a manner that lapped over several succeeding meals. On such occasions the girls talked continually of the tranquil, humble joys of home, while the children lay in the grass, too tired to play or chatter. Mary comforted their weariness with a promise of a speedy reprieve.

“We’re goin’ home in the spring, sure,” she would say with illuminating smiles, “an’ when you’ve been there a day or two you’ll plum fergit about ever feelin’ puny or tired. Jest keep lookin’ t’wards home.”

But the event seemed to recede. Summer’s golden glory paled before autumn’s riper loveliness, and the air grew pungent with harvest fragrance that made Mis’ Lomux’s heart sick with longing. Polly noticed that her friend was losing ground daily, but there was no help for her at the mills, and Mary would not hear of returning to the fallow farm before the growing season began.

“I jest couldn’t bear to let the chilluns go to the poor farm,” she said yearningly. “Folks’d always have that to throw up to ’em when they growed up. An’ there’s them Lomuxes! They’d talk wuss’n anybody.”

During the late autumn one of the boys met with an accident which kept Mary from work for several days and drained her slender savings to the last nickle. Then winter came with its chill continuous rains, when the mills, always dull and somber, grew doubly gloomy. Doors and windows were kept closed and the prisoned air grew more and more poisonous as the workers exhaled it over and over. Mary protected her boys as well as possible. She had made herself so well-liked by her fellow-workers that no one interfered with her many little devices for the children’s comfort and no one manifested the ill-will which is so generally exhibited towards favorites; for it was impossible to be harsh toward the brave little woman who fought so desperately against losing odds. Toward spring Mis’ Lomux was obliged occasionally to take a day off on account of blinding headaches.

“’Tain’t nothin’ at all,” she invariably protested, in answer to Polly’s anxious questions. “Folks that’s had the fever ginerally feel this way every year about the same time. When the weather gits warmer I’ll be stout as ever.”

But Polly knew better. She had seen that look of deadly weariness too often to be deceived.

“Ain’t you never heard from Tobe?” Polly asked one evening when she sat on the steps of Mary’s shack watching her friend’s strenuous attempts to hold herself erect while she patched a pair of faded little trousers.

“In Atlanta, workin’ in the engine shops, an’ doin’ well; his maw told Billy Sanders a while back.”

“An’ he knows you’re down here slavin’ like a nigger for all them chillun?”

“Then all I’ve got to say is that he must be a turrible no-count feller to let his wife—”

“’Tain’t his fault,” Mary flung back, lifting her deathly pale face for a moment. “It’s them Lomuxes that made all the trouble to start with. If his maw hadn’t found fault with the chillun he never would a’ done what he did.”

“I jest couldn’t stand the thought of Tom bein’ teched by nobody. None of them chillun ever had a hand laid onto ’em afore, an’ I couldn’t bear that they should—ever!”

“Well, ’tain’t none of my business, of course,” said Polly drily, “but I will say that if Tobe was half a man even, he’d do his part now that you need him so bad.”

“He couldn’t—not after what I said,” Mary protested mournfully. “I told him never to come back no more till Kingdom-come, an’ he said he wouldn’t—not if I begged him on my dyin’ bed!”

“My land, what a mean sperited feller he must be!” Polly exclaimed contemptuously. “I wonder the Lord didn’t punish him for sech talk. In my opinion, Mary, you’re a heap better off without him than you’d be with him.”

Mary’s head drooped very low over her work, but in spite of that Polly saw the tears that fell on the little patched garments. There was a long silence during which Polly hated Tobe Lomux as heartily as she pitied Mary. Then she delivered herself of a bit of advice that had burned within her heart for weeks. “If I was you, Mary, I’d give up an’ let the county take care of me—jest for a little spell. You ain’t able to work another day, an’ to tell you the truth I don’t believe you’ll be let work much longer, ’cause the boss has noticed how bad you look. I’ll git the circuit-rider to speak a good word for you at the poor[34] farm so’s they’ll give you a little shack off to yourself.”

“Oh Polly, I couldn’t go—I couldn’t!” Mary cried chokingly. “For myself it wouldn’t matter what come, but the chillun—they would always be looked down on fer livin’ at a poor farm.”

“What’s to become of ’em if anything bad was to happen to you, I’d like to know?” asked practical Polly. “You’ve done for ’em an’ humored ’em till they’re sorter spoiled. They couldn’t git along with strangers. The poor farm’s the only thing, Mary. I don’t doubt but that you’ll be stout enough by next spring to go back to the farm an’ make a crop, but you won’t if you stay here.”

“I’ll rest up a bit,” said Mary dejectedly. “We can git along on what the boys makes for a few days an’ by that time I’ll be stout enough to go back to work.”

But in that surmise Mary was mistaken. On the fourth day when she resumed her place at the reels, outraged nature succumbed completely to the long strain, and she dropped in a dead faint among her whirling spools. That happened the day before Polly was to go on a long advertised excursion to Atlanta, and, although Mary was quite ill on the eventful morning, Polly did not offer to stay with her friend but hurried through her gala preparations in great excitement. She looked thinner and paler and smaller than ever in her unaccustomed finery.

“I’ll fetch you a little somethin’ from Atlanta, if I git time to go to the stores,” Polly promised, while she waited on Mary’s porch for the hack to gather up its fluttering load along Factory Row.

Polly left the crowded train at Atlanta and hurried off in search of the engine shops. She had little difficulty in locating Tobe Lomux, whose industry had made him quite a favorite there. He was a sturdy, well-built young fellow with a good, honest face and a firm undimpled chin that bespoke a will of iron. He looked at little frail, anxious Polly as if she were something too insignificant for serious notice.

“I’m a friend of Mary Lomux’s,” Polly began with a furiously beating heart, for her hopes had dwindled discouragingly during her long, worried ride, “an’ I’ve come to find out if you aim to leave her die without doin’ a thing to prevent it.”

“Mary—die!” Tobe’s head went back with a wrench that sent the blood bounding to his face. “What’s that about Mary?” he asked gruffly.

“Don’t you know that she’s killin’ herself at the cotton mills down at Gainesville, workin’ for them chillun? Ain’t nobody wrote an’ told you that, Tobe Lomux?”

Tobe ignored the question. “Did Mary send you to me?” he asked in a voice that Polly misinterpreted.

“No, she didn’t. She’s got too much grit for that even if she is too sick to hold up her head. I didn’t have much hopes of gittin’ any satisfaction from you, judgin’ by the way you’ve acted, but I thought I’d try jest onct. What I want to know, Tobe Lomux, is if you’re goin’ to let her die—or not?”

“Me! Why, good Lord, what can I do? If Mary wanted me I’d—I’d—Well, she don’t, that’s all.”

“Mary didn’t send for you,” Polly broke in eagerly, “but if you’re any sort of a man you’ll drop that spike an’ take the fust train to Gainesville. That’s what you’d do, if——”

The tool dropped from Tobe’s grimy hand, and his head and shoulders went back defiantly. “I’m goin’ right back along with you,” he said, jerking off his leather apron and shaking down his sleeves. “Wait till I draw my pay. We can talk on the train.”

Polly remembered that homeward ride to her dying day, for it was the first time in her defrauded life that she had been brought face to face with a great passion whose very crudeness added to its strength. Tobe had held himself with grim, fearful ardor to his labor, while his stubborn aching heart yearned for one word of reconciliation from Mary. His mother had written[35] strange, slighting things relating to the blighting factory life that Tobe abhorred, and he had waited and Mary had suffered in silence. Before the train reached Gainesville Tobe’s busy brain had evolved a plan which he confided to Polly while they stood on the station platform waiting for the country stage which was to take Tobe up to Lumpkin that very afternoon.

Polly paid a brief visit to Mary’s shack when she reached Factory Row, fearing to stay long lest her secret should escape her eager lips. She was tired, she explained so tersely that the sick girl felt hurt and neglected. The following day Polly appeared at sunrise.

“I don’t aim to work today,” she announced, “so I may as well set with you, Mary. You jest lemme fix you up on the porch where you can git the air while I red up the house a bit.”

Mary was too listless to object, so she dragged herself out to the narrow porch where the warm spring sunshine drenched the rough boards with a golden flood, upon which the blossomed torches of the cypress vine made small, dancing shadows.

“Ain’t it a turrible pretty day!” Polly exclaimed glowingly. “Makes me think of way up in Lumpkin, don’t it you?”

“I jest can’t bear to think of it at all!” Mary wailed, with a yearning glance toward the far, golden hills.

“I’ll bet the honeysuckles is jest thick all over them river hills by now. Don’t you rec’lect how blue the bottoms looked along about this time when the dog vi’lets is out full?”

“It’s time to lay off the cotton fields,” Mary murmured. “Polly, if anything should happen to me, you’ll see that the chillun keeps together at the poor farm, won’t you?”

“Shucks, you’re goin’ to get well—that’s what’s goin’ to happen to you, Mary Lomux. Now lie still and rest while I straighten up the house.”

Mary lay quite still for a long, long while, looking toward home with a great wistfulness in her weary eyes and a dark fear in her heart. By and by a wagon turned across the bare, sun-baked flat that separated Mary’s shack from the factory grounds and stopped at the head of Factory Row. It was spotlessly new, even to the snowy bow-sheet, and the household furnishings visible through the shirred opening were new, also. Mary saw the driver spring down lightly and throw the reins over a broken gatepost. Then Tobe stumbled up the steps, dully ashamed of his unconquerable emotion, for he came of a race who count it unmanly to betray any outward sign of feeling. But it was impossible for him to speak calmly.

“I didn’t have no idee you was sick, Mary,” said he shakingly. “I’m real glad Polly come an’ told me about it. I thought I’d drop in an’ see how you’s comin’ on, jest to be neighborly,” he added in a voice that seemed to come from a great distance.

Mary struggled up with a smothered cry, but fell back weakly among the pillows and cried instead of answering, while Polly stared helpless from the doorway and Tobe wrestled with his heart’s desire to take the poor little woman in his arms and comfort her in love’s own way. And while they waited a thin little voice came from the pillows.

“I ain’t a bit sick,” it said, “jest that flustered I can’t help but cry. Don’t mind me—Tobe. I’m real—glad to see you.”

“Mary,” Tobe rose from the chair into which he had dropped and stooped over the little trembling figure until his big, firm, strong hands rested on her shoulders. “Mary, do you reckon you could make out to go on up to Lumpkin with me? I’d love, the best kind to raise a crop this year.”

A cry of inarticulate joy struggled up from the pillows and after a moment a little tear-wet, lovely radiant face looked up at Tobe. “Do you mean—Oh, Tobe, would you take the chillun too?” Mary faltered.

“Sure thing, an’ be only too glad. Land, how I’ve missed them young[36] ’uns!” cried Tobe, every fiber of his being aglow.

Mary’s joy brimmed over. “Oh Polly, did you hear that!” she called in sheer ecstacy. “I couldn’t be happier—no, not if I was in heaven.”

The young man lifted his head and looked straight at Polly with wet, shining eyes. “Say, you’ve got to go long with us,” he said unsteadily, “’cause I ain’t goin’ to leave Mary do a lick of work till she gits plum strong agin, no matter what comes. Git ready, will you, Polly?”

“Me! My land, how pleased I’d be. Why, it’d be like gittin’ to heaven—mighty nigh,” said Polly growing hot and cold by turns. “Now that the boys is both goin’ down to live with pa, too. Seem like things is turnin’ out too good to be true.”

“Soon as you’n Polly can fix what you want to take along,” Tobe answered eagerly. “I’ll go over an’ fetch the chillun from the factory while you all git ready. We’d oughter git home by dark.”

Then he rose and strode buoyantly across the sun-baked hill to the factory door and Mary rose, too, tremblingly, but without hesitation, while Polly held herself in readiness to support her frail figure should her strength desert her. But there was no further need of anxiety, for Mary had tasted the elixir of life during that brief, transfiguring hour when love had put to rout the dreariness of hope deferred and filled her heart with joy unspeakable.

Bobby Jonks; His Hand and Pen

Man is an animal, but you can easily detect him from the rest of them when he has his hat on. He is of few days and full of things that the doctors cut out if they get half a chance. My Uncle Bob is a bachelor. A bachelor is a man who smokes in bed and burns himself up every once in a while and goes to glory a-hollerin’, while everybody else says “Oh, pshaw!” and “Did you ever?”

All bachelors are wise, but my Uncle Bob knows ’most everything; he says he believes he’d be in Congress right now if it wasn’t for his modesty—no, honesty. But, says he, there is one thing he never could fully make up his mind about, and that is whether clam-digging is fishing or agriculture. A hog is a quadruped; the love of money is the root of all evil—thus we see why the motto of a rich man so often is “Root hog or die!” A man is either a biped or a cripple, according to whether he has messed around in a sawmill or not. The difference between a biped and a quadruped is two legs. A three-legged stool is a tripod, and is mostly used by country editors. A turtle is a quadruped, but he can’t climb a tree and get off a good joke about making a noise like a nut. Neither can some people.

On the only three occasions in a man’s history when he cuts any particular mustard he is called “it”—when he is a baby, a bridegroom and a corpse. And in all three instances he is said by his admiring friends to look real natural. Man was made to mourn, but Uncle Bob says the dad-dogged fool always thinks he can get out of it by marrying again. A woman may be as handsome as a circus horse but she is never satisfied to let another woman be handsome, too. It’s different altogether with a hog—he is perfectly contented to let everybody else be hogs if they want to. Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

There is no real or true life insurance but the straight old line regular life, where the policy is payable only at death. Term life insurance, so called, is simply banking for the benefit of the company which takes the risk. In regular life insurance the insured has a certain expectancy at the time of taking out the policy. Payment for the amount he is to receive at death is spread out over his expectancy, less four per centum interest compounded, and he pays it in annual, semi-annual, or quarterly installments, as may be agreed upon. If he lives out his expectancy, he will have paid in all he is to receive at death, either directly, or by the interest carried on his premiums. Of course there is a certain amount of loading in the premiums he pays, but for the purposes of our illustration, that need not be considered. In this plan, the policy holder is really insuring himself, and when he dies his beneficiary, or estate, simply receives back the money he has paid in. The fact that there are so many life insurance companies and that they have become so wealthy and powerful, illustrates the power of interest, especially when it is compounded.

The Royal Arcanum professes to give life insurance at actual cost, which it does not and never did. It was organized from the top down. Fifteen persons met in Boston on June 23, 1877, and constituted themselves the Supreme Council. Twelve of them became officers, and three were incorporators simply. This body reserved to itself all the power of legislation and of receiving and paying out the moneys of the order. Provisions were made for the organization of subordinate and grand councils of the order, but they were simply wards of the Supreme Council. Members were received on medical examinations from 21 to 55 years of age and paid for $3,000 insurance, one dollar at 21 years, and up to four dollars at 55 years. The rise from year to year was from 4 to 20 cents. The assessments were to be paid when called for, after the death of a member. The order grew and prospered from year to year until 1898, when the management thought it saw the necessity of increasing the rates. It made 21 at the rate of $1.76 and 54 rate of $7.00. The rise each year was from 6 to 44 cents. At this time the order had 195,105 members, and the loss in membership in the order in the next six months was about 10,000.

However the order continued to prosper until after the annual meeting of the Supreme Council in 1905, when it adopted a new table of rates, which began at $1.89 at 21 and rose to $16.08 at 65, but from Oct. 1, 1905, all the members were to be assessed at attained ages, whereas before that all had been assessed at entrance ages. In other words, on Oct. 1, 1905, each old member was required to reënter the order as a new member, and pay at attained ages. New members after that date were to pay at entrance ages, but all were to pay $16.08 per month on $3,000 when they reached 65 years. At the time of the making of this new rate the order had over 300,000 members. Since then it has lost 50,000[38] members, and a majority of its members are opposed to the new rates.

There was no occasion for the new rates, as, under the laws of the order, additional assessments could have been made, at any time, to provide for excessive mortality, and the order could have been worked out on additional assessments until it failed, as it is bound to do.

An organization within the order has been formed to contest the new rates, and this has brought a suit in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts to have them declared invalid. The protestants claim that when each member entered the order he made a contract to pay assessments at age entrance, and that while the Supreme Council may call extra assessments, as mortality may require, it cannot increase the rates, or compel members to pay at attained ages. Also that the new rates are unreasonable and will create a surplus of $3,700,000 every year, which is contrary to the laws of the order and of the State of Massachusetts. The Supreme Council claims that each member when he entered the order surrendered all his rights to protest or object to any action of that body and agreed in advance to approve any action which it might take in regard to rates.

All of the old life insurance policies of every kind and character are based on contract, and it was supposed that the rates at entrance in a fraternal order constituted a contract between the member and the supreme body of the order. Many of the courts of the several states have so held, but it was for the Supreme Council of the Royal Arcanum to defy reason and common sense and to claim that they were the autocrats of the order. All insurance should be like a deposit in a savings bank, that can hardly be lost. The Royal Arcanum, however, has depended upon lapses. Thirty-five is the age usually taken for illustration in insurance. At that age the average of lapses per 1,000 lives is 37 per cent plus. In May, 1905, there were 305,083 members in the order. That would mean that out of 305,083 members if all were of the age of 36, in any year, 111,000 would lapse. The average policy in the Royal Arcanum is $2,231.67 and out of that there would be lost by lapse, $826.70. If all the members were 36 years of age, on the whole $680,848,000 insurance in force there would be lost by lapse, at thirty-six years, $251,923,760 annually. Now in honest insurance there should be no lapses or forfeitures and in the insurance of the future there will be nothing of the kind. But on this plan, no matter how long one has paid, or how much he has paid in, if he stops paying, he loses all. Misfortune or accident may compel him to stop paying, but no matter what may be the cause, he loses, and other persons dying quickly have had the benefit of the money he has paid in. A member who entered in 1879 at the age of 36 will have paid in on September 1, 1905, about $800, or $30.72 per year. A person insured at the sum of $3,000 would have to live to the age of 133 to pay that sum out at the rate for the first 26 years. But assume the insured has paid $800 to October 1, 1905, and remains in the order. He pays $97.20 the first year of the new rates, $103.68 the second year and $192.96 the third year and the same sum each year thereafter. His expectancy is 12.81 years at 63. If he lives out his expectancy, he will have paid into the order, $3,277.12, or $277.12 more than he will receive. But suppose he should live till 85 years of age, he will by that age pay in $5,205.72, or about $2,205.75 more than he can draw out.

Will any man join an order of that kind where he shall forfeit all by the failure to make a single payment? So long as he can get into a company which will give him paid-up insurance, extended insurance, or a cash-surrender value, he will not.

Every man insured in a fraternal association is in the condition of Damocles. The sword suspended over his head is likely to drop at any time. The moment confidence is lost the whole matter dissolves like a rope of sand, and the insurance is gone. Suppose the[39] Royal Arcanum had ceased to do business on June 1, 1905, $680,648,000 of its insurance would have terminated at that time, which would have been a loss of about $2,231.67 to each member. That is, 305,083 persons would have lost $2,231.67 insurance each. These same persons and their predecessors had paid in $97,004,175.82 of which $94,790,627.86 had been paid out on death losses. Since the new rates have been published the order has lost 50,000 members carrying $111,583,500 insurance. Of the sum paid in, $36,090,650 has been paid in by men who have dropped out and the balance of loss is to be paid by the survivors. Thus it is ever with assessment companies. They must and will fail as soon as it is demonstrated that the adopted rates will not carry any organization for a generation. The new rates of the Royal Arcanum have simply demonstrated the utter worthlessness of assessment companies, and the value of regular life insurance where each policy holder contributes a fund to pay his own policy.

The Royal Arcanum is no better than a suicide club, for it is only the suicides and the weaklings who can have any benefit of the order. The new rates require the members to pay greater sums in premiums than in old line companies, and at the same time the company insists upon the old and exploded system of forfeitures, refuses any paid up or extended insurance, and any cash-surrender values. Who will sit down to a feast of this character? No one but an old member who has paid in too much to stop, and no new man will join the order. The whole scheme of the new rates was to drive the old members out so that the order would not be compelled to pay their death losses. The order is an autocracy. There are twelve life members in the Supreme Council who represent no one but themselves. Three of these are original charterers and nine are Supreme Past Regents. There are twenty-nine officers, who as such are members of the Supreme Council. These thirty-eight by the aid of twenty representatives can control the Supreme Council, and there is added a new life member every two years in a new Supreme Past Regent. No one should be a member of the Supreme Council but some one who represents a constituency. Yet John Haskell Butler, of 244 Washington Street, Boston, Mass., controls the entire Supreme body. In this he is ably supported by W. O. Robson, Supreme Secretary. How these two gentlemen of eminent talent could be imposed on in the adoption of the new rate, which in the case of the old member who entered at thirty-six years, compels him to pay a surcharge of $64.18 per annum more than necessary to carry his risk, or in his expectancy a total of $1,226.98 more than he should pay, or 70 per centum more than his equitable share, is more than we can understand.

The average of the surcharge on all the old members is 67 per centum, and is 27 per centum higher than the new members pay. Naturally, if the membership could be held together, these new rates would create and pile up a surplus, or excess, of $3,700,000 per year over any sum that the laws of Massachusetts permit the society to hold, which at the present time is about $30,000,000.

However, the society has never attempted to create any surplus or reserve over and above about $2,000,000, nearly equal to the proceeds of three assessments. What kind of financing is this which at one fell stroke burdens the members with paying sums which will produce $3,700,000 per year after paying over all mortuary calls? Heretofore the order has preached for twenty-eight years that the surplus remains in the pockets of its members and shall so remain. Now it is to be created and placed in the control of Mr. Butler and his one hundred and fourteen associates who are souls with a single thought. And what for? What kind of actuaries did the Supreme Council employ to make these new rates that such a result is brought about and that the policy of twenty-eight years is reversed at a single session, without any notice to[40] the members? The members of the Royal Arcanum, the men who pay the money disbursed by Mr. Butler and his associates, have no voice in proposing any new legislation for the order, nor in approving or rejecting any enacted by the Supreme Council. They must pay whatever the one hundred and fifteen guardians ask of them or get out of the order.

The $3,700,000 surplus exacted the first year, under the new rates, is not to be used for paid-up or extended insurance or cash-surrender values, but is simply to be kept on hand as a reserve. The reserve, which has heretofore been carried in the pockets of the members, is now to be transferred to the pockets of the Supreme Council. Why are the members of the order, who have carried their insurance at great sacrifices, to have an additional burden placed on them? Why must this great reserve be created unless for the same reasons it was created in the three great companies in New York City? What is the object of creating a reserve when there is no paid-up or extended insurance and no cash-surrender to be made, and when assessments are required to be called for as needed to pay death losses? Why should any assessment company have a reserve beyond a few assessments ahead? What kind of actuaries did the Supreme Council have to make tables to produce such results? What fit guardians of 250,000 people are the one hundred and fifteen members of the Supreme Council who would adopt a table of rates producing such results? The control of the funds must have driven these one hundred and fifteen people mad to have produced tables which will so work. Would it not have been better to have called extra assessments from time to time under the authority of the laws of the order and of the State of Massachusetts, until the order was compelled to fail, than to have adopted the new rates, which are more expensive than old-line insurance and which if approved in the legal contest now pending will insure the failure of the order at once?

The only true assessment insurance is to pay the death losses as they occur, by assessments, and which must include a fund for management and control. When the assessments become too great the company dissolves and that is the end of it. All those who have not died during its existence, or who have lapsed in the same time, have lost their bets, and those who have died have won.

I am not able to give the number who have been members of the order since its origin. It could not have been more than 400,000. Of this number 35,000, or one-twelfth, have died. Over 33 per cent., or 133,333, have lapsed, and if the institution fails, as it certainly will, 367,000 have lost every dollar they have put in, in order that 35,000, or one in twelve, might draw prizes.

Such institutions are contrary to public policy and should be suppressed. Each state insurance department should require such statistics as will show all the facts any one might wish to know.

If I had the exact statistics, I am satisfied the proportion of those who pay in and lose would be much higher than I gave it.

The laws of political economy must be evolved just as we evolve those of nature, and they are as certain when we know them, but any institution which requires a party to live beyond his expectancy in order to pay in the amount of his benefit certificate is a fraud. At 21 a man’s expectancy is 45 years. Now a man at 21 who entered the order June 23, 1874, would have paid in to December 31, 1905, $404. It would take him over 166 years to pay in the $3,000 at the same rate. As he can never do that, his death loss must be paid by some one else, and consequently his insurance by others is a fraud and a gambling transaction.

As eleven persons must contribute to pay the loss of the twelve and then lose everything themselves, the whole scheme is an imposition contrary to the interest of society. Eleven men[41] contribute and lose $250 each that one man’s beneficiary may gain $3,000, and these eleven men lose every dollar they put in. After twenty-eight years of preaching to the public that they had found the El Dorado of Insurance, that they were furnishing insurance at cost and that the members carried the reserve in their pockets, Messrs. Butler, Robson & Company now come to the front and admit that all this time their scheme has been a fake and a failure. They say the unclean spirit departed from them in May last, but I think he returned to them with seven others worse and they have turned the Arcanum into a madhouse.

I do not have the personal acquaintance of all the seven, but two of them might be called Landis and Barnard, because the condition of the Arcanum is worse than before. Now every member must pay in his $3,000 in the period of his expectancy, and if he lives beyond it he must pay till he dies. The new rates indicate that members must die before reaching 65 years, and if they decline, then they must be fined $192.96 per annum for their refusal to do so.

Any man who enters the order now, in view of what he must submit to at and after the age of 65, ought to have his sanity inquired into. It is high time the State should intervene and protect the public from the schemes of these fraternal orders. The fraternity is humbug, and for every loss paid there are many more losses to society from which it should be protected. The correct scheme of insurance has not yet been discovered or announced, but when it is it will not be gambling or commercialism, but will be simply indemnity—which it should have been from the start.

About once in every so often, we, as a race, all lay back our heads, shut our eyes, and let out the shuddering shriek: “Back to Nature!” It is so loud and heart-felt a cry that it makes you wonder why we have to go back at all—why we didn’t stay there. If the Get-Strong-Quick professors are right, this thing of our wearing clothes, and dwelling in houses, and eating dainty cooked food three times a day is sheer tom-foolishness, all the more tom-foolish in that once we led the healthy, happy life that inevitably results from fasting three or four days in the week, then dining on goobers and timothy hay; wearing nothing but a nose-ring and a dash of paint, and sleeping in the hollow trees.

For most of us, “Back to Nature” is too long a road to travel—all the way. Nevertheless, the cry is so loud, and so general throughout the civilized world that we cannot dismiss it as impracticable and meaningless. It betokens something. I think I know what, and if it didn’t look so much like serious thinking for you and me, I’d write out what I think it means. I’ll say this, though: If we judge the future by the past this universal impulse to touch the naked earth once more, and so to gather strength and vigor from it, means that the world is pregnant with a great event, and we must be fortified for the labor-pains of it. A new age is struggling to be born. Mark my words.

The timid venture, on the way back to Nature, of a two-weeks’ sitting on the front stoop of a boarding house in the mountains or at the seashore does not satisfy us now. Bold and daring spirits have even gone to live in the wild woods, and have come back to tell us it was bully. We all know it is great fun to play at being boys again, but for most of us the problem is complicated by our having wives and daughters whom we cannot well put in cold storage during our absence. I know that under the pressure of the need to go back to Nature some have even taken the women with them. I—I—I don’t know about that. It doesn’t look very alluring to me. Mind you, I don’t know a thing about living in the wilderness except what I have read and heard, but as near as I can come to it, there seems to be considerable packing to be done. There’s the canoe in the first place. If I were thinking of going into the woods, I shouldn’t stir a stump unless I had a canoe. But you take one fifteen or eighteen feet long, and carry it about three miles through thick-set timber, and I should say along about the last half of the third mile you’d begin to notice it. You’d have to have some kind of a tent, and even when they’re made of silk, I should think they would make something of a bundle. You’d want your gun and ammunition; you’d want your fishing tackle; you’d need a small ax; you’d have to carry a coffee-pot, a frying-pan, a deep pot, a plate, a knife and fork and[43] cup; you’d need at least one blanket and a rubber sheet of some kind; you’d need to pack your bacon and your flour, and erbswurst, and matches, and quinine, and morphine, and rags for bandages in case—you know—and saccharine, and whisky if there are snakes around, and—oh, yes, tobacco; don’t let me forget tobacco—and, oh, I don’t know what all. No women’s fixings in this partial list, you see. I don’t know. I knew a man that took his wife along with him to the woods—but then, don’t you see, it was on their honeymoon. Oh my! It makes all the difference in the world when you’ve been married ten or fifteen years. Yes, I should say so.

I once read a most fascinating series of articles by a woman who had this delightful experience. The intention was to chirrup: “Come on, girls! It’s perfectly elegant!” But she didn’t fool me. I could see that whenever there was anything that was arduous, or tedious, or mussy in the housekeeping line “the gentlemen of the party eagerly volunteered.” Yes. M—hm. I can just see ’em. Mind you, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that a woman in the woods is a darn nuisance. No indeed. Only—Well, I tell you. Her husband may be eager to play Injun, but I don’t believe she would be very keen to play squaw. That is, and “tote fair.”

There is this in favor of taking ’em along: Not every man can cook. I know that out there in the forest, when you make camp as the shadows lengthen after a long day’s tramp, when every muscle aches, but aches with glad fatigue; after a day in which your lungs have drunk in the pure air thinly fragrant with the vague odors that the glazed leaves distill, as it were offering incense to the god of day; when you have quenched your thirst from a spring in the bottom of whose earthen bowl the sands are reeling and staggering in the delirium of glee; when you have hearkened to the wild beauty of some unknown bird-call echoing through the lofty Gothic aisles; when the western sky flames into undreamed-of glories and then fades away until the lonely stars come out, I know they say that you can choke down any old mess and relish it. Maybe so. I am as good a hand at eating pancakes as anybody else, but I don’t know about them for every meal and every day; bacon is my favorite vegetable, but there comes a time; fish once a week is all I care for. No. It doesn’t seem alluring to me.

They tell me hemlock boughs make a fine mattress. Yes? I know where I can get better for less money. They tell me that sleeping on the ground with the high sky for a ceiling is simply great. If it comes to that, I have slept on the ground, and the morning after I knew exactly where my hips and shoulders were. I don’t mind granddaddy long-legs tracking over my face. They’re kind of interesting. But I have never been able to put away the thought that if it should turn chilly in the night, and some snake should come and crawl in bed with me, and smuggle his cool slimy body down my back, it would probably break my rest. I shouldn’t fancy it, I’m positive.

I tell you. I compromised the matter thus last summer. I got back to Nature—part the way. Not so far though as to get out of touch with the milkman. I had things cooked to suit me; I slept high and dry upon a Christian bed, and yet I wasn’t indoors a minute of the time the whole enduring summer. And I’m never going to be another summer under a wooden roof if I know how to help it. I’ll tell you about it if you like.

There were five of us that wanted to live in the outdoor air for twenty-four hours out of every twenty-four. There was the Honest Man who went to gainful business every day; there was the Lazy Man who didn’t do one tap the summer long, though often besought to do so, who now takes his pen in hand to drop you these few lines; there was the Honest Man’s wife; and there were the Lazy Man’s Wife, and his growing Daughter.

The Honest Man already had in stock a 12 × 14 tent, and a small A-tent. The Lazy Man bought a 10 × 12 tent for himself and wife, and the next size[44] smaller for his daughter. Each family brought bed-clothing and personal apparel. (It was a first-rate opportunity to wear out old clothes.) The communal property, dishes, oil-stove, egg-beaters, and all such were paid for half-and-half. It stood the Lazy Man for outfit just $49.27 all told, and the outfit is now down cellar waiting impatiently for summer to come again, when it will be as good as new and won’t cost anything.

The summer previous, the Honest Man had gone exploring and found a spot on the Canadian shore of Lake Erie within an hour’s ride on the steamer from his business. A whopping big maple tree, thick and umbrageous, stood a hundred feet or so back from the water’s edge, on a sand slope carpeted with wild grape vines. The beach was of fine white sand, without a pebble bigger than a moth-ball, and it slanted so slowly into the water that breast-deep was fully a hundred yards from shore. This made it rather poky for the men-folks when they went in swimming, but it was ideal for the women, to whom a foot of depth is drowning depth. The lake being soft water, nobody can adequately express the joy the women had in washing their hair. This favored spot was a shade more than a mile away from the steamboat pier at which, six or eight times a day, excursion steamers unloaded revelers who sought the pallid ecstasy of a non-alcoholic pleasure resort. (It was Canada, remember, and while you might go in swimming on the Lord’s day, you could not ride upon the giddy-go-round. A district attorney from the smoky city on the American side presumed to fish on Sunday, and got sassy to the constable who said he shouldn’t. Thereupon they snaked him off to a neighboring village to the hardware store where the ’Squire kept court and fined him $20 and the costs.) We were far enough away on the long board walk to miss the transients, and by looking carefully through the trees you could just see one house from our place, the castle of our landlord. I am aware that it’s nice to be exclusive, and get away from common folks, but it’s so blamed expensive. Even millionaires when they want to make sure of getting any place have to travel with the cheap crowd. You can think that over. You will find it’s so, although I haven’t time to work it out in detail.

The Honest Man having lived on this spot the summer before, the floors were laid of boughten lumber, and the frames were up. Also, the private walks, made of such bits of board as the Good Lord had pleased to send upon the rolling waves, nailed upon saplings from the wood back of the camp, were still in place, so that there wasn’t much to do, a circumstance that grieved the Honest Man no little. He liked to be busy. The Lazy Man was patient under this affliction. He did help when there were things to do. He got the nails and handed the hatchet, and generally fetched and carried, knowing full well what are the drawbacks incident to being a heaven-gifted literary genius, such as not being of the least account about a place.

Among the triumphs of the Honest Man’s saw and hammer were the tables, prime among them being the dining-table under the same maple tree, whereon we ate our every meal from July 2 until September 3. It is fitting that in this public manner I should return thanks for our kind and considerate treatment by the weather. I can cheerfully recommend it to all and sundry. It rained at times, I won’t deny. It had to. I can see that. But I must say it was most forbearing in the matter, and rained only out of meal hours. Once or twice it was plain to see that it strained a point in our behalf, for example, that time we had to have our Sunday ice-cream in our tents, and the two or three occasions when the breakfast dishes were practically storm-washed.

This dining-table, the serving-table, the table in the cook-tent, and the china-closet—Oh my yes! We had a china-closet. It was made out of a packing box, had shelves in it, and four plank legs—these articles of furniture[45] were covered with marbled oil-cloth, and the door of the china-closet was of the same rich material, being secured with loops and nails. The cook-tent reared its lofty A on a frame with a waist-high board-wall, lined with shelves. It was so studded with nails that for once in their lives the women were speechless of complaint that there weren’t places enough to bestow the junk without which, so it seems, life in the kitchen is insupportable.

Hard by the china-closet was the refrigerator, in whose construction, let me say, the Lazy Man bore his part. He dug the hole in the sand in which was sunk a barrel with a perforated bottom through which the melting ice drained off. The women professed they lay awake nights listening for the things piled upon the ice to topple over into smash. They had to worry about something. There wasn’t a thing else for them to do but cook, and make the beds and wash the dishes.

I suppose that cooking by a camp-fire is the extreme of picturesqueness. It is also mighty hard upon the back, to say nothing of its blinding you with smoke, and frying the grease out of your face, even after you have learned that it isn’t really necessary to have a conflagration big enough to melt the nose off the coffee-pot, but that a cupful of live coals and a tiny bunch of twigs will do the trick. You have to stand over such a fire to keep it going, and when it rains it is the deuce and all. So we had a blue-flame oil-stove with an oven, and had everything cooked in the highest style known to the art, just as it was before we started on our way back to Nature. There was just one thing the women missed. Endless hot water laid on. Their heaviest burden was to remember “the dying woman’s advice.” Don’t you know what that is? “Sally,” she whispered with her latest breath, “always put on the dish-water before you sit down to your victuals.”

But if the Lazy Man could not bring his mind to penning deathless Literatoor, he could at least tote water from the lake, so it wasn’t so bad after all.

The need of cooking was great indeed. In no spirit of carping criticism I desire to say that I have seen the Honest Man, many and many’s the time, wolf down six big potatoes at a meal and other things accordingly. We others did our feeble best, but we never quite compassed that. I did eat six ears of green corn once, but you must remember that they were right off the vines, as you might say, and you know how good green corn is when it’s fresh.

This was no lonesome wilderness wherein we had to scuffle for our food. The milkman came right after breakfast with the morning’s milk. The morning’s milk remember, not the night before’s. Then came the iceman. I want to tell you about him. I had seen him pushing the lawn-mower on a green velvet lawn before a mansion up the beach a ways. I thought he was turning an honest penny taking care of it for some one else. Bless your heart, he lived there. He had a fine big farm behind it, but it was all seeded down in grass, because the harvest of ice from the lake before him in the winter brought him more money for less work than the rich loam behind him could raise in summer crops. Then came the grocer from the village back in the country. He always brought us kerosene, sometimes he brought us groceries, and all too seldom he brought us the flat loaves of the Italian baker in the village, flat and crusty loaves, which the grocer scornfully called “dog-bread.” There was “the bearded lady” that brought us home-made bread just once—just once. Evidently she had confused the relative proportions of the yeast and flour. Then came the old man with the broken hand, talk about which shortened the day for him and us; also, his wife, a dear old soul, who sold us from time to time bouquets picked from her garden, old-fashioned flowers made up so round and hard that if a man were clouted on the head with a nosegay you’d have to take him to the hospital. There was “the bonnet lady,” a sweet-faced Dunkard in the habit of her faith. There were several[46] whom we came to know right well, and after they began to suspect that, like as not, we weren’t as crazy as we seemed, living in tents—Did you ever hear the beat of that?—they showed they were just folks, same as anybody else. But the one I liked the best was the man that came on Saturdays to fetch us eggs and butter. I aroused his interest by telling him that where I came from they sold eggs by quarter’s worth; so many for a quarter, more when eggs were cheap, fewer when eggs were dear. Well sir, he like to never got over that. It was like the returned missionary, telling how the poor heathens live in China. He was a very conscientious man. “I’m sorry,” he would say, “but I’ve got to charge you 21 cents for them there eggs. They ain’t worth it. No eggs is worth that much, no time o’year. They ortn’t to be more’n 18 cents at any time. But the others is sellin’ ’em for 21, and I s’pose I got to, too.”

One and all, as soon as ever they could in decency get round to it, had this one question to ask: “What do you do when it rains?” They’d ask it with such a now-I-got-you look that it was funny to see how set-back they were when we made answer: “We do the same as you, we go in out of it.” But on the rebound you could notice the doubt forming itself in their minds as to whether we knew enough to do that. I’m sure they drove away thinking we were kind of be-addled in our intellects. I’ll have to own up to having asked: “What do you do when it rains?” in the beginning; and also, “What do you do when it blows?” But now I am convinced that a canvas tent well staked is equal to any weather, and I believe that if it had a red-hot stove in it, a body might be right cozy in a tent even in zero weather. I am going to preserve that conviction unshaken by never putting it to the test.

I said that the grocer from the village inland stopped. You notice that I didn’t say the butcher. He wouldn’t. You might go out and “holler” at him: “Hay! Hay there! Hay you! I want to talk to you. Hold on a second.” He never let on he heard you. I didn’t have a revolver, or I should have held him up. I did corner him once down at the Grove, and he explained to me he really could not be bothered with our money for his meat. He and his two men had all they could attend to now, what with their regular trade and the two hotels and the boardinghouses down along the beach. If he sold to private customers, he’d have to hire more help. When I suggested that he do that very thing and make more money, he smiled at me as one smiles at the foolish prattle of a child. Nup. He was awful sorry he couldn’t accommodate me, but—. And that ended it.

So for awhile, whenever we paddled down to the Grove in the canoe for the mail we stopped at the meat-shop. The Grove was where the giddy-go-round was; the razzle-dazzle air-ship, the whistle of whose tiny engine squealed like a frightened pig; the cake-and-coffee shop, the “red-hot” stand; the high-class “vawdvill,” admission ten cents, children five; the dancing floor, patronized by youth and beauty in duck jumpers and sleeves rolled high on red and peeling arms, ragged with strips of tissue-paper hide, each mouth distorted with an “all-day sucker” whose pine stem appetizingly protruded; the combination barber-shop and post-office where they were all out of two-cent stamps for weeks together, and “Joe’s.” I’ll get round to “Joe’s” in a minute if you’ll just be patient, but now I must tell you about the meat-shop. He was a fine fellow, the first butcher, much sought after when he had got into people’s confidence. There was the landlord that rented him the shop; there was the landlady where he roomed and boarded; there was the man he bought his meat of; there was the man he bought his twine and paper of; the man he borrowed $20 of and the man he borrowed $5 of—all seeking him and not finding him. He was—and then he was not. It was one of those mysterious disappearances you read about.

After he went away, we summer folks ungratefully conspired to ruin the land that sheltered us. You know there is no quicker and surer way to do that to a country than by shipping valuables[47] into it. The more iron and steel and wool and chinaware and diamonds—all kinds of things you pay money for—the more of them are brought into a country, the poorer it gets. If it were possible to cover the ground knee-deep with all that heart could wish but brought from another country, the inhabitants would have to give right up, and everything would go to smash. Conversely a country which imports nothing is always immensely rich and prosperous. You know how that is in private life. The man that raises everything he eats; that does his own butchering, makes his own shoes, whose wife spins all the flax and wool the family needs—such a man is always well-to-do; he’s independent. While those who have to buy everything are always poor and forlorn. We all know this, but such is the depravity of the human heart, we want to buy things without asking whether they are made in our country or not. If it wasn’t for our wicked hearts prompting us to want things, we could easily keep out the foreign goods. So as to sort of even up the injury we do our country, it is arranged that whenever we thus sinfully buy foreign wares we pay a fine for it. The fine for ruining Canada by bringing in fresh meat to eat is six cents a pound. Now I want to tell you that when we had no butcher and the village butcher wouldn’t stop for us, there were people so selfish that they not only ruined Canada by bringing over fresh meat, but they smuggled it! Yes sir! Smuggled it. And King Edward needing the money so badly, with all the expense he is under.

The United States is just as up and coming, though, as Canada. Every bit. We don’t propose that our fair land shall be devastated by a flood of cheap Canadian mutton (it is most mighty good mutton; I’ll say that for it), so there is a fine on anybody that brings it over. The Beef Trust has expensive families to send to college too.

In response to popular demand, the baker consented to run the butcher-shop. If you found the place locked up, you stamped on the stoop and yelled awhile. He would come out, rolling the dough off his fingers and cut you off some meat. Sometimes, though you’d have to wait until he got those pies out.

He was as good-hearted a man as ever lived, but he caused me many a sleepless night. I’ll tell you how it was. One day I didn’t go for the meat. The Honest Man’s Wife went. She got a roast, five pounds and a quarter it was, at 18 cents a pound. The man figured on the cost. He put it down 70 cents, but that didn’t look quite right to him, so he set down a figure 1.

“Would you mind,” she asked as innocent as a cat lapping milk, “would you mind figuring that out for me?”

“Sure thing, lady,” said the baker-butcher. “Five pounds and a quarter. There’s your 5¼, at 18 cents. There’s your 18. Five tums 8 is 40. Put down the aught and carry 4. Five tums one is 5, and 4 is—is—er—er—Five times 8 is 40. Put down the aught and carry—Hold on. I guess I made a mistake. Call it 97 cents.” He smiled pleasingly.

“Seven cents,” mused she. “M—, won’t you please figure out for me how one-fourth of 18 is 7?”

Well now. I had been paying for meat without ever figuring it out. Considering that with his limited arithmetical powers he was certain to make mistakes, and considering that those mistakes were equally certain to be all in his favor, can you wonder that I have tossed and tossed for hours upon a sleepless couch trying to recall the times I bought meat of him, how much it weighed and what I paid him?

I promised to speak of “Joe’s.” Behold I show you a mystery. I saw a billhead of his. His initial was M. Try my best I couldn’t make out to spell Joe with an M. Yet everybody called him Joe. I asked the Signora, his mother-in-law. She pressed her lips strongly together and wildly shook her head. “Eena Cannodda dey gotta no sensea,” she exclaimed. “Eesa nemma notta Joe. No. Eesa nemma[48] Mike. Michaele. Seguro. Surea tinga. Cannodda mans ee say: ‘Eh Joe? Youra nemma Joe? Eh?’ Ee know dey gotta nuss sense a eena Cannodda. Ee say: ‘Sure a-tinga.’ Eesa neema notta Joe. No. Eesa nemma Mike. Michaele. Seguro. Surea tinga.”

At Joe’s you could buy all things necessary to support life from ham to hairpins, including Canadian tobacco, which needs a protective tariff if ever anything does in this world. Not because it is a weakling though. It biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder. Funny thing about that Canadian smoking tobacco. Sometimes it puts you in mind of sauerkrout, and sometimes it puts you in mind of boneset. I don’t think it is quite as bitter as boneset, though.

Shelter, and food, and water and tobacco being thus accounted for, there remains another prime necessity of life, and that is, sleep. I don’t believe there is one person in a hundred that knows the real luxury of sleep. Consider the uncounted hordes that live in terror of “night air.” Consider the more enlightened that raise their bedroom windows just a trifle, to calk them up as soon as ever it turns a little cool. But even when wide open, a bedroom with a window in it is not by any means the same thing as a tent to sleep in, a tent by the lakeside, its front all flaring open, and its sides and top working like bellowses with the breeze. We had regular wire springs and to the wooden frames we nailed pieces of 2 × 4 for legs. On these were mattresses and bedclothes, plenty of them. For when we read of city folk dying of sunstroke and rolling off their roofs where they had gone to get a mouthful of the lifeless air, robbed of its ozone before it reached them, we were snuggling under one and sometimes two pairs of blankets. And then, I had the pleasure (a small and tepid pleasure you may think it, but very real to me) of trying to prop my eyelids open every night, as I lay stretched out upon my bed, till I could thrust my hand out between the sidewall and the baseboard, and feel the glossy leaves of the cool grapevine, and try to unkink a tendril before I lost consciousness. Sometimes I couldn’t get that far. We’d stay up till all hours, nine and even ten o’clock, fighting off sleep. It was a nightly problem with us which we’d rather do, go to bed and get that lovely sleep, or stay awake a minute or two longer staring at the “friendship fire.”

I have vainly tried to think which held the greater fascination for me: The lake as it shifted its hues before my eyes from reddish brown to vivid apple-green through leaded gray and royal purple, the farther shore now so sharp and clear that you could see the houses on it, now but a thin slice of pearl against a pearly sky, the water between us and it now a floor veined and streaked like marble, and now ridgy with billows, that practised, as it were, their scales upon the yellow beach, their hand-backs remembering what the teacher said, “no knuckles,” and their finger tips dancing in the white froth: or, the fire of evenings, fluttering its ribbons of orange taffeta against the back log, snapping its blank cartridges in sport at us, the red coals so many heaps of glowing jewels in an Indian prince’s treasure-house. The lake enthralled me in the day-time. It numbed my brain; it paralyzed my pen-hand, and left me only the still and speechless joy of living. When the darkness fell, the firelight drew me with the master-spell. From the lake I now and then could turn my eyes. The fire was jealous. Not for a full minute would it let me go. In its genial warmth and light our souls expanded, and we sang the old songs that everybody knows, the songs that lie so near the heart its strings must thrill in concord with them, but, through all, our eyes were fastened on the fire. What magic it must be that thus can charm unhaltingly through all the long, long centuries that have drifted by like mist since first men gathered about the friendly flame! The wonder of it! The wonder of it! Without the Fire there could never be the Family, with all that means to us; no Hearth, no[49] Home, with all that means to us. The first priestess was she that kept the coals alive; an altar is but a cooking-place. Lineal descendant of the first flickering blaze fed with twigs is all our god-like industry, all that has made us lords of earth and sea. Back to nature we may go, but farther back than fire we dare not, lest we perish body and soul.

Perhaps it was the dumb fear of this, the heritage of pre-historic ancestry that made us sigh when the time came to tear the logs apart and quench them for the night.

How happy were those dear idle days! Happy, not only in the retrospect, but each moment savoring pleasant to the taste. Once I thought that Heaven must be rather bore-ous with nothing left to strive for, no ambition, no anxiety. I know better now. I could live on and on forever in that camp and never wish for anything but to live. As I write, the pictures of the sweet, calm evenings out upon the placid lake in the canoe return to me. It heaves in gentle swells, the umber water netted on its ripple-crests with soft reflections of the flushed sky fading into tints too delicate for words of color. Black against the lucent edge of heaven march the slim poplars. The stars are struggling out, and taking pattern from them, the riding-lights of yachts shine yellowly. The waves plash gently on the shell that holds us, and the water gurgles against the paddle that urges onward, or tinkles in drops like tiny bells. Something catches in the throat. It is too beautiful, too heavenly for earth-born. From far across the waters comes Caruso’s voice, by magic reproduced, sweet to suffocation.

On the taffrail of the departing steamer we leaned and watched the spot until the darkness and the distance smothered the pale gleaming of the tents where our friends lingered yet a little longer. We sighed; we could not help it. A little more and tears would have flowed.

I want to go back there. I want to go back! Back to Nature—or at least part way.

A Difference

“That long-whiskered, pompous gentleman over there, who is doing most of the talking, is a prominent citizen, isn’t he?” inquired the tourist.

“Ah-nah!” pessimistically replied the landlord of the tavern at Polkville, Ark. “He’s a member of the Legislature.”

His Identity

“Does any one know this poor fellow?” asked the Good Samaritan, addressing the crowd which had quickly gathered at the scene of the accident. “His mind seems to have become an absolute blank, and——”

“Trust official! Trust official!” shouted the assemblage in one voice. “Out of his head and thinks he’s on the witness stand!”

One of our Ohio martyred Presidents, James A. Garfield, in delivering a speech in Congress, the last one, I believe, uttered this sentence: “Whoever controls the volume of money in this country will be absolute master of its industries and commerce.”

A truer sentence was never uttered in our House of Representatives. But to see clearly and forcibly its truthfulness and effects, one must have a proper idea of what money is, by what power it is created, the factors or elements of money, and its functions and use.

Briefly stated, money is the debt-paying instrument in all civilized nations, whose people are actively engaged in making contracts, buying and selling. Every contract creates a debt, hence the necessity of a debt-paying instrument.

Barbarous nations resort to barter; that is, giving one product or commodity for another, and yet with all of our boasted civilization we have men—some prominent ones too—who claim that money is a commodity.

I propose dealing in facts, as they are the stern sentinels of truth. Every nation enacts laws compelling its citizens to tender certain things, variously called “dollars,” “pounds,” “francs,” etc., as the only legal means of payment of debts and taxes. This is the vital point of the whole money question. Law, and law alone, makes money. Let us see what money is, and how it comes into existence.

Our gold, silver, and paper coins; also our nickel and copper coins, are really made up of three distinct factors or elements, each of which may, and often does, exist independently of the other two. This fact is one of the central truths concerning money.

What are these three constituents? First is the denominator or namer of the unit—Dollar. This is an ideal or abstract term given to an intangible thing. Second, some tangible or material substance to represent the dollar, or some multiple of it; and third, its life, the legal tender function.

No two of these can make money; they must all three be named by sovereign power, Congress, or we have no money. Sovereignty is a unit and cannot be divided, nor can it be delegated. This is why National Bank notes are not a legal tender; they are simply the debt of the bank circulating as a substitute for money, so as to gratify the greed of the money sharks, and the “Power” that is aiming to be “master of our industries and commerce.”

But we are told that Congress, sovereign power, cannot make money out of nothing, that there must be intrinsic value in our monetary tokens. Let us analyze this proposition in the light of facts and logical reasoning.

The second factor in money is the material substance used to represent the dollar, or some multiple of it. This material substance does not make the dollar. Remember this.

The important factor in the dollar is its life—the legal tender function—and sovereign power alone can grant this.

Under our constitution, sovereign power is placed in the hands of the American people—the whole people, not a part of them,—and their representatives in Congress exercise that[51] power; so that whatever Congress says shall be money is money in the United States. So it can be safely affirmed that law alone creates money. The fiat or decree of law in the United States gives us our money.

But we are told that paper money, greenbacks, is all right when they are made redeemable in coin. The word “redeem” should never be used in connection with our money here in the American Republic. According to our big dictionary, redeem means “to purchase back,” “to ransom, liberate, or rescue from captivity or bondage.” Now as we have seen, Congress issues our money and puts it in circulation among the people. Is not Uncle Sam’s stamp on a piece of paper just as good as it is on a piece of silver or gold? If not, why not? Will some one please tell us? Then again I ask, wherein is there any sense or logic in Uncle Sam, the sovereign power in the United States, buying himself back? Where has our sovereign power got to, that Uncle Sam must ransom, or rescue himself from captivity or bondage?

As we have seen, sovereign power alone can issue money. That being a fact, Congress alone should issue all our money, whether coin or paper, and it should all be made a full legal tender; and no one kind “redeemable” in another kind; with no state or National note circulation as a substitute for money.

Another very important consideration is that it should be issued in sufficient volume to effect all our exchanges on a cash basis, or as nearly so as possible; for debt and usury, now called interest, is the present curse of every civilized country on earth.

This accomplished, the Government should establish Postal Savings Banks in every city having a population of two thousand or more, where the people could deposit their surplus money, until needed, in perfect safety, paying a small per cent. just as they do for insuring their buildings.

There is always a ratio existing between the total volume of money, free to flow in the channels of trade, and all things on the market for sale, including labor. This ratio is called—price. Statistics show that we had our largest volume of money at the close of the Civil War. In 1866 we had $80.00 per capita. We then had high prices and every man willing to work was employed. There were no tramps on the road begging for work or something to eat.

The accursed policy of contraction then commenced, at the instigation of the “Power” that was aiming to “be master of our industries and commerce.” Contracting the money volume continued until 1878, when we had less than $20.00 per capita. Then our roads and city streets were full of tramps, so-called. No work was to be obtained. Shops and factories were closed and farmers did their own work.

In 1866 there were but 520 failures in the United States with liabilities amounting to $8,579,000. In 1878, there were 10,478 failures with liabilities amounting to $234,383,132. Such were the effects of contracting the debt-paying instrument of our country at the dictation of Wall Street money tyrants.

The Rothschilds in Europe are the “Power” that controls the volume of money in every one of the European countries, and the result is they are the “absolute masters of the industries and commerce” of every government in Europe.

Furthermore, it can be safely said that through their agent, August Belmont, and his clique in New York, they are aiming to become the “absolute masters of our industries and commerce” here in the United States.

Can it be possible that an American President would join in this crusade against the best interests of the American people? It would really appear so, for Theodore Roosevelt in his recent message to Congress recommends retiring of the greenbacks and “redeeming” the silver dollars in gold. That means that our gold coin shall be our only perfect money, with National Bank notes (the debts of the banks, drawing double interest, once on the[52] bonds deposited to secure the notes, and again on the notes; for no bank note passes over the counter of the bank issuing it, until interest is paid in advance), as a substitute for money; thus giving the banks the power to increase or diminish our volume of money, just as it may suit their sweet will and avaricious purposes.

At this point of the discussion we are told that we must have a standard of value, and that gold is a never-varying standard of value the world over. In reply to that I find in Sir Frederick Eden’s table of English money, from the Conquest in 1066 down to 1601, that in 1551 gold was worth only 4 shillings 7½ pence per ounce in London—a little over one dollar of our money; and in Doubleday’s “Financial History of England,” page 277, that in 1813 gold was worth 5 pounds 10 shillings an ounce in London—twenty-seven dollars and a half in our money. Does that look as though gold was a never-varying standard of value?

Besides, there is and can be no such thing as a “standard of value.” We can have a standard for quantity, gravity, and extension, but not of value. We have the gallon, the bushel, the pound and ton, the yard, rod and mile, but where is the unit for value?

Some may say; “Why the dollar is the unit of value”—not correct. The dollar is the unit in the expression of price; and, as we have seen, price is the ratio, so the word dollar is not a unit of value. Not until we can measure an idea with a quart cup, measure it with a foot rule, or put it in the scales and weigh it, can we have a measure of value; for remember, value is an idea, an action of the mind, and what has civilization invented to measure an idea with?

Value is human estimation of desirable things, which are limited in quantity, or which require sacrifice to obtain.

There we have a full, clear and scientific definition of value, “Human estimation”—clearly an action of the mind—an idea.

Whenever there is a general inability to pay debts on account of an insufficient or low volume of money, we call it a—panic. We have had five such periods in the history of the American Republic, viz: in 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873 and 1893.

How much better it would have been for our Republic had our fathers, who framed our Constitution and established the Government under it, given us a safe, sound and scientific financial system; with all money, whether coin or paper, issued by the Government, and in sufficient volume to do a cash business; volume to be increased as population and business increased; all made a full legal tender for all debts public and private, and at no time to be a contraction or reduction in its volume. Then we would have had none of the periods called panics and our advancement in all branches of business and science would be far in advance of what it now is.

It may be said, and truthfully, that our fathers had no time to devote to the money question; but there were a few in those days who did study it and profited by it just as there are at the present time.

If the farmers, the mechanics and wage-workers,—the creators of wealth—in this country ever expect to get any relief from the tyranny and oppression of this octopus that is “aiming to be master of their industries and commerce,” they must go to work earnestly and systematically in their various organizations—the Grange, The Farmers’ Alliance, the Patrons of Husbandry and the various Labor Unions—to studying the money question, and if they persevere they will see clearly as President Garfield did over a quarter of a century ago, that “whoever controls the volume of money in this country will be absolute master of its industry and commerce.”

There were a few men even at the time our Government was organized who understood the money question. Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin concurred in the theory that “good paper money, based on the credit of the people is the best money ever invented by man.” “Equal and[53] exact justice to all men, special privilege to none,” was their motto.

Let me quote further from Garfield. In that same speech he said: “But I admit freely that no Congress is wise enough to determine how much money the country needs. There never was a body of men wise enough to do that. The volume of currency needed depends upon laws that are higher than Congress and higher than Government. The laws of trade alone can determine its quantity.”

Demand for use is the natural law of money supply, and the Government should furnish such an amount as may be legally demanded; the idea being that the business of the country will absorb as much as it needs, and no more.

My opinion is, the volume ought not to be less than $50.00 per capita; and, as I believe, $100 per capita would be none too much to effect all our exchanges for cash, which is the proper way to do a safe business.

According to the Treasurer’s Reports for 1864, 5 and 6, and Fawcett’s, “Gold and Debt,” we had in circulation at the close of the Civil War about $80 per capita, which was none too much. Then it was that we had high prices and good times.

Our present Comptroller of the Currency reports $31 per capita in the various kinds of money and substitutes for money now in circulation. This is altogether too small an amount for the production and exchanges required in this broad land of ours. The result is debts are being made and credits are expanding at a fearful rate, preparing the way for our next great panic.

As stated above, we have never yet passed beyond twenty years without having a panic, and a moment’s thought will present to the mind the fact that we are now on the last half of the twenty years since 1893.

It is coming, for we all know that “like causes always produce like results;” and the cause is an inadequate volume of the debt-paying instrument—money—to do the business with. The result is that deferred payments—debts—must be made, and, as we have seen, a panic is a prevailing inability to pay debts. So look out for breakers in the near future.

Our present situation is no time to advocate commodity money, for the defenders of hard money ought to know that hard money and hard times always go hand in hand.

Demand for use is the natural law of money supply; and, as the demand now is far in excess of the supply, it is safe to say, that unless more money is put into the channels of trade, there will be a severe money stringency; if not a genuine old-fashioned panic.

I have often wondered why $100,000,000 in gold is kept penned up in the Treasury Building in Washington. So far as doing the people any good it might as well be in the bottom of the ocean.

Money performs precisely the same function in the social organism that blood does in the animal organism. Blood is the vitalizing force in the human body, and money is the vitalizing force in the body politic. Everybody knows that the loss of blood causes weakness in a human person, and just so the loss of money—a contraction of the money volume—causes weakness in a government; hence no “Power” should be permitted to control our volume of money.

Every voter in this Republic has a head above his shoulders supposed to contain a think-shop; and, if the “Power” now controlling our money volume, and as a result our “commerce and industries,” is to be removed and better times secured, every think-shop must get down to business, with a full determination to see that our “commerce and industries” shall not be interfered with, that the volume of money be increased enough to effect rapid exchange of products and the payment of debts.

The difficulty in accomplishing this lies in the fact that so many think-shops are never used, and again, some never read any newspaper except “my party paper,” containing nothing for[54] think-shops to work at, and the result is—ignorance.

Thought is the mother of ideas, and ideas move the world. The reading man will naturally be an observing man, a thinking man, always looking for the cause of results which are transpiring around him, either in politics or science.

The election in several States last fall indicated very clearly that more men were using their think-shops than in previous campaigns. The good work has commenced and may it continue until our Republic be free from any organization that dare attempt to be—“Master of our industries and commerce.”

West from Ping-Yang, the old Korean capital, flows Tai-Dong River into the Yellow Sea. Where in its mouth the flood tide weakens, and junks with lumber slung over sides drop their brown mat sails; there, where the clean sharp hills most beautifully are tricked with mirage and blue mist, squats the town of Chinnampo.

Kuroki’s army landed there on the March night early in the war when the ice, as if by magic, ground out toward China. Oiled torches spiked to rafts bobbed on the chill stream, and the winches of blacker transports creaked and whistled to the snowy shore. From the holds swung aloft rice and fodder and knock-kneed, shaggy ponies. Impish guards of the Mikado in red and green, privates in long coats and spectacles, sprang forth rigidly on land. No noise, no fuss; the brown invasion of Asia was furtively begun. The long barracks were ready, and they that had watched Jap coolie sappers a-building them—beer and sweet-cake sellers from the islands, pioneers in the new westward hegira—sat proud and bland that night in their paper-slat doors. Meanwhile, from his desert of filth and thatched mud huts all about, crouched cousin Korean in the darkness, unsurprised and cynical, smoking a yard-long bamboo pipe as he dropped soft syllables of philosophy on the vanity of effort, and with disdain drew his wadded white robes closer.

Even when the red sun flag fluttered darkly up its pole, no cheers followed. But from a hill overlooking the town an oath arose.

“Damn these Japs, damn their mustard bellies,” growled Captain Cyrus Brewster, chewing a stogie on the porch of his lonely bungalow.

Isolated on his hill, the captain was just such a Yankee, thin-nosed, blue-eyed and muffin-mouthed but with an imperishable look of youth for all his curled gray hair, as you might find in a bungalow with a flag-pole in front were you wrecked, for instance, off Patagonia; which is to say he was an iconoclast, and hated the world. He shipped from Chinnampo two million dollars a year in bullion from a gold mine near the Yalu River, for which he was “agent;” passed white men’s food and chemicals through the custom-house, and swore at coolies loading them on the light-draught junks he ran to the head of navigation on the Tai-Dong, whence carts trundled to the mines.

But worse than the world he hated the Japanese, for they militantly coveted for barrack joists the only pine grove in the region, which adorned his homestead. They could not seize the land without stirring diplomatic mud, since the captain had bought his stake from the Russians, who had eked it from Seoul in ’96, when the Jap ambassador burned the old Empress in kerosene, and her son fled to the Slav legation. Therefore the Islanders had threatened eviction, with smiles and insults; dickered blandly with bows, lies, and tissue documents inkily fly-tracked, as the captain repulsed them with a[56] fist blow on the table, and cable blanks inscribed with fiery messages to Washington, which he never sent.

“War news?” he’d exclaim to missionaries bound up river. “Don’t ask me, by crotch! I don’t bother the monkeys in their damned town, and they don’t come up here to me.”

Thus being pro-Russian and a truly brave man, Brewster felt he must vindicate his notions in action. Having heard that a Cossack captain near Wonsan on the west coast would be pleased to know how many men and rice sacks landed with Kuroki, he let a young Russian travel, dressed as a Japanese, on his junks between the lines. This fellow’s name was Davydoff, a machinist, who patriotically had quit the mine when the war broke out, but being lame could not enlist. In disguise, he traveled by the name of Ikeda. I do not know how the captain squared with his conscience in abetting a spy, but that Yankee defect is an over-worked myth, anyhow; and a world malevolent enough to land a man, aged fifty, alone in Korea, with a past like an erasure in a pirate’s log, should grant indulgence.

This very hour tonight he awaited Ikeda, erst Davydoff. Now through his night glass he searched the river, now the silent town distorted by no flickering camp-fires, the torches, dying into iridescence, revealed the black Tai-Dong as a covert serpent stealing across a world numb and indifferent in white age. “Like them yeller oriental hearts, that river,” he muttered, nodding at the stream, “reaching out acrost the world fer us white men’s sceptres, learnin’ to smile whiles they suffer. Oh, they’ll get the sceptres.” You see, the captain believed firmly in the Yellow Peril. Soon he turned toward the angled thatches of the town, and a white painted gable far from the barracks caught his eye.

His sharp features softened with recollection. “I see yer hev yer schoolhouse lit, young missy,” he murmured. “Night school. Workin’ overtime civilizin’ Koreans.” For first the invaders had built the barracks, then the school—copying the white man’s way in lifting a yellow burden—which to the captain menaced a right regeneration of Korea. The brown people thus handled the surest civilizing weapons of the white, who were sealed meanwhile further north in their fortresses of privilege and prejudice; so the bungalow on the hill and the schoolhouse among the huts symbolized the passing of Asia.

“Karin San’s there,” mused the captain, and a vision of the white clad Korean boys with long hair parted in the middle, the girls in green silk tunics, their snub noses buried in books of English and Japanese, uprose before him as he had seen them through the doorway, repeating the alphabet in unison, on a day he had passed the schoolhouse. Then Karin San had bowed low on the threshold, saying, “It is a beautiful day, You-think-yes? I am Karin-San-the-school-teacher-of-English,” and a big red pin had fallen from the shiny convolutions of her oiled hair, as she bowed so low. “Great Christopher!” the captain had gasped; the same dizziness now touched his breast as he watched.

Many times since he had visited Karin San, stealing down to the school unknown to the Japs, or even Davydoff. He would sit beside her on her platform, and she would turn to him for correction when her red lips mistrusted how an English word should sound. After lessons they would talk of Japan and America, for the captain had the reserve of age and disappointment, and to Karin the war was no more a subject for discussion than the coming of spring itself.

“Shame me for lovin’ you, Karin San,” he muttered now tonight. “One of the yeller-bellies I hates. Hypocrite!” and he turned toward a gigantic sort of dog-house under his flag-pole, where hibernated in winter and dozed in summer, the captain’s big brown Siberian bear, Kuropatkin, which he loved even more than his twisty pine trees. He tapped on the house with his bamboo stick, and wished the General “Happy New Year.”

“It’s time ye waked and brushed yer teeth,” he said. “World’s a bit livelier[57] in these parts than when ye went to bed last year.”

The rattle of a chain told the hibernation was over, while eight hundred pounds of shagginess squeezed into the open; tested the ground for frost with a paw, waved its head as a man sounds a stiff neck, and as if to say, “My! but this is early in the summer to wake a fellow!”

But the captain had stooped quickly and snatched at a red object in Kuropatkin’s house. “Cuss them, Gen’ral!” he exclaimed, grasping a shinbone hung with flesh. “The Japs has tried to pizen ye! Peach kunnels,” he growled holding the meat to his nose. “But Mr. Jap Mustard-belly ain’t so all-fired wise, and don’t know God A’mighty can’t pizen a b’ar. He’ll learn a thing or two ’bout Rooshian b’ars some fine day, though now he’s got the nerve and numbers to do most anything.”

Kuropatkin, cocking his head on one side, raised an ankle, and, pointing like a setter dog into the pine-grove, let out an “Oof!”

“You see Mr. Mustard yonder?” drawled the captain, following the General’s gaze. “You’re sayin’ you’re pretty wise, you b’ars, ain’t you? I guess the’ ain’t no monkey law yit about watch dog or b’ar licenses in this country. My timber’s lyin’ pretty loose about this hill. We’ve likely got a vendetta on, General,” and having kicked away the poisoned bone, the captain unhooked Kuropatkin’s ankle chain, thus freeing him.

Quite right was the Yankee about Jap nerve and a vendetta. The Islanders’ next militant move in the feud came that very night. In his French bedstead—the only kind in Korea, with its thin iron mosquito-frame aloft—he was wakened by a rasping, cracking sound out in his grove. Now and then came a swish and a thump. Then——

“Yai! Yai! Eee! Eee! and a diabolical yeodle curdled the moonlight on the hill-side. Presently a big brown object lolled from the shadows of the pines, and stalked majestically toward the flag-pole.

“Got the fisheatin’ Japs in the act, did yer, Pat?” whispered the captain out the window, shaking with laughter.

“Oofski!” grunted Kuropatkin, crowding into his house. Next morning Brewster walked to his grove to find that three of his tallest pine trees had been chopped and carted off, while two axes hung at hasty angles in a half-felled fourth. After breakfast, Puk-Chong, his Korean “boy,” started for the Jap headquarters with the copy of a telegram, declared in a brief note to be then on its way to the American Minister at Tokio. Brewster himself walked unnoticed down the hill to the cable office, which lies far from the barracks. He actually despatched the message sent in copy to the commandant, there being yet no war correspondents, and hence no censorship in Korea. It was rather a more fire-eating complaint than any he had pretended to send to Tokio before, and some time passed before he knew the importance of his act.

After tiffin, two Jap soldiers appeared on his veranda, mutely inquisitive in their brown leggins, yellow shoulder-straps, and high crowned caps. They drew white gloves from their hands, smiled, and bowed three times till their long swords clicked on the floor. The shorter, darker soldier—he with a wispy convex mustache and eyes like a dissipated doll—handed the captain a letter bearing the long brown Korean stamp. The captain whistled as he opened it. It was addressed in a round, shaded hand suggesting steel pens and primary writing books. Reading it, he glowered; then smiled, as if he discerned something pleasant on a mountain across the river; frowned again and more deeply, coughed, and put the letter gently into his left-hand breast pocket, where his heart underneath beat faster.

“So Korean postmen ain’t good enough to carry white men’s letters no more?” demanded the captain.

“We dare no longer trust the shiftless Korean with letters to so august a person,” explained the taller soldier, and both bowed.

“They won’t let you steam them[58] open and read them, like you have this one?” said the captain. “Hey?”

“Your bear,” said the doll-eye, after each had stared with polite blankness at the captain, “is he dangerous?” and the soldier indicated the flag-pole.

“Mebbe your pardner’s pants ken show that,” drawled the Yankee, taking the other by the shoulder and turning him around. “Um, no,” he growled, “but that b’ar knows pizen when he smells it.”

“We feed it to b’ars regular in Americky,” replied the captain fiercely. “We put it on shin bones and shove it in their kennels. It makes them strong so they ken bust chains and plug axes inter trees.”

“Ah, so, so,” gasped the pair, with the Jap stare which conceals understanding.

The captain knew the soldiers could never have called on so direct a mission as to deliver a letter or complain of Kuropatkin’s attack; and that to show anger to mere privates at losing his trees would yield him only smiles of scorn and pity. What had they come for? Brewster had his suspicions, which he started to test. He thrust his hands carelessly into his pockets, observing that he guessed he wouldn’t “get no more letters at all, steamed or unsteamed.” To which the emissaries replied that he did them an injustice, that they had no desire to interfere with the honorable foreigner’s business, but sought rather to safeguard his privacy by official deliveries.

“So deska,” said the captain with falling inflection, which means, “Well, well, now, you don’t say.” “You mean then, any Jap can bring me mail?” he challenged.

“Then I’d like your boss’s permission,” said the captain slowly, “to detail that Jap boy Ikeda I have traveling to the mines for me to bring my mail.”

“Ah—he is expected back soon?” interrupted both at once, stepping forward eagerly at mention of the spy, confirming Brewster’s suspicion.

“No,” drawled the Yankee. “No. Ikeda’s welched—gone south to Seoul to fight for the Korean Emperor.”

The soldiers consulted one another with clever glances. The captain whistled easily, for he was quite sure now that they had come to arrest Davydoff. “Good morning,” he repeated.

The pair started down the walk to the gate, but turned to bow. As they did so, the Yankee seemed to see their stoop grow rigid. They gazed over his head to the door of the bungalow. He turned. Behind him in the doorway stood what seemed to be a Jap—a man wooden-shoed, in a gray kimono, a derby hat squashed flat over his ears—Davydoff returned.

“Your boss is pretty obligin’,” called the captain to the soldiers. “Without my askin’ he seems to have telegraphed Ikeda in Seoul to come back and carry my letters. An’ he’s come.”

“Hi! Pat,” called the captain, “Sic ’em, Pat, sic ’em!” he shouted.

A chain in the big dog-house rattled, and before the emissaries had paced ten yards, their twin brown gaiters were flying across the garden and swinging over the rail fence, before the galumphing Kuropatkin.

“I hev a great pity fer ye,” imitated the captain. “They expect all lies or all truth,” he observed, turning to the bewildered spy. “Mix ’em, an’ yer ken wig a yeller-belly—if ye hev an intelligent b’ar.”

The youth exclaimed, trembling; “I have heard all. The two Japanese there know me for an informer. It is danger to remain here.”

“It’s a bullet fer ye on the bund tomorrow,”[59] said the captain, thoughtfully eying him, and “jail fer me.”

The boy limped dazedly to the wash-basin in the dining-room, and a black wig fell to the floor. In a moment a blue-eyed, yellow-haired youth sat down to tiffin opposite the captain. A whitish beard curled thinly over his chin, and except for the roundness of his head and his hair’s creeping low on the forehead—as in all exiles’ and settlers’ sons of the Siberian steppe—he would have passed in America for the second generation of a Baltic immigrant, refined and sharpened by transplantation.

“It would be but dying for my country,” he said with effort, but now calm, after the two had eaten awhile in silence. “The great work is done. Kosakin, the Cossack, has all the figure of the landing.”

“Yes, Davy, but Rooshia ain’t the captain’s country,” explained the Yankee. “We got to hide you.”

The captain lapsed again into silence, listening absently to an excited tale of suspicion, strategy, and escapes on a week’s trip from Wonsan, told in the Russian’s queer, inverted English. As they rose from the table, Brewster drew from his pocket the letter given him by the doll-eyed soldier, and handed it to Davydoff. “Suppose you read this,” he said. Davy took it, and read:

“I guess we’ll have to take in the show,” remarked the captain, as the boy glanced up with a queer look of amazement. “We got to go somewheres.”

“Is there no place else?” asked the boy excitedly, “I would myself surrender rather than now to enter the schoolhouse.”

The captain met his glance intently. “It’s our one chance, Davy,” he said, searching the boy’s eyes. “I’ll tell ye. I know thet young school missy pretty well. Unbeknown to you, I’ve helped her hearing class. She’s the one friend I have in town. If the game’s up with us, as I believe, I’d like to say good-bye to her,” and the captain with bent head turned away.

Davydoff sprang to his feet and paced up and down the room, clenching and unclenching his hands, darting glances at the captain. “No, no,” he cried. “Not there! Not there! Never, by my honor!”

“It is ye suspicion the letter’s a trap?” he asked searchingly. “It ain’t, I promise ye. Jap though she is, she’d never—never—” he stammered. “Or——”

The Russian stopped short and their eyes met. “No, no,” he answered, “I apprehend no trap, not from Karin. Only if—” he checked himself. Understanding glimmered in his blue eyes. Then—“If she is as well your friend, I will go. I will go to the schoolhouse with you.”

At dark, the captain followed by Davy, black-haired and derby-hatted, with Kuropatkin swaying comfortably between, halted suddenly as they entered the moon-lit pine grove. Looking back toward the bungalow, they saw two-brown gaitered figures patter up the garden path and steal behind the bear house, where one leaped monkey fashion on its roof. The other with prehensile feet shinned the flag-pole and hurled a stone down upon Kuropatkin’s roof. Finding he was not at home, they dashed on toward the bungalow.

“Jes’ caught the gang-plank in time, ain’t we?” laughed the captain. “Dodged the yeller-bellies so far.”

Emerging from the grove, they stole across frozen stagnant water, among squalid red clay huts with tiny lattices under the thatching. Four soldiers, singing with locked arms as they passed, kicked a fallen Korean chimney—a tin kerosene can. Not a white-robed philosopher was in sight, but[60] through the huts’ straw fences, they could see long-haired hags huddled over smoky braziers in which bubbled the head of a dog or hoof of a bull. Through low door-ways in the haze of tiny, ill-trimmed lamps, sore-covered children in soiled bright silks rolled on matless earth beside chests clamped with iron.

At last the schoolhouse, white, high-gabled, and awkwardly occidental, faced them. They chained the bear to a rail of the steps, and without knocking entered a long empty room of half a dozen glass windows, its plain boards lit by two big swinging kerosene lamps, and decorated with British and Japanese flags. From the platform at the far end, behind a drawn red cotton curtain strung on a long wire, a spiral stair wound to the loft under the gable overhead. Chairs and benches were piled in the corners.

Karin San tripped down the stair in her best iris kimono and big obi, pausing at intervals as she crossed the floor to bow the glittering comb in her black hair. Her powdered oval face resembled an enamel shell. With half closed eyes and red lips parted, she seemed striving to speak volumes of welcome, and to be intensely amused and overwhelmed by her inability.

“Kombomoi kombomoi,”[1] she gasped and the captain responded, his heart beating faster, but his eyes suspicious of the vacant building.

“Very sorry, very sorry, Brewster San,” pleaded the little school mistress. “Tonight, no Uncle Tom. No show.”

Little Eva’s red shawl hung from a nail over the platform, also the gray beard and spectacles of Uncle Tom, while on it rested a couple of buckets filled with ice-cakes. From wondering how that spectacular scene of Eliza’s crossing was to be portrayed—if a samisan could render the proper jumpy music—the captain’s eyes fixed Davy’s in mute wonder.

“Military authority—Major Kumoda—just now order me no show,” Karin apologized, again bowing with a smile in which her visitors, though used to oriental deception, could read no duplicity. “Mebbe soldier come.”

The soft chords in her neck glistened like velvet, but again the captain turned from them to his spy, saying, “Right you were in growlin’ to come here. Better say yer prayers, boy, if you Rooshians is as good at prayin’ as they tell. She’s snared us for the mustard-bellies.”

“You shall not so accuse her!” burst out the spy. “May not her deed be honorable? Did not the soldiers open and read her missive? Having not found us on the hill, they have reason to look here at once.”

But the schoolmistress had crept to a window and was looking out, her snub nose pressed tight against the pane. From outside came the mutter of voices, and crunch of feet on the lingering snow.

“Damn us for fools!” broke out the captain. “And I’ve dragged ye down to death, boy, for they dassent shoot a Yankee. Davy, blame me. I don’t ask yer to forgive,” and his voice weakened. “I told yer I come to bid the girl good-bye. It’s not the first time this cowardly fool heart o’ mine hes ruined me with others. But after all these useless years o’ my life, to find this yeller girl respond to all the stored-up sorrers—” he broke off, gulping.

“Then I am happy to come,” said the Russian with tense slowness, “if for your sake, my captain. It is then not the forgiveness, I owe,” he added bitterly, with set teeth, “but—” and he burst out laughing, shouting—“So there was no place else to hide? As well here as elsewhere might one be taken!”

“Boy, I knew ye had no fear of death,” said the captain, laying a hand on Davy’s shoulder. “An’ how I love her—Karin!”

He walked to the bright little figure tremblingly preoccupied by the window, and extended his arms. The Russian could stand it no longer. With fierce Slavic impulse, he tore off his disguise with one dash of his arm,[61] and, erect with blazing eyes, checked the captain.

“Captain! Fear of death? Never!” he cried. “Because the soldier must think Karin in league with me, a vile spy, I would rather have surrendered myself than come here to hide with her. Yet I go, because you, my friend—dear to me—request, and jealously I think you also love her. You confess, Captain, we have long been esteemed together, and to you I owe more than my life; yet Karin you shall not seize from me, even in the moment of my death. I love her better than my life or your own, or her life. We have long loved. Yet may she love you the more. In this hour, I leave to her to choose between us!”

With a cry, the little schoolmistress threw herself into Davy’s outstretched arms, and was smothered in a long embrace.

The captain bent his head. “Davy, forgive me,” he whispered after a silence. “I never guessed she was yourn a’ready, else I’d not—I do ask yer forgiveness now.”

The spy limped toward the Yankee to press his outstretched hand, and a stone struck the schoolhouse door. “You hear,” laughed Karin, at the window again with woman’s tact, but losing innocence of her lover’s danger. “Major and two soldiers afraid of him. He very brave, but I think soon soldier shoot him. They would come arrest you! You will hide? Go, go upstair! My room!” she cried excitedly, pointing to the spiral.

The captain looked out. “Hold yer ground, Gen’ral,” he called. “This ain’t no picnic bitin’ wood thieves. He’ll hold on to the last, Davy. I seen him nip the major’s sword, and wink at me—By crotch, they’re gaggin’ him!” He turned to the lovers. “Go, Davy, go! Up them stairs with her. It’s yer one chance. I’ll face the monkeys and take my medicine. It’s the least I owe yer,” and a vain thought of his cable message and the American gunboat at Chemulpo a hundred miles away flashed through him.

Karin San seized the spy by the arm, and they vanished up the spiral stairway. Immediately bayonets crashed upon the door, and it burst open. The doll-eyed soldier and his companion of the morning, preceded by the green-capped cavalry officer, hurled themselves into the room. The officer seized the captain by both arms. “Brewster, American, we arrest!” he cried, and turning to the doll-eye, delivered a rapid order to search the house,—so judged the Yankee—for he smiled and bowed at his prisoner, saying, “We find also you friend, Russki spy.”

But the doll-eye and his mate were checked in ascending the stair by Karin San descending with upraised arms and her sweetest smile. The privates paused and bowed. The three at first spoke calmly back and forth. Then the doll-eye began shouting at the schoolmistress, once with what the captain was certain would be an oath in English. But always she replied to them earnestly smiling, never pleadingly, gravely shaking her head, her hand upon her heart; always quiet, determined, arguing with utter self-possession, calmly appealing—to what? wondered the captain, in such fanatics of patriotism.

At length both soldiers turned and saluted the Major, uttered a short sentence, and descended the stair.

The officer turned to Brewster, elevating his long mustachios in a sardonic smile. “You see,” he said, “the love of country of the Japanese. Perhaps you think it is the respect for woman, wherefore my soldier do not search the teacher room. It is not. Boy, man, woman, all labor for the same end, our country. No one would betray; we trust one another absolute. It is so we exist; we fight; we win.

“We think the spy Russki enter here with you. But Karin San, as much myself officer of the Emperor, declare he is not here,” he went on with a self-satisfied smile. “We believe her. He has escape,” and turning to the soldiers he gave them another sharp order—to search the town and the hills about.

Next morning, sitting cross-legged and politely silent with his captor, at a breakfast of sweet chicken hash and cabbage, Captain Brewster sprang to his feet. “Bzoo-oo-oooo!” groaned a whistle under the glittering hills along the river. Away dashed his manikin host without word or glance. Between the cedar slats of the captain’s prison—the major’s house by courtesy—the Yankee sighted the long, thin funnel and squat deck of an American gunboat.

Two hours passed. Then the doll-eyed soldier who stood guard on the veranda, slid open the paper house-door. Three tall Yankee tars followed by a young lieutenant with sandy hair and a long upper lip, scraped heavy feet on the major’s mats.

“Brewster, are you responsible for this?” said the officer, handing the captain a pink paper oblong.

The telegram was addressed to the commander of the gunboat, dated Tokio, and signed by the United States Minister there.

“No, Skowhegan on the Amonoosuc. Born in Penobsticook myself, but my folks was raised on the Allegash,” grinned the officer.

When the captain had whistled again, he observed, “Like to be back there, wouldn’t you, in a country where they have Christian names you can pronounce?” And the lieutenant embellished his assent gracefully, with expletives.

“These young Napoleons,” he began soon, indicating the little major’s green cap which bobbed in the rear, “are interfering with my orders. They say that you’ve been running a spy ranch. Their chiefs have pulled out for the Yalu, so they want to dicker with Tokio before I take you cruising and talk over the spring fishing back home.”

“Let me give you a tip on that, lieutenant,” said the captain, putting his hand on the officer’s shoulder. Then he whispered awhile into the young man’s ear. At first the lieutenant shook his head seriously; then quite as gravely dug the captain in the ribs. And as the delegation, including the manikin major, withdrew, Brewster called after to his new friend, “Mind the boys use only blank shells. We want a bluff, not an international war.”

And so the little cavalry officer never came back to his prisoner at all. In half an hour, “Boom-boom!” resounded guns from the blue Tai-Dong. The doll-eye thrust his head into the paper door. “You hear? You hear?” he cried pointing to smoke curling about the Stars and Stripes on the river.

“America—Japan—cross—fight—so,” said Brewster, linking his two forefingers. And the doll-eye dashed away.

The captain’s ruse of firing blank shots to force the telegram had worked. When he believed that the coast was clear, he stepped out on the veranda. Only the lieutenant from Maine was walking up the hill.

“I’ve got a Jap servant and his wife that I’d like to take abroad with us,” said the captain to his savior, as they descended into the town, where not even a Jap private was in evidence. “They’re over yonder in that white building,” and he pointed to the schoolhouse. “And wait,” added the captain, while the officer despatched an orderly from the landing, “Could he fetch along my—my—pet Newfoundland dog, as well?”

Remarked the younger man from Maine, as the two watched from the gunboat the clean hills fold over the straw roofs of Chinnampo: “If there’s trouble from all this, that’s for the dudes in Washington to fix. Spies is[63] spies, but them pine trees is pine trees, and valuable, as we ought to know. Too bad about old Kuropatkin, though most orderlies would be afraid of bears—Hello! Look!”

He pointed to the water. Aport, a black oblong rippled the surface of the river—Kuropatkin swimming out to the vessel.

When the ship had heaved to and started again, the captain’s face was salt and wet against a shaggy brown coat.

Also wet were the faces of a light-haired youth, and a little teacher of English as she is Japped.

There remains something considerably less than 500,000,000 acres of public land open to settlement. From this total amount careful and conservative estimates deduct 300,000,000 acres as not suited to present known methods of agriculture. The remaining 200,000,000 of the public domain is passing into the hands of private individuals at a rate exceeding 17,000,000 acres per year. At the present rate of diminution the valuable public domain will be exhausted within the next decade and a half.

The public domain lies largely in the States and Territories of Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, South and North Dakota and California. In Texas, by virtue of the agreement with the United States at the time of annexation, the title to the public lands rests in the State. Liberal grants to the Western States, of lands for school and institutional purposes, should be added to the public domain in order to arrive at the total land available for future settlement. These State lands are sold at prices somewhat below the price of similar unimproved lands in the same locality, but on long terms, and appeal about equally to the farmers and the speculators. Their gradual disposal is placing in the treasuries of the Eastern States a large school fund. The people are the beneficiaries under the administration of the State land laws. A possible 50,000,000 acres of farming land is available from this source after the National domain is gone. It is well to note in passing that the value of the State lands rises in proportion to that of surrounding lands. It is controlled and disposed of with entirely different motives from those supposed to govern the control and disposal of the lands of the general Government. It is not free land in any sense of the word.

There are many who, remembering how the Western limit of grain raising has crept westward across Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas, look for a repetition, or, more properly speaking, a continuation of this phenomenon across the remaining public domain. It is true that we are only on the borderland of plant-breeding possibilities. Spelz, or macaroni wheat, Kaffir corn, and other drought-resistant cereals are making a marvelous change in Western farming conditions, and in the certainty of crop maturity; but as was stated before, under known conditions, only two-fifths of all this Western land is now or will ever be adapted to agriculture. On the remaining three-fifths, grazing, limited in amount, will continue to be profitable. Within this large area lie the giant ridges of the Rocky Mountains. Great gulches channel their slopes. Valleys are strewn with the debris of ages of erosion. Rain fall is scanty. Water supplied from artesian wells has only a limited possibility of use. Irrigation is local in application, and limited not only by stream supply, but also by the topography of the country. We have reached the limits of the immediate adaptation of agriculture to climatic conditions.

The area of the valuable public domain[66] is measurable, but it is as yet not measured. To the eastward of the area named there is some land still open to settlement under the homestead act. What sort of land is it? Land covered with glacial drift, swamps, hills, sandy land—the cast away heritage of three generations of keen-eyed farmers. Greater stress of need will bring some of this under the plow, but the fact remains that it is undesirable land, viewed from the standpoint of the man who desires not only a home, but a competence.

Alaska, with unknown but probably limited agricultural possibilities, is already beginning to attract the attention of the speculative public. Farmers are not greatly interested in the development of agriculture in a region so remote and where the season precludes farming on a broad scale.

This somewhat lengthy statement of present day conditions is necessary in order to understand the danger that menaces us as a people through the alienation of the public domain from its legitimate uses. The land open to settlement is passing, not into the possession of makers of homes, but into the hands of speculators who are enriching themselves in the first instance at the expense of the farmers, but ultimately at that of the people at large.

The vast grants to the transcontinental railroads, by means of which the Government paid private parties royally for building roads that have, since their construction, charged the people for services rendered “all the traffic will bear,” threw open, wide open, the doors to the land speculator.

Railroad lands were bought up at a low figure by companies backed by Eastern capital, just as today similar companies are buying up and exploiting the Canadian Northwest. Settlers were sought for and brought in by the car load. They were located on a quarter section of Government land, and sold as much more of the adjoining speculators’ land as they could be persuaded to buy. Under other firm names these same gentlemen who exploited the public and corporation lands sold horses and farm machinery to the new settler, taking mortgages as partial security on crops not yet grown. The lean years came, and the land companies reaped to the full their harvests.

So passed away from the people millions of acres of land in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas and the bordering States. Today that land is selling back to the people at prices ranging from $10 to $40 an acre—land which I have seen sold under the sheriff’s hammer at less than $1.00 an acre.

These land agencies are, in a thousand ways, busying themselves in the securing of further lands for speculative purposes. The days of wholesale grants having gone by, they are turning their attention to the lands of the individual settler, and under their tutelage clerks, teachers, town men and women, hired laborers, men who do not know wheat from barley or rye from flax, are filing upon the last of the tillable public lands. Under the homestead law, these settlers are allowed six months after entry in which to establish homes on their land. This time is taken full advantage of. Then a board shack is built and the law complied with by the breaking of a few acres of sod. Eight months more of (constructive) continuous residence, and the land becomes the property of the settler upon a cash payment of $1.25 to $2.50 an acre, according to location. The company furnishes the commutation money and “finds” a purchaser for the claim. The shack is boarded up or moved off. The sod grows to weeds. The settler, having made from $800 to $2,500 by a little enterprise and a good deal of perjury, is eliminated from the problem.

This cat’s-paw of organized land plunder is securing for his principals a large, a very large, percentage of all the public lands passing under private ownership. It would be safe to say that one holding out of every four passes into speculative hands. Judged by conditions, past and existing, in the two Dakotas, this estimate might be doubled, and yet fall within the facts.[67] On this point see the report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office for 1905. The land companies immediately list their newly acquired lands, and by an ingenious system of “booms,” carefully nursed and let loose at the proper time, they advance the price of their lands to a point sometimes double or treble the original market value of the raw prairies. This is wholly, or almost wholly, a paper increase in value. Roads, schools, markets remain as before save for the change wrought by the actual settlers.

This is, in essence, the same thing as the watering of railroad or other stocks, and it is done for the same purpose—that the “ins”—the land speculators—may fatten on the “outs”—the farmers. And if the land valuations now obtaining in the fringe of settlement bordering the public domain be from 25 to 75 per cent water, how about its effect on the land values in older sections—say in Iowa, or Ohio, or Illinois?

Obviously the price will be enhanced. And the immediate, discernible effect of that is to render it more difficult for the landless man to become an owner. I have seen land go from $25 an acre to $60 and over, in Iowa and other States in the East. The land utility is the same as in years gone by. It will raise no more—sometimes less than former years. But every dollar added to the price has increased the rental, and decreased the possibilities of a laboring man becoming owner of his own farm.

Someone will say that this is untrue; that the returns from an acre of land are today greater than in former years. What I mean is that an acre of land cropped for ten or fifteen or twenty years is no more valuable today as a producer of grain or live stock than it was then. The added value of the crop is due to better markets, better implements, better knowledge of agriculture. In other words it is a net gain due to labor and intelligence, and as such should go to labor. Instead of that it is consumed in rent. With every advance in the values of Western lands and the consequent narrowing of the opportunities afforded the landless man of the Eastern and Central States, the values, or rather the prices, of these older lands advance.

And if the speculator is able at this time to force the price of land up by leaps and bounds—if he can take raw prairie and, without adding to its value by so much as one furrow of breaking or one bushel of ripened grain, can make it double his money for him, how will it be when the last of the tillable public lands are taken? How will it be when the only desirable vacant lands are held for speculative purposes? How will it be when there is no alternative between paying some farmer for a part of his holding or paying some land company its price, based upon monopolistic values?

Today, in the West, favored by cheap land—$25 to $30 an acre—I am giving $1.30 as rental for every $1.00 I receive as tenant. Here it still is possible for a man to start single handed and win a farm, but the crops remain about the same, the prices are slowly bettering, the cost of the bare necessities of living is lowering, the price of land is rapidly advancing, the rental is going up, and my wages as a tenant are becoming relatively less. I can still say, “Unless you give me a living chance, I will go to the free lands and make my own home.” I still can pay for a home for myself here. But I know that a decade hence conditions will have changed. There will be no ‘farther West’ in the sense in which we know it today. The increased land values will shut out a great body of men from becoming land owners, or they will achieve their aim only at the expense of a life-time of grinding toil. The basis of a landed aristocracy on the one hand, and of a landless tenant class on the other will have been laid. And you do not live so far to the Eastward, nor are you so deeply buried in the great cities that the thrill of that new birth of despotism shall not reach you, and be a portent of danger to your independence as a citizen and as a man.

Repeal the land laws! Let the settlement[68] of the public domain cease until we know its capabilities. Better to deprive a few worthy men and women of the advantage afforded by the laws than to throw away the birthright of unborn millions. We do not know very much as yet about the ability of the West to sustain population, but this we do know, that no general land law can apply to this great semi-arid region and give anything like equal justice. Investigate carefully the areas desired for settlement. Make the unit of the homestead variable, according to the amount needed to support a family. In irrigated sections but a few acres will suffice. In even the drier districts it may well be questioned whether more than 160 acres should be granted any one settler. We cover altogether too much ground. Our Western farming has borne bitter harvestings of the weed called “land hunger.” We need to concentrate.

And whatever laws may be enacted, they should be of such a character as will stop speculation in lands intended for the people. Let the lands be sold, and no title pass until after a reasonably long term of years, and after actual continuous residence and actual valuable improvements have shown beyond question that home making was the primary object of the settler.

But the urgent present need is for repeal of the various laws that permit this land plunder. We can settle details of future administration later on. We cannot later on return to the people their stolen lands.

Candid

Mrs. Newrocks—Yes, indeed. I wish somebody would invent an easy substitute for spelling.

Proof

Second Commuter—Of course it is. Why, J. P. Morgan never tried to get control of it.

It was in 1850 that William Henry came to Chicago. He was then a young man of twenty-five and fresh from his father’s farm. While William was still in his teens it was plain that the slow life of New England would never satisfy his ambitions and desires and so his restless nature turned him to the great, wide West.

William had scarcely landed in the little, muddy, struggling town before he knew that he and the city would grow up together. Even in its early days, Chicago had that wonderful power which clings to it still—that power of inspiring every one who touches it with absolute confidence in its greatness and its strength.

When William Henry came to Chicago it was a little village stuck fast in the swamp and mud that bordered the great lake, while in every other direction stretched the endless prairie with its black soil and its green, waving grass. But William Henry was young and Chicago was young and even then in his imagination he saw before him the endless stone streets and the unnumbered stores and factories and homes that the future years would bring.

He had not long been in Chicago before he caught the spirit of its vigor and they both marched rapidly toward wealth and power. He soon founded a tobacco warehouse and salesroom on Lake Street, and his business steadily increased with the growth of the city until he gained that imposing title of dignity, influence, selfishness and narrowness, “a business man.” As he left the busy years behind, his warehouse grew greater, and he moved from place to place until he occupied a whole building on Lake Street which he had bought and paid for from the incense that a generous people was everlastingly sending up, if not to his glory, still to his profit.

William Henry had come from the farm, and with all his city life and training he kept the inborn love for the soil, for the blue sky, the open air and a piece of land big enough for a cottage, a garden, a barn and a chicken house—such necessities as he had known in his younger days. These simple surroundings of a rural life which seem hard and bare while they are living things, because of the toil and pains that all the necessities of life impose—these simple companions of our youth seem, somehow, to grow into the fiber of our being, and when we look back upon them from our artificial surroundings and our worn out feelings, the mist of the gathering years covers them with a glamor that makes us think that our childhood was lived in a fairyland.

So when business grew prosperous, Henry looked for a piece of land. He did not want a twenty-five foot lot or even an acre, but he wanted a fine, big “patch” on which he “could turn around.” He always kept a horse and buggy, and every Sunday after his week’s work was done, he would drive out into the country to find a “patch.” He drove out beyond the brick stores;[70] out beyond the houses and frame cottages; out beyond the utmost limit of the place; out on the open prairie, covered with water in the spring and rank with high weeds and waving grass in the summer months, and out there in the country he found a “patch” of fifty acres of raw prairie, which, like a herd of wild horses on the plains, had never been subdued by man. His friends and neighbors laughed when he told them of his “farm” clear out beyond the confines of civilization, almost to the red man’s reservation, but he told them to wait and see. In his prophetic brain there rose the scene of a great city, stretching out along the lake, reaching far to the north and south and west—a wondrous conglomeration of all the people of the earth drawn together by the magic name “Chicago.”

In his vision, he could see railroads and street cars, stone pavements and brick houses covering the “patch” with teeming life. Poor Henry, he was not a fool; he was too wise. For there are two men for whom the world never has any use; one is the fool and the other the philosopher. The fool believes that there is nothing but today; the wise man thinks that there is nothing but tomorrow. So the fool toils and the wise man dreams, and the mediocre man reaps the harvest—reaps the harvest born of the poor man’s work and the wise man’s dreams.

When William Henry bought this patch, he had a vision of a time when relieved from business cares, he would build a house like the one his father owned, only on a larger scale. He would have a garden, such as it seemed to him was planted behind his father’s house. He would have a barn with horses, and cows that gave real milk, and a chicken house where real eggs were laid, and then, still further on in the magical future that he knew was in store for the city that he loved, he saw his “patch” cut up into building lots and covered with stores and factories and houses built of brick and stone and standing firm and brave to verify his faith and dreams.

So Sunday after Sunday he drove to his “Farm”, week by week he carried out his neighbors and his friends. He planted trees and he dug a well. He worked and planned and planted and dreamed out on his “patch” beyond the great town ever reaching farther and farther toward the cherished spot.

Well, the dreams and plans of man all go for naught in the presence of the blind forces that control the world, and one day Henry was startled by the cry of fire. In the twinkling of an eye his warehouse was in flames and all of his tobacco at once turned into smoke, without so much as the aid of a single pipe. When Henry awoke from his stupor, all Chicago was a smoldering heap of ashes, and he was a ruined man. The only thing that escaped the flames was the little green patch so far away on the prairies that even the fire scorned to search it out.

Henry no longer had the strength and energy of twenty years before, but he did the best he could. He built a little cigar store in place of the great warehouse that was once his pride. He still went back and forth on Sundays to his patch of ground, and now he dreamed only of a little house out there on the farm where he might keep a cow and some chickens, and return to the simple life that his childhood years had known. But there was one man who found his patch, and this was the tax gatherer. No land was ever yet too far away for him. Year by year, the assessor put a value on his farm, and the little cigar store could not yield the revenue to pay. Of course, he never dreamed of selling the land to some one else; no one does. Deep in the soul of man is planted the old inborn desire to own a portion of the earth.

When Henry had no money to pay the tax, some of the “patch” was sold. With never failing regularity the assessment came, and with almost equal regularity a piece of the “patch” was sold to a buyer of tax-titles. Finally, one Sunday in the early spring, Henry drove down to his little farm. It was the first visit since the fall. Here and there a swale filled with[71] the rain of early spring stood in his path. Now and then the black mud of the rich prairie held his buggy fast, but finally, after much time and trouble, he reached the farm, and there, plain before his eyes, was a high, tight board fence which barred him out. His first impulse was to go back and get a gang of men to tear down the fence; his next was to hire a lawyer. After some search he found a lawyer that he thought would do. The lawyer knew more about the case when it was done than when he started bravely in. Of course, Henry had no money, else the taxes would have been paid, so the lawyer took the case on shares and agreed to pay the costs, and then they started in to get the “patch.”

No one familiar with the courts would expect me to tell the history of this case. It is familiar to even the common lawyer who reads the State reports. It was about the year 1880 that Henry’s lawyer filed the first papers in the court. The lawyer was young and full of hope—full of the hope that is the heritage of all the young; the hope that gives courage to live and fight and endure in the vain belief that it all counts for something; the hope that keeps alive while years and adversity, with their deadening, staggering blows, teach that all strivings are equally vain. But Henry’s lawyer was young. He had the money to commence the suit and he thought that this would be enough. Both Henry and his lawyer could see the fence fall down and the farm platted and sold and their money in the bank, while Henry’s life was in the early autumn and the lawyer’s in the first green of summer time. But the days and weeks and months and years went by.

At first they lost the case, but they were not cast down. There were other courts that were better because they were higher up, and besides all this, the law provided that in a contest for real estate each side had the right to try his case twice, and the right to go each time to the highest court of the State. Had Henry’s life been at stake he could have had but a single chance and no right to go to a higher court, unless the judges graciously granted him permission, and then only on the showing that he was innocent of the crime. But land is one thing and life is another. And this is quite right, for the amount of land upon the earth is fixed, while there is no limit to human life.

Well, in a year or two the Supreme Court reversed the case, and then Henry and his lawyer had another chance. In the meantime two more years were passed in waiting and the case came on again. This time Henry won. It was the turn of the other side to find a higher court. But the Supreme Court found a flaw and sent it back to be tried again. Two or three more years were spent in waiting before the case was reached. At last it came again. Henry had grown old and white and feeble; his clothes, too, were shabby and unkempt. His little cigar store had dwindled until only his old comrades came to loaf and talk of the grand old days “before the fire.” Henry never doubted that he would win. Through it all he had held the same faith in final victory that he had ever cherished about the future of his “patch.” He had lived to see cable cars run past his land, to see crosstown electric cars on each side of the little farm, and to see the elevated road stretching slowly down in anticipation of the sub-division that would one day come.

Henry took the stand and told the story of his “patch,” of his early years when he drove out on the raw prairie and fixed the stakes; of his Sunday pilgrimages with his many friends; of his well, and grove and green hedge; of the high board fence that he found on the spring day so long ago. He looked like a patriarch as he sat bent over in the witness chair, and his voice and story was that of some long-forgotten day.

The jury could not resist the old man’s case and again he won. Once more the other side took it to the higher court, but found no relief. Still, under the rules of the law, they had the right to one more trial, because a piece of real estate was involved. So, of course,[72] they took the last chance that the wisdom of the law held out to them.

In the meantime, Henry’s lawyer had spent $5,000 and waited twelve long years. He was no longer young, and most of the illusions and dreams of early life had passed away. He was fighting now from habit, and because he had learned that there was really not much else in life. He knew that one fights for the sake of fighting, not for the hope of any reward that falls to the victorious cause. Two years more dragged on. Henry, of course, grew older and more shabby year by year; then, too, disease had come with age; poverty and age and disease often travel hand in hand. This is when poverty comes in the latter part of life. When it comes in youth the lucky victim misses age. Henry had an iron will, and then he had a life’s ambition which seemed to defy years and poverty and disease. But time is the only warrior that never knows defeat, and it was plain that age and sickness were to triumph even here.

Finally, one day the long-looked-for trial came. If Henry won, this would be the end. It was now fifteen years since the first paper was filed. The lawyer sent a carriage for Henry on this long-to-be-remembered day. It came back empty to the court. Henry had been taken to the hospital in the morning before the carriage came. He had protested, and asked to go to court, but it was of no avail, so they drove him to the great brick building and carried him slowly to the elevator and took him to the top floor and laid him on the bed. He asked for his lawyer, and was told that he was busy with the case, which he had concluded to try without his client’s presence in the court.

Day after day dragged on; each night Henry asked about his case; each day he was told that he was sure to win. The nurse knew nothing about the case, she saw only the old sick man, as white as the spotless coverlet that she smoothed tenderly above his wasted form. She knew that he might as well spend his last few hours in peace, so she told him that the case was coming along all right and that he was sure to win. Henry’s mind was failing with his strength. The nurse could never tell when he was asleep or awake. Sometimes he seemed to be back on his father’s farm, a little boy. Again, he was driving out over the bare prairie looking for his “patch.” Then he wanted to get out of bed and buy a cow and some chickens for his “farm,” and then he sank to sleep.

In the meantime, the lawyer fought valiantly along. Finally the case was ended, and for the last time the jury gave the land to Henry. The lawyer waited only to hear the verdict read, then rushed to the elevator and down to the street. He took a carriage and told the driver to go with all speed to the hospital. He ran to the wide approach, passed the doorkeeper, went up the stairs two steps at a time and turned down the hall. He stopped at Henry’s door, opened it softly and went in.

The nurse was standing silent near the little iron bed. At the window the setting sun was struggling through the smoke and grime of the great city and painting the sky with a dull red glare. Its last beams struggled through the dim window and fell upon the white coverlet, the worn, sad face and the scattering hair. Henry was as still as the bed on which he lay.

The lawyer looked down at the old, white face, and saw the eyes staring out at the red beams of the setting sun. He could plainly see that they rested on nothing this side of the crimson sky.

A white corpuscle, of venerable and intellectual appearance, dug a claw into the lining of an artery and paused.

Past him surged millions of his fellows, all intent upon doing what they believed they had been sent into the Man to do, which was to earn a living; tired mother-leucocytes, starting out upon the day’s work dragging small leucocytes after them; young leucocytes, with not a care in the world and never a thought for tomorrow; serious-looking leucocytes, weighed down with responsibilities.

Here and there were some whose individuality would attract attention—that old fellow with the prominent proboscis, forced along in the rush, as others were, but at the head of an association formed by him, so benevolent to himself that he got all the white meat, while the workers divided pickings, of every disease germ captured. There had been battles with an invasion of diphtheria germs, skirmishes with germs of typhoid, small-pox, and scarlet fever. The leucocytes had overcome every enemy, and they were a triumphant, arrogant race.

The venerable corpuscle might have clung where he was, all day, without interfering with traffic, were it not for a peculiarity of the corpuscles. A very hungry white corpuscle, coursing ravenously, noticed the venerable old gentleman, and paused. Stronger than even hunger was his feeling that he should have to learn why the old gentleman was standing on a corner, instead of pouncing, grabbing, and struggling. Small leucocytes, with messages to deliver, paused and gaped; and, because they paused and gaped, such a crowd gathered that a burly corpuscle, with a stout club, came along and growled:

“Fellow leucocytes, I look around and see among you some who may remember me. These may recall that a long time ago I withdrew from the activity and excitement of our affairs, and may wonder where I have been. I have been secluded in the land of gray soil at the upper end of our world. In a remote convolution of this gray matter I have lived and have absorbed something of a strange spirit permeating it—the spirit of intelligence—and I have learned much from it. I feel that I have a mission among you. Let me start it abruptly with a question. Fellow leucocytes, do you know why we are placed here in this Man?”

The others laughed good-naturedly, agreeing that this was their sole reason for being.

“Out of it!” cried the wise old corpuscle. “Why not out of him? Then you don’t believe that the Man we inhabit is a living creature? You think[74] that because his life is not like our life, he has no life? And you think that, when you can feel the element of him that we inhabit, pulsate?”

“You doubt that he is kept alive by internal heat, just as we are? For, without heat, there could not be life.”

A studious white corpuscle had become so interested that he permitted a fine plump pneumonia germ to pass him without pouncing upon it. He stepped forward and said, learnedly:

“Yes, there is internal heat in the world we inhabit, but we are taught that the Man was once a ball of fire and is now gradually cooling off. It is ridiculous to say it is alive like us. Look how fine and delicate is our flesh; see the Man made of coarse, rough substance forming banks along every river we navigate. Think of how tremendous its heat is, when it is great enough to keep these teeming millions of us from perishing! Could any living creature produce such heat? You say we can feel it move? It must move very infrequently then, for these manquakes are far apart. And you regard as a pulsating, the coming and going of the tide? Why, our hearts beat thousands of times in the span of one ebb and flow of the tide we are familiar with!”

Said the wise old corpuscle: “I say that not only is this Man alive, but that he, and millions like him, inhabit a world as vast to him as he is to us.”

But the financier-corpuscle, with the prominent proboscis, coming along with a germ under each arm, rolling half a dozen others in front of him, muttered, savagely:

“This wide Man of ours,” pursued the cursed agitator, “is between five and six feet in length, according to his system of measuring. The world that he inhabits is twenty-five thousand miles in circumference. Telepathy has told me so; I have been able to interpret throbs of his intellect to mine. He calls his world the Earth. I say that he is a white corpuscle to the Earth, as we are to him. He will not accept this belief. He argues as do you. Flesh that he lives upon is so gross that he calls it rock and soil; as rivers and brooks he looks upon arteries and veins. He knows of a tide and sees it pulsate. During one ebb and flow, his own heart beats thousands of times. He says the Moon causes the tide. Perhaps; then the Moon is the Earth’s heart. He feels agitations similar to those we know as manquakes. They are very infrequent. He knows that there is heat in the Earth, but can not conceive that it is a source of life, because of its extreme degree. He has no sense of proportion. He can not conceive that a tremendous creature with an existence of ages must move, breathe, and throb in proportion to bulk and longevity, and be sustained by heat that would consume him.”

“Too deep for me!” cried a group of young leucocytes. “Oh, he’s some kind of a fake! Start in advertising something, in a minute!” Each jumped on a red corpuscle and went sliding down hill.

“Friends,” he said, “let us not deride this old person. Let us, rather, point out his astonishing errors to him. Be tolerant, I say! Be tolerant, by all means, even when we are opposed. Sir, we’ll admit that there are many Men instead of only this one, and that all inhabit some vast creature that they call the Earth. But what for? We are here for pleasure, profit, and to store up germs.”

“Are we? For a long time it has been my theory that we are here solely for the welfare of the Man we inhabit; that our food and our enemies are elements inimical to him; we remove them in his behalf.”

“Vile agitator!” The financier-corpuscle, coursing round again, was so agitated that he nearly dropped a germ.

“Let him speak!” urged the studious corpuscle. “His views differ from mine, but I will be tolerant! I have arguments that will silence him soon. Now, then, my friend, if our reason for being is such as you describe, and you liken men to us, these many men you speak of must occupy a relation to their Earth similar to ours to this Man. Do they pounce upon and destroy every organism malignant to their creature?”

“I have no doubt of it!” cried the old corpuscle. “I believe that, existing with those that are workers, are others, similar to them but idle or weak, or, at any rate, of no value to the Earth. I do not say that these worthless ones are pounced upon and eaten, but I do believe that in some way those of no value are forced out of existence; perhaps, besides weak and idle individuals, there are whole tribes who are being exterminated, unable to survive in the struggle with the fit.”

“What industrious, unselfish beings these Men must be to do so much for their Earth!” sneered a doubter.

“Now, let him speak!” urged the tolerant philosopher. “I have arguments that will destroy his views, in a moment. Let there be freedom of speech, by all means!”

“Industrious and unselfish?” repeated the old corpuscle. “Are we? Industrious, yes; but unselfish, no! For our own existence we are working in this Man’s behalf. We are not philanthropists. For the necessities of life we perform our appointed functions, most of us never dreaming that we are laboring in the interests of the Man we inhabit. So it is, I believe, with them! I can’t quite imagine what their beneficent tasks are, but perhaps they till the soil, as we till the soil of this Man, keeping the Earth’s system in good order, doing everything in the belief that they are working only for themselves.”

“Pursue your analogy!” cried the rival philosopher. “If we populate a living creature, then the creature inhabited by Man must itself be a corpuscle floating in the system of something inconceivably vaster. We are leucocytes to Men; Men are to the Earth; then hordes of Earths are to a Universe? You speak of many Men. Are there hordes of Earths?”

“You have expressed a thought of my own! I believe that there are other creatures like the Earth. Perhaps they are faintly visible to the Earth. Perhaps they revolve and have orbits and course through a system just as we do.”

“There,” cried the old corpuscle’s opponent, “I’ve got you! Be tolerant to him, my friends; I’ll silence him in a moment. My friend, then these vast revolving creatures like the Earth are remote from one another? They float in nothingness, then? But you have called them corpuscles, or tiny parts of a whole. How can they be parts of a solid, when they are widely separated bodies floating in nothingness?”

“Take an object of any kind,” was the answer. “Of what is it composed? You call it a solid, but I have lingered long enough in this Man’s brain to catch glimmers of what he calls the atomic theory. This doctrine is, that all matter is composed of ultra-microscopic particles known as molecules. These molecules are not stationary; they revolve; they have orbits; in everything you think solid and dead, tiny specks of itself are floating and are never still. A myriad worlds like the Earth, are only molecules floating in ether, forming a solid, just as the molecules of any substance you are familiar with form a solid. Only comparatively are they far apart, as to a creature microscopic enough, the molecules of a bit of bone would seem far apart and not forming a solid, at all. To the molecules nearest to him he would give names, such as Neptune or Mars; like Men, he would call them planets; remoter molecules would be stars.”

“Wretched nonsense!” cried the other philosopher-corpuscle. For he had no argument left. “Subversive of all modern thought! You ought to be locked up for promulgating your wild views! I’ll be the first to hang you, if someone will bring a rope! You have it that all existence is a solid,[76] then? That a myriad worlds like your fancied Earth are molecules to an ultimate creature? But there can, then, be no ultimate creature; he, in turn is but a microscopic part of— Beware of him and don’t listen to him, my friends!”

Suddenly a number of rough-looking corpuscles began to circulate through the crowd, paid in typhoid germs by the wrathful financier-corpuscle, who, standing farther down the artery, could not control his excitement, as he cried:

“Vile agitator! Already there is too much murmuring against my invested rights!”

“You tell us,” shouted a rough-looking corpuscle, “that we, the conquering inhabitants of this Man, fresh from a war in which we were gloriously victorious, are placed in this Man only for his welfare?”

“Fellow leucocytes,” said the old philosopher, earnestly, “I do tell you that! Through our own selfish motives we do our best to benefit him, but each one of us for himself only, haphazard and without system. Then never mind what Man’s relation to his Earth may be, and never mind what his Earth’s relation to its Universe may be; let us think only of our relation to this Man. Let us have done with our grabbing and monopolizing, and study and find out just what is best for us to do in our appointed task of taking care of this Man. With that view, let us all work together and overcome that egotism that makes the thought of our own true humble sphere so repellent——”

But, excited by the defeated philosopher-corpuscle and the emissaries of the financier-corpuscle, the crowd had become a mob. Angrily it shouted:

“And he says that we, with our great warriors and leaders, our marvellous enterprises, our wondrous inventions, are only insignificant scavengers of this Man we inhabit? Down with him! Or, if we’re too civilized to tear him apart, put him away where he belongs!”

And the fate of the wise old corpuscle would have been the fate common enough in the tragedies of philosophy, were it not that a few disciples hurried him away, seeking refuge in a tiny vein far from battle, struggle, and selfishness.

“He says we were made for the Man!” jeered the few leucocytes who gave the distasteful doctrine another thought. “But we know, and have every reason to know, that this Man was made for us!”

Broadly speaking, election is simply choice. In a narrower sense the term is limited to the choice of persons for political offices, or for nomination to such offices, by the people, or by a somewhat numerous body, as distinguished from appointment by a single person; or the determination of other questions submitted by law to popular vote.

This paper seeks to present the general features of American laws in the nature of election reform, in the narrower sense, with especial reference to the decisions of the highest courts thereon.

When the thirteen original American Colonies revolted against the mother country, their government was essentially that which had been evolved in a[77] thousand years of struggle and conflict in England. But in details, there was as wide divergence as could well be imagined among people of practically common origin, race, religion and language. With the more permanent union under the Federal Constitution came an impulse to conform much governmental procedure to a common standard. Especially was this true in the matter of elections.

After 130 years of trial and change, nearly all of the States vote on the same day, choose representatives in Congress and Presidential electors, as well as most other officers in the same manner, and do not differ very widely in methods of voting. The qualifications of Electors are somewhat diverse, though probably less so than at the beginning, and everywhere the right of suffrage has been widely extended. The period of active assimilation to common standards lasted to the time of the Civil War. Then the universal, extended and heated discussion of human rights, the fury of partisanship, the passions engendered in the great internecine conflict, the adoption of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, and following all this, the expansion of the nation in wealth and power, together with the accumulation of colossal fortunes, and the growth of corporate importance and influence, all these led to the trial and testing of the most fundamental and long-established rights of man, while every new measure in law, has had to run the gantlet from the preliminary proposal in caucus, convention, primary, or elsewhere, to the final decision thereon in the highest judicial tribunal. There was no final judicial inquiry into the right of suffrage until in 1857 in New York and in 1859 in North Carolina; but such became numerous in the reconstruction period. From questioning new rights of black men, it was a short step to attacking old rights of white men.

How the matter of popular elections has grown in importance may in a degree be illustrated by the court decisions. The syllabi up to September 1, 1896, in all State and Federal cases affecting elections, occupy 553 columns of a digest; for the eight and one-half years immediately following, up to April 1, 1905, 396 columns are so filled. Seemingly nearly four-fifths as many points relative to the elective franchise have been passed on in less than a decade, as in the earlier 120 years of free government. Except in the instance of Kentucky, 1889, on the Australian ballot for the city of Louisville, no question reached a court of last resort prior to 1890 on such matters as the Australian ballot, factional nominations, and nomination papers, while in that year four such cases were decided in the New York Court of Appeals alone, and others in Montana and Missouri.

In the earlier, simpler, primitive days an important aim was the securing to each State its rights, real or fancied; latterly more attention has been given to the rights of the individual to an effective share in Government from its beginning in primary election, caucus, convention, or otherwise, within a party or without it, and continuing until his wishes are at last crystallized in the form of laws, and to protection against fraud, violence and intimidation while exercising the prerogatives of an enfranchised citizen. Not unknown are instances of denying rights already possessed and restricting privileges long exercised. There has been tyrannical suppression of individuals and classes. But the sweep of the years, though slow-moving, has been in consonance with the Declaration of Independence—“to secure these rights, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

In the recent movement for election reforms, four lines of advance are marked: (1)—To secure the voter, by protecting him from evil influences, as is the object of the various “corrupt practices acts” and kindred laws; by guarding him against fraud, intimidation[78] and overawing, by means of an absolutely secret ballot, as under the Australian system; and by preventing, as with voting-machines, any manipulation of ballots or count. (2)—To extend the franchise by reducing the qualifications of Electors, and so making suffrage more nearly universal, as in the 15th Amendment, and the laws enabling women to vote. (3)—To increase popular control over officials and their acts, over law-making, and over the initial steps in making nominations, as in making offices elective instead of appointive, in adopting the initiative, the referendum, and the recall, and in prescribing legal forms for primary elections and making nominations. (4)—To secure more equitable representation of every individual, class, party or interest; to avoid the despotism of a majority, or worse yet, a plurality; and to prevent the practical effacement of minorities.

(1) To preserve the purity of elections, many states have “Corrupt Practices acts” forbidding the purchase of votes, directly or indirectly, by candidates, committees or others, with money, intoxicating liquors, cigars, promise of office, or otherwise. Some limit the amount of expenditures of candidates; others require detailed sworn statements of campaign outlays to be publicly filed. President Roosevelt in at least his last two messages urged Congress to enact stringent laws to prevent bribery and corruption in Federal elections, and to secure publicity of the expenses of candidates, parties and committees, and of the source of contributions.

Voting was doubtless at first viva voce. In some States, particularly in the South, elections were so conducted for many years, and in Kentucky this was in accordance with a constitutional provision. For a number of reasons, however, voting by ballot was adopted in all the States, either originally, or superseding the viva voce method.

The written or printed ballot was gradually perverted to such degree that in 1857 the legislature of South Australia adopted an official secret ballot, printed and paid for by the public, and wholly controlled and handled by public officers. The idea was speedily carried to England, spread over Continental Europe, and at a somewhat later date reached the United States, where in some form, almost everywhere modified, it has become part of the electoral machinery in every State, under the name of Australian ballot. On first test in American courts, the system was held to be unconstitutional, but it has later been sustained almost everywhere as being merely regulative. The tendency of these laws has been to make elections more formal, and less flexible. Changes on the ballot and “scratching” are no longer possible with the ease of the old private ballot system. But in general the voter’s choice is not restricted to the names printed on the ballot. Constitutional guarantees of secrecy are not impaired by those clauses which permit aid by election officers, to the disabled or illiterate, in marking the ballot. In some States, as Tennessee and Maryland, illiterates are indirectly or partially disfranchised by laws which permit aid only to persons “that by reason of blindness or other physical disability” are unable to mark their ballots.

These laws have been sustained in the highest courts. Regulations, if not too difficult in the opinion of the court, are upheld, and likewise provisions that require a party to have cast a certain percentage of the vote at the last preceding election, before it may be entitled to an official ballot. Even forcing a citizen to choose between voting under an obnoxious party heading, or not at all, is, at least in New Jersey, viewed as no deprivation of his rights.

In a number of States, voting machines which automatically register the voter’s choice have been authorized, and to some extent used.

At this point mention may be made of compulsory voting, which has been seriously discussed as advisable to bring out otherwise good citizens who[79] are apathetic as to their civic responsibilities. In 1898 the people of North Dakota adopted a constitutional amendment, permitting the Legislature to impose a penalty for failure to vote.

(2) Although the theory of the Declaration of Independence is broad, the practice as to the “consent of the governed” was decidedly limited at the time of the Revolution, and the ruling power in at least some of the States was vested in so few persons as to be oligarchic rather than popular. Property qualifications were often essential to the right of suffrage. These no longer exist in any State. Also age, race, sex, citizenship, residence and payment of taxes determined a person’s eligibility either to vote, or to hold office, or both. A higher age is set generally in Europe, but in America twenty-one years is universally accepted as marking maturity for voting purposes. Race distinctions were wiped out by the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Religious tests were always few, and are probably wholly abolished—the last effort being to bar Mormons in Nevada about twenty years ago, but held unconstitutional. Sex is no longer considered in Wyoming, Idaho, Utah and Colorado. While only males are fully enfranchised in the other States, suffrage has been given to females in many matters, particularly municipal and school. Only American citizens may vote in a large number of States, but in others aliens also, who have declared their intentions to become citizens by naturalization, have full rights. In an anomalous position are Porto Ricans and Filipinos, who are neither citizens nor aliens. Residence where the elector offers to vote is always required, usually a year or more in the State, but sometimes less; and a shorter time in the county and voting precinct, or city and ward.

The extreme mobility of our population, so different from conditions in the Old World, or even earlier America, has led to a feeling that, in some way, the good citizen should be enabled to express his choice in National elections, though for any reason he may have moved from one State to another shortly before election; likewise that he save his vote for State and district officers and measures, though crossing county lines; and on county matters, though removing from precinct to precinct. An effort to avert this temporary disfranchisement was made in Kansas, by a law permitting railroad employees to vote where their occupation happens to take them on election day. The payment of taxes has long been a pre-requisite to casting a ballot in Pennsylvania and other Eastern States. In the South, this requirement, as well as educational qualifications, appears to gain ground.

(3) The extension of the subjects of popular decision has been most marked, and the drift is increasingly in that direction. A further innovation, rapidly growing, is the expression of a wish or preference by the electorate where such vote is merely advisory and not binding. Office after office, once appointive, is made elective, and when so gained by the people is never surrendered again. In 1776-1783 only Georgia, among the Colonies elected judges. Today thirty-one States elect them. Then scarcely a governor was chosen by the people. At first presidential electors were named in a variety of ways. But by 1832, the right had everywhere been yielded to the people. The very many resolutions of amendment offered in Congress, providing for the election of United States Senators by direct vote, the passage of such measures repeatedly by the House, and the persistent, reiterated requests for this reform by various Legislatures, all show a deep-seated popular desire.

Scarcely had America copied from Australia her ballot system, when, becoming adept as Rome in absorbing from surrounding nations, she borrowed from the Swiss the Latin terms referendum and initiative, although the principles thereby expressed are as long established on this continent as English settlements. For centuries among Germanic peoples, there has been a steady[80] transition of power. The right to petition the crown grew into legislation. Final power was transferred from king to parliament, and now in turn it is passing from the legislative branch directly to the electorate.

None of the colonial charters, except those of Pennsylvania, had any provision for amendment, and of the original States, only Massachusetts and New Hampshire submitted their constitutions to the people for ratification. By 1787, provision for amendment, thitherto wholly lacking in all State constitutions, unless Pennsylvania’s, was added to eight of them. The custom of amending constitutions by popular vote arose, and is now established in every State except Delaware. Thus, changing the organic law, upon legislative initiative, has become commonplace. The next step—to permit the people themselves to initiate the change and finally for them to ratify or reject and even to propose important laws,—was slower of acceptance. Switzerland began this revolution in free government in 1830 and by 1848 had the principle embedded in its federal constitution. About 1886 discussions of the Swiss institutions, and especially the initiative and referendum, as seen by American students abroad, began to appear in leading American journals and magazines. In 1898 South Dakota amended its constitution by adopting a provision for initiative and referendum. In 1900 Utah followed this example. In 1902 Oregon by the decisive ratio of eleven to one in the popular vote, adopted the most clearly expressed section yet developed in our country. In 1904 Nevada added a similar feature to the organic law.

In April, 1901, the matter of an initiative and referendum amendment first reached a supreme court, coming up in South Dakota, regarding acts to take immediate effect, passed under the emergency clause of the amendment. The court held that the Legislature is sole judge as to what laws are “necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health or safety, or support of the State government and its existing institutions.” The fundamental principles involved were not questioned on either side. But in December, 1903, the initiative and referendum amendment was directly attacked in the Supreme Court of Oregon, and unanimously sustained. The Court, per Bean, J., said: “Nor do we think the amendment void because in conflict with Sec. 4, of Art. 4, of the Constitution of the United States, guaranteeing to every State a republican form of government. Now the initiative and referendum amendment does not abolish or destroy the republican form of government, or substitute another in its place. The representative character of the government still remains. The people have simply reserved to themselves a larger share of legislative power, but they have not overthrown the republican form of government, or substituted another in its place. The Government is still divided into legislative, executive and judicial departments, the duties of which are discharged by representatives selected by the people. Under this amendment, it is true, the people may exercise a legislative power, and may effect veto or defeat bills passed and approved by the Legislature and governor but the legislative and executive departments are not destroyed, nor are their powers or authority materially curtailed.” Although the question of the nature of laws initiated, or otherwise adopted by the people, upon reference to them, was not directly before the court, it said: “Laws proposed and enacted by the people under the initiative clause of the amendment are subject to the same constitutional limitations as other statutes and may be amended or repealed by the Legislature at will.”

Concerning that clause in the amendment which says: “the veto power of the governor shall not extend to measures referred to the people,” the court held that this applies to bills actually referred to the people, and not to all that might be referred, and that all acts not submitted to a referendum may be vetoed. The Utah[81] and Nevada amendments have not been tested in court. Indeed, that of Utah is not self-executing, and the Legislature has not yet enacted a method of procedure to give it effect. The South Dakota amendment specifically applies to municipalities as well as the State. Nebraska in 1898 enacted a general initiative and referendum statute for counties, townships, cities, villages and school districts.

Since the time when “popular sovereignty” was a party shibboleth in the free or slave-State controversy, so many matters are frequently, if not habitually, submitted to a vote that such course no longer excites comment. The charter of Greater New York was adopted upon a referendum, which method has become the rule rather than the exception in giving charters effect. Within the charters themselves, the Initiative and Referendum appears with increasing frequency.

Many of the earlier acts referring matters to the people were assailed as unconstitutional on the ground of delegating legislative power to the people. The diverse decisions on the subject cannot be reconciled. Beginning with Delaware in 1847 and continuing to as late date as 1902 (in Ohio), various courts have pronounced such laws invalid. On the other hand, the Supreme Court of Louisiana decided flatly in 1853 and again in 1854 that conditional legislation, to take effect upon popular approval, is not unconstitutional. Then began some subtle and attenuated “distinguishing” among decisions. Many courts came round to the position that “while the Legislature cannot delegate its power to enact laws, it may provide that whether or not a law enacted shall be operative, may be made to depend upon the popular will.” An interesting fact is that the courts in the Southern States invariably upheld reference to the people, and that adverse decisions are very numerous in the North. A peculiar referendum was attempted in Massachusetts, but was declared unconstitutional. The act provided for submitting the question of extending municipal suffrage to women, but by a special section allowed the women to vote on the proposition of their own enfranchisement. Where there are constitutional clauses requiring some matters to be referred to the people, the rule of expressio unius est exclusio alterius has been invoked in opposing the submission of other laws to the people, but in vain. The failure of the proper officers to provide for taking a vote at the first election after the passage of a referendum law, cannot defeat the will of the people, or deprive them of the option of acceptance or rejection. Until accepted by popular vote, the law takes effect only for the purpose of submission, and at a later election mandamus will lie to require the officials to hold the election properly. In 1900 a movement began in Australia to make it obligatory to refer the matter to the people in case of a deadlock between the two houses on any bill or resolution.

The latest development of the principle is the advisory referendum, and advisory initiative. As the name indicates, these simply show to the legislative and executive departments the will of their constituents, and no legal obligation rests upon the officials to give form to the popular expression. In 1901 Illinois enacted a “public opinion law.” Delaware has pending a constitutional amendment to establish the advisory initiative and referendum. In 1905 Texas enacted a very interesting experiment in the way of a primary election law, which not only provides for nomination of candidates by direct vote, but contains provision for the use of the initiative and referendum within party lines to direct party policy, and determine what principles shall be promulgated in the party platform. Many city councils have voluntarily resorted to this method of learning the people’s will. In Buffalo in the fall of 1905 three questions were to be submitted. But the commissioner failed or refused to put the questions upon the voting machines at the proper time. Mandamus was brought in the[82] Supreme Court. Thereupon Justice Krause granted the writ on one question, that relating to public ownership of a light and power plant by the city, but denied it on the other two, saying as to these: “They involve questions of legislation over which the city council manifestly has no power. Indeed, their very purpose is not to furnish information for the guidance of the local authorities; but they are peculiarly matters for the Legislature.”

When the Federal Constitution was submitted for ratification, many of the conventions in the several States, dissatisfied with certain features and more often with omissions in, the new instrument, offered amendments. These were numerous and varied, and some were later adopted. In New York and Rhode Island the conventions offered an amendment for the recall of United States Senators at the will of the Legislature, and the substitution of others. In 1803 and again in 1806, the Virginia Legislature passed resolutions in support of such amendment for recall. A revival and much broader application of the principle has lately been seen. In 1903 the city of Los Angeles, California, amended its charter by popular vote, and in addition to the initiative and referendum, it placed in the people’s arsenal another powerful weapon—the recall. A few words in the charter clearly define the recall. In the special election in September 1904, the councilman whose course in voting for two certain ordinances was not approved by his ward, was defeated by another candidate. The incumbent then petitioned the Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus to compel the rest of the council and city government generally to recognize him for the remainder of his term. Without deciding the point, the court assumed the validity of the recall amendment, but sustained the petitioner on the ground that the procedure in calling the special election was not quite regular. Even on this point, Chief Justice Beatty dissented. In an inferior court, the matter had come up in another form, and Judge Ostler decided against the incumbent, holding that the recall amendment is not obnoxious to either the State or Federal constitution, that it was not necessary to make charges in the petition for election, but simply to make statements of reasons to enlighten the public; that the officer had no property in the office nor vested right to hold to the end of his term; that it was no contract, but a mere agency, terminable at any time by the principal, the sovereign people.

With the general adoption of the Australian ballot, whether pure or modified, a certain rigidity and official formality was introduced, which makes independent action, or the rejection of “regular” party candidates, however unworthy they be, increasingly difficult. This put a premium upon the control of conventions and party machinery, and the naming of party candidates by whatever means. To secure a fair, untrammeled expression of popular will in the initiatory step of making nominations, a system of primary election laws has been evolved, and now exists in almost every State. The early forms applied where parties voluntarily, in primary elections, made nominations, sometimes of candidates by direct vote, but more often only of delegates to conventions, all under party management and control, subject to such public laws; the later forms are mandatory, requiring all parties to nominate candidates, or delegates, at an official primary election, under public control. The usual course of evolution has been to hold primaries for naming delegates, and then to assume the nomination of all candidates without the intervention of delegates.

About 1879 or 1880 a primary election law was enacted in Kentucky, but no obligation was imposed on any party or persons to nominate candidates by primary election. In 1895, almost simultaneously, several States adopted compulsory primary laws, limiting their operation at first to one or several large cities, and later extending them over the State[83] in either a mandatory or an optional form. So widely do these enactments differ, that it is hard to deduce general statements of their features. Many have been upheld, and not a few overthrown. There has been a general tendency to substitute mandatory for optional laws. After a bitter fight, extending over a series of years, Wisconsin by a majority of over 50,000 adopted a mandatory primary election law in 1904, that provides for nomination by direct vote, of almost all officers from the smallest up to candidates for United States Senators, by all parties upon the same day at the same polling places and with the same election officers, who are publicly chosen from the two leading parties in the State. In 1900 California expressly recognized the primary election by a Constitutional provision, and empowered the Legislature to prescribe conditions on which voters may participate in such elections. The Constitution of Mississippi, Section 247, declares that the Legislature shall enact laws to secure fairness in primary elections. Where the primaries are official and mandatory, all expenses are paid by the public; where they are voluntary, the cost falls on the party holding them. Myriads of questions have arisen out of these elections, and Legislatures have sought in a variety of ways, to solve them. The proclivity of some voters to take part in all primaries has been an ever-present problem in those States that permit the several parties to hold their primaries at different times and places.

Where it is entirely optional with a party, whether or not to nominate by primaries, having decided affirmatively the party must conduct such election strictly in accordance with the statutes. The first primary laws made past acts the test of qualification to take part in a party primary election. But later laws incline to accept future intentions instead, while New Jersey, at least, requires both faith and works. Kentucky’s court has held that the Constitutional provisions relating to elections, do not apply to primary elections, but most courts that have considered the subject, take the opposite view. Massachusetts holds that a primary law is not unconstitutional in authorizing printing on the ballots, the names of candidates presented by a certain number of voters, if blanks are left for the insertion of the names of other candidates not so presented. But Minnesota denies this poor boon to voter and candidate, and says that no blanks need be left in which to write a name.

In many instances, only parties casting a certain percentage of the total vote are privileged to avail themselves of the mandatory laws, and such limitation has been upheld where ample provision is made for nominations in other ways, by the minor parties. In some of the laws, the procedure is minutely detailed; others are very brief and general. Some leave much to the party rules and machinery already in existence, or that may be provided, and even expressly declare that the party’s rules shall govern in matters not provided for in the law. While the provisions of a primary law may apply only to general elections, seemingly to the exclusion of special elections, it is not therefore a special law, within the Constitutional meaning of the term, and in all elections to which the act does not apply, the old statutes will govern as before the passing of a primary law. Nor is a law rendered special by requiring direct choice of the candidates in a single ward or township, while for larger divisions, delegates are selected to hold nominating conventions. A New York statute distinguishes between municipal and other elections in determining party affiliations, so that a man may claim party regularity, though voting differently at will in city affairs. The inalienable right of the people to call Cincinnatus and Putnam from their plows, when the office seeks the man has been vindicated by the Supreme Court of Michigan.

(4) Ever since man first espoused the doctrine of majority rule in popular Government, students have been perplexed by the problems presented when[84] three or more candidates for one office, or three or more solutions of one question, have been before the people. Likewise, the utter elimination of the minority from a voice in affairs, and its treatment as a wholly negligible factor, has troubled philosophers and statesmen who desire justice and truly representative government. In the early history of this nation, five or more of the original commonwealths chose their representatives in Congress on a general ticket; five chose by districts, and this system gradually spread, until in 1842 it was made mandatory. Numerous constitutional amendments were offered, especially in the early days, to elect Presidential Electors by districts, and Representatives by districts. In 1877 and again in 1888, Maish of Pennsylvania presented resolutions of amendment dividing the electoral votes of each State in proportion to the popular vote for the several candidates. Many States provide for the distribution of election boards, and some few other offices among political parties, usually between the two leading parties. In 1870 Illinois adopted a constitution with a section to secure proportional representation, or more properly, minority representation, in the legislature. Quite a number of proportional measures have been passed in the different States, but most of them have been pronounced to be unconstitutional. In March 1889, the Michigan Legislature enacted a law embodying the “cumulative” plan to represent the minority. It was held unconstitutional. In the opinion, Chief Justice Champlin discusses the matter philosophically and historically, and describes the four plans known as the “restrictive” or “limited vote,” the “Cumulative,” the “Geneva,” “free vote,” or “Gilpin” plan, and the “Hare” or “single vote” system. To this there has since been added perhaps as, fifth—the “Gove” plan.

The “restrictive” or “limited vote” plan has been used in American elections more than any other method designed to assure representation of a minority. The Pennsylvania Constitution prescribed the limited vote for Judges of the Supreme Court, County Commissioners and some other officers. The principle has been extended by simple statutory enactment, in the Keystone State, and upheld there. But similar laws in Ohio, New Jersey and Rhode Island, have been repeatedly pronounced unconstitutional. In foreign countries, the system is much used. The “cumulative” plan is much used in corporations, and some attempt has been made to apply it in general elections, the Illinois selection of its lower house, being the most prominent example. Beginning in 1874, Ohio, too, used this method for a while in selecting Legislators. In 1889 it was applied in Boston to choosing Aldermen. In Michigan the attempt so to elect the lower house was held void, as has been stated. The “free vote” has gained no foothold in our land, but is much used in Europe. The Hare-Spence plan has been in use in some parts of Denmark since 1856, also in Tasmania, parts of Australia and New Zealand.

The “preferential ballot,” which is a prominent feature of the Hare-Spence method of securing proportional representation, has also been used where single candidates are to be chosen to office, in order to assure a majority choice among three or more candidates.

Even this simple survey of events shows strongly the steady advance of the electorate in taking power into their own hands. If any mistrust the people, if any have any misgivings lest the masses be incapable of using wisely the powers they have assumed, he may find relief in the thought that whereas the average mature American of the year 1800 had enjoyed but 82 days of schooling in his life, his descendant of today receives 1,034 days’ public instruction. The trend toward democracy may be the result of men’s conscious deliberate design; it may be unconscious destiny.

You wonder why the world should be so fair to me today—to me, Pierre of the People, the poor oppressed people, whose heart’s blood has been crushed out until it rushed forth in floods that cover the streets of Paris with a crimson stain?

Even for me the sun shines today and the flowers bloom with a fragrance they never breathed before—the red stains that clot the dust in the street are great crimson roses blossoming with a glory never before worn by flowers.

“Pierre,” said Monsieur le Géneral, “you are not a traitor to France, are you?”

“No, Monsieur,” I said sturdily, setting my teeth and giving him as steady a look as he was bending upon me.

I told the truth. We who would free France from the rule of the aristocrats are not traitors. Rather are they traitors who would make of our nation a stagnant pool of slavery and corruption.

“My definitions are from the book of real life, Monsieur le Géneral. They are always in agreement with the truth. Monsieur knows, though, that he may trust me for himself, however my definitions may differ from his own. He has not forgotten that I saved his life once from an English sword. I know the memory is graven upon the mind of Monsieur le Géneral as deeply as the scar is cut in my arm.”

I laid my hand on my heart, bowing till my head almost touched one of the crimson roses in the velvet of Monsieur’s carpet.

What could I say fairer than that, for was not life the dearest thing to me then?

So matters stood with my lord and me on that morning when he sent me with a missive to Mademoiselle Denise. To her or to another, what mattered it to me? They were all young demoiselles and, as such, of far less consequence than the silver mounting of my lord’s pistols or the flash of his gold-sheathed sword.

As I crossed the courtyard a dark-eyed page, idling by the fountain that sparkled in the sun, was singing:

With that refrain ringing in my ears, “Never a rose like my lady’s face,” I[87] went from the shining flood of sunshine into a hall that seemed like dusky twilight after the outside brilliance. But in the centre was a space where the sunlight drifted down through an open window into a circle of radiance and in the middle of it stood Mademoiselle, a shining figure that dimmed all other light. She was clad in white and gold, and the long folds of her robe lay in shimmering snow along the marble floor. Her amber hair was like a river that the morning sun-rays cross. Her eyes shone like great sapphires set under long lashes of gold and arched over by golden brows. It was as if the light of a thousand suns had centered in one fair woman.

The scar, once a proud and happy place upon my arm, burned as if a coal of fire had been dropped upon it and for one wild moment I could have cut from me the arm that had interposed to save the life of my master. Then I knelt before her, when she had waved her hand for my approach, and presented the letter. She looked at it carelessly and turned her eyes from it to me where I knelt and beckoned me to rise.

“Tell me of yourself,” she said in a voice that was like the softest strain of a lute. “Who are you?”

Who was I? Yesterday I would have said a man. Had I not done a man’s part in battle? Was it not a man’s right arm that had stretched itself forth to save a great life? Now I was—nothing. There was not a grain of dust in the streets of Paris smaller than I.

“Nothing, my lady,” I said, not daring to lift my eyes to her face, nor scarcely to look at her hand lying like a white lily on the snow of her gown.

“That proves you very much,” she said, “for a man never thinks himself nothing till he has a standard of merit with which to compare himself and the possession of such a standard is a proof of worth.”

With what pride I should yesterday have avowed myself the servant of so brave a soldier and so grand a gentleman. With what hatred of him and what contempt for myself did I make that statement today. Did not the great gulf between the gold and white Queen of the World deepen and widen infinitely with the significance of my words?

She wrote a line on a leaf from a gold and white tablet and gave it to me, sealed with a golden seal.

I bowed low and went out from her presence with my face toward her. At the entrance I lifted my eyes and looked dazzled at the spot of light in the centre of the great hall. Thus I passed out into the courtyard flooded with sunlight which seemed dim in comparison with that supernal radiance.

The dark-eyed page had seated himself on the rim of the basin into which the fountain fell with a tinkling music that kept rhythm with the song he was still singing. With the refrain yet ringing in my ears, “Never a rose like my lady’s face,” I went back to Monsieur le Géneral with the missive she had given me.

A little later the blood of the Paris streets spattered to the gold robes of the court. I saw the head of Monsieur le Géneral carried by me on a spike and the dark-faced, ragged man who bore it sang a ribald song as he looked mockingly up into the face, one word of which would have been his death-warrant had it been uttered when that head yet sat upon the stately shoulders. For a moment a sorrowful thought of the days when I loved him lay like a cloud upon my mind, but what time was there then for thinking of love—at least of that love.

I left the crowd of raging demons and ran across the courtyard where the fountain yet tinkled merrily down into the basin. No dark-eyed page loitered there and sang of the red rose and his lady’s face to the music of the falling water. I dashed past the fountain and ran into the great hall. It was empty and there was the print of muddy feet trampled over the marble floor.[88] I went to the Leader of the People.

“Ah, Pierre, if you owe a grudge to the aristocracy of France you can feed to it now the most luxurious viands of earth. Even she is offered to the vengeance of justice and her head will grace a pike as none other has ever done.”

I pleaded with him for the life of that woman whose gold and white beauty was the fairest thing I had ever gazed upon and whose beautiful heart looked out from eyes that showed all its goodness and truth. Citizen Beauget had received many services at my hands in the days when I was near the powers of the court because the favorite of the king had owed his life to me.

“Eh!” he cried. “A citizen of France seeking to save the life of one of the oppressors of France? Ah, I have it. If she will marry you, good Pierre, her life is yours. Ha, the white and gold lily of the court marry Pierre, the Sansculotte! Beautiful thought! Perhaps she will wish to save her life.”

Then I stood up before him and looked at him with a scorn before which he dropped his gaze.

“Citizen Beauget, Mademoiselle will marry where she loves or kiss the cruel ‘Maiden of Liberty’ with pure lips and a brave heart.”

But I took the paper he gave me and went straight to the prison where she stood, and even there space was bright because of her. She turned and looked at me and the glow that comes once to a woman’s face was in hers when her eyes fell on me.

“Nay, not so, Mademoiselle. I come to bid you live, if I read truly what is written on your face.”

Hand in hand we went out into the night and neither the terror of the living nor the faces of the dead staring up into the moon-lit sky marred the peace that filled our hearts.

There are phenomena a-plenty, said the New York World editorially (December 31), “which unmistakably foretell a new party and a new issue in American affairs. It comes in a multitude of shapes and clothed in a multitude of garments.”

Coming from the source it does, this utterance is significant. There is no doubt about the existence of the phenomena, but your conservative usually delights in playing ostrich. Personally I would like to question the accuracy of the World’s forecast—for I contend that we have now more political parties than economic conditions warrant—but regard for truth requires affirmation instead of denial. The new party is bound to come.

“Mr. Bryan,” the World continued, “has already defined it (the new party) in terms of triple state socialism—city ownership, State ownership and national ownership of all public utilities.”

Granting that this is correct, it is not hard to see that a new party is superfluous, for the People’s Party now covers this ground; and the Democratic Party has in places adopted a portion of the program.

The public mind, however, is thinking of a new party—and that settles it. The arguments of a few feeble individuals cannot change public opinion. So let us accept the inevitable and try to make the best of it.

The new party, it is safe to say, will pre-empt a large portion of the ground now occupied by the People’s Party. It will declare for true democracy. It will adopt one of two methods in making its declarations. It may, in a few well worded paragraphs, state fundamental principles of democracy, avoiding the peculiar isms of the various factions which will be brought together in the new organization; or it may attempt to frame a plank acceptable to each of the factions. It is needless to say that the former will lay the foundation for success, while the latter will give rise to dissensions and result, finally, in disintegration.

But I do not wish to suggest a platform for the new party. Able men will be present at its birth, and they will know what to do. I do wish to be heard, however, on the question of name for the infant party.

Populists well know that for the past four years I have fought persistently against changing the People’s Party name. I have freely admitted its faults, but have insisted that a faulty name is less dangerous than a change. The organization of a new party presents a different problem. A new name is necessary.

Viewed superficially there are many good names which might be adopted; but when subjected to careful analysis, the number dwindles down to a very few. I take it that the name should indicate the predominant feature of the party; that it should be but one word, and that word short, preferably of three syllables, not explosive or difficult to pronounce, but capable of being uttered easily; that whether used as noun or adjective no change is necessary; that it should not be an unusual or a newly coined word, but one the meaning of which, in its generic sense, is now well understood by, or at least familiar to the public.

A year or so ago a writer in The Public (Chicago) suggested Isocrat, one who believes in equal rule; and Orthocrat, one who believes in good rule—both charming names but violating what I believe to be very important: that the name should not be unusual, newly coined, or unfamiliar to the public. Isocrat, isocratic, isocracy; orthocrat, orthocratic, orthocracy. Ingenious inventions, but hardly suited to our purpose.

Several persons in the past few years, notably Rev. John V. Potts, of Ohio, have made good arguments in favor of “The People’s Democratic-Republican Party.” I shall not discuss this further than to suggest that a 27-letter name is too long; and that to designate a member of the party would require a hopeless amount of circumlocution.

“Home Rule,” “American,” etc., have been suggested; but a little thought will disclose their weak points.

Nine men out of every ten today—who would likely become affiliated with the new party—will, when questioned as to their political belief, generally preface their remarks by declaring, “I am a radical.” Why not give them an opportunity to say it with a capital R?

Not so many years ago the suggestion of this name would have aroused a storm of protest—but it is different today. Then a radical was looked upon as a rash man, if not, indeed, a revolutionist. Men coveted the distinction of being regarded as conservative. To put a radical in an important public office, as Governor, for instance, would “drive capital out of the State.” Only a “con-ser-r-va-tive” (how they did roll that r) could prevent things from going to the demnition bow-wows.

Today it is almost criminally libelous to call a man “safe and sane,” so great a change has come over the public mind. The words “radical” and “conservative” have come to be understood in a new light. The new meanings have quite obscured the old. A “conservative” is looked upon today as the beneficiary, as principal or agent, of some special privilege—franchise, tariff tax and the like—which gives him the power to absorb wealth produced by others, without rendering an equivalent therefor. Naturally, he desires to “conserve” this unfair advantage—for civilization has by no means eliminated the wolf in man—and is, therefore, opposed to radical change. He is a conservative, a stand-patter, a let-well-enough-aloner.

I make no claim of altruism for the radical, and am inclined to look with suspicion upon the man who prates overmuch about doing everything for others and nothing for himself. Self-preservation is the first law of Nature, and man hasn’t learned how to repeal it. Besides, it isn’t necessary, even if we knew how. But there is selfishness and selfishness. Conservative selfishness means to build up one’s self at the expense of others; radical selfishness has for its motto, “Live and let live.” In other words, by promoting the general welfare, I can best advance my own interests.

But, for the sake of argument, let us admit that men are alike in their selfishness; that all are wolfish, whether conservative or radical. Common sense teaches us that only a comparative few can be the beneficiaries of special privileges. If we all possessed equal powers to rob, conferred by legislation, the result would be about the same as though none of us possessed such powers. The former alternative is, of course, impossible; for a special privilege would cease to be such if made general. But the latter is possible. Let us frankly confess that the radical would be a conservative if he could become the beneficiary of a special privilege. Given the opportunity, I feel sure he would act much as other legalized robbers do.

I believe we have indulged in too much denunciation of the beneficiaries of special privileges, the legalized plunderers, and paid too little attention to the criminal ignorance of the great majority who permit themselves to be robbed. I believe we should admit that the masses have acted as “them asses”—and resolve to quit playing the fool. That’s why I suggest the name Radical for the new party. It means a going to the root of the trouble and uprooting it. It means a change which will hurt the pride of a few, because they can no longer hoodwink and rob their tens of thousands under guise of law—a change which will benefit the pockets of the many, because they will no longer be picked by legal enactment.

A Wild Enthusiast

“Oh, he is the kind of a chap that would try to blow up a balloon with baking-powder.”

Unfinished

The present revolt against bossism and the recent destruction of several of the strongest and best constructed machines, naturally suggest the question as to the permanence of the results. The vital problem now is whether the boss will rise again, or whether a new one will come in his stead. To know the answer we must understand the causes and conditions which bring the boss into existence.

The supposition that the boss arises by virtue of his strong personality; that he is an organizer, a general, one born to command; that the “machine” is the product of his skill and genius, and that no one who does not possess the same elements of character can follow him, is wrong. The municipal boss is an effect rather than a cause. He is the product of certain forces, working under certain conditions, and so long as the forces are unchecked and the conditions unchanged, a new boss must inevitably be created to fill the place of every one the people may dethrone.

In municipal politics, the boss comes into being at the point where the criminal rich come in contact with the criminal poor. The criminal rich desire franchise privileges, which are among the most productive and valuable of all forms of property. How valuable they are may be better understood if we remember that a recent conservative writer estimates the franchise values of Greater New York at four hundred and fifty millions of dollars, a staggering sum, but the real market value of actual property which has been virtually stolen from the people. Property, too, of great earning power as compared with most other investments, capable of paying almost unlimited dividends; and often giving its possessors control over all other branches of business, even over life itself. And this property, amounting to half a billion dollars in New York alone and to an incalculable sum in the cities of the whole United States, has been appropriated by the criminal rich through the agency of the municipal boss.

In order to consummate these thefts, the franchise grabbers must have a purchasable city council. To elect and maintain a purchasable city council two things are necessary: a division of the “good” citizens against each other, and a boss to unify and keep solid the criminal poor as a balance of power.

The “good” citizens—by this term I mean the great mass of fairly well-meaning people—are kept divided by the extension of national political interests into municipal affairs. This division is the first condition essential to the development of the boss.

The criminal poor—meaning not merely professional criminals, but all who gamble, get drunk, have occasional fights, and are liable to get into trouble with the police—having with them the saloons, dives and all the hosts of graft and shady business, hold the balance of power. The boss maintains his hold upon them by means of his ability to help them out of trouble. The first step of the boss must be to corrupt the police force and the justices’ courts. This is not hard, for the police and the justices are usually very anxious to be corrupted; it pays them[92] much better to be corrupt than to be honest.

So the boss comes in as a business agent between the criminal poor and the police, enabling the criminal to escape punishment, and the police to get rich by sharing in the profits of crime.

Under this régime the criminal poor are permitted to prey upon society by dividing their spoils with the police. The power of the boss is in his ability to withdraw his protection from any individual who may waver in his political support. The boss never preys upon the poor, whether criminal or not, he is always a friend in need, a refuge in time of trouble to those who follow without questioning.

By means of this following he elects his henchmen to the city council; and so it is to him that the criminal rich must come when they want to appropriate franchise property. The boss really steals the franchise and sells it to the rich.

Thus, under the boss régime, both the criminal rich and the criminal poor are permitted to prey upon society.

We understand, now, that the municipal boss is the product, first, of the political condition which keeps the good citizens voting against each other; second, of the condition which makes possible the private ownership and control of municipal public utilities; third, of two forces, equally desirous of preying upon society—the criminal rich and the criminal poor.

And it is evident that so long as the conditions continue and the forces are permitted to operate, the creation of new bosses is inevitable.

It is only possible to hold the good citizens together in independent organizations in a very spasmodic and uncertain fashion so long as the party system prevails in national politics, but it is always possible to unite them on any one question by means of the referendum. Therefore, the first condition may be changed by the enactment of laws requiring the submission of all franchise questions to the popular vote. On a referendum, the good citizens of all parties, if they vote intelligently, will present a united front to the forces of graft. This will prevent the consummation of new thefts, but it will not restore the property already stolen, except by the slow process of awaiting the expiration of the present franchise grants.

The second condition may be removed by training the people in knowledge of the practicability of the municipal ownership and operation of public utilities. Until the people believe in municipal ownership as a practical possibility, it is impossible; once they do believe, and are ready, it is probable that the laws of the States for the recovery of stolen property will be found sufficient to bring about the restoration to them of all that is rightfully their own.

At the end, we always come to the proposition that to check the forces of evil we must eliminate the profits of evil doing. There is no other way. By this plan, the social problems in which the municipal boss appears will be found easy of settlement, and possibly those connected with the state and national boss also. For they, like their prototype of the city, are not the great personalities we have deemed them, but merely the products of conditions easily changed and of forces amenable to control.

“Is the letter from Johnny, Mary agra?” The pathetic appeal in Mrs. Ryan’s quavering voice, and the heart-hunger expressed in her wrinkled, parchment-like face brought a lump to the throat of her daughter as she replied:

“Why doesn’t Johnny write, an’ why doesn’t he come an’ see his poor ould mother afore she dies?” the old woman wailed. “Och, but me heart is sore wid the longin’ for me darlin’ boy, an’ me ould arrums is achin’ to hould him agin! Niver a word from him this three years, come Chrisymas! It’s not like Johnny! It’s not like Johnny at all, at all!”

“But, mother achree, Johnny doesn’t forget you,” Mary answered soothingly. “An’ he never forgets to send you two pounds every three months by Liza, or Andy, or Katie.”

“I know it, Mary. Johnny was always a ginerous boy: but it’s not his money I want, but himself back agin! Shure I’d rather beg wid Johnny than own the wurruld an’ all wid-dout him!” Mrs. Ryan answered. “Read Andy’s letter for me, Mary acushla.”

While Mary Ryan read aloud the letter which she had just brought from the village post-office, her mother gazed yearningly over the restless expanse of dark blue ocean, which stretched away to the crimsoning west. With dreamy eyes, which saw but heeded not, she watched the hovering, screaming sea-gulls, the white-sailed fishing-smacks and the long, black streak of smoke that, far away on the horizon, marked the course of an outward-bound steamer.

For many years Mrs. Ryan had been in the habit of sitting on the rude bench by the door of the cabin, that was perched high up on the rugged hill-side, and watching the steamers as they came and went.

Four times during those weary years the mother’s heart within her had grown numb with pain as she saw the black streak fade in the distance and knew that one of her darlings was being borne away from her.

Andy was the first to leave the overcrowded cabin and seek work in the grand land of plenty across the water. In a year, Andy sent the passage money for Liza, and, in another year, Liza sent the passage money for Katie. Then Johnny, the idol of her declining years, kissed his mother good-bye and, with cheery, hopeful voice, promised to return to her in two, or at most, three years. With that dumb resignation, sometimes born of a sense of hopeless inability to cope with circumstances, Mrs. Ryan had watched him wend his way, with many a backward glance and wave of the hand, down the narrow zig-zag path to the village and the train for Queenstown, where the merciless steamer waited to bear him away forever from her loving arms. She remembered still how the sunbeams had glinted upon his auburn[94] hair that morning, and how handsome he had looked in his new tweed suit and green tie. She thought of the tears that had welled up in his blue eyes when she gave him her parting blessing, and she recalled the silent anguish with which she had sat by the cabin door and watched the black steamer, silhouetted against the golden sunset and slowly disappearing in the distance. It had been hard to see the others go, but Johnny—what would life be without Johnny?

That was five years ago. For two years Johnny had written regularly, telling of steady work and good wages, and promising to come home for a vacation as soon as possible. Then there came a short, badly-written note enclosed with a letter from Andy, and after that—silence.

Andy and Liza and Katie wrote regularly and sent money for the support of their mother and Mary. It was Mary’s mission to remain in the Old Country and take care of the feeble, aged mother.

Every three months, Andy or one of the girls sent an order for two pounds and wrote that Johnny sent it with his love. That was all. They never answered the questions concerning Johnny, his doings and his whereabouts which Mary repeatedly wrote at her mother’s behest.

“Is that all, Mary? Is there nothing at all, at all about Johnny?” Mrs. Ryan queried in disappointed tones, when her daughter had finished reading Andy’s letter.

“There’s not a word in it about Johnny, mother darlin’,” Mary answered reluctantly.

“Andy said Nancy Quin is comin’ home on the boat that gets in Saturday, didn’t he?”

“Yes, mother,” Mary replied, “Nancy is comin’ to spend a month with her people.”

“Then, plaze God, Mary, when Nancy comes to see me I’ll larn the truth about the onnatural silence of Johnny! Och, but he was the darlin’ boy—always so gay and pleasant!”

There was a brief silence, after which the old woman drew a worn and yellow sheet of paper from beneath the plaid woolen kerchief that was folded across her bosom.

“Read it for me, Mary agra,” she said sadly, “read it for me agin—the last letter from Johnny. God bless him, wherever he is, this day an’ night!”

Mary held the frayed and faded sheet before her eyes. The writing was almost illegible and the paper was worn into holes where it had been folded, but she knew the words by heart and, as if conning a familiar lesson, repeated them slowly:

“Three years an’ niver a word from him!” sighed the old woman, as she again laid the long-treasured note in its accustomed place over her heart. “Och, but me ould eyes is achin’ for a sight of him—me darlin’ boy!”

The sunbeams were glittering upon the wide, heaving expanse of ocean which lay between Mrs. Ryan’s cabin and the great Western world whither her children had gone.

Sitting upon the beach by the open door, the aged woman watched Nancy Quin laboriously climbing the steep, zig-zag path which led to the cottage. When the visitor reached the door and the usual salutations had been exchanged, Mrs. Ryan steadfastly fixed her eyes upon the girl’s face and asked:

“In the name of God, Nancy Quin, why doesn’t Johnny write an’ why doesn’t he come home?”

“Arragh, thin, Mrs. Ryan, darlin’, how should I know that? I haven’t laid me eyes on Johnny these three years.” Nancy answered evasively, but her embarrassment and the compassion in her voice were not lost upon her questioner.

“Don’t lie to a poor, ould woman,[95] Nancy acushla,” Mrs. Ryan entreated, “but tell me, God’s truth, where me boy is an’ why he doesn’t come to me?”

For a moment Nancy Quin looked with infinite pity into the anxious, wrinkled, pleading face, then, dropping her eyes before the old woman’s wistful gaze, answered brokenly:

“Don’t fret yourself about Johnny, Mrs. Ryan agra. You’ll soon see poor Johnny; you’ll be wid your boy before long,” and turning away with a stifled sob, she entered the cabin in search of Mary, while Mrs. Ryan sat very still upon the bench and gazed with tearless, unnaturally bright eyes out upon the bounding, white-crested waves of the Atlantic.

“Oh, Mary acushla, she’s read it in my face!” Nancy cried in remorseful tones, “an’ I promised I’d keep it from her.”

“Keep what from her?” Mary asked, anxiously. “Is it anything about Johnny, Nancy agra?”

“Yis, Mary,” Nancy answered sorrowfully, “Sure an’ it wrings me heart to tell you. Poor Johnny was killed—run over at a crossin’ three years ago.”

“An’ why didn’t they let us know?” Mary sobbed, “Where was the use of deceivin’ us?”

“It was the poor boy’s wish,” Nancy replied tearfully. “They took him to the hospital and kept him alive for a day, an’ before he died, he made Andy an’ the girls promise they’d never let his mother know of his end. He had a hundred and fifty dollars saved to take him home an’ he bade them sind it to her a little at a time wid his love. His last words were ‘Don’t let poor mother know! It would kill her! Don’t let poor mother know!’”

There was a long silence, broken only by the subdued sobbing of the girls. At last Mary said, wiping her eyes with her apron:

“By the help of God, Nancy, we must still keep it from mother. She’s not long for this world, an’ Johnny, poor boy, was the light of her eyes!”

“Mother darlin’,” Mary said softly, “it’s growin’ cold, an’ you’d better come in for your cup of tay.”

There was no answer. A smile of ineffable peace lingered upon the aged, care-worn face. In the faded blue eyes, whose unseeing gaze was fixed upon the merciless ocean which had taken her darlings, one by one, from her arms, shone the wondrous light “that never was on sea or land.”

To his mother, the silence of Johnny was no longer a mystery. He had not come to her, but she had gone to him.

Our readers are requested to be as brief as possible in their welcome letters to the Magazine, as the great number of communications daily received makes it impossible to publish all of them or even to use more than extracts from many that are printed. Every effort, however, will be made to give the people all possible space for a direct voice in the Magazine, and this Department is freely open to them.

Your criticism on prevailing evil conditions is justly and emphatically to the point. But I would call your attention to the world’s experience that at no time has a reform taken place unless new ideas, new methods for reform comprehensive to the public for relief and improved conditions were introduced at the same time when the old deplorable affairs were condemned. To excite the multitudes without a proper and thorough education on social and national relations calculated to promote peace, harmony and prosperity, is dangerous. Look at Russia. If you will add as many correct and direct advices to the general public as you do criticism, you may be successful in initiating a reform that may far surpass any in the past ages.

To say that I endorse the principles advocated by the magazine puts it mildly. The old parties must be checked or we are politically and financially ruined. You have started in the direction. You have got the people thinking and that is half the battle. Push the good work already started and I hope victory will crown your effort. I want to go on record as a firm believer in Tom Watson principles.

I have received every copy that has been printed. Just as soon as I have read them I let others have them. I am well pleased with the Magazine.

The Magazine is fast eliminating political ignorance throughout America, which, in fact, is the pillow upon which rests the great evils we suffer.

Your Magazine is a wonderful power because all classes of our people read it, and its truth is so plain and reasonable no one can reject it, let their politics be as they may.

I have read each issue of your Magazine and all in each issue. Sometimes I do not agree with you but you are trying to keep on the right track, and come very near to staying in the “middle of the road.” I am a native Alabamian and a Democrat of the “Moss Back” kind.

Go ahead. I am with you and if necessary will vote with you, independent of my party.

Have taken your Magazine from the first number and would not be without it at any price. As an educator it is A No. 1. I wish that every wage earner could be gotten to read it. No one can read the splendid articles it contains without becoming a more intelligent citizen.

I have read every number from the first number. I shall never vote either of the old party tickets again. I am 83 years old next Tuesday. My health is failing. I think we ought to unite with Prohibitionists, for the sale of intoxicants is about as big an evil as we have and we have got the great whiskey interest to overcome before we can get into power for both the old parties are their friends. Yes, my dear brother, I am with you. With my little influence I will do what I can.

I received your copy of Tom Watson’s Magazine and think she is a dandy. I hope you succeed. I see some of the Pittsburg papers kicking on it and asking why it is allowed to pass the mails.

I think Tom Watson’s Magazine is a good one. The editorials are the biggest things I ever saw. I don’t like such stories as “The Gray Weed,” “The Tiger God,” etc., etc., but I like Tom Watson and all that I have[98] read from his pen. My wish is that Tom Watson may live long to ring that “Liberty Bell” until the people shall awake and rise in their might and throw off their shackles.

We appreciate your magazine very much, especially the articles from the pen of Mr. Watson and, while he lambasts the party to which we belong, much of it is deserved and we hope he will continue to lay on until prevalent evils are corrected.

I have been reading your magazine ever since the first issue and I think it the clearest boldest and most fearless journal in America. I shall continue to read Watson’s.

I have never had the pleasure of meeting you personally, but have known of you ever since you entered Congress in 1892. Since that time I have eagerly sought to read all you have said and written. Being strictly in accord with your political views, I greatly admire the firm stand you have taken in alleviating the burden from the masses of people, your honesty of purpose and the plain and outspoken way you have in presenting your views. I have had the pleasure of voting for you twice and yet hope to see you elected our national executive. The crowning act of your life was your work in the last election when you took our banner from the dust of fusion and confusion and unfurled it to the breeze, and fought the battles of reform practically alone. May you yet receive your reward.

As to your Magazine, I subscribed for it before it was ever printed. Am well pleased with it. Have no improvement to suggest. I quit the Democratic Party in 1890. Have only made one mistake since and that was when I voted for Bryan in 1896.

To say that I like the Magazine is only putting it lightly. It is the only political gospel I know of being published at present. Love to have it read in every home in the United States. Then have every one act upon its teachings. I know of no way of making it better unless advocating return to Africa by American Africans. That subject seems to be neglected, though I don’t know that I could write on that subject to any advantage.

I am very much pleased with your Magazine. I have got it from the news-stand from the first copy to the present. I don’t know how I would get along without it for every number is better than the last. I think it’s the best book of Education that is published. Its principles are right and just to all, and I wish both of the old parties would take a few doses of the medicine prescribed in your book. I think they might be cured of some of their corruption.

I think Tom Watson’s Magazine contains more profitable and really more necessary information for the American citizen than any other publication. It is a regular monthly feast to read his pieces. In reading his pieces, I am made to feel as though I was communicating with the supernatural.

I wish to call Mr. Watson’s attention through his Magazine to his physical health. Take care of your health, Mr. Watson. We need your wonderful mental power with good health behind it. You are so completely absorbed and enthused in your great work for the people, you might over-tax the brain and bring on a collapse: that would be a national and incalculable misfortune.

Yours of recent date received. As I wrote to you some time ago, I am a migratory cuss, and therefore rely upon the news-stands for my magazine. I read Watson’s, Everybody’s and McClure’s, regularly, and any others that in glancing over, interest me. I have no time to read stories. What I want is political and scientific.

I like Watson’s. Prize it highly and after reading it, treat it as I do all the others, i. e., hand it to someone else to read. I cannot suggest any way in which your work can be improved. I will do what I can to induce others to read your Magazine.

I think it all right. Just what we need. I don’t see that I can add anything better to it. I am doing all I can for you.

I am 60 years old, and have been a reformer ever since Tilden ran for President. I said then there wasn’t a hair’s length difference in the old parties.

I consider Tom Watson the grandest, greatest and most brilliant man of this or any other age, and may God grant him strength to continue the fight for human liberty and human right until the fight is won.

I am very much interested in the wave of reform that is sweeping over our country as indicated by the recent elections. Keep[99] hammering away, Bro. Watson, you have my entire sympathy and support.

I think your Magazine is doing a great deal of good in waking up the dull minds of the common people, which I hope in 1908 will sweep the cussedest set of rascals into—well, say the penitentiary.

I think it is “just about right.” It just suits me. I can’t see how it could be made any better. The last number (December) is worth the price of a year’s subscription. It is full of good things.

I am a Massachusetts Yankee, a Republican. I served under Jim Lane in Kansas; under Sherman in Georgia. When I first received your magazine I told your old school-mates Alex and Lee Morris that I might vote for you for President. It seems, however, that you oppose protection. That lets me out. I believe every honest, intelligent, patriotic American is a protectionist.

I do not think that it could be improved. All it needs is for the people to read it more and educate themselves on the reforms that the Populists advocate.

I have been a reader of your splendid Magazine from the first issue. I saw by the papers prior to the time you commenced your publication that you were going to edit a magazine. I immediately began to plan to stop the circulation of a 50-cent dollar long enough to get it to you for one year’s subscription, but son beat me to it, he having no taxes to pay, nor no overalls to buy, went barefooted, wore a seven cent straw hat and a thirty cent hickory shirt and saved his money and sent it in to you while I was sweating blood trying to pry a money lender loose from one of his idols.

I’m glad to know that I am not disappointed in the character and make-up of your magazine. You call a spade a spade. You did that while you were in Congress and it is a reproach to the grand old Commonwealth of Georgia that a hide-bound, moss back, clay-eating democracy could not have been broad enough to have let you stay in Congress. Who was the man that defeated you? I don’t know. I doubt if his name is known outside of the Congressional District. Georgia has produced but four men that have challenged the serious attention of the people of the country. Viz:—Old James Oglethorp, Alexander Stevens, Bob Toombs and Thomas E. Watson.

I see that many of your correspondents hope to see you President. No, Thomas, you will never be President of the United States. Why? First, you are too big, have convictions and the honesty and courage to express them. Second, too many fools (with an adjective prefixing “fools”). Your editorials are very fine. I have seldom read anything finer than “Dropping Corn,” “A Tragedy in a Tree-top.” Then there is your insurance policy which is a source of joy. “Monarchy Within the Republic” by Mr. Fox was instructive. The cartoons are superb. The McCurdy family, in your last, conveys the idea that the McCurdy’s are “agin” race suicide, but you must remember that sapsuckers are more numerous than eagles. You very skillfully put the good to Bryan, but say what you will, he stands head and shoulders above any other Democrat of this day. Compare him, if you please, to Alton B. Parker. When I hear the name of Bryan, I think of the American Eagle soaring the blue ether of Heaven. When I hear the name of Parker, I think of a tomtit sitting on a watering trough.

Best wishes for Thomas Watson’s Magazine and a long life for its brainy, honest and fearless editor.

I have taken your magazine from the first number and am much pleased with the good work you are doing.

I have read every issue of your Magazine since the beginning and would like to say a word of praise. Your work and efforts are casting seed that will surely cause “two blades of grass to grow where before there was only one.” Success to you.

Your magazine read and reread in my home every month by myself and five grown sons. We all admire the principle set forth in your grand editorials and know that what you say is truth, but I do think that you are a little too harsh and a little too personal when you speak of Cleveland, Rockefeller, Ryan, Belmont, Morgan, McCarren, Taggart and others of that class. You know that poor human nature is the same the world over and if we were to kill out these men whom you handle so roughly, others would soon take their places. So then the system which brings this state of affairs about in our government is to be blamed more than these men. Therefore, let’s strive (in the right spirit) to remove the evils which beset us as a Christian people. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” And besides, I want you to live long and lead this grand fight for reform, but when I read your cutting editorials I[100] shudder for fear some of these people may have you assassinated.

I address you as “dear comrade” because I am getting to be an old man now and enlisted in this movement for reform away back in the palmy days of the Grange, and myself on the “Ocala Platform”, believing it to be just and in line with the principles later on, under the Alliance banner, planted our Revolutionary sires fought for, and I am proud to say that out of fifty odd Congressmen who were elected on that platform, Tom Watson is the only one who remained true, and I admire every red hair on your head for your loyalty and bravery, and have always voted for you when an opportunity was offered, and if I were called upon to make a national ticket of men whom I believe to be true, it would be,

My son was on a visit to the States last summer and he sent me your books—“The Story of France,” “Napoleon” and “The Life of Thomas Jefferson.” The books reached me during the summer holidays, and as new books are somewhat scarce out here and yours moreover looked so inviting, I began to read the day after their arrival, and day after day this reading continued until I had gone through the four volumes.

On finishing the last volume I purposed to write and thank you for the pleasure you had given me through your books, but the fall term of the University opening about that time I was very busy and so did not write. But now I wish to thank you for a very pleasant summer, for the enjoyment and instruction I received from your excellent books. New light has been thrown on France and her relations to the other powers of Europe, especially to England. Napoleon becomes, to me at least, a new man in your hands. Your “Thomas Jefferson” is a much needed antidote to much of the history that has been written and gives a clear view of the man and his times. Especially would I thank you for your statements with reference to the formation of the Constitution of the United States, also for your explanation of the “Genet Affair.”

In one or two allusions that you make to affairs out here, you have evidently been misled by the newspapers. In your “Napoleon,” page 215, you say:

“In the year 1900 Russians, Germans and other Christians invaded China to punish the heathen for barbarities practiced upon Christian missionaries.”

I don’t think that you state correctly the real object of this invasion of China. The missionary’s part in this Boxer affair was to suffer. Not only were many murdered, but both those who were murdered and those who escaped were made the “scape goats” in the eyes of the world. I enclose a slip that recently appeared in one of the Shanghai papers that gives the true genesis of this Boxer trouble. The armies of the different nations did not “invade China to punish the heathen for barbarities practiced on Christian missionaries,” but they came to rescue their respective ministers, who by their blundering policy had gotten themselves shut up in Peking. If these officials had not been in Peking the armies would never have come. I don’t know of any Government that cares quite that much for a missionary, though they all seem quite ready to use a murdered missionary to advance their land-grabbing schemes.

Again on page 218 you mention that Admiral Seymour ordered his wounded killed, etc. This was published in the papers at the time, but there never was any truth in it. It was simply one of the many horrid stories that went out from Shanghai during those dark days—manufactured in Shanghai.

And now, Mr. Watson, I trust that you will pardon me for inflicting you with this, but I felt that I ought to write and thank you for those books. I trust your pen will not rest. I sincerely wish that you would do for Germany or for Italy what you have done for France.

It is a splendid work you are doing. Your Magazine is a live wire and you are a powerful dynamo. The good you and Bryan are doing can never be reckoned or measured. You are right, and right is the most powerful force in existence, because God himself is the author and is behind all right. May you live to see your work crowned with success. While touching up other things, don’t forget we poor farmers of Florida. Between high freights and commission merchants we catch it. I am what you might call a one-horse farmer, but every year I pay the railroad $2,000 to $3,000 freight on stuff I make to get it to market to say nothing about the freight I pay on what I buy. I would like to make a trade agreeing to give one-half my stuff to get the other half to market and sold. And when on account of delays or for want of ice or any cause not traceable to downright negligence our truck arrives in bad condition and is sold for freight the railroad takes it all. I had one year 102 baskets shipped over one line and 15 over another. The 15 sold for $3.00 per basket, the 102 were refused because the car was not properly iced on the way to New York and arrived rotten, and I never got a penny. A piece of negligence, but could not be proved. This is by no means an unusual case and every truck farmer in the state, I guess, could make such a complaint or one equally unjust to the shipper. But the railroad agent for the A. C. L. at this place, so it is commonly talked on the streets,[101] absconded with $2,000 of rebate paid to him by the railroad to be paid to a big phosphate concern here, and there is nothing doing. They say he won’t even be arrested and, of course, the railroad and the receiver of stolen money will not be punished, although I was told by an attorney of this city that the railroad commissioners were notified of the facts in the case.

So I say, God speed you, and may you be the means of accomplishing great good for this, our glorious country—too good to be wrecked by sordid greed.

I had a sack of one bushel of oats (32 lbs.) price 75 cents and 20 cents worth of seed (all in one cash) sent by express from Birmingham, Ala. to Thomasville, Ala. (a few hours run by rail). I had to pay $1 charges and part of the oats were eaten (I suppose) by rats. I shipped a box of pears (50 lbs.) from Thomasville, Ala., to Braidentown, Fla. I was told by clerk or agent the express charges were $2.00. I told him I would not pay such a charge. Another clerk or agent looked in a book and said the charges were $1.00. I paid it. That was on Friday. The pears reached Braidentown, Fla. Tuesday. They should have been in Selma or Mobile Saturday morning, and where they were from then until Tuesday we know not. A letter saying the box had been opened and a part of the pears taken out was received yesterday. Have I no redress? I wrote to the Mayor of Birmingham to know if such thieving was allowed in his city.

I have read, with increasing interest, all the issues of your very excellent Magazine, and it gives me pleasure to express my appreciation of the effort you are making to educate the public.

The task of one who is endeavoring to expose corruption and corporate greed is, as I know from personal experience, a discouraging one; nevertheless I have a firm conviction that justice must finally be meted out to the smug respectability that has been robbing the whole country. The loathsome and criminal devices resorted to by our would-be aristocracy, in their greedy desire to acquire money, merits a more active opposition than that brought about by a public exposure of their crimes. Complete restitution of all funds wrongfully acquired in the exercise of an extortionate monopoly would be but a small punishment.

I wish you all success in your endeavors and only regret that I cannot at the present time take an active part in the campaign.

Even Diogenes with his lantern would in vain search justice in this country. To tell the truth in this country is punished as lese-majesty. Therefore I may be hung for lese-majesty, but I don’t care.

I was born and raised in free Switzerland and I will die as a free man who dares to express his honest opinions. If I am wrong, show me my errors. It really seems that people never will hear and accept the truth, until some fellows have been hung for telling the truth.

Let us be honest and acknowledge that our so high praised Christian civilization is a total failure. Might is right. The greatest hypocrite and most brutal beast is the absolute master, who dictates the terms by which he will rule. Their mottos are:

“Everyone for himself and the devil takes the hindmost and—The people be damned.”

I find in the literary department much to commend and little, if anything, to find fault with. In the editorial and political department, I can not say as much. You advocate many things which men of all parties have always been agreed on—that is, honest men of all parties. If you could only get the people to take you seriously and make the ten commandments a partisan issue, you would win out hands down, for a big majority of the people are honest in principle and want an honest Government. I dissent from very much that you are trying to teach in the way of political economy and you make many assertions and statements which I believe to be errors. But that does not count. The greatest fault I find with it as a magazine is the tendency toward being a common scold—with a good deal to denounce and little or nothing to commend.

Mr. Watson, allow me to say that while I admire your talent and much more your honesty, I cannot agree with you that the “great middle class” are the only ones needing protection. There is a party in the field fully organized and standing for “all the people”. “Government ownership”, with the Government as it now stands, would only add to our burdens. But first—Let the people own the Government. For this the Socialist Party stands.

I have received two numbers of your Magazine and have studied them when I could spare time. I was in the Populist movement one time. It was all right in its time, but its time is past and now we have something better—Socialism. So your Magazine is not enough revolutionary.

Being a subscriber to the Magazine, I offer the above letter for publication in the Magazine.

Your editorial “Peonage in Panama” published in the December number, was read by me with a great deal of interest, as I have lived for seven years in Central America and am thoroughly familiar with labor conditions there, having during my residence there had constantly in my employ on plantation work from 15 to 50 laborers, or mozos, as they are called.

Of course, I do not know the exact conditions under which these laborers were contracted in Martinique, but am confident the conditions were similar to those under which all labor in that country is contracted. The employer of labor signs up a number of men and the men ask for, expect and receive an advance of money against their future services of an amount equal to from two to four months’ wages. There is a form of contract signed in which the laborer acknowledges the receipt of so much money paid him for future work to be done by him under the contract, by which he also agrees to work for the employer for a specified time at the rate of so much per month. This is the general custom in those countries and with the class of labor available is the only way in which the employer can be reasonably certain of securing and retaining his laborers, as the law forces the mozo to live up to his contract and also makes him secure in obtaining his money after he has worked out the amount advanced.

It was unquestionably the case with the Martinique negroes that they had all received advances of money against their future services, and that the money had all been spent before leaving their homes and, such being the case, where would the employer have found himself if he had submitted without any resistance and allowed the laborers to nullify their contracts and return home?

The Martinique and Jamaica negroes are as a rule a very unruly, unreliable and impertinent class and it requires strenuous measures to keep them in subjection and make them live up to their contracts. They cannot be compared to the American negro, who is much easier to manage.

I appreciate your feelings in the matter, but do not think you thoroughly appreciate the conditions of affairs as they exist in regard to the relations of employer and employee.

When the Martinique negro claims he does not know conditions as they exist at Panama, or other points on the Central American coast, he is lying, as they are all of them more or less familiar with the entire coast from personal visits to it or information acquired from friends who have been on the coast.

I know nothing from personal observation of the Peonage system in the Southern States but I do know that the contract labor system is the only way to handle labor in Panama, for you cannot get them without the advance of money and if you do not protect yourself by the contract, the chances are 9 out of 10 that your man will never show up to work it out.

A gang of those negroes numbering 500 or 600 are not easily handled by any means, and force must be used at times, or at least a strong display of it made or discipline would not be maintained twenty-four hours. Conditions are altogether different from anything existing here and matters must be judged differently. Existing conditions must dictate the line of action to be pursued in any given case and from my knowledge of the character of the men and the conditions, I do not see how the authorities could have acted otherwise than in using force, if necessary, to persuade these negroes to disembark. You certainly would not consider it just that these negroes take the contractors money, spend it, have their fare paid on the steamer to Colon and then on arrival deliberately say they would not land and work out what they had already been paid, but were going to return home. There would be no justice in such a course and if the employer had to use force to obtain what was coming to him, the man’s labor in exchange for his money which the man had already spent, it seems to me he was entirely within his rights. These laborers owed this money to the employer just as much as a man owes money that he has borrowed from another and given his note for, and, just as much as the borrower should expect to pay his note, just so much should this laborer expect to give his services in payment of the money advanced to him. As I have stated before, the laws of these countries recognize this condition of the field of labor and uphold the employer just as our laws recognize a man’s liability when he signs a note agreeing to repay money advanced to him. When the laborer has repaid by his services the money advanced to him he can no longer be[103] held to his contract, but just so long as the laborer demands the advance of money before doing any work, just so long must he expect to be forced, if necessary, to carry out his agreement, and his services as laborer being his only asset he must give those services.

In those countries you only have your laborer as long as you keep him in your debt, for as soon as he gets a month’s wages in his pocket, he is ready to loaf and get drunk.

I think if you were thoroughly acquainted with conditions there, as I am, you would take a different view of the matter. I have been a constant reader of your Magazine since the first issue and enjoy it very much, but felt I must give you my views on this question.

It is de rigeur nowadays for a “genteel” personage travelling along a country road in a buggy or automobile to address any casually met pedestrian as “my man” when seeking local information. This seems boorish to my old fashioned notions. We are evidently becoming very aristocratic along with our tremendous increase in national wealth. It is a very great exhibition of gall for a large employer to so bespeak an humble subordinate.

I will present to the editor of the Tom Watson’s Magazine, if he can find space, an article addressed mainly to the uneducated and unthoughtful hard working men and voters of our United States. The writer is an uneducated man and a life-long hard toiler and acquainted with grief, sorrow and adversity and has lived over three score and ten years. My mother being left a widow with four little dependent children, she was forced to hire me at seven years old for bread and hence I feel interested in millions of men, women and children that are dependent and in grief and sorrow, that if they had equal rights and justice in this government, they would be a prosperous and happy people, and a just principle that presides in my heart prompts me to write an article addressed to that dependent, unthinking army of men in this government. Though I am forced to write from the hand of an uneducated man or from the language of my mother’s tongue, I hope my position will be understood.

In the first place I want to draw your minds to the man that has no equal in this government to wit: Thomas E. Watson. The day before the national election of 1901 I heard him make a speech in the city of Gainesville, Ga. He said that there was no chance for the Populists in this election, but that he would commence the fight the next day after the election for 1908 and now you see he is true to his word. He has begun with an educational school by offering his school-book or magazine in the house of every family in the United States that wants it, when each monthly book or magazine is worth more than the year’s subscription to any thinking man, and I feel greatly astonished that every workingman of the nation does not take it, for I am sure it is the greatest educator as to how the world has moved on in the great governmental ways since the creation until the present day, and especially the last forty years of the government of the United States. Then I earnestly beg and solicit all men to take the magazine, and especially the workingmen, that you may learn that this little delicate man, Tom Watson, is the workingman’s friend and is making a fight for you and your weary wife and children that they may be freed from slavery and brought from under the greedy law of the privileged few that are now corporated into a thievish and robbing body, that they may steal and rob the workingman of his hard earnings. Yes, he has taken this greedy lion or corporation by the throat with a cry that he surrender to the working people their rights and that they must be equal to you. Then, my brother workingman, I appeal to you with all my earnest and honest heart to rally to this honest and brave man, Watson, and stand by him and vote for him and aid him to devour the greedy lion that you may have your liberties and rights for yourself, wife and children. Now, in conclusion I will say I have been a hard laboring man all my life and I am now standing on the bank of Jordan and may, before you read my little message to my brother working voters that I am so much interested in, be across the river. Though I am in eternity at the election of the next President I have three sons and seven sons-in-law and grandchildren that will vote for the hero, Watson, for the interest of workingmen.

Forty-eight years ago I was born a Democrat and I have been one ever since. I love true democratic principles now, but find it impossible to work and vote for these principles and remain true to the party as it is now organized and run. I have been a member of the State Dem. Ex. Com., was Chairman of the 5th Congressional Committee when you were being cursed, abused and robbed and was glad of your defeat because I thought you wrong. I thought the fight for reform should have been made within the party; but, alas! there is no reform and never will there be reform so long as the Belmonts, Gormans, Clevelands and other trust tools are in control.

I now believe that you are right. The only hope for the people is to rise up and hurl from their rotten pedestals both of the old parties and take the reins of government into their own hands. Never before were the people more ready to act. Here in the new County of Grady, which was “officially born” today, the people are overwhelmingly[104] in favor of cutting loose from the old parties and marching under a new banner. I will advocate in my paper which I have just started, new, clean methods, and fight for democracy as you see it and so ably preach it.

I have been a subscriber to Tom Watson’s Magazine from first to last and expect to continue as long as the light holds out to burn and I believe it is getting brighter. I hope and pray for Tom Watson to live to see the good day when he can realize that his work has been crowned with complete success.

You ask me to give my views concerning the Magazine. I know it is the best I ever saw, and I have seen a good many. As to improvement, I have no suggestions to submit in regard to the make-up of the Magazine, but I do suggest that you make it hotter, if possible, for the scoundrels who rob honest toil of the fruits of its labor.

I have been a Populist as long as anybody I know of and the older I become the deeper my belief is in the justice of our cause and our principles. I was an admirer of Tom Watson when he was a member of Congress years ago and I am for him now and will remain for him as long as he travels in the road he is now in and I have no fear that he will apostatize.

With best wishes for you and all your co-workers, I remain your friend to the end.

1 am a Populist and have been one since 1880 and opposed to Fusion first, last, and all the time. I have been receiving your Magazine since November. I have three brothers that live in Alabama that have been voting the Democratic ticket all their lives, and I want them to read something that will open their eyes for I consider them politically blind; and I want to help you in your gallant fight for the right. I like your Magazine. I wish I was able to send you 100 dollars to have it sent to men that think that they cannot afford to spend one dollar for a paper. But the trouble with them is that they don’t think at all. They use their heads to hang their hats on only. In the Presidential election of 1876 I voted my last Democratic vote for President. I hope to live to see a reformer elected President of our Government. I believe that time is near when the people will get their eyes opened. Bossism is dying slowly but surely. Populism is not as dead as the two old twin parties would like to see it.

I have much enjoyed the Magazine; but have for sometime been in doubt as to whether I should be warranted in letting you continue to send it. Its good strong meat has not disarranged my digestion; it’s not that, but it comes near—very near—to being a lack of circulation of the life current of the country on the little corner I occupy.

I was a railroad man over 20 years and was discharged, not for incompetency, but for propagating Populist doctrines. Vocally and with the pen I spread the words of Jefferson, Lincoln and many others. I posted them on bulletin boards and wrote some articles for the Dedham Transcript—near Dedham, Mass. I was laboring the last few years of my railroad service. However, my story is not so interesting as that of many. I have three sons railroaders—all scattered, and I have been living here alone on a little corner belonging to the oldest, locomotive engineer for the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. He reads your Magazine occasionally and I send one occasionally to the others.

I am one of the nineteen that voted for you in the 3rd ward of our city in the last Presidential election. I am of the same opinion still.

I desire to say to you that I have been reading your Magazine carefully ever since it was put in print and I am proud to say that it is a great eye-opener to our common laboring people.

Now, I will say to you that I am 78 years of age, was born in St. Clair County, Ala., was raised a farmer and I certainly know how to sympathize with our laboring farming people all over the country.

I am proud to see that we have such patriotic men as Thomas E. Watson going over our country educating our people in the cause of righteousness. Now I am happy to know that the people are waking up to know that justice and righteousness will prevail against fraud and rascality. I feel happy to believe that Tom Watson will be our next president. Now let us all get to work by showing up the light of truth to our misguided laboring people. Our forefathers taught us the principles of self-government—equal rights to all and special privileges to none. I would say that every voter should read Watson’s Magazine and vote for Watson for President.

It is the best paper published. I don’t know how you could improve it. I have been handing out my paper so you see I have obtained four old yellow dog subscribers. I hope to send more soon. I am one of the Old Guard. I am for Tom Watson against all comers. Tom and Hearst would make a team, so put me down for them.

Tom Watson’s Magazine is the best educator[105] that I read. I learn more by reading it than I do from all the daily papers I can get. Mr. Watson’s editorials are worth the subscription price. I believe Tom Watson is the greatest and grandest statesman in America today. With Watson for President we can smash the present National Banking system and abolish corporate railroad robbery and regain our freedom stolen from us through corrupt legislation both State and National. I am for Watson in 1908 for President. Can vote for him with a clear conscience without fear of ever regretting casting my vote. I am still proud I voted for him November, 1904. Give it to old Grover and the wiggle tails and trust. As ever I am for Watson and Liberty.

I have read every number of your most wonderful Magazine. I say wonderful because it has no equal in championing the cause of the people and in denouncing the big thieves who go scot free because they have plenty of money with which to bribe both judge and jury. For the last decade there has been a huge suspicion in the minds of the masses that both the old parties are dominated by the same Wall Street influences and your brilliant editorials have confirmed this suspicion. There was a huge suspicion that the leaders of the so-called Democratic Party in 1904 betrayed the people into the hands of Wall Street, and your editorials have certainly confirmed this suspicion. Indeed the “magazine with a purpose back of it” is having a mighty influence with every honest and fair-minded man. The literary features of your Magazine are excellent. The “Educational Department” alone is worth more than the subscription price. In fact your Magazine has no peer for the price in America.

Dear Tom, we trust your health will continue good, that you may continue to expound those sacred principles that have emanated from the Sage of Monticello.

I desire to express my appreciation of your superb Magazine. I have read every number and shall continue to read it as long as you are at the head of it. The only way to improve the Magazine is to put more of your own writings in it—say “The Life and Times of Jefferson” in serial form.

“The Life Worth Living” expresses my opinion of your Magazine. It teaches the true idea of scholar, statesman and patriot. Let us make a sacrifice of ourselves for the good of mankind and then we will be led out of the wilderness.

I have been in the fight 39 years and will be to the end. I am for principle and not party.

Public opinion should be so modified that a man desiring peace could remain peaceable without being branded coward. Had such been the case, young Branch’s life might have been spared.

Deduced from the papers it seems a dread of opprobrium had as much to do with young Merriweather’s acceptance of Branch’s challenge as irritation or resentment.

Have read your Magazine. Admire it very much and like the way the opinions of the people are voiced. Being one of them, I send you an opinion to voice.

I like your Magazine and realize that you are doing a great work for the people.

I consider that Tom Watson’s Magazine is doing a Godly work for humanity in teaching them to know how to discriminate between a democratic and an aristocratic government.

My husband and I have read your Magazine since its first issue, and we would not be without it. There is often a conflict as to who shall read it first though perhaps half a dozen other new magazines are lying about unread, for we take many. My husband, busy high-school teacher, says Tom Watson refreshes him after his hard day’s work. As he reads it, I can hear him chuckling occasionally, sometimes laughing heartily. We enjoy the editorials, especially, but it is all good. The fiction is of a high order. I hope to see your Magazine in our public library. Many more would like it if they knew of it, and a great many do most of their reading here in the public library.

My husband has his life insured in the Equitable—I hate the word. He did it to protect me and the children in case of his death. But now we are undecided whether to keep up the thing or not. Do you think the Equitable might fail to fulfill the contract in case of death? I should like to know your opinion. We have just paid three premiums and another will be due next spring. I have two little children and if my husband should be taken we should be in a dreadful plight. But we are trying to make other provisions. It is simply outrageous the way the people are treated. It fills one with helpless rage.

I was interested in the article “Phases of the Peonage Question.” Was the planter who “had to kill a negro” ever tried for it? I would like to know that planter’s name and address, so that I can follow his suit when it comes off. I am interested in this question. Won’t you request the author to give me this information, if you cannot give it. I prefer to have it through the pages of the Magazine.[106] With best wishes for your success in trying to bring about more just conditions.

I have read and reread every copy of Tom Watson’s Magazine from cover to cover and like each number better than the proceeding one. It is far the best of the fifteen magazines that I read each month and I would not do without it for twice the price.

Your editorials are convincing. Just keep on pumping the hot shot into the trusts and corporations for, if they are let alone, they will soon be taking the house and lot while the old man and boys are at home. They would not wait for the old lady to become a widow.

I have been one of your true friends, since I got acquainted with you as a Congressman. I love your style of calling things and people by their right names. Your paper is doing a noble work now, while the people are being confused over the late insurance frauds, railroad and banking scandals, trust, corporations and thefts from the honest common laborer, and they see it is worth while to do a little of their own thinking. I hope the day will soon dawn, when people will see the folly of relying on other men’s views not in accord with true reform.

I regard your magazine as one of the grandest magazines of the day and I, with many other loyal Georgians, regard it as a great privilege to do honor to the illustrious name of Tom Watson as the South’s Greatest Son. I voted for Watson for President, and am proud of my vote.

I regard Tom Watson’s Magazine as one of the best magazines published today for truth telling and divulging the hypocrisy of high official men. It now has plenty of cartoons. In fact it is the best I ever read.

I have a fixed arrangement with our news-dealer, T. P. Wright and Co., of Weston, by which I get it promptly; but for that, of course I would subscribe. I think, as some others do, that it is all right to encourage news-dealers, as many copies in this way pass into the hands of persons who otherwise would not become readers of it.

I have no suggestions to offer as to improvement. Tom will attend to that. What he don’t see “ain’t” worth discussing. His last reply to Keely, was worth to me all the magazine has cost me from March to January.

My chief regret is that Tom and W. J. B. are not pulling the same line. Hope they will soon.

I was among the first subscribers to your magazine. If spared by Father Time, will be among the last of its readers. Nothing better in point these days than Tom’s editorials.

I think 15 cents more appropriate price and think most who read it at all, or buy it, feel the same way. I would like to be on your list, but I move about so I must get it at news stands.

Seemingly few people have time for anything but getting a living. It is such a “bread and butter” world, do you wonder at the enthusiastic Socialists? There is plenty produced and the distribution is so unjust and cruel.

The million and a half of voters who were freed from party thralldom by the Populist movement have made it impossible for the Democratic Party to get back to Clevelandism, or for the Republican Party to “stand pat” on anything. The Senators who “grinned like Cheshire cats” at Senator Allen when he made charges against them, are having troubles of their own. The outlook is hopeful, and the law of disintegration is still at work.

I am, and intend to remain, a regular subscriber and reader of your fearless and honest Magazine, which, along with Post’s Public, are the only papers I care to read, and see you also consider Post’s paper “excellent.” I do not think you are just to Tolstoi, and so enclose you his own letter of April 27, 1894. In your editorial of October you confound “ownership” with “possession.” If you will read chapters XVIII and XIX of “Social Problems” the great essential difference will be clear to you. Neither George nor Tolstoi ever proposed any division or partition of the land—nothing of the sort. George indeed, in chapter II, book VIII of “Progress, and Poverty” makes this most plain, saying “I do not propose either to purchase or to confiscate private property in land.” But surely, Mr. Watson, if you have not, carefully, without bias read these incomparable works, you ought to do so; he expressly disclaims his “fundamental reform” as being any “panacea;” he fully recognizes and so does Tolstoi “that even after we do this, much will remain to do.” I am an old and very poor man of 73. Had I the means I’d buy and send you George’s “Condition of Labor.” No honest Christian after reading that little, but truly logical and ethically admirable “Open Letter to the Pope,” could say, much less maintain, that Nature (God) did not intend the Rent of Land—Land values—for the use and the support of human[107] Governments. I hope you will honestly “read, mark, learn and inwardly digest” George’s works. You then would see and own that “The Land Question is the Labor Question” and far more important than “The Money Question,” serious though that certainly is. I subscribe myself your earnest and true admirer.

Frankly—I enjoy reading Tom Watson’s Magazine, especially his editorials, more than anything else I read, for I agree with them and have for the past thirty years advocated them.

If the Magazine can be improved you know how to do it better than I do, but we readers should supply you the means by a united effort to double your subscription list. Whatever may be the alignment of political parties two years hence, the principles advocated by Mr. Watson will be represented by one of them. To you, then, reader of this letter in California, Florida, Minnesota or among the granite hills of New Hampshire, what will you do to help and do it NOW?

One to be placed in the local barber shop, to catch the eye of a waiting customer.

As nothing succeeds like success, please inform your readers of it, from time to time, for the cause is quite as much ours as yours.

I have always been an admirer of Tom Watson and am yet, as I am of W. J. Bryan. But while I am an admirer of these men I have no faith in their proposed remedies for the ills, both political and social, from which the proletariat of this great nation are suffering.

They both lean, and in a certain sense lead, in the right direction, as I think, but, alas, stop short of any effective measures for the permanent and general well being of the great mass of wealth creators in this great big trust-governed nation.

The leaning and leading of these men that I admire is in the primer of Socialism. But there it stops, and as long as it stops there it will, in my humble judgment, eventuate in no permanent good to the great body of our citizenship today so sorely in need of deliverance from the wealth-absorbing institutions and processes of these U. S. of Trustdom.

Equality of opportunity to grow and develop the very best there is in each child born into this world ought to be the certain inheritance of every American born child, and that you can never have with our present system of inheritance. Every worker ought to have free access to nature’s store house of wealth and then be guaranteed in the certain possession of what he brings therefrom and this can never be had with individual ownership of land.

I have been reading your Magazine since your first issue and I can assure you it is like good wine—it improves with age. You have got the right spirit of independence and you are putting practical issues before the public in a manner never before attempted. Keep up the good work and your efforts will soon be appreciated by the toilers who have been blind to their interests in the past, and kindly devote as much of your valuable time and space to organized labor and their interests as possible, and I can assure you it will be highly appreciated by a large number of your admirers, “union men.”

I have been reading your Magazine for three months and I find it is the best one that I have ever read and I will continue reading them. Of all the magazines that sell for ten cents, give me Tom Watson’s.

I have just finished reading in your valuable Magazine, “Is Money to Rule Us?” a subject that greatly interests me. What is money? It is nothing more than a little glittering dirt, taken from the bowels of the earth by man, rolled in little flat round pieces, and given the name of money. And we, who consider ourselves civilized, allow that glittering dirt to influence us far more than principle.

I have one of your first copies and would not enter any serious objections, but as to my own taste there are some of the fictitious articles that are not conducive to good information and might be substituted with better literature. I believe that the people have too many fancy fictitious falsehoods and long and tedious explanations which could be reduced to plain and simple facts.

I am a native of Georgia and I like the name Tom Watson and the cause he espouses a great sight better. Here is my motto: “Unity, Unity, Unity, Unity.”

I have read each number of Tom Watson’s Magazine since its publication—buying it at the book store.

Being a Democrat in politics, of course, I think it is the most interesting periodical published in the United States. I don’t know which to admire most—the principles it advocates or the brilliant manner in which they are presented. I hope some day to be able to read “The Life of Napoleon,” “The Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson,” and “The Story of France” by the editor of the[108] Magazine. I will say though, that I believe if all the reforms advocated by the Populists (who are nothing more or less than real Democrats) and the best plank in the platforms of the two old parties that do not conflict with the former, were adopted into law, that the condition of the lower strata of society would be benefited very little.

The reasons therefor would take up too much space in this letter but they are ably set forth in “Progress and Poverty” by Henry George, and in chapter nine, Social Statistics. In one of the early editions by Herbert Spencer, George’s remedy, explained in a few words, provides for confiscating rent for the purposes of governmental expenses and abolishing all taxation on labor. If anyone thinks the above change would hurt the farmer, he should read what Tom Johnson, the Mayor of Cleveland, O., has to say on the subject. A perfect monetary system and a transportation system run at cost, would only make much more wealth to be absorbed by the earth owners. The writer has been a loyal member of organized labor (Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers) since 1872, and he has come to the conclusion that no permanent relief can be expected in that direction even without taking taxation from productive effort.

All your editorials are well suited in style to interest the masses—all stubborn facts beyond contradiction. If the masses could be properly politically educated the great difficulty would be removed. In the way of reformation there are many obstacles to change our governmental affairs by a vote of the people. They seem to be hypnotised by the great money power of corporations. The press is almost entirely subsidized. The reader gets but one side of the question discussed by writing or orations. Each candidate of his party makes his speeches without joint debate, generally, and the result—but very few have but a vague idea of present conditions. Today is my birthday. Born the 9th of January, 1820, but I hope and trust I am to pass another Presidential election and I assure you, sir, it would be the grandest desire of my long life to see you seated in the Presidential chair in 1908.

In the January number of Watson’s Magazine, among the items of home news from November 9 to December 7, I notice that the Standard Oil Co. raised the price of refined oil ½ cent a gallon. That is equivalent to 21 cents a barrel. That was only one half of the story. They dropped the price of Crude Oil at the same time 3 cents a barrel, or from $1.61 to $1.58 per barrel, and not a paper or a magazine in the country as far as I have seen has a word to say about it. I do not think it of any use to comment on it to you. I have no idea you knew of it, or you would have been after them with a hot stick.

On page 268 in commenting on John D., you say he is the man who compelled the railroads, etc. It has always been a surprise to me that some of our statesmen as well as Ida Tarbell, Tom Lawson and other writers, talk about the Standard Oil Company compelling the railroads. I have had twenty-five years’ experience in the business and I say it is nothing of the kind. The railroads are the Standard Oil Co. Rockefeller, as far as the oil business and the railroads are concerned, is only a stool pigeon. If you want proof of it look at Pullman. When Pullman was alive everything was Pullman. When he died it was found he had only a one-sixth interest. If he could make the money he did on his one-sixth interest, what must the gang back of him have made? Now oil can be carried cheaper for long distances by rail than by pipe-line. What is the use of talking about the railroads being compelled? I do not believe this country has any more idea of what it is up against than a lot of babies.

I should like to see you. I know you are in New York often. Some time when I am in the city I will call at your quarters and see if you are there.

I have read every number of Watson’s Magazine. It is immense. There is nothing like it in the whole realm of literature. It is the only magazine dealing with political, social and economic questions, that tells the whole truth. It is the only one that is in position to afford indulgence in such a luxury as telling the whole truth.

It seems to me that Watson’s Magazine has met with greater favor than you could have anticipated. I wish that it had a million subscribers. I do not now take time, nor tax your patience by reading further, to mention some special excellencies of the Magazine.

Am still a Populist, but Populists are few here. The most of them got such a dose of Bryanism in ’96 that it killed the most of them and that was just what Bryan and his bunch wanted, and it worked well in these parts; yet some of the fools say Bryan is a good Populist. If Bryan is a Populist, I am not—no, not by a d—n sight! He stands for anything to get a big name and make a big blow. That’s all, and if the Populists ever expect to do anything they must let such cattle as W. J. alone. Nothing in him but wind and not Pop wind either. He is plumb full of plut. wind and that isn’t good for a Populist; or that is my view of the orator from the Platte. I hope to see a new revival along Populist lines in the near future.

I will try to convert some of the old fellows. They all admit we are right, but yet they still vote the old ticket. That is mighty poor logic. The great trouble, as I see it, is this.[109] The prejudice that grew out of the War still sticks in the people, and as long as the Democrats and Republicans can hold the reins, just so long will that prejudice remain with the people either one killed. I was a Confederate soldier but I have no love for either of the old parties. I claim it was the war Democrats that licked us Johnnies—no, not licked, but overpowered us.

I am one of the charter members of your Magazine and I have been handing it out to some mighty good men for them to read. I am forty-eight years old and have read a heap and I believe that I will be inside of the truth when I say that there is more good sound sense in one of your Magazines than in all of the newspapers that I ever read outside of the Missouri World and the paper that you used to publish. I took it as long as you ran it. I have followed you ever since you were in Congress. I got a couple of your campaign books at that time, voted for you every time I got a chance to. I would rather cast ten thousand votes for Tom Watson than one for the sainted Bryan. I wouldn’t give Tom Watson for all the Bryans that could stand on Nebraska soil. I don’t think he is good stuff for reform, or for the plutocrats either. I will close by saying that I think Tom Watson’s Magazine is the finest in the world, and I have never seen anything that would equal it for an educator. Give it to them, Tom. I believe the boys are leaning your way.

I thought enough of your Magazine to send you a renewal of my subscription which will carry me through to April, 1907. I have always admired Mr. Watson as a writer, and as long as he writes as well as during these last two or three years I shall continue to read his stuff.

I admire some of his politics but am not a third party man, nor am I populistic in my views. I am an independent, I presume, or “on the fence” ready to fall in line with an honest party, one foreign to the present.

I see no reason why the Magazine should not reach into the millions. It is good enough, fair enough, bold enough, and honest enough to give each and every one a fair deal. Tell Tom to hit Roosevelt and he’ll please me.

You are doing splendid work with the Magazine. I was chairman of the State Central Committee of this State in 1896, the year Bryan ran the first time, and the year he destroyed the People’s Party. When he swallowed the gold standard, Parker, gold telegram, boots and all, he lost the last vestige of respect I had for him. He has been weighed in the balance and found wanting.

I have never stated to you my position on the money question. You say “Mr. Hauser seems to think that there is substantially no difference between the Socialist position on money and that taken by the Populist.” Yes, there is some difference. The Pops are wedded to the legal tender system which is the only sane system, too safe and sound and just for the exploiters. I am a Socialist and my position is this on the money question. I would have legal tender only till the co-operative commonwealth is established. Then I would use labor checks to denote the price of a given article. For instance, if it took John Smith 30 minutes to make a hat, 30M. would be the cost in labor, and hence would be the price of the hat. So Dick Jones, who labors 30 minutes and makes a pair of shoes, could take his time check and exchange it for the hat. In Rev., 18 chap. and 11 verse, you will find this: “For no man buyeth their merchandise any more.” That time is coming and it looks as if it was nearly here. The Ethics of Socialism are the same as the Bible and are therefore right. Therefore Socialism is irrefutable.

I know the Pops and Soc. ought to unite, but whether they will or not is the question. If the Pop Party represents the workingman’s interest then the working people in that party and the working people in the Soc. Party should harmonize their differences. When they become sensible enough they will. The capitalists have laid the example for the workingman. He must do or be done forever.

I want to work to get all the plain people to concentrate forces regardless of party lines.

I reckon the Lord only knows how much I rejoice while reading the Missouri World and Watson’s Magazine, and in each of them see that we yet have men who have the wisdom and ability to turn on the light and are not afraid to do it. Yes, men who are veteran patriots, worthy of all the honor that has ever been conferred on them and to whom this American government will owe lasting praise and gratitude for its salvation. Now, sir, I don’t believe I have said too much so far and what I say more than this is real. I now feel like repeating the words of Paul Jones when asked if he was not ready to surrender, “I have just begun to fight,” and I tell you the truth when I say that I have been saying this for thirteen years. But let me tell you, and all who may see this, the meanest, dirtiest thing I have done politically in all these thirteen years. Right now some of the Old Guard are ready to say “He voted for Bryan and Fusion.” Well, yes, I did. The fact is I didn’t know as much then as I do now and I wanted relief, and I got it. Yes, got relieved of a chance to[110] vote for reform until the last Presidential election when I got to vote, and not only to vote but work also for the election of our gallant, patriotic, country-loving, people-serving and never-surrender Thomas E. Watson. And if it is the Lord’s will I pray that he may not, as our brave L. L. Polk, fall before the great battle is fought, or rather finished, but that he may live to see his ambition realized and all the down trodden and corporation ridden laborers and producers once more free and enjoying the fruits of their labors, and this government once more in the hands of the people.

I have just returned from Foulkner Co., a county south of where I live, and while there I met one of my old Populist friends and he began to tell me about receiving one of Watson’s Magazines, and, said he, “It is the best thing politically I ever saw,” and, “In a short while after that they registered my name as a subscriber and I have been reading it ever since.” He then went on to say that Dr. Snoddy of Saltillo has received the November number, and said the doctor says it is the richest and ablest political magazine he ever saw. So I see how much good we all may do by sending out Populist literature among the people.

Ed. J. Chastain, and I went to work and got 5 subscriptions for that champion of the people’s cause. If I was able to I would send, or have sent, Tom Watson’s Magazine to 20 men here in this country. Yes, and I believe if Congress was creating money and regulating the value thereof as the Constitution says they should, I would be able to do this. Yes, and not only that, but 20 men would have the money if we had a just division of the wealth that we produce, but when I ask a man to subscribe for the Magazine he says, “I would love to have it but I am not able,” and so it is. So now, you poor man, see where we are at. The money changers and money creators have got us now where we can’t afford to spend a little of the little money, we can get for something that will tell us how to find where we are at. I believe the day is now dawning on our American land. Our great chiefs and hypocritical leaders, who have been looking across the briny deep with pitying eyes, are now beginning to feel a little muddled and puzzled at the turn things are taking on this side, and I feel like the dirt will be finally scraped off deep enough so that enough of the deceived wealth producers, real government supporters, can see the greatness of our (Populist) claims and the injustice of the favoritism that does now exist as shown up by our noble watchmen, and elect men to steer the ship of state once more so as to save this one glorious American government to the people who pay the tax to run it. And now, in conclusion, let me say that it seems like we are doing nothing here in Arkansas; at least it appears so to me. Yet I think if we had an organizer to go ahead, that many of the bewildered Democrats, and Republicans too, would fall into line and march with us to victory. I see that Benty has been appointed national organizer. If he should see this I hope he will let us know when we may expect him in our part of Arkansas. I live in Van Buren County.

I am aiming to take and read and study the inestimable Tom Watson’s Magazine just as long as I can raise a dollar to pay for it, and I am going to get all to subscribe for it I can, and sometime in the future I want to write something for the benefit of preachers, as there is much depending on them just now.

I have been purchasing the Magazine from our news agent since the publication began, and have all the back numbers up to and including the November issue. I can’t afford to lose a single issue as I desire to keep them for reference in the future. Our news agent sold all of his December supply before I called.

I quit the Democratic party when Cleveland demanded and compelled a Democratic Congress to finish the Republican financial policy by repealing the Sherman Silver law, and selling bonds to supply a gold reserve in the treasury, and I have been a Populist from that day to this.

Of course, I have been left almost alone since W. J. B. and his followers appropriated the bulk of our platform timbers and in that way captured and allured thousands of our good reformers back into the so-called Democratic fold, and things have looked gloomy and lonesome around the old camp-fires most of the time, but I can’t get my consent to undertake to keep up with the shifting peregrinations of the Democratic band-wagon under its latter-day leadership. So I am content to remain with the faithful mid-roaders who have had the courage to resist the allurement of the fleshpots of modern Democracy.

I am by profession a lawyer and while I voted the old party ticket and supported all of its nominees, regardless of their fitness for the positions they were running for, I had a good patronage and was doing fairly well, but when I threw off the shackles and refused to obey the party lash, scores of my old friends withdrew their patronage and suddenly concluded that I had lost my influence with the courts and juries of the county, and joined in a hue and cry to ruin my business and by this means to force me to at least be quiet in reference to my political convictions. Some of my ancestors were Irish and some Scotch and I was born and grew to manhood in Kentucky, and of course the blood that runs in my veins and the atmosphere that I breathed in my young life combined has developed a disposition that revolts at coercion in matters of conscience and the right to speak and vote as I see the right to be.

However, I have lived these things down in a measure, and am still earning a living for myself and family in spite of persecutions,[111] and I enjoy the privilege of occasionally reminding the hide-bound Democrats of their inconsistencies and of asking them what position their party occupies today and what its position will be in 1908. Of course they don’t know just where they are at now and no prophet could afford to predict where they will be even next year, and so they are mute and can only reply by a sickly smile.

I often wonder how much longer this rotten fabric can hold together. Of course a party with no fixed principles or common policies, can never succeed in gaining control of the government machinery and they ought not to, for no one can foresee or even surmise what the results would be with such a mass of inharmonious elements undertaking at the same time to steer the course of the ship of state. The Populo-Democrats would pull hard on the oars in one direction and the Republico-Democrats would strive to pull the vessel in the opposite direction, and of course the results would be “confusion worse confounded.”

I can see but one way of hope and that comes from the wide-spread disposition to condemn crimes in high places, and to break away from partisan bossisms throughout the land. This may be the breaking of old party chains that will ultimately result in independent political thought and action, and culminate in an era of honesty in the administration of public affairs and also in private dealings among men. At least I hope so.

(1) No. $346,000,000 still circulate, much to the annoyance of the National Bankers.

(3) The law declares that they are “money” and guarantees their payment; hence they pass as money, but are not, strictly speaking, Legal Tender. The basis of their circulation is the Credit of the Government. The people have to pay taxes to meet the interest on the bonds in order that the National Bankers shall have the vast profit and power of using the Government Credit for their private gain.

(4) The privilege of taking silver bullion to the mint and having it turned into coin on the same terms that are granted to the owners of gold bullion.

(6) The Public Debt, at the time it was contracted, was payable in lawful money. The same motives which led the money-Kings to impair the credit of the Greenback with the “Exception Clause,” led Congress to change the law to the effect that the bonds should be payable in Coin. This of course meant either silver or gold, at the option of the Government. Another step was taken and the bonds are now payable in gold.

(7) Because, under the rulings of the Secretary of the Treasury, the Gold Reserve can be drawn upon to keep silver and paper currency up to the Gold Standard. I presume that National Bankers prefer to keep their gold because it is the money of final payment.

(8) Commercial usage, and the banks. Foreign coins have no legal status. Their value and currency is a matter of private agreement.

Yes: I fully agree with you. The Presidential Bee which buzzes in my bonnet is a feeble little thing, and with the help of a few stalwart friends I think it can be controlled.

Yes: I looked into your book and think it is great. As you say it is the only book which intimates that there are two sides to Fire Insurance.

I have been thinking here of late that it is highly probable that some Fire Insurance Companies are grander rascals than some Life Insurance Companies. Your book deepens that suspicion. $25.00 is little enough for the book.

(1) I find that McEllicott’s Debater is out of print, but if you will send fifty cents to F. E. Grant, 23 West 42nd street, New York City, he will mail to you an excellent, up-to-date book which covers about the same ground as the McEllicott Debater.

Mr. Grant is an unwearied, indefatigable, never-say-die bookseller, and he makes a speciality of getting all sorts of books for all sorts of people.

(2) Get a thorough High School Education and let the dead languages go to thunder. If you want to learn any other language than English, study French.

P.S. Yes: there is a good deal of use in studying ancient history. It is worth a great deal for a man to have a clear general idea of what was done on this earth before he got here.

You don’t want to feel bad because of your ignorance when gentlemen with whom you may be talking refer to Semiramis, Alcibiades, Cyrus, Alexander, Cæsar and the rest of those ancient celebrities. Oh, yes: read up on history, ancient and modern, so that when you associate with intelligent people you will know what they are talking about.

(1) To answer with any fulness would require more space than we can now spare. The Code Napoleon follows, in a general way, the Roman Civil Law, while most State Codes in the United States are founded upon the Common Law of England.

(2) The war between Russia and Japan; the separation of Norway and Sweden; the defeat of Clericalism in France; the quasi-alliance between Great Britain and France; the overthrow of the Tory ministry in England and the appointment of a Labor Agitator as a member of the Cabinet; the “butting in” of the German Emperor in Moroccan affairs; the labor and peasant revolutionary movements in Russia.

(3) The Hearst campaign in New York City; the Roosevelt peace; the Life Insurance revelations; the Lawson articles on Frenzied Finance; the President’s declaration for Federal regulation of railways; the set-back to political Bossism in the State and City elections last Fall; the establishment of this Magazine.

(4) Zebulon Vance of North Carolina; George G. Vest of Missouri; L. Q. C. Lamar of Miss., John. T. Morgan of Ala., Benj. H. Hill of Ga.; James Z. George of Miss.; Roger Q. Mills of Tex.; James B. Beck of Ky.

(5) The War Period is a distinct epoch; the Reconstruction Period is another, and this period may be said to have ended when President Hayes withdrew the troops from the South.

The election of a so-called Democrat (Cleveland) over a Republican (Blaine) may also be said to have marked the advent of another epoch.

The McKinley-Mark Hanna dispensation was also an epoch and will take its place in history as the high-water mark of class-legislation, Trust making and rotten politics.

Yes; Roosevelt seems to be making himself an epoch—just what sort of one neither he nor anybody else seems to know.

New Zealand has what is practically the 8 hour law. In other words, from one end of the colony to the other 8 hours is recognized as the Standard Working Day, both in public and private service.

No change would have to be made in our Constitution to make such a law general in this country.

Congress and the States have just as much legal right to make an Eight Hour Day as they have to make a Thanksgiving Day, or other Holiday.

Referring to page 108 of November number of the Magazine, I find that our correspondent was informed that the Government made good to the National Banks all old notes which were worn out, mutilated or destroyed, and that this was done by virtue of Section 24 of the National Bank Law.

Old bank notes which become worn out, mutilated, or destroyed are replaced by new notes. The Comptroller of the Currency issues the new notes under and by virtue of the law. The entire National Bank act is a disgrace to the Statute Book, and section 24 is simply one of its clauses.

(1) I call Napoleon a democrat because he made war upon caste and privilege, upon Kings and aristocracies, and because he favored universal education, equal opportunities for all, and equal rights for all.

Born in Corsica, and coming to France to be educated for the army in a royal school, Napoleon could hardly be the kind of democrat the average American boy so naturally becomes.

France was ruled by a King and aristocracy, just as other European nations were. Monarchical institutions, hundreds of years old, stood on every hand.

The Revolution crashed through them all, and prostrated them all, but the Revolution could not sustain itself. Reaction set in, and there was danger of a Bourbon restoration.

Napoleon struck in at “the psychological moment,” and became the people’s King. Personally he became despotic, but his work was always democratic.

I call him a democrat because he made it possible for the poorest boy in France to advance to the highest pinnacle of glory; because he lifted the boycott against men of obscure birth and made merit the test of distinction; because he abolished the outrageous privileges of feudal nobility in every part of Europe which came under his control; because he rebuked the bigotry of priesthood and punished a clerical Ass who had insulted the corpse of an actress; because he scornfully repulsed the flatterers who wished to “make up” a fine ancestral tree for him, and proudly dated his nobility from the date of his first great achievement; because he studied to improve the condition of the common people; because he tried to make school-teaching practical—that is he tried to have his schools fit every boy for the career which that boy’s talent was suited for; because he equalized taxation; because he based his administration and his Code upon the broad righteous principle of “Equal Rights for all and special privileges for none.”

(2) An oversight. Green’s “Short History” is a classic and every library should contain it.

(3) The Bourbons had broken the pledges which they had made as a condition precedent to their being restored. Not until Talleyrand and the other traitors had besought the help of the Czar Alexander, would Louis XVIII even go through the form of granting the reforms which had been promised.

When the Allied armies withdrew, the Bourbon reaction set in with a headlong rush. The veteran soldiers of the army were affronted brutally by young aristocratic officers who had never smelled gunpowder. Napoleon’s officers who had won renown on scores of battle-fields were contemptuously maltreated. The wives of the officers were snubbed by the high-born dames of the old nobility.

The revolutionary and Napoleonic system was being uprooted in various directions, and the people of France realized that the[116] Bourbons meant to restore the Old Order with all of its brutal inequalities and injustice and oppression. The people saw that the Bourbon restoration meant once more the galling chains of the noble and the priest. Hence, when Napoleon came from Elba, the masses of the French hailed him wildly. They followed him with mad cries of “Hang the priests!” The Masses clamored for arms, asking to fight and die for The Man, Napoleon. Even after Waterloo, they clung to him frantically, tumultuously rallying to him, and begging him to give them guns. Had Napoleon frankly thrown himself into the hands of the masses of the French people, he could have hung the Talleyrands, Fouchés and Marmonts, and driven the Allies out of France.

But Napoleon was a soldier of the Military Academy. He had no faith in the fighting quality of “the mob.”

Another hundred years had to elapse before the Boers of South Africa could show to the world that if your mob is the right sort of mob, and has the best guns, and can shoot with the best aim, it can knock your painfully disciplined army into a cocked hat.

Yes: Clarence Darrow is a writer of marvelous power. Read his “An Eye for an Eye,” and you will realize that the Chicago lawyer has all the genius of Tolstoy when it comes to making a story of thrilling interest out of the commonest human materials.

An author (Bolton Hall) who has devoted much study to our economic situation states these producing citizens annually create wealth to the amount of $19,000,000.

You can figure out for yourself how much each worker creates. Ten per cent of our population get almost all the annual production of wealth.

The Republican who told you those things about English wages did not know what he was talking about. The idea of a railroad engineer getting four dollars per month, and factory hands being paid five cents per day! The figures are so ridiculous that even a Protection-soaked Republican ought to know better.

If high Tariffs benefit the laborer, why is it that workmen get better wages in free-trade England than in high-Tariff France, Italy and Germany? If high-Tariffs give the benefit to the laborer why is it that the Salvation Army had to save the factory hands at Fall River, Mass., from starvation, by ladling out free soup? The best paid laborers in the United States are the negroes of the South who raise cotton, a free trade product. The laborer gets a larger share of the cotton he produces than any employee in any protected industry.

In England the wages paid to factory hands are at least equal to those paid in the United States when the amount of the wage is compared with the amount and quality of the product.

Ask your Republican friend if he does not know that his great Apostle, James G. Blaine, made this assertion some twenty years ago.

There is a huge army of the poor and the[117] unemployed in England, but it is not due to Free trade.

(3) The host of non-producers who use the government as a means of getting their support and their wealth by oppressing the producers.

The Government could easily establish a Bureau of Loans, and could adopt a business-like system of lending money direct to the people.

This principle has been put in successful operation in Great Britain, Norway, Greece and other foreign countries.

Not long ago, the firm of N. A. Harris & Co., of Chicago, New York and Boston, put out a Circular offering for sale “Sanitary District of Chicago” bonds to the amount of $500,000. As a recommendation of these bonds, Harris & Co., declared in the Circular that the United States Government had accepted the bonds as security for Government deposits.

In other words, the National Banks have been borrowing the people’s money out of the Treasury on the faith of these bonds. Of course, the banks paid no interest.

Now does it not occur to you that the Government could as well lend some of that money to you at four or six percent interest upon security equally good, as to lend it to a favored few without interest?

I do not believe that Mr. Cleveland profited personally by the sale of the bonds. He acted stupidly and he acted in violation of law. The whole transaction had an ugly look because Morgan had recently been his client and Stetson (who drew the contract) had recently been his partner. But I do not think he acted corruptly.

Oh, no. He sold them for 103½, and Morgan, Belmont, Rothschild & Co. immediately realized 112¼.

I would advise the reading, by the members of the club, of such books as the following: “Politics in New Zealand,” “Poverty,” by Robert Hunter; “The Menace of Privilege,” by Henry George; “Letters and Addresses of Thomas Jefferson,” recently published by The Unit Book Publishing Co., New York, “Bossism and Monopoly,” by Spelling.

These books will not cost a great deal, and they will give you a very complete survey of our political and economic condition.

My conception of a Trust is: A combination of individual or corporate capital which practically establishes such a monopoly that it can control the output, dictate the price, and crush competition.

Doctor Booker Washington, spoiled by[118] too much praise, got too gay in his statements concerning the rapid progress of the negro in civilization. The Doctor’s idea seemed to be that as soon as you caught a young African, washed him, combed him, put clothes on him, and taught him how to read, write and cipher, he was at once civilized.

I knew better than this, and the Doctor does now. He will be more particular how he claims superiority for the negro race, hereafter. Especially since his brethren in Santo Domingo have given that “Republic” another push hellwards.

On that island, one of the most favored spots on the globe, the negroes had the advantage of beginning with an elegant civilization which the French had taught them.

The negroes expelled the French, set up a government of their own, and the record of their republic has been one of the foulest blurs on the history of the human race. They get worse and worse and worse. There are not a sufficient number of whites in Santo Domingo to keep the negroes straight: in this country there are. That makes all the difference.

(2) If I were President and could do away with the Gold standard, restoring the currency to the constitutional status, depriving the National Banks of the privilege of creating paper currency, and exercising that power directly by the use of Treasury Notes, why should the banks “totter and fall?”

A good many of them have tottered and fallen; many more of them are going to “totter and fall.” Why? Because the system is rotten. Thousands of individual banks and bankers are as sound as gold dollars, but the system isn’t, for the reason that too much bank-made currency, of various sorts, is afloat; the line of credits has been lengthened until it is about to snap; wild-cat speculation is rampant; and thousands of banks are dabbling in business which isn’t legitimate banking.

I am in favor of Banks of Deposit and Discount—so long as we cannot get Postal Savings Banks.

But I am opposed to Banks of Issue—that is, banks which issue their promises to pay and get rich on what they owe. These are the National Banks. Render to Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; restore to the Government the sovereign power of issuing paper currency.

Depositors would not be endangered by our policy of expanding the currency; the more money in circulation, the more certain the depositors would be to get paid.

(3) In my Message to Congress, I would recommend Postal Savings Banks, for the reasons stated in the December issue of this Magazine, page 231.

The kind of money I would recommend would be that which the Fathers fixed in the Constitution, and which the practice of a hundred years seemed to render “irrevocable”—a system which had the sanction of Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Monroe, Jackson and Lincoln.

The Constitutional system of currency, as shown by the law and the practice of Presidents, and the decisions of the Supreme Court, is Silver, Gold, Treasury Notes, and the silver dollar was the unit of money.

Congress sold itself to Bank of England agents, and changed our system of currency to suit European financiers.

Mr. August Belmont, of New York, could tell you how much Rothschild money his bank spent to bring about the change.

And I hold in my desk sworn evidence that Ernest Seyd, Bank of England Agent, spent $484,000 for the same purpose.

The fight for reform will never stop till you have wiped out that shame, and have put our financial system back on the sound basis built by the Fathers.

If the Corn husking issue has been settled, please hustle for those subscriptions if you would make us happy.

The National Banks now have outstanding notes to the amount of $550,000,000 in round numbers. If the privilege of issuing these notes as money were taken away from the National Banks, the paper money now in circulation would be reduced to $550, 000,000. Suppose the Government should issue an equal sum in its own notes to take the place of the National Bank notes—how could the Government put its own notes into circulation?

(1) It could immediately put the entire[119] amount in circulation by applying it to the part payment of the public debt. We are the richest nation on earth: the richest that history knows anything about—yet we keep ourselves mortgaged with a perpetual National Debt because the favored few demand bonds to bank on. If National Banks were abolished, as real Democracy always sought to do, there would be no further excuse for keeping the Bond-Mortgage on the National estate.

(2) It could put the entire amount $550, 000,000, in circulation gradually by paying the national expenses with it.

(3) It could put the money in circulation by building Government railroads with it.

(4) And my opinion is that the whole sum could be benevolently assimilated by that Panama Canal business which the sleek Cromwell and his Varilla unloaded on the impulsive Roosevelt.

Second Question: Yes. We wage no war on private banks. As long as banks confine themselves to legitimate banking, loans, discounts &c., they are not a source of national danger. It is only when a certain class of bankers, like the National Bankers, usurp the Governmental function by supplying the country with money, that they are, as Jefferson said, more dangerous to Republican institutions than standing armies.

As the cost of living decreased, the purchasing power of wages would increase, and every dollar now paid to Labor would command for the laborer a greater quantity of necessaries, comfort and luxuries of life.

How could you suppose that the wages of workers will go down when the masses of the people wrest the Government out of the hands of the plutocrats? Public ownership of public utilities cannot be brought about until the people rout the Privileged Few at the polls, when that day comes do you fear that the people will cut down their own wages as the Privileged Few have done?

Not many weeks ago the price of cotton advanced. The farmers of the South had suffered so long and so much from low prices that they organized. The result was a rise in the price of raw cotton.

How did the Protected Manufacturers of New England meet this increase in the cost of raw material?

The Government reports show that the manufacturers have been earning twice as much on their invested capital as the farmers had earned. It was fair for the farmers to contend for a juster division. Hence their organization.

The manufacturers saw that they would lose a part of the unjust profits which they were reaping from the Protective system, and they promptly cut down—their fat dividends? Heavens! No. They cut down the wages of the factory boys and girls, men and women, who are protected by our blessed Tariff.

Now if the people ruled this country, if there was no Privilege, no Monopoly, no taxing of some to enrich others, no granting of Governmental powers to private Corporations, no corrupt alliance between Commerce and Government, you may bet your bottom dollar that fat dividends would be cut, before men, women and children would be desolated by a reduction of wages.

The negative side of that question might draw arguments of facts from “Social Progress” by Dr. Josiah Strong, “The History of the People of the United States” by McMaster. To keep your mind clear from haunting doubts, however, avoid such books on the other side as “The Tramp at Home,” by Lee Meriwether, “American Pauperism,” by Isidor Ladoff, “The Menace of Privilege,” by Henry George, “Poverty,” by Robert Hunter.

It would be well also, not to read of the Life Insurance revelations, nor the facts which disclose how corporations corrupt and control the politicians.

There are ten different books indicated in this formidable list, whereas the subjects enumerated are all treated with sufficient fullness in the text-books which I have heretofore suggested to law students, viz:

My election to Congress was due to my support of the Ocala Platform of the Farmer’s Alliance, and when the Indianapolis Convention of 1891 instructed all Congressmen so elected to stand by the principles of the Alliance regardless of the Caucus dictation of political parties, I declined to enter the Democratic Congressional Caucus in Washington.

(1) I was immediately denounced in the bitterest terms by nearly every Democratic paper in Georgia; yet I could not have done otherwise without betraying the Alliance-men who had elected me.

I did not join the Alliance as so many time-servers did; I remained on the outside, but they trusted me so implicitly that I received the solid Alliance vote. How, then, could I walk into the Caucus trap, to be silenced and tied by a majority vote which was dead against the Alliance demands?

During the summer of 1891, I had held a series of great public meetings throughout my District, and these Conventions of the voters overwhelmingly and enthusiastically instructed me to stand by the principles rather than the party, if the time came when it was necessary to choose the one course or the other. Then came the organization of the People’s Party, after it had become plain that neither of the old parties meant to give the people relief.

I went with the People’s Party because my election had been due to those principles, and because the same overwhelming majority of Democrats who had elected me had gone into the People’s Party, and because I had no hope whatever of getting the reforms inside the Democratic Party.

(2) Neither the Republican nor the Democratic party has ever advocated “Government Ownership of Public Utilities.”

Government ownership of Railroads is the rule on the Continent. In England the Imperial Government owns the Telegraphs and Telephones. The Government Parcels Post does the work of an Express Company. Municipal railroads, telegraphs, telephones, lighting plants, water systems, laundries, bathing establishments, bakeries, etc., etc., are in operation all over Great Britain and all over Europe.

We are the laggards, we smart folks of the United States. We are the only nation of civilized cattle on earth which the Corporations find easy prey.

My opinion is that a majority of the people of the North, East and West have become satisfied to let the South exercise the same right to settle her domestic affairs that they practice in settling theirs.

Only a minority—some members of which try to make up in noise what it lacks in numbers—cling to the old prejudices, passions, and policy of interference. Mr. Ernest Crosby—a hot partisan for negro rights—has recently published a “Life of Garrison,” and very boldly admits that while Slavery was wrong the war which was waged upon the South was also wrong.

Ten years ago such a sentiment would have drawn volleys of protest from the North, the East and the West.

There are no protests now; and I shouldn’t wonder if a majority of the intelligent people of those sections would admit that while Slavery was a moral wrong, that it had been practiced by both sections, given a solemn Constitutional sanction as a condition precedent to the Union, that the South had a right to withdraw from a voluntary compact whose terms had not been kept, and that the war which was made upon her to force her back into the Union was a colossal mistake and wrong.

(5) Because of the tyranny of party name and party organization. Southern Democrats dare not vote independently.

(6) I think they begin to understand it. The more they see of the negro in Mass, the better they will realize our problem. As long as they seem to think that all the Southern negroes are as nice and wise as Booker Washington, they will, of course, find it difficult to get our point of view of the race question. But they will gradually come to see that there is only one Booker Washington and that he isn’t doing anything more than running a large school which any ordinary white College President could run on one half the money which Doctor Washington rakes in—why opinion will change. The doings of the negroes in San Domingo—where there are no mean Southern whites to beat, cheat, or lynch them—will also have influence in opening the eyes of the world as to what the negro, in Mass, actually is.

The idea that the negro is merely a white gentleman whom the Almighty inadvertently painted black will disappear, in time.

(7) The “suppressed vote” in some of the states of the Union appears to be quite large and the number of illiterate, criminal and incompetent voters is likewise great. A square deal would demand that whatever rule is applied to the South should be applied to the others.

1896, Democratic Candidates, Bryan and Sewall. People’s Party Candidates: Bryan and Watson.

1900, Democratic Candidates: Bryan and Stevenson. People’s Party Candidates: Barker and Donnelly.

(4) No. Concentration of wealth in the hands of a few goes on at a more frightful rate than ever. Five thousand men now own one-sixth of the entire wealth of the Union. One man, J. D. Rockefeller, could buy the State of Georgia, give it away, and then have enough to buy it back.

(1) Money that is “redeemable” in other money is not my idea of money. A dollar is not redeemed by swapping another dollar for it. The only redemption of the dollar which amounts to anything beneficial is when a debt, public or private, is redeemed by paying it off in legal tender. I redeem my promissory note by paying the amount of money it calls for: I redeem all my other dues and debts in the same way. Nothing is redeemed when a gold dollar is given for a silver dollar, or a metallic dollar exchanged for a paper dollar. That method of fooling the people will go out of fashion as the people become educated. All money is absolute fiat money. That is, the law makes the money. God made no money. Nature made no money. Evolution made no money. The law takes raw material and makes money out of it, just as the lumberman takes a log and makes plank or shingles out of it.

The Government fiat makes gold money, makes silver money, makes nickel money, makes copper money. It would with equal ease and certainty make iron or paper money.

Whenever the law says that a paper dollar shall go just as far, as a legal tender, as the gold dollar goes, the paper will suit me and you just as well as the gold.

(4) I do not clamor for gold and silver only. We demand the money of the Constitution which has been taken away from us by venal Congressmen who were bribed by Wall Street and the European financiers.

This is but another form of the old question of getting the paper money into circulation.

(5) Could establish a Department which would lend it to the people, direct, at a low interest, as is done in Europe.

In Norway and Sweden the Government lends money to the farmers on their land, on long time, at low interest. These banks have been most beneficial and successful.

In Germany the Government bank lends money on land security, directly to the land-owner.

The only reason in the world why our people cannot secure similar advantages, is that we are cruelly oppressed by corporation tyranny and greed.

Last month I spoke of how easy it is to let a light day tire you as much as a heavy one. If you can do three-thirds in one busy day why does it take all another day to do two-thirds and tire you about as much in one case as in the other? Why didn’t you have a third of it for your own amusement or improvement? What became of that third? It is all just another proof that it pays to do a thing with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your body. If you had worked as earnestly the second day as you did the first, you would have done the day’s work, had a third of it to yourself, and been no more tired than you were the first. It wasn’t because you were lazy—you just “had the time” and put it all on the daily work instead of taking some of it for yourself.

I can hear a small chorus of objections to the above. Wait a minute. No one knows better than I that the housework for one day is often different in kind and amount from that of the day before; that one’s strength is often not the same two days in succession; that there are extras and specials and interruptions; that the baby may sleep most of one day and cry most of the next; that many things depend on the mother; that some women really have all they can do day in and day out and year after year and work at high speed all the time until they die of it; that often what fits one case does not fit another. I know all that. But the principle is true! And nine times out of ten that principle applied to your own case would help you physically, mentally and morally. And those about you.

I venture that this person, however well she knows it, hasn’t been applying it. No there’s nothing new in it. That’s just where the danger lies—it is so old a principle that we forget all about it.

“Yes,” say a dozen more, “you are right. That person ought to apply it and profit by it. If we had work like hers we could accomplish a lot by it. But we haven’t, more’s the pity, and our work is such that we can’t do that way with it.”

There lies the real trouble. As in everything else, we can see how others can make an improvement, but when it comes to our own case, why, that is quite different, because this and because that and because the other. The funny part of it is that these other people, while they are blind about themselves as we are about ourselves, can see very easily how we could improve matters. Of course other people generally think they could improve our methods much more than they really could, but it is equally true that we think they could improve it less than they really could. Two heads are better than one, and it does help to see ourselves as others see us.

I don’t believe many busy women can save as much as a third from their lighter days, but I do firmly believe that nearly every one of you can save some part of it. Maybe it is only half an hour, but much can be done in even that little space several times a week. What we need in our daily work is more generalship. Your body is like an army blundering around without a leader unless you guide it with your head. That is what your head is for—to save your body and help it accomplish more. The trouble is that we all get into a rut too easily and go on doing our work in the same old way for years. We quit thinking, quit using generalship.

What each of us needs to do many times a year is to sit down and carefully consider her own work. Does too much time go to one thing and too little to another? Can we omit any of it without harm to anybody? Is there some way of doing this duty more quickly without slighting it? Would such a simple thing as changing the height of the sink, the kitchen table, the wash-bench, save time, strength and aching back? Will a plain shelf or two along the kitchen wall make work easier? Would an hour spent on a carefully planned rearrangement of the kitchen utensils and supplies save many hours during the coming months? There is no end to the useless things one can buy for a kitchen, yet there are many appliances and arrangements that, some in one household, some in another, will pay for themselves many times over in a year. Read advertisements, papers, magazines—you can glance through the advertisement pages in a very few minutes—perhaps go to demonstrations by agents of practical devices for lightening[124] housework. Notice what your friends are using. Look much and buy little. But keep yourself awake to new ideas, and now and then when you are sure of your ground adopt some of them. Where there is no outlay of money necessary try frequent experiments, but not many at a time. If any of your family or friends are of an inventive turn of mind, call them in for consultation. The most valuable inventions are the simplest ones.

You cannot believe all you read or hear about, but you can generally believe your own eyes if you use them carefully. Go to those of your friends who seem to manage their work well. If they have any utensils or appliances that actual experience has proved good investments, note them carefully. Maybe you or some of your family can make something that answers the same purpose. If not, sleep on the question and if your judgment still says that it will pay in the end to get it, try hard to raise the money. Even on a basis of dollars and cents it may pay in the long run. And it is generally a question of more than money—a question of body, mind and soul.

Note carefully how other good housekeepers manage their work. There is a practical study for you! You have probably watched them many times before this, but now watch them with seeing eyes.

Turn your attention to the tasks that burden you heavily. Here reforms are needed most. You will hardly be ready to assert that you are doing these tasks in the very best way in the world. Find out why not, and then try to improve on the old method.

After you have thought over your work in general sit down some evening and plan out the duties of the next day as far as you know them. Forget how you used to manage. Maybe you will be able to make only one or two small changes the first time. That is a good beginning. Try again later. Keep your wits about you and your thinking-cap on all the time. It will pay.

As the world grows older it accomplishes more in a given time than it used to do. They can make a hundred things now in the time it took to make one fifty years ago. Are you a part of the world and its progress or are you something left behind in the onward march? Not your fault? Well, you can be pretty sure that it is partly your fault and that you can remedy some of it if you only will.

Besides the prize for the best story of “heroism at home,” every month another free year’s subscription will be given for the best item or paragraph of any kind for the Department. The two subscriptions will not be given to the same person. The subscription may begin with any number you please.

Someone says that the world’s progress doesn’t concern her off in her little corner—that she has her work to do and that’s all there is to it. Well, perhaps it doesn’t in one way of speaking, but her life is both less happy and less useful than if she let the world’s progress concern her a little. She says it wouldn’t help her any in making biscuit or sweeping the floor if she did know some of the stories of history, how the revolution in Russia is getting on, about the great writers and painters, about anything outside her work. Well, it wouldn’t—in a way. The biscuits wouldn’t be any better nor the floor any cleaner. But any one that isn’t half-witted can learn to sweep a floor or even to bake biscuits. You are, or ought to be, more than a cook and a housemaid. You are a home-maker, and though good biscuits and clean floors are very necessary things in any house, they are not enough to make a home out of it. In a true home there must be mental and moral, as well as physical, comfort. You are still something more. You are a woman and a free human being. You have your duties to other people, as everyone has, but, like everyone, you have a duty to yourself. You were given a brain and a soul, as well as a body. You can easily see the need of feeding your body: the need of feeding your brain and soul are equally necessary. Why were they given to you? To starve?

No pen, however powerful, no voice, however eloquent, can present in the full force of its true colors the value of intellectual and moral development to the housewife, the woman, the home-maker. Religion is not a subject for our Department. The matter of creed is for each one to settle for herself. But in those questions of ethics and social morals that arise in any household and generally have, after all, their foundation in religion, and in all those questions of intellectual living and growth, this Department of ours does have its field and its purpose.

Why? Because, as I said, a home, a real home, has its moral and intellectual sides as well as its material side. Because even its material side, the everyday round of duties, cannot be made what it should be unless brain and soul are made fit to direct the body. Because as wives, mothers, daughters, sisters we are responsible for the members of our family, and for ourselves as human souls. It is not enough to bring a child into the world and then feed it, wash it, dress it, give it a place to sleep, and one day say to it: “We have raised you. Go forth and make your living.” Of course not. We all know that, though goodness knows there are plenty of people who don’t do even that much. It is not enough to furnish a clean, warm house[125] and three meals a day to the bodies of your husband, parents, brothers or sisters. They could get that much at a boarding-house or hotel. They, and you, must have moral and mental food, baths, clothes and beds as well as physical ones—a home—not merely a house. We cannot give what we don’t have. To furnish these things to them we must first get them ourselves.

Then we should give heed to moral and intellectual living and growth because it is our duty. There is another reason—because it is for our own happiness and pleasure.

It was once my privilege to go over a thousand or two letters from people who, after becoming members of a great and good system of education by correspondence, had written in the fullness of their hearts to tell how it had made their lives brighter and happier and to thank the school, not as much for the knowledge they had acquired from their reading and study at home, but for the great pleasure and joy the having of this knowledge had brought them—for the new intellectual, social and moral life that had come to them with it. The letters came from all over the English-speaking world, but I was most struck by the fact that a large part of them came from housewives. The following is a fair sample of hundreds from farmers’ wives, laborers’ wives, clerks’ wives, business-mens’ wives:

The wording wasn’t alike in any two, but, in every one of the hundreds written, there was the same idea—“something outside to think about and be interested in.” This was the note sounded in nearly every one of all the letters from men and women both. Some were women living many miles from the nearest neighbor, some were bed-ridden invalids, some factory girls, some servants, a few fashionable “society women,” some of the men, lonely sheep-herders on the Western plains, some naval officers, some this, some that, but one and all gave thanks from grateful hearts for a lift out of the rut of daily drudgery, for a broader horizon, for greater usefulness. I cried over some of those letters. They came straight from the heart if ever anything did.

That was the voice of experience, not the voice of theory. What they could do, we can do. We are not going to have any study courses or any lessons to learn. There will be nothing any of us has to do. But I believe each of us is going to think things over, talk it over and then make herself some spare moments, if she hasn’t some already, and set to work to make life a better thing for herself and those dear to her by getting “something outside to think about.”

How am I going to bring this about? Oh, I am not going to do it—we are! I have no idea of going into any house and saying, “Do that this way, and do this that way.” All of us are going to help by making suggestions, by giving experiences, by offering interesting bits of information. It is for you to decide which of these you can use. The thing to be desired above all others is that each of us may learn to think for herself. Many think for themselves very keenly already—perhaps more keenly than I do—and these are the very ones that can help the rest of us most; but we can all think better, if we all think together.

By the next number, April, which will come out March 25, there ought to be a fair number of questions and suggestions from our readers. Don’t forget that the best suggestion or bit of information sent in each month entitles the sender to a year’s free subscription, to any name and address desired. And remember that another free year’s subscription goes every month to the person, man or woman, who sends us the best true story of heroic living in common everyday life. The notices elsewhere in our Department give the particulars.

How are we going to get “something outside to think about?” Well, there are plenty of things outside and there are plenty of ways of bringing them into our lives. Each of us will find some things and some ways—all by herself if she will try and then she can tell the rest of us about them—but in our Department each month we can take one set of things, see whether there isn’t something of value there for us, ask questions, make suggestions, try experiments, offer bits of information, talk about it with our families, think about it while we are working and while we are resting or amusing ourselves, bring new things into our lives. I am not going to set up as a teacher and there isn’t going to be any course of study. There is only one thing I claim to know that some of you don’t know—that we, any of us, can make our lives brighter and more valuable by feeding our minds as well as our bodies. I know this by experience—not only by my own experience and that of my two daughters but also by the experiences of scores and hundreds of other women I have known and, perhaps, helped a little. I never talked to anyone in print before, but for many, many years, ever since one golden day when I discovered that I was actually making my own life happier and fuller and less ugly by an effort to feed my starving mind in my few spare moments, I have never missed a chance to do what I could to show other women how[126] they could get the same blessing for themselves.

In this number we will talk and think about reading and what it can do for us if we go about it right. Next month we will consider woman’s interest in politics. After that there are many more subjects—flowers, trees, gardens, stock, other animals, history and women in history, business and women in business, painting and women artists, women’s clubs and study circles, customs of other nations, food, correspondence courses, music and women musicians, and hundreds of other subjects. I want you to help me select the subjects as we go along.

IS READING WORTH WHILE?

What is reading worth to a busy housewife? “Well,” says one, “it may be worth a good deal, but I haven’t time to find out.” If this woman knew there was a twenty-dollar gold-piece to be picked up at the end of a few minutes walk, would she have time to stop her housework long enough to go and get it?

What can we get by reading? Maybe only rest, amusement and a “change.” Maybe this and also some knowledge. Maybe some valuable experience. Are any of these worth taking time from housework for?

There is surely no need of saying that rest, amusement and change are necessary in the long run for any kind of work. You save time by taking a vacation. Somebody has said that anyone can do twelve months work in eleven, but that no one can do eleven months’ work in twelve, meaning that we can accomplish more in a year by devoting one month of it to a sensible vacation.

There can be no doubt that we can gain much knowledge from books. It is one of the chief sources from which the world gets all that it knows. But is any of this knowledge worth while for a housewife? If anyone doubts it, stop and think. How about the Bible, the newspapers, the cook-book? Is this the only reading from which we can profit? In your own experience surely you can recall at least a few other books that told you something you were glad to know.

How do you get experience from reading? Isn’t it safer to learn human beings and their ways by studying them direct? Yes, and no. It depends on the book. Perhaps the author can tell you in a few hours more real truth about men and women than you can learn alone in years.

We have heard so many queer things about “literature” that we are likely to think of it as fancy things written by a lot of delicate, long-haired men and masculine women and having very little to do with our own everyday lives. Well, there are many over-cultured and over-educated people who would define literature that way. But they are mightily wrong! The best literature is generally simple, not “fancy.”

Literature is the spoken or written record by which each generation of mankind is enabled to preserve the knowledge and experience of the generations before it and to begin where the last one left off instead of having to begin all over again.

It doesn’t matter whether it is written or only spoken. Indeed, before man invented the alphabet or even learned to transmit his ideas and feelings by crude, rough pictures there wasn’t any literature except what was spoken or recited. The “Iliad” and “Odyssey” of Homer were sung or recited, long before they were put down on parchment. Our fairy-stories and legends generally date back hundreds and hundreds of years and were preserved only by each generation telling them to the next. In later days, especially during the Middle Ages, many valuable poems and stories, and even more of history, would have been lost to us forever if wandering bards and minstrels had not recited or sung them and taught them to others. There is no way, except literature, by which we can learn from the past. Did you ever think that our generation has, by itself, added only a very, very tiny bit to the knowledge existing in the world when our generation was born? All our great inventions would be impossible without this previous knowledge.

Of course, literature in its stricter sense is more limited than all the material covered by the definition above. A dictionary, for example, can hardly be called literature. A bit of writing or talking to be literature must show the imprint of the author’s personality and it must have in it something valuable enough to make it worth preserving. But, in general, the definition as given gets at the root of the matter, and that is all we need be concerned with. It shows that literature is not a fad or an amusement of too highly cultivated people, but one of the biggest and most valuable things in the world. We, no matter who or where we are or even whether we can read or write, are dependent on literature in our everyday lives.

How can we tell good literature from bad? Well, it is often pretty hard to tell about the books and stories of today, but there is a very easy way of telling about what was written a hundred or a thousand years ago. Nowadays, when most people can read and write and the printing-press makes it possible to produce great numbers of books and papers, there are thousands of people writing all the time and naturally a lot of them write very poor stuff. We talk about the “best selling books” and go wild over some[127] new novel. We did the same last month and we’ll do the same next month.

“Let’s see. Oh, yes—‘So-and-so,’ by So-and-so. It’s a perfectly charming story.”

There it is. All the time people are raving about the “latest” book. Like as not in a year they can’t even remember its name. Why is that? Because, hardly any of these books are really good literature. Many of them are interesting and amuse us while we read them, but that’s all. In a year, or less, we have forgotten them.

Then what is good literature? We can find out this way. Consider all the books that were written a thousand, a hundred, fifty or even twenty-five years ago. How many of them are read now? Comparatively very, very few. Now why? Because they weren’t good enough. There is a sure test for you—if a book lives on after its author is dead and buried you can be pretty sure that it is good literature. It had something to say that did more than amuse people for a month. The author had put into it some little bit of human nature, of human life, that is as true for people a hundred years later as it was for those who first read it. (Mind you, I am talking about novels, stories and plays, about fiction and poetry, not just about such things as histories which are generally preserved anyway because of the cold facts in them.) The authors of such novels or poems have written into them some of their own experience and observation of life. The characters in them are real human beings, and the feelings, thoughts, passions, sentiments, actions of the characters, or those expressed by the author without the aid of his characters, are, in general, the same feelings, thoughts, passions, sentiments and actions that you and I and our acquaintances have in us today. Therefore we understand the people in those books and sympathize with them, even though they may have lived centuries ago, in a foreign land, dressed in strange clothes, bound by strange customs and outwardly having very little in common with us. There is only one thing that people are always interested in—human nature. It is according to whether a book gives us a true picture of human nature that it lives or dies, that it is good literature or bad.

With new books now appearing by thousands it is almost impossible to tell which will live and which will die, which are really good and which are not. Time is the only sure test. The men talk about Dr. Conan Doyle’s “Sherlock Holmes” stories now and some of us women like these tales equally well, but will they be alive in 1975 or not? Emile Gaboriau died only twenty-three years ago. His detective stories are better ones than Dr. Conan Doyle’s, but they are no longer read except by the few. Wilkie Collins wrote novels that made you hold your breath with interest and were widely read. He has been dead only seventeen years, yet already “The Moonstone,” “The Woman in White” and his other books are of the past. Both Gaboriau and Collins have some real merit and will probably always be read at least slightly, but what of the thousands of other authors who wrote books twenty-five years ago and whose very names are forgotten?

Among the books that have come down to us from the past we can choose pretty safely. If they have lived this long we can be sure there is something worth while in them. I know a few sensible women, some of them with both time and money, who make it a rule never to read any book until it has been published a year. If at the end of that period it is still interesting other people, then they buy it, being pretty sure that it must have at least some small merit. They say it is surprising how very few books do remain in the public attention that long.

Now I know just what will happen. Some of you know all I have been saying as well as I do, but some one is sure to say:

“Oh, yes, that’s all true enough, I suppose, but when I find time to read, I don’t want to wade through anything heavy.”

Nobody asked you to. Books aren’t “heavy” just because they are good. Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s “Marjorie Daw” and “The Story of a Bad Boy,” Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer,” “Huckleberry Finn” and “Innocents Abroad” are certainly far, far from being heavy; so are Charles Kingsley’s “Water Babies,” De Foe’s “Robinson Crusoe;” so are Dr. Brown’s “Rab, and His Friends,” Ouida’s “A Dog of Flanders,” though both bring tears to the eyes; so are the poems of Robert Burns and Longfellow; so are Æsop’s “Fables,” the stories of Joel Chandler Harris and Thomas Nelson Page; so are hundreds of others. Yet all these just named are good literature. If by “heavy” you mean only things that are dull or hard to understand, the list of good books that are not “heavy” grows tremendously, and there are still others that may be hard to understand in places but are nevertheless interesting enough to “amuse” you all the way through. Shakespeare, George Eliot, Hawthorne, Poe, Tennyson, Stevenson, Dickens, Thackeray, Whittier, Helen Hunt Jackson, Hugh Conway, Bret[128] Harte, Augusta J. Evans, Louisa M. Alcott and scores besides are more than “worth while.” If there are now and then dull or difficult pages in some of them yet they are all the world away from being “heavy.”

Reading for amusement only is much better than not reading at all. We need amusement. But there is one danger. If what we read for amusement happens to be poor literature it is not true to life and you are learning things about yourself and others that are not true and may lead you into mistakes some day. You know what dime novels—Wild West and detective stories—will do to young people. It isn’t only because they are exciting and deal with crime, but because they give false ideas of life and false ideals. There are thousands of books, apparently harmless enough, that will hurt grown people as much as dime novels hurt the children. There are plenty of books you can read “just for amusement” which are also very good literature and very good teachers of life. Why waste time on the poor ones?

When I say a book is good or bad I am not referring to its morals but to its merit as literature. A hopelessly poor piece of literature may have excellent morals, and a book that is good literature may be very unsafe from a moral point of view. The relation of literature to morals is too big a question for me to discuss. Each of us must steer her own course in regard to this question. It is, however, helpful to remember that if the purpose and main lesson of a book are morally good, even though it may deal a little with questionable subjects, its reading may tend toward good rather than evil.

SHOULD WOMEN BE INTERESTED IN POLITICS?

Next month in the April number we will take up woman’s interest in politics. Is there any reason for her being interested in them? What effect do city, state and national laws and law-makers have on her own personal welfare or that of her family? If she raises children what effect does that have on future politics? What two great questions now before the country bear directly on the price she pays for food and clothing and on the price her husband receives for what he sells or for his labor? What about the men the voting members of your family help elect to the state legislature or the national Congress or White House? (Perhaps if you live in Colorado, you vote for President yourself.) What about the wives and children of these men? What about the candidates who were not elected and their families? If there is an election on, ought you to know which of the candidates are rascals, which represent wrong principles, which will vote for measures that will make the things you buy more expensive? Ought you to use your influence against such men?

Let us each see who can send in the best reason for a woman’s being interested in politics. The answers must be very short, and they must reach our office before March 10, for the April number, as you know, appears March 25, and by March 10, at the very latest the printer should be working on whatever is to go in it. This seems like working a long ways ahead of time, but the Editor tells me that most magazines by that time, will be all done with the April number and working on May or June! So you see you will have to write very quickly to be in time.

We had a glimpse last month at some of the interesting things connected with bread and bread-making. The house is full of things we have known so long that we scarcely think of them except as parts of the daily routine, but which, if we turn our attention to them, prove veritable mines of information, history, travel and even romance. This month we’ll consider some of the things concerned in bread-making.

Wheat

Wheat, for example, takes us all over the earth and back to the days before there was any history at all. Wheat, like our other grains, belongs to the Grass Family and its scientific name is Triticum vulgare. It is the most valuable of all the cereal grasses and, next to maize, or Indian corn, the most productive. Rice is really its only rival as a human food. It is generally supposed that it originally came, like so many of our grains and fruits, from the plains of Central Asia, but it has been found that a certain wild grass of Western Asia and the Mediterranean regions, can be cultivated into what we call wheat. It is the bread-food of most European nations (who, by the way, call it corn) and is supplanting maize in America. In our country alone 40 or 50 million acres are devoted to it every year, and the yield is a million or so over half a billion bushels. Generally, one-fifth to two-fifths of this is sent to other countries. Russia, Canada and other countries produce large quantities of it.

Wheat was widely grown in the pre-historic world. As far back as there is any record of languages there was a word for wheat. We know that the Chinese (who knew about gunpowder, printing, glass,[129] spectacles and many other things centuries before we “invented” them) cultivated wheat as far back as 2,700 B. C., and regarded it as a direct gift from heaven. The Egyptians attributed wheat to their heathen goddess Isis. The Greeks believed that Ceres, their goddess of agriculture, gave it to her favorite, Triptolemus, and lent him her miraculous chariot to drive over the earth and distribute the new grain to the sons of men. There is a pyramid in Egypt, which scientists estimate was built 3,359 years before Christ was born, more than 5,000 years ago, and in one of the bricks of this pyramid they found imbedded a little grain of wheat. How much that single grain told the world! The lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Italy also left traces showing they knew the use of wheat, as did the inhabitants of what is now Hungary, in the Stone Age.

There are more cultivated varieties of wheat than of any other grain, the number running up into the hundreds. New varieties are generally secured by taking the pollen from tiny flowers of one variety and putting it on the pistil of another, so that the resulting seeds, while they take after both parents, produce a new variety unlike either of them. This process of cross-breeding has been made to produce marvelous results not only in other grains, but in fruits, nuts, flowers and trees, as any of you who are familiar with the work of Mr. Luther Burbank, the “California Wizard,” know.

Flour

Flour, being generally a product of wheat, has had much the same history, but the process of milling has a little story of its own. The earliest mills consisted merely of two stones, one round, the other hollowed out. The grain was placed in the hollow and then crunched into small bits by the round stone. Later on, man thought of putting a handle on the round stone, making something like a mortar and pestle. Another and later way of improving this crude mill, was to groove the round stone and make it fit into a fairly deep hole in the under stone, with a place for the ground meal to come out. This is called a quern. You have heard of someone’s being “caught between the upper and nether mill-stones.” In Deuteronomy (XXIV, 6,) we find this: “No man shall take the upper or nether mill-stone to pledge, for he taketh a man’s life to pledge.” In Numbers (XI, 8), “ground it in mills or beat it in a mortar” shows that the children of Israel, knew both kinds of mill, and other passages show that they had at least two kinds of meal or flour.

The Romans used only the mortar and pestle, and until 173 B. C. the poor woman did all the work. Then baking became a regular occupation, and the bakers were called pistores, which means “pounders.” When the Romans conquered Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Holland, Belgium and Britain they took their customs with them. The hand-mill was followed by one with animal power, and later by one with water-power. As late as 1800 A. D. there were to be found in remote parts of Scotland and Ireland crude mills made of two large stones ground against each other by running or falling water.

The wheat grain is really not a seed, but a fruit, for it is composed not only of the true seed, but of the seed and its husk or covering. The two considered together, make what botanists call a “fruit.” In modern milling this husk is generally separated from the seed and made into bran, while the seed becomes flour. When the two are mixed we have “whole wheat” flour.

Good flour, should be a pure, uniform white powder, only faintly tinged with yellow, free from grits and lumps, should show some adhesiveness when pressed, should have no smell of damp and moldiness or any acidity of taste.

Most flour now, is “new process” flour, made by a gradual crushing between sets of rollers revolved by water-power, steam or electricity. The “new process” originated in Hungary and France and began to be generally adopted about 1880.

Yeast

Yeast is a vegetable. Strange as it may seem, yeast is a tiny fungus growth, though it takes a microscope to see it. In brewing (particularly with hops), in wine-making and in any other process of fermentation where the liquid contains some sugar and some albuminous matter, the clear liquid becomes “muddy.” Then the minute things that made it muddy collect into a foaming, bitter mass which is yeast. This yeast has the power of setting up fresh fermentation when put with other things. It is fermentation that makes bread-dough “raise.” Oh, yes, there is alcohol in bread-dough, but it doesn’t stay there. As I told you last month, 12,000,000 gallons of alcohol are made and lost in bread-making every year in Germany alone! Some day scientists will learn how to save it.

Hops

We generally think of hops when yeast is mentioned. I wish any of you who can tell us the story of hops would send it in to our Department.

Salt

How could we cook, or eat, or live without salt? It is an absolute necessity for people and animals. Also, it is very valuable as a fertilizer, and was used as such centuries and centuries ago by the Hindoos and Chinese. Further than this, soda is derived from salt, and as soda is necessary in making both glass and soap, these two useful things could not be made if it were not for salt. Most of our modern textile fabrics are more or less dependent on chlorine, which is made from salt. We all know how valuable salt is as a[130] preservative for butter, meats and other animal food, and now they are learning a way to preserve timber with it. We know, too, its use in freezing ice cream, but may not realize how much it is used for refrigerating other things. In short, even if we could live at all without it, life would be pretty miserable.

The chemists call salt chloride of sodium and use this symbol for it—Na Cl, which shows what it is composed of, but doesn’t mean anything to me.

We get salt in three ways—from rock-salt mines, from natural brine springs and from evaporating sea water. The world’s biggest rock-salt mines are in Gallicia, upper Austria, Bavaria, Hungary, Transylvania, Wallachia; at Vic and Dienze, France; at Bix, Switzerland; at Cadrona, Spain, and at Cheshire, England. That at Wieliczka in Gallicia is a mile long, three-fourths of a mile wide and over a thousand feet deep. Some of its chambers are 150 feet high—as high as a sky-scraper—and one of them is fitted up as a chapel to St. Anthony, the altar, statues and everything being solid salt. In this mine is a lake 650 feet long and 40 feet deep. There are horses there that have never seen the light of day, and men, women and children who live in salt houses and never see the outside world above their heads. It is a small village buried down under the ground. When the emperor and his family visit the mine, it is brilliantly illuminated and a grand festival is held in a great hall.

In Africa are large beds of salt land, beds of rock-salt and a lake covered at times with a shining white crust of pure salt two feet thick. France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and some Mediterranean islands are the chief producers of sea-salt. In China there are salt wells of great depth and number.

In Spain, France and other countries salt is a government monopoly, and no one else can sell it. Travelers tell me they have seen salt lakes in Spain where the people living along the shores were prevented by the guardia civile, or national police, from picking up the salt deposited in large quantities at the water’s edge. They had to buy it of the government. The poor use salt sparingly over there even now, and you may remember that the heavy tax on salt was one cause of the awful French Revolution.

In our country nearly every state has salt deposits of some kind. Virginia furnishes lots of rock-salt. The most important salt springs are in Onondaga County, New York, and furnish nearly half of what the country uses. The state owns them and gets a royalty of one cent a bushel. Michigan produces about twenty million bushels a year.

Removing Grease Spots

To remove a grease-spot from cloth, lay a piece of clean blotting paper over the spot and then pass a hot iron back and forth over blotter. As the grease is melted and soaked into the blotter, cover the stain with a fresh part of the blotter and continue the operation until the stain has disappeared.

Dish-Mop

The little dish-washing mop is a comparatively recent invention, but its use is increasing as its advantages are learned by experience. It is merely a handle about ten inches long with a miniature mop, smaller than your clenched fist, at the end. With very little trouble a home-made one can be arranged, which is practically as good as the store ones, though the latter can be bought for ten or fifteen cents. The little mop saves the hand from going into the water so much, answers every purpose of the old dish-rag, and can, like the cloth, be cleaned by vigorous boiling.

Spice Cabinets

The little tin or wooden cabinets, now on sale in large quantities at the bigger stores, with from four to twelve small drawers for spices, are great space-savers and time-savers. The only objection is that, despite the label on each drawer, the busy cook is sometimes likely to get hold of the wrong one.

Soup-Stock

If soup-stock is put to cool in an earthware vessel, instead of a metal one, much better results are obtained. It is claimed that this is one of the secrets of the excellent soups the French are famous for.

A Fuel Saver

If one uses a gas stove, a single burner can be made to do several times its ordinary work by means of a thin sheet of iron, about a foot square, placed directly over it. The flame spreads out against this sheet and renders its whole area available for cooking, so that two, three or even four small vessels can get from this one burner enough heat to boil water, or at least to keep the contents warm against the time for serving. No more gas is used than when a single vessel is allotted to each burner. It is possible to buy a sheet of iron, an eighth or a quarter of an inch thick, made expressly for this purpose, the edges being turned down to raise it about half an inch from the surface of the stove.

Table Mats

Asbestos, bought in large pieces, cut into round, oval or square mats, and either[131] covered daintily or placed under regular table-mats, makes not only an economical protection for a polished table against hot dishes, but a very sure one.

Coal Oil and Gasoline

If you are in the habit of starting a fire by pouring coal-oil on the kindling, break yourself of it. You may do it safely fifteen hundred times and be blown up the next. Coal-oil will not even burn if you drop a match in a barrel of it, but if you spread it out in any way (as on a lamp-wick) it will not only burn but the gas thus formed will often explode with terrific force. Never fill a coal-oil lamp while it is burning.

Gasoline is still more dangerous. If the fire insurance inspector finds out that you keep even a small bottle of it in the house, he will have your policy cancelled immediately, unless you have paid extra for a special clause permitting you to keep a small amount on the premises. I knew a physician who was killed and blown clear across the street by the explosion of gasoline in a saucer, which was being used for cleaning spots on the carpet of a house he was visiting. The vapor caught fire from an open grate two rooms away from where the saucer had been left. Gasoline is an excellent cleaner, but if you use it, do so out of doors. Let no one come near with a lighted match or cigar, and throw away any of the liquid that may be left. As an explosive, gasoline is much more powerful than gunpowder.

A Cheap Shower Bath

Five feet of rubber tubing and a ten-cent spray will make as good a shower-bath apparatus for the bath-tub as any one could ask. The stem of the spray will twist into one end of the tubing and if the bath-tub faucet has the right kind of attachment it will twist into the other end, making a long flexible shower-spray that will prove an unending comfort. If the faucet hasn’t the right kind of nozzle to fit a hose, one can be purchased from the plumber or hardware store for very little. Besides the pleasure and comfort a spray gives, there is the added satisfaction of thoroughly cleaning the body with perfectly clean water before drying with the towel.

A Warmer Bed

If you continue to feel cold in bed even after piling on a mountain of covers, turn your attention underneath. A feather-bed lets no cold reach you from below, and a box-mattress is often nearly as good a protection, but an ordinary mattress, even a good one, is very likely to let the cold through. If you don’t use a comforter under the sheet, for the sake of the mattress and for greater softness to the body, put one there for warmth. If this is not enough, spread several layers of newspaper or wrapping paper between this comfort and the mattress. It will crackle under your weight for a time, but it will keep you warm and cosy.

Hanging Pictures

If you are hanging a picture from a nail in the wall instead of from the picture-molding, you can save the wall by using a very small, thin wire nail. If it is driven in without “wobbling” and downward at a narrow angle with the wall a small nail will hold a surprisingly large picture.

Save your Eyes

Do not sleep with a strong light shining into your eyes. In sleep the eyes are relaxed and, closed though they are, suffer from too strong a light. The sun shining into them before you wake in the morning is especially bad. Never read or put the eyes to a strain before breakfast.

To Reduce Weight

A physician gives the following foods as a broad and common-sense diet for those wishing to reduce their flesh: lean mutton and beef, veal and lamb, soups not thickened, beef-tea and broth, poultry, game, fish and eggs, bread in moderation, greens, cresses, lettuce, etc., green peas, cabbage, cauliflower, onions, fresh fruit without sugar.

Peeling Onions

It is said that if when peeling onions one holds a needle or any small piece of polished steel between the teeth, the steel will attract the acid fumes of the onion and save the eyes.

To Keep Lemons

1. Cover with buttermilk or sour milk and change once a week. This will also freshen dry lemons.

2. Put in clean white cask or jar, cover with cold water, change every other day and keep in a cool place. This method will keep lemons fresh for months.

To Clean Knives

Many are unfamiliar with this old-time method: Take even portions of fine coal ashes and soda, mix with a little water, rub the knives briskly with the preparation, wash in tepid water without soap, and wipe dry.

Floor Polish

One quart turpentine, six ounces yellow beeswax, four ounces white resin. Melt the beeswax and resin together over a slow fire and when partly cool add the turpentine. Bottle for use.

A PRIZE FOR THE BEST TRUE STORY.

Every month the Department will publish a little story of heroism in the home—not any one act of heroism, but the tale of how some one lived heroically, lived self-sacrifice, in everyday life. It must be true and must be about somebody you know or have known or know definitely about. It must not have over 500 words. The shorter, the better. Whoever sends in the best story each month will not only have it printed but will receive a year’s subscription to Watson’s Magazine sent to any name you choose. Tell your story simply and plainly.

The Wickedness of Worry

“Worry is one of the worst curses of modern life. I say of modern life, not because people a thousand years ago did not worry, because as civilization advances men become more highly strung, more sensitive, and less capable of detachment. Thus, we often say, in a very expressive phrase, that a thing ‘gets upon our nerves.’ Something distressing happens to us, and we cannot shake it off. Some one treats us rudely, harshly, or unkindly, and the word or deed rankles in our minds. We think it over until it is magnified into a grievous and intentional insult. We take it to bed with us, and no sooner is the light put out than we begin to recall it, and turn over in our minds all the circumstances that occasioned it. We sleep feverishly, haunted all the time with the sense of something disagreeable. We wake, and the accursed thing is still rankling in our minds. This is one form of worry, which is very common among people of sensitive minds.

Another form of worry is the tendency to brood over past errors. The business man, or the public man, is suddenly overwhelmed with the conviction that he has made an awful mess of things. The worst of all calamities is the lack of energy to grapple with calamity, and in most cases it is worry that breaks down a man’s energy.

A third, and perhaps a more common form of worry, is the gloomy anticipation of future calamities. There are some men who, however happy they may be today, are perpetually frightening themselves with the possibilities of a disastrous tomorrow. They live in terror. When actual sorrow comes upon us, most of us discover unexpected resources of fortitude in ourselves. But nothing sickens the heart so much as imagined sorrow. Of this form of worry we may well say, “It’s wicked!”

I have no doubt that most of my readers know by experience what some of these things mean. No doubt also many of them have many real causes for anxious thought, and they will ask me how I propose to deal with it. One of the best ways is to be content to live a day at a time. Sydney Smith counsels us with rich wisdom to take short views of life. Each day is an entity in itself. It is rounded off by the gulf of sleep; it has its own hours which will never return; it stands separate, with its own opportunities and pleasures. Make the most of them.

Another good and simple rule is never to take our griefs to bed with us. ‘Easy to say, but how difficult to do,’ will be replied. But it is largely a matter of will and habit.

John Wesley once said that he would as soon steal as worry, for each was equally a sin. To worry is wasteful and foolish; we have also to recollect that it is wicked.”—W. J. Dawson.

Lemon Pie (Old)

Two lemons, five eggs, two teaspoonsful of melted butter, eight large spoonsful of white sugar. Squeeze the juice of both lemons and grate the rind of one. Stir together the yolks of three eggs and the white of one, with the sugar, juice and rind, beat well, add one coffee-cup of cream and beat well for a few minutes longer. Pour the mixture into the waiting crust dough. Bake until pastry is done. Meanwhile beat the remaining whites of eggs to a stiff froth and stir in four spoonsful of white sugar. Spread on top and brown slightly. This is enough for two pies.

Simple Pudding

(No eggs or milk needed) Slice some good bread rather thick, cutting away the crust. Butter on both sides, lay in a deep dish and fill it up with molasses after seasoning with ginger, cinnamon or lemon.

Irish Potato Pie (Old)

Two good pints of potatoes after they are boiled and mashed. Put through a sieve while warm. Add small cup of butter, milk enough to make a batter. Cinnamon, lemon, spices and sugar to taste. Four eggs beaten separately, stirring in the whites after the yokes. This is enough for four pies.

The Social Secretary. By David Graham Phillips. The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis.

An exceedingly clever novel, dealing chiefly with the effort of a Congressional family to break into good society in Washington, D. C. The Congressman is a Western man with a lot of money, and with a wife who has lots of horse sense and a sound heart.

They need a pilot to steer them into the realms of fashion and influence. To this position comes a beautiful, spirited and accomplished girl who belongs to a well-known family which is eminently respectable but is in reduced circumstances.

The campaign mapped out by the Social Secretary in behalf of the Congressional family is finally crowned with success, and the heroine marries the son of the Congressman, as a natural, logical result.

In the course of the campaign, the author gives us many an enlightening glimpse of what goes on in Washington “behind the scenes.” This little item for instance: When President Roosevelt is called away from the dinner-table by some urgent matter which requires instant attention, Mrs. Roosevelt, all the ladies, and all the gentlemen rise as the President rises and remain standing until he returns.

I, for one, was quite surprised to know that our sturdy lion-hunter, bronco-busting President had fallen into snobbery of that description. I hope it isn’t so.

A Maker of History. By E. Phillips Oppenheim. Little, Brown & Co., Boston, Mass.

A book which catches hold of you and takes you right along. It is original in its plot, dramatic in its incidents, absorbingly interesting in its narrative.

A young Englishman, by accident, happens to witness a meeting between the Emperor of Germany and the Czar of Russia—a meeting which elaborate precautions had been taken to keep secret. Another accident puts into the possession of the young Englishman a page of the secret treaty between the two Emperors. The scheme of this treaty is that Russia shall give England a casus belli, that Germany shall come to the assistance of Russia, and that Great Britain shall be despoiled. The young Englishman is suspected, and his footsteps are dogged by German spies. Later he talks imprudently in a Parisian restaurant, and becomes an object of intense interest to the French Secret Service. He suddenly and mysteriously disappears. His sister arrives in Paris, is astonished at the disappearance of her brother, and starts out to search for him. Then the sister disappears.

After a time everything turns out happily for hero and heroine, but in the meanwhile many an event of thrilling interest happens to keep the reader wide awake and wondering what the outcome will be.

The Greatest Trust in the World. By Charles Edward Russell. The Ridgway-Thayer Company, New York City.

This book is made up of the articles which were published in Everybody’s Magazine, and which created such a profound impression by their calm, relentless exposure of the most cruel and most lawless and most despotic Trust on earth. Not even the Standard Oil Company grinds the common people as the Beef Trust does, for the latter deals with food products which are indispensable to life, and the Beef Trust can and does say to the people, “Pay my price or die.”

The book treats of the might of this monopoly; of the great yellow car, the bandit of commerce; of the manner in which the Trust intimidates the railroads; of the manner in which the Federal Government white-washed the Trust; of the union between rotten business and rotten politics.

American Diplomacy. By John Bassett Moore. Harper & Brothers, Publishers, New York City.

My own impression has been that “American Diplomacy” has never amounted to much, and I cannot say that Dr. Moore’s book has convinced me to the contrary.

The only apparent triumph of American Diplomacy was the securing of French aid in the Revolutionary War; and as to that most students will agree that “diplomacy” had nothing to do with it. France saw an opportunity to strike at her hereditary foe, Great Britain, and she sent an emissary to the American Congress to drop certain hints which led to the sending of Dean, Lee and Franklin to Paris. Where France was already so eager, “diplomacy” could claim no triumph.

It is to be regretted that Dr. Moore fails to mention John Laurens in connection with French aid. The fact is that Washington[134] and Congress became dissatisfied with Franklin, and that John Laurens was despatched to France to hurry matters up. He did so. He got the money with which Washington made the decisive Yorktown Campaign, and brought it home with him. Surely Dr. Moore ought to have mentioned the name of John Laurens.

In the famous Jay treaty, “American Diplomacy” made a craven surrender to Great Britain, and in the Treaty of Ghent we certainly won no laurels. Andrew Jackson and his Southern volunteers threw the only crumb of comfort which the situation could boast when they shot the life out of Wellington’s veterans at New Orleans.

In the various negotiations concerning the Northwestern boundary, “American Diplomacy” has yielded up an Empire to British bluff and shrewdness. During the Civil War, “American Diplomacy” ate humble pie with a vengeance more than once; and even in the Venezuelan affair when Cleveland’s attitude seemed so heroic, England, it would appear, packed the arbitration board and got pretty much everything that she wanted.

In the last tilt between us and the mother country, touching the Canadian boundary, we were assured that the arbitration was a mere matter of form, and that Great Britain could not possibly get anything at all. Yet when the award was made, it developed that Great Britain had got slices of stuff all along the line—the land line and the water line.

Look at the manner in which Great Britain used us as her depot of supplies during the Boer War.

She held John Hay in the hollow of her hand, and with our aid crushed the republics of South Africa.

Those who love truth and humor served up in the literary form of the fable, will find this an entertaining little volume. There is much wit and wisdom packed away in these stories; and they reveal a thorough knowledge of human nature and of present conditions.

Garrison the Non-Resistant. By Ernest Crosby. The Public Publishing Co., Chicago.

When a Southern writer eulogizes such a bitter foe to his people as was William Lloyd Garrison, his words will bear the same discount as must be given to the words of a Southern ex-Brigadier, when he goes North and tells pleased audiences, “I am glad you whipped us.”

The truth is the South does not love Garrison and is not glad she was “whipped.”

When Mr. Crosby frankly states, as he does in this book, that Garrison had no sympathy whatever for the sufferings of the white laborers of the land, he put his finger upon the trait which caused Garrison’s great unpopularity in the South.

He was narrow and fanatical, and while he hated slavery for its own sake, he hated the South about as much as he hated slavery.

Wendell Phillips, after the negro was freed, went on broadening in the scope of his sympathies and his work. He became one of the stalwart champions of the rights of white labor. He studied its case, denounced its wrongs, demanded better things for the millions of toilers who were being exploited and destroyed by insatiable commercial greed.

Not so Garrison. The negro freed, the South reeking with her own life-blood, her homes in ashes, her soul crushed in utter desolation, Garrison was happy. His work was done. White men, white women, white children might groan and suffer and die in a worse slavery than had afflicted the blacks of the South, but Garrison did not sympathize—did not lift a finger, did not utter a word in their behalf. Another trait in Garrison’s character was just the trait to stir the dislike of a Southern man. He carried to such an extent his doctrine of non-resistance, that he declared he “would not defend by force his own wife in case of an assault.” In other words, rather than forcibly resist the criminal who sought to violate his own wife, he would stand idly by and permit the crime to be committed. I do not know how many Northern men endorse a sentiment of that kind. In my judgment they are few, very few. But I do know that there is not a respectable man in the South or West, who would not feel disgraced by the utterance of such a doctrine. Mr. Crosby deserves great credit for his courage and candor in admitting that while slavery was wrong, the war waged upon the South was wrong. Of course it was wrong. The whole negro race, here and throughout the earth, were not worth the frightful cost of the Civil War. Mr. Crosby’s book would have been more valuable had he omitted the last two chapters. The author is a very talented man but he cannot get to know the true status of the South by listening to the talk of loafers in the office of the hotel where he happens to stop.

Sidney Lanier. By Edwin Mims. Houghton, Mifflin & Company, Boston and New York.

The author is temperate in his estimate of the genius of his subject, and relates the life struggles of the Georgia poet with sympathetic spirit.

As the years go by the fame of Sidney Lanier will grow. That he wrote some poems which have little merit is true; that his peculiar and unfortunate mannerism mars the beauty of other poems which do possess merit is also true; but after all this is conceded,[135] it can be confidently claimed that he sometimes rose to the heights of Keats and Shelley, and that his art sometimes equalled the marvelous skill of Edgar Poe.

Here and there, throughout Lanier’s poems, can be found gems of thought and expression which in loftiness, purity and exquisite form lose nothing by comparison with the higher work of the best English poets.

Nor will the story of his life ever lose interest. It is so full of innate nobility; he met the most exacting duties so cheerily, so bravely; he fought the battle for bread with such manly confidence, such sweet sympathy for others; he gave to the world so much more than he asked from it; he was so independent and yet so companionable; he so long held at bay, with buoyant pluck, the ghastly White Terror, Consumption; he was so refined and strong and lovable and valiant and nobly aspiring that always and everywhere the simple facts in the life of this Georgia boy, Confederate soldier, painstaking lawyer, aspiring author, heaven-endowed musician, original poet, will move the hearts of men to respect, to sympathy, to admiration and love.

Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama. By Walter L. Fleming. The Columbia University Press, New York, Publishers. The Macmillan Company, Agents.

All things considered, this is the most valuable contribution that has yet been made to the literature of the Reconstruction Era.

The book contains some 800 pages, and the mass of important data is a monument to the industry of the author.

Not only are we given a full account of the manner in which Secession was brought about, not only do we get the story of military operations during the Civil War and Carpet-Bag operations afterward, but we are given illuminating pictures of social and economic conditions, the unspeakable rottenness of negro government; the cotton frauds and stealings; the troubles in the churches; the movements of the Ku Klux Klan (which Tom Dixon most unaccountably traces back to the clan life of Scotland); the struggles of the native whites to throw off the carpet-bag and negro yoke; the upbuilding of an educational system; the gradual creation of a new industrial system; and the final triumphant vindication of Alabama of the right of local self-government and white supremacy.

Mr. Fleming has done a great and beneficent work in the gathering of the mass of facts which he embodies in this volume.

No matter what Mr. Lawson’s motive may have been, he has done a public service in the exposure of the methods of Wall Street which cannot be overestimated. For thirty years the story which Lawson has told has been asking for an audience. Time and again, books and magazine articles were published warning the people of the ways of the system. As far back as the days of Peter Cooper, loud voices of clear-eyed men were raised in the effort to rouse public attention. The literature of the Greenback movement, of the Farmers’ Alliance movement, and of the People’s Party movement was full of notes of warning, full of statements of fact exactly on line with Lawson’s revelations.

Why then did the revelations of Lawson sound like a new trumpet and rouse the country so quickly and so universally? Because Lawson spoke from the inside: because Lawson was one of the kings of finance himself: because Lawson had played the game himself: because Lawson drew to himself that peculiar attention which attaches to the witness who “turns State’s evidence.” A robber who has worn the mask and ridden with the band on many a midnight marauding foray is always listened to with breathless interest when he enters the box and tells how the robbery was planned, how the crime was committed, and now the spoil was divided. This is but natural. No matter how much proof one may have to establish the guilt of the accused, one feels, always, that there are details which none but the criminal can supply. Here Thomas Lawson’s value is beyond dispute and beyond price. That the methods of Frenzied Finance are substantially what Lawson says they are, can no longer be a matter of doubt.

“When You Were a Boy.” By Edwin L. Sabin. The Baker & Taylor Co., New York.

It seemed impossible that another successful book on school-life and boyhood days could be written, but the author has shown how easily one may be mistaken about a thing of that sort. Here is no story of a fascinating but impossible “Little Lord Fauntleroy”; here is no coarse, witless, stupid “Stalky & Co.,” here is no “Huckleberry Finn” or “Tom Sawyer,” or “Tom Brown,” or “Peck’s Bad Boy,” or “Master William Mitten.” The hero of “When You Were a Boy”—is you. The author has looked into his own heart and drawn your picture to life. You had your little “fist and skull” fights—and here they are in this book. You had a pet dog who did all sorts of funny, aggravating, endearing things, and then died while you were off from home; and the author tells of it, intimately. Your first experience with your father’s shot-gun, your savage rapture over the first thing you killed—here it is in the book. And the first fishing trip, the first “party” you attended, the first girl you “saw home,” the first sweetheart—it is all put down, accurately, vividly. Even that time—you mean little whelp!—when you determined to punish your parents by “running[136] away from home,”—the author found it out on you, and you will hang your head once more, and your eye will dim, as you read about it, in the book. The author does not preach and does not prose, and does not sentimentalise—but “When You Were a Boy” is one of the most life-like delineations of the American boy—his character, his feelings, his habits, his fun and frolic, his passions, his standards—that has ever been put in a book.

An exposition of the evils of the twins—Bossism and Monopoly. Mr. Spelling brings the record of trust robbery and boss despotism down to date, and while he necessarily has to treat the same facts and conditions which so many other writers have handled, none of them has a firmer grip upon the subject than he—nor have any of them produced a more essentially useful book. He is the only writer who has seized upon and utilized the tremendously important facts set forth by Albert Griffin in the financial articles which he wrote for this Magazine some months ago. What Mr. Griffin calls Hocus Pocus Money another may call fictitious values, unsupported credit, wild-cat inflation, or any other name, but the fact as first pointed out by Mr. Griffin is that the Privileged Few in the Banking world are taxing the people to an enormous amount for the use of bogus money.

Mr. Spelling also deals with the Railroad problem in a masterly way, advocating, as all sane men will soon be found doing, Government Ownership.

The Coming Crisis. By Gustavus M. Pinckney. Walker, Evans and Cogswell Co., Charleston, S. C.

This is a book to read closely and to think about. It is full of solid fact and sound reasoning. Its tone is calm, but its thought is deep, and it deals with matters of gravest import.

(1) “Society under government naturally tends to fall into two parties, one attached to the consumption of taxes and increase of power, the other attached to the decrease of taxes and to the limitation of power.

(2) The tendency of the first party is to absorb the rights and property of the second: the tendency of the second is to resist the process.

(3) Remaining unchecked, the first will steadily encroach and absorb until the second is compelled in self-preservation to resist by tendering the issue of force.”

Illustrating the method by which the one party appropriates the property of the other, Mr. Pinckney cites our infamous Tariff System.

“The amount of prices advanced under a 40 per cent. tariff and transferred from one private pocket to another, would ... soon extend to figures to dwarf the national debt.”

Some one has calculated that from Independence to 1861, the amount thus transferred from private pockets to other private pockets, without consideration, was something like $2,770,000,000.

The sum so stolen from private pockets by the damnable Tariff, since 1861, and put into other private pockets is a great deal more than the colossal figures mentioned above.

Mr. Pinckney likewise takes up the National Banker and shows how the Government allows him advantages over his fellow man that are “utterly without right, reason, or justification.” After explaining the juggle which takes place over the bonds, and the notes, he sums it up thus:

“The people are taxed in order that the privilege of issuing money may be farmed out to the banks.”

Nobody has ever summed up the iniquity of the National Banking System in a more startling sentence, and a good Democrat, like Mr. Pinckney, must have been sorely grieved when he saw every Democratic Senator and every Democratic Representative unite with the wicked Republicans in 1893-1894 to renew the charters of the National Banks for twenty years.

Space forbids the extending of these comments further. I will only add that no student of present conditions can afford to miss Mr. Pinckney’s book.

Letters and Addresses of Thomas Jefferson. Edited by Wm. B. Parker, of Colombia University, and Jonas Viles, of the University of Missouri. The Unit Book Pub. Co., New York.

When two college professors start out to give the world a new book on Thomas Jefferson, the world has a right to expect an unusually valuable book.

Professors Parker and Viles did not undertake an original composition. Theirs was the simpler task of making a good selection from the letters, State papers and addresses of Mr. Jefferson. That such a selection should be a success, it was necessary that the compilers acquaint themselves intimately with all that Jefferson wrote, and that the selections made should fairly represent Jefferson himself—Jefferson the man, the scholar, the farmer, the builder, the inventor, the advanced thinker, the man of bold speculative ideas, the statesman, the student of social and industrial problems.

Mr. Jefferson’s book, “Notes on Virginia,” contains more than 300 pages. It is full of his most characteristic thinking. It displays the working of his mind on matters great and small, social, racial, historic practical and speculative.

Our Professors quote eight pages from[137] the book, wherein Mr. Jefferson discusses Religion, Slavery and American Genius—three subjects only. These are important quotations, but what a pity it is that the Professors did not quote Jefferson’s profound study of the Indians, their physical and mental peculiarities, their mode of life, their love of their children, their fortitude under suffering, their undying loyalty to friends, their skill and bravery in war, their eloquence in council, their system of tribal government. Mr. Jefferson wrote nothing more interesting than this account of the Indians of Virginia. It was in this that he reproduced and handed down to posterity that gem of oratory which we boys used to “speak” at school—“Logan’s speech” sent to Lord Dunmore.

On page 166 of the “Notes,” Mr. Jefferson gives a concise and comprehensive statement of the wrongs which the colonies suffered at the hands of the King. Inasmuch as we have developed a school of Tory historians who make light of the American grievances, it might have been a good thing had the Professors quoted Mr. Jefferson’s summary of those grievances.

On page 172 of the “Notes,” Mr. Jefferson makes a remarkable prediction of the manner in which abuses will creep into our Government, and he solemnly warns his countrymen to combat these abuses “before they shall have gotten hold on us.”

Inasmuch as the abuses which Mr. Jefferson dreaded have gotten hold on us, his prophecy, published more than a hundred years ago, deserves a place in any collection of Jefferson’s works.

On page 216 of the “Notes,” Mr. Jefferson has a word to say on popular self-government which every American boy should read as soon as he becomes a voter. I am sorry the Professors left it out.

The most powerful chapter in the “Notes on Virginia,” is that beginning on page 228 and ending on page 235. As it stands written, it is a masterpiece. To spoil a good thing is easy; and the Professors spoilt the best chapter in Jefferson’s book by cutting out only a portion of it for use, and not the best part at that.

On page 240 of the “Notes” is Mr. Jefferson’s splendid tribute to the working classes of the rural communities—but the Professors seemingly attached no value to it.

What could have been more timely than the re-publication of Mr. Jefferson’s magnificent plea against War, and against Militarism, which covers pages 253, 254, and 255 of the “Notes”? The Professors could not have embraced in their collection anything of greater intrinsic and eternal value than this, and they have given much space to matter which, compared to this, is mere trash.

I have neither the time nor the patience to compare the letters which these Professors have collected with those which they have left out. If they selected the letters in the same spirit that they culled from the “Notes,” their compilation is just as far from doing justice to Mr. Jefferson as “The True Thomas Jefferson,” by W. E. Curtis, was from the truth. There is no American book of the same size that contains more errors than Curtis’s “True Jefferson;” and when I saw that these two Professors had named that book as one of their authorities—well, you can see for yourself how it stimulated my attention.

Democracy in the South Before the Civil War. By G. W. Dyer, M. A., Pub. House of the M. E. Church South. Nashville, Tenn.

The author modestly calls this a compendium of a more comprehensive work which will be published later.

It is an exceedingly valuable study. The author has dug up a lot of buried treasure. His refutation of many unfounded opinions concerning social economic and political conditions in the South prior to the Civil War is supported by a diligence of research that gather all the necessary evidence.

Among other facts of importance which Mr. Dyer establishes, Prof. John Bach McMaster to the contrary notwithstanding, are:

(1) There was no land monopoly in the South. On the contrary there was a better pro rata distribution of land than in the free States.

(2) Manual labor was not a badge of disgrace. On the other hand, the white population of the South was engaged in all kinds of manual labor, excepting menial service.

(3) The South had a larger number of miles of railroads in 1860 in proportion to her free population than the rest of the country.

(5) In 1860 the South was the richest section of the country, and her wealth was increasing with greater rapidity than that of the other sections.

It will be remembered that in one of his great speeches in Congress William L. Yancey demonstrated this truth.

So they are even now. The laborer who produces that free trade product, cotton, gets nearly one-half of the value of the cotton produced. In the Protected industries of the North the laborer does not receive an average of twenty-five percent of the product of his labor.

The idea of a State fund for the education of those who were not able to pay their tuition originated in the South. In other words, the present American system of State free public schools was born in the South. If Mr. Dyer’s more comprehensive[138] work increases in value as it increases in size it will deserve to be a most successful book.

“Sonnets to a Wife.” By Ernest McGaffey. William Marion Reedy. St. Louis, Mo.

Mr. McGaffey makes his Sonnets a continuous hymn of the beautiful in Nature. The clean atmosphere of the open world is in every sonnet. All the airs of heaven blow pureness about these lovers. The spiritual significance of the great Nature, of which husband and wife and their love for each other are a part, is always strongly suggested, and this without cant either of orthodoxy or of the dolorous minor poet lamenting the loss of himself to the world.

The Eternal Spring. A Novel. By Neith Boyce. Fox, Duffield & Co., New York, $1.50, postpaid.

The story opens at an Italian villa, overlooking Florence. Elizabeth Craven is wearing “second mourning” for a deceased husband who was too old for her, and who had never satisfied her womanly cravings for male companionship. Elizabeth is thirty-eight years old, but is still in the flush of health and strength and beauty. Hers is the villa, and to her comes Barry Carlton, who has been stock-gambling for several years in Chicago, and has quit because he had won a modest competence and had brought himself to the brink of nervous collapse.

Barry Carlton had known Elizabeth intimately five years before and had become warmly attached to her. Poor Elizabeth! She had loved Barry all the while, and she loves him yet.

She is radiantly happy as she welcomes Barry to her villa. She knows that he has come from America to ask her to become his wife. He is thirty years old, and while worn down to a painful thinness she has no doubt whatever that rest and loving attention will soon restore his robust youth.

Then she will live. She has never known life; she has been cramped and confined all these years; when she marries her young lover, she will know the passion of living.

But alas! Barry wooes tamely. Elizabeth is coy, expecting more heat. Barry cannot give it, the wooing lags, no engagement occurs, and then comes the shipwreck of Elizabeth’s hopes. Barry falls in love with a divinely gifted and lovely young creature who is also a guest at the villa.

A strange thing happens to the reader. Elizabeth has won his heart, and she holds it to the end. She is so womanly in her devotion to Barry; so womanly in her grief at losing him, so majestic in her renunciation of her own hopes, so beautifully generous and helpful to the man and the girl who have broken her own heart, that the reader feels himself about to say:

For the reader does not fall in love with Clara. She is a bit unnatural and uncanny.

Her mother, the bad but magnificent Mrs. Langham, is far more real and interesting.

As to Barry himself, the reader never does quite understand why the women find him so irresistible. It does not appear that he is very handsome, or very accomplished, or very anything else, excepting that he is abominably selfish in his dealings with Elizabeth. The women who fall in love with him rave about his “honesty,” but that is a quality which seldom carries women off their feet. Decidedly Elizabeth remains the heroine and next to her in interest comes the bad, beautiful Mrs. Langham. The author tells the story with superb art. There are no incidents, no thrills, no dramatic climaxes, and yet there is not a dull page in the book.

Cause for Joy

“Well, now, which do you think is correct, ‘measles is’ or ‘measles are’?” chucklingly inquired the landlord of the Torpidville tavern. “Also, would you say, ‘The Glee Club are’ or ‘the Glee Club is’?”

“D’know!” replied the patent-churn man, shortly. “Those old catch-questions don’t interest me a little bit. But what I’d like to know is why everybody looks so pleased and smiling today? Is there a picnic or celebration or something of the sort on the tapis?”

“No, skurcely that. It’s the relief that is tickling ’em, not anticipation. You see, the Glee Club of the village Academy was going to give a concert and cantata tomorrow night, assisted by our best local talent, and now the measles have, or has, as the case may be, broken out, up there in the temple of learnin’, and every member of the Glee Club have, or has, got it, or them, good and plenty and the entertainment has been indefinitely—haw! haw!—postponed.”

The Democrat has no axe to grind, no scores to settle nor heads to whack in advancing the erection by the city of an electric lighting plant. From every standpoint it is right.—Grand Ireland (Neb.) Democrat.

Paul Morton, president of the Equitable, says he is not going to pay any more money to legislators to protect his insurance company. This reminds the Syracuse (N. Y.) Herald of the story of the old darkey, never regarded as being at all particular about how or where he gathered up a penny, who dropped his pocketbook in a crowd one day. As the nickels and dimes scattered about, the old man began to scramble for them, shouting, “Befoh de Lawd! Let evahbody be honest now.”—Leeton (Mo.) Times.

Democracy means always independence of thought, and unless the party leaders treat the people fairly they will find it also means independence of action. This was fully demonstrated last year in both National and State campaigns, and it is time the Democratic leaders in Missouri should heed the warning.—Ozark (Mo.) Democrat.

Congress is now asked to appropriate $16,500,000 in one lump to the Isthmian Canal. This nice little sum will only serve to grease the skillet for a short time.—Panola Watchman, Carthage, Tex.

It has been only a few weeks since Mr. McCall of the New York Life Insurance Company was standing on his dignity and trying to make a joke of the insurance investigation—just as Mr. Rogers of the Standard Oil Company tried to make a joke of the investigation in New York last week. But today Mr. McCall is a disgraced man in the public eye, and another man signs as president of the New York Life. And it may be only a short time until Mr. Rogers is holding an unenviable seat with Mr. McCall and a lot of other unscrupulous fellows who a short time ago imagined that they were practically the whole financial show. These money grafters are up against an aroused public sentiment which in America today spells destruction for whatever it may be directed against. In America there is no system that can stand against the will of the people, and Mr. Rogers and his Standard Oil crowd will yet live to see the day—and that soon—when they will put off their arrogant airs in answering a criminal investigation by the legal representatives of a great state.—Darlington (Mo.) Record.

The Department of Agriculture is now undertaking to show the farmers how they can raise better tobacco. What the farmers would much prefer would be for Secretary Wilson to show how to get more than 34 cents for it from the Tobacco Trust.—Tarboro (N. C.) Southerner.

The steamer America, from Honolulu for San Francisco, carried $750,000 in coin sent by registered mail by local bankers, in order, it is alleged, that the money might be at sea, and beyond the territorial jurisdiction on December 31st, when a tax of one per cent. is levied on all money on deposit by the banks on that date. It is understood that the money will be returned immediately. Deducting the charges of shipment, the saving made will be approximately $7,000.—Argonaut, San Francisco.

The attention of the public is unpleasantly attracted to the position of Henry H. Rogers, active head of the Standard Oil trust, in relation to the testimony sought by the supreme court of Missouri. The Missouri court, in seeking the enforcement of the anti-trust law of that State, has undertaken to procure testimony upon the allegation that the Standard company is violating the law. Among the witnesses is Mr. Rogers. He dodged service of the subpoena until outwitted by an officer and in the witness chair he refuses to answer questions propounded by the attorney general of Missouri. He refuses with a supercilious air that asserts his contempt for such humble affairs as courts and officers of the law. The world’s greatest trust, the world’s richest men, tell the world that they are not amenable to the regulations to which the balance of the world is bound to conform. This is the anarchy of wealth. Recently representatives of the oil trust told Commissioner Garfield that the Standard Oil was greater than the government; that John D. Rockefeller was a bigger man than the President of the United States; that he owned the Senate and the House and was able, by the mere passing of the word, to cause the removal of Secretary Metcalf and Commissioner Garfield. A few years back in history the Standard[140] Oil corporation defied the Supreme Court of Ohio and caused the political defeat of the presumptuous attorney who brought an action against it and won because his case was just. Now comes Henry H. Rogers, second to John D. Rockefeller, bristling with defiance because a Western court proposes to make him and his associates obey the same law that common persons have to obey. It is greatly to be feared that the oil magnates are invoking a test of strength—feared because some one is going to be roughly handled should there come a popular adjustment between the forces of wealth and government. The American people have been very patient and are still patient. But if they are called upon to pass upon certain points raised by the contumacy of Mr. Rogers and the rest, the controversy will be short, sharp and decisive.—Howard (S. Dak.) Advance.

Let those with a sense of humor laugh now, while the game is barely on, at such naïve expressions of alarm as those of Secretary Taft in a recent speech wherein he feared that the “dangerous classes,” such as populists and socialists, might succeed in arraying the masses against capitalism to the injury of the latter. Secretary Taft fears that the ninety per cent of our population are going to demand the right to rule. Awful, isn’t it?

This fat sow of the system with its nose in the trough, its distended guts groaning and still filling, sounds the warning that the razor-backs are preparing to assume control of the swill. Wough! Secretary Taft believes that this country is only safe when every bank, the House, the Senate, every State legislature, and every public office is manned and controlled by a McCall, McCurdy, Hyde, Armour or Rockefeller; that is, safe for the system. We say this country is not safe when ten millions of its inhabitants live in dire poverty and two hundred and seventy thousand people fill its jails.

We say there is something radically wrong with our educational and economic systems. We say the multi-income grafters must be hurled back to one man power, for there is not a banker nor so-called financier in America that has not for years been in collusion with Hyde, McCall and McCurdy, and consciously participated in their stealing.

Come, now, Secretary Taft, would men who have been brought up to do real work be any more dangerous in high places?—Parker H. Sercombe in To-Morrow.

And now it is announced that all three of the big life insurance presidents in New York are down with nervous prostration. Sounds from testimony as though it ought to be the policy holders.—Alma (Neb.) Record.

With the arraignment of Standard Oil officers, life insurance fakirs, Panama Canal investigations, United States senators losing their dignity, and being tried like other criminals, and all manner of “big bugs” having to shudder at the majesty of the law, we are made to wonder what is going to happen next.—Durant (I. T.) Farmer.

Announcement is made of another donation by John D. Rockefeller to the University of Chicago. This time it is $1,450,000. Where did he get it?—Granville (Ia.) Gazette.

Rockefeller may fire Rogers for talking too much. Rogers admitted that he knew his own name and had heard of Standard Oil.—People’s Voice, Norman, Okla.

Now that railroad passes are abolished and the franking privilege is to be stopped, what will Congressmen do, poor things? They have been sending their soiled clothes back to their district and having them returned free, have been getting beef, butter, eggs, and vegetables in the same way, and to cap the anticlimax of their perquisites Hon. Shepard of Arkansas has discovered that their mileage allowance of twenty cents per mile made in the old stage-coach era, is a gross over-allowance and has introduced a bill to cut it down to six cents a mile, which is quite enough for the Pullman car accommodations nowadays.—Luck (Wis.) Enterprise.

The State of New York which has a population of 8,000,000 and wealth far in excess of any state in the Union has had no representative in the Senate since the holiday opening of Congress. Its two Senators, Platt and Depew, are prevented by ill-health from attending the sessions and it is not known when they will be able to take their places in the Senate Chamber. Senator Platt with his new wife is at Virginia Hot Springs, looking in vain for the fountain of youth. He is palsied with age and he is so feeble that he cannot walk about unsupported. On the daily drives and outings that Mrs. Platt is obliged to take to maintain her vigorous health she is never accompanied by the aged Senator, who remains in his room nearly all of the time. The situation with Senator Depew is scarcely more agreeable. Instead of the triumphant, jovial Depew of old he is now a man broken in health and spirit by the revelations of the New York insurance companies which have placed him in such a questionable light before the public.—Kiowa (Colo.) Record.

As this country becomes more and more a manufacturing country, it needs to give more heed to this fundamental problem. Urged by purely selfish motives, commerce and industry are ever tending to exploit the labor of the child because it is low priced, and to oppose restraining legislation. This, observes the Chicago Tribune, is why the child labor laws of England are considerably[141] less stringent than those of progressive countries on the Continent. The latter, pressing upon each other’s frontiers, realize that child labor impairs the military efficiency of a nation. Military considerations may not weigh so heavily with the people of this country as they do with continental Europe. But child labor should be prevented in America with a view to securing for children that better preparation for life and that worthy type of ultimate citizenship which American ideals demand. In the interest of social and civic efficiency, and so of our national future, the rising generation, both North and South, should be protected against premature toil.—Bath (N. Y.) Plaindealer.

The new officials in Philadelphia should see that their predecessors get their just dues—a long term in the penitentiary.—Winona (Minn.) Leader.

When the People’s Party first submitted its platform of principles to the people, the soundness of its principles was questioned and doubted by many, and even by some who recognized the soundness of the principles, yet had not lost hope, or were not convinced, that reforms could not be brought about swifter through their old parties than through a new party organization, and for this reason never aligned themselves with the People’s Party; but the last ten years of endeavor to secure reforms through the old parties has convinced them that reform through the old parties was like tracing the rainbow to find a pot of gold hanging on the end of it.—People’s Voice, Norman, Okla.

The state legislators certainly cannot now have any reason for flinching on the question of railroad rates. The Pennsylvania road showed that while one third of their passengers rode on passes they were able to pay a nice dividend to stockholders. Now that nobody rides on passes the public certainly should secure the benefit by a reduction to two cents per mile for travel. The law makers can also consider the right of eminent domain for the trolley lines, as well as the right of electric lines to carry freight. The latter propositions would mean thousands of dollars in the pockets of the people. Instead of the discontinuing of the passes being a detriment to the people, it will undoubtedly become a benefit.—Roscoe (Pa.) Ledger.

Hon. Ezekiel S. Candler, Jr., a member of Congress from Mississippi, recently delivered a speech before the House of Representatives in which he favored legislation that would abolish hazing in the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. Mr. Candler very justly ridicules the idea that hazing is necessary to make a boy courageous and keep him from being a “sissy boy.”—Grand Cane (La.) Beacon.

From what can be learned of the dispatches concerning the punishment of grafters under the present administration, it seems that those who were brought in guilty, have invariably been men who were opposed to some of Roosevelt’s pet hobbies. Burton of Kansas, you must remember, strenuously opposed Roosevelt’s plan to reduce the duty on Cuban raw sugar, and made a brilliant speech in opposition to it. Poor old Senator Mitchell, of Oregon, also opposed some of Teddy’s pet schemes. He was pursued unmercifully and maliciously, yet the beef trust goes unpunished. Teddy’s investigators are now busy defending them. Those men arrested in Nebraska for the illegal fencing and use of Government land received but a nominal fine and a sentence of six hours in the custody of the United States Marshal. Secretary Shaw, another of Teddy’s proteges, has declared that John Walsh of Chicago is innocent of any statutory crime, and has only done what many other bankers have done. Just as soon as the failure of the Walsh banks was wired to Washington, plans were at once set on foot to protect them, also to protect Walsh. Teddy will have to shift his bearings a little or the people will soon begin to believe that he is not the Simon-pure reformer, graft crusher and trust buster that the press agents are claiming him to be.—Ex Porte, Florence, Colo.

The grain trust of Nebraska fixes the price of every bushel of grain in the state. Not an elevator in the state pretends to begin operations till the price of grain fixed by the trust comes, and it comes every day very early in the morning. Supply and demand! Who said supply and demand regulate prices?—Broken Bow (Neb.) Beacon.

Germany is putting the tariff question squarely before the “stand pat” Republican clique in the Senate. That country proposes to bar American goods by a prohibitory tariff unless this country reduces the Dingley tariff for Germany. This is a fair proposition and one that the people generally in this country would gladly welcome, but the eight or nine Republican bosses would rather see this country sink than give an inch on the present tariff.—Vandalia (Ill.) Democrat.

H. Clay Pierce, president of the Waters-Pierce Oil company, who has been holding up the people of the Indian Territory and Texas for a great many years past, pays $25 a day for seven rooms the year round at the Waldorf-Astoria, one of New York’s big hotels.—Rush Springs (I. T.) Landmark.

The Standard Oil Company has during the past year gobbled up about twenty gas plants in various parts of the country. Having an income of about forty millions a year. John D. Rockefeller must put his money into something that will bring him more interest.—Delphi, (Ind.) Citizen Times.

Senator Burton has dismissed his private secretary, because there was nothing for him to do. There is also very little for poor Burton to do unless it is “doing time.”—Princeton (Ky.) Chronicle.

The Congressman, who, with his wife, aunts, and mother-in-law, franks their clothes home once a week to be washed, is going to be the loser by the investigation of the Congressional franking privilege pending.—Delton (Mich.) Graphic.

Tom Watson wants to know if Bryan will try to buy the throne of Peter the Great or the second-hand coat of Peter the Great. Mr. Bryan set the entire Japanese nation against him when he tried to buy the “war chair” that Togo had sat in, and the Watson inquiries suggest nothing more out of place than this foolish and very improper episode.—Rushville (Ind.) American.

The reply of Thomas E. Watson to Clark Howell is such a long letter that we cannot get it in this issue of the Rambler, but will give it Tuesday. The weakest of all the weak things that Howell’s advisers have let him do is the stirring up of Watson.—Cordele (Ga.) Rambler.

And so “I am a Democrat, D. B. Hill” has also been receiving a large sum of money ($5,000) each year for a long time from the Equitable Life Insurance Company. Mr. Hill says his salary was for his services as a lawyer and not for his political influence. Mr. Hill may have thought so, made himself think so. But to a man up a tree the salaries the insurance companies paid Hill, Depew and other men of great political influence were to make friends of them so that the graft of the insurance officers could continue. We presume most of the men of great political influence in the ruling parties are on the pay roll of one or more of the big grafting corporations. A list of the congressmen, governors, etc., who are getting salaries as attorneys for the railroads, trusts, etc., would be very interesting reading.—Missouri World.

The Georgia gubernatorial campaign has reached the letter-writing stage, apparently, though it must be confessed that the man who sprung the trigger isn’t profiting very much by the result of his action. The secret of the Sibley correspondence was carefully guarded until the Columbus debate, and then thrown upon the public in the form of a bombshell, the expectation being that Mr. Smith would be swept from his feet by the explosion.

The result was anything but what was anticipated. While Mr. Smith knew nothing of what was coming, he did exactly as he has done in the face of all the charges that have been brought against him—made no explanation whatever, because he had nothing to explain.

The matter was explained, however, and by the man who knew more about the whole business than any one—excepting, of course, Mr. Howell, and that man was Hon. Thomas E. Watson. And Mr. Watson’s explanation does just what it was intended to do—it explains.

Attempts have since been made by Mr. Howell to give further enlightenment on the Sibley and McGregor episodes by publishing the entire correspondence, but like a man in quicksand, every struggle to extricate himself only sinks him the deeper.

At no time has it been shown that Mr. Smith sought an alliance with Mr. Watson, or that one was ever made. Mr. Watson has no political ambition at the present time, and, in fact, states in one of his letters that instead of seeking the election to the United States Senate, he is supporting, and will cast his vote for Hon. John Temple Graves for the same reason that he is supporting Mr. Smith—because Mr. Graves stands for the same principles Mr. Watson has always advocated.—Dublin (Ga.) Times.

Howell and McGregor are trying hard to make it appear that Tom Watson and Smith made a firm trade before Smith announced for Governor; and in the next breath Clark says Sibley offered him Watson’s support six weeks after Smith announced. Funny how he could support both of them!—Bullock (Ga.) Times.

Mr. Howell is lustily calling to the “Loyal Democrats” to save him from Tom Watson and the bow-wows. Loyal to what? To Clark and the corporations? But a few weeks ago “Boss” Murphy was calling (and buying) both “Loyal” Democrats and Republicans to save him from Hearst and the penitentiary. Honest Democrats, by the Eternal, be loyal to yourselves, your wives and children, and to the God that made you.—Dalton (Ga.) Herald.

Why should ex-Populist Hon. Thomas E. Winn be allowed to use the columns of the only Democratic paper in the state, the Constitution, to advise ex-Populists to vote for Howell, and Hon. Thomas E. Watson be refused to say whom he is for and why. Tell us, Clark.—Lawrenceville (Ga.) Journal.

H. Clay Pierce, of the Waters-Pierce Oil Company, a branch of the Standard, has been in hiding at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, in New York, to prevent the serving of a summons to appear before Attorney-General Hadley, of Missouri. Pierce has had his private yacht steamed up for days, ready to leave the country at a moment’s notice. Old John D. Rockefeller is also dodging around, keeping out of the way of the officers. The fact that the Standard Oil fellows are afraid to go into court, and are continually[143] on the lookout for officers, ought to be sufficient proof to the people that they are guilty. Honest people are not afraid of law or officers.—Garnett (Kan.) Independent Review.

It seems that conditions down on the isthmus, where the Government is engaged in digging a big canal, will not stand much probing. A Republican paper, friendly to the administration, sent a representative down there to report on the conditions, and his report has caused an investigation to be begun by Congress. President Roosevelt will be fortunate if he saves himself from this Congress, and he can afford to keep on friendly terms with the Democrats.—Malad (Idaho) People’s Advocate.

The Federal Senate of the United States is becoming more and more like the House of Lords in England. It is clearly not of the people. Wealth is the title that makes membership possible. A man without money, in these later days, can no more enter this American House of Lords than a camel can pass through the eye of a needle. No matter how a man may have acquired his riches, even though every one of his dollars be tainted, this “honorable” position as the head of our Government is his—providing he has the “dough to go around.” Oh! the shame of it all! Why is it that the common people, the masses, those who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow—and they are in the majority—do not rise up in their might and make this office an elective one by all the people instead of a few subsidized purchased legislators, that it might come from the people, and in coming from them, represent them instead of the selfish money interests of the country?—Detroit (Mich.) Courier.

Common mortals have an awesome fear of the majesty of the law, but not so with Rogers, the Standard Oil lord lieutenant. They are regarded by him as but minions of the people; something far beneath his lofty station. Let’s hope he is taught a wholesome respect for courts of justice before this Standard Oil rottenness is all suppressed.—Prescot (Wis.) Tribune.

Of all the thin political tricks that have been attempted to be put off on the people of Georgia, that Sibley-Howell correspondence, sprung by tricky Clark in the Columbus debate, was the thinnest. Why they didn’t have sense enough to date their letters two months earlier, so as to antedate Hoke Smith’s announcement, is an evidence of the weakness of political trickery. There was never a meaner nor more transparent job, for it could deceive only fools.—Sparta (Ga.) Ishmaelite.

It is said that the various corporations of the country have employed and almost monopolized all of the best legal talent of the land. Be that as it may; no lawyer that is, or for the last ten years has been, employed by a corporation should ever be elected or appointed to a public office. Especially should they not be sent to Congress or state legislature.—Cass (Tex.) Sun.

Two insurance companies that have defied the state law requiring licenses and who have other charges laid at their doors have been taken into the civil courts by the State Insurance Department. It is to be hoped that they will not escape upon any technicality as they did in the criminal action. It’s time the insurance companies were made to understand that the laws, weak and incomplete as they are, must be enforced.—Cortez (Colo.) Journal.

The year 1906 is an off year in politics. No National tickets will be in the field; but National issues will be emphasized and direction given to the next campaign. It will be well for us to look the field over and examine our bearings. For many years we have trusted the great political parties to make up the issues that we, by ballot, are to decide; but experience has taught us that political parties make up blind issues, in which the people are not interested. The great issue before the people of this Government today is the enforcement of the law. The great monopolies, who are law defying in their tendencies, must be compelled to obey the law. The law-defying elements that are moved by selfish motives alone, must be made to bend to the will of the people.—Lockwood (Mo.) Times.

Berlin, the capital of Germany, has solved the vexed sewage problem in a way that should commend itself to American cities, where we are away behind in the disposal of harmful and polluting refuse. The municipality of Berlin purchased thousands of acres of unproductive sand land near the city and fertilizing this with the sewage, raises big crops for the city’s benefit. Of course the plant is costly, but the proceeds of the farm repay all cost, besides a good profit.—The American Farmer.

The Citizen regrets very much the domestic infelicity which seems to exist under the roof of the Atlanta, Ga., News. It is unfortunate. Hon. John Temple Graves, as the Rome Tribune puts it, “is the Atlanta News.” We would not give a thrip of our finger for it without him. He is the life of it, and his brain and energy have made it. He has kept it free from furtherance of his political ambitions, and has made it these years the impartial commentator of men and affairs. The whole trouble is, no doubt, the result of corporate greed, and the desire on the part of certain influences to control its policy.—Dalton (Ga.) Citizen.

The next political campaign in this county will be more than interesting. Neither party has a “walkover” any longer. No candidate has a “cinch,” but those who win will have to work and satisfy the people. Moreover, our people are not going to vote for men they know to be bad, merely because nominated by their party. The object of our system of ballots is to give every voter a chance to exercise his individual opinion and our people, Democrats and Republicans, will do it.—Bloomfield (Mo.) Courier.

If there are 80,000 populists in Georgia, Clark Howell had just as well come out of the race, for his attack on Tom Watson is an attack on each of them, and the result will be that every one of them will vote with him. They follow him wherever he leads with that same spirit of loyalty exhibited by the grenadiers who followed the matchless Napoleon. It is a bad political move to disturb this sleeping lion, who is, perhaps, the matchless master of the Queen’s English in Georgia. His store of information seems inexhaustable, and his logic irresistible. True, regardless of his politics.—Marietta (Ga.) Courier.

Right, you are, neighbor. Watson’s reply to Howell on the Sibley letter was the hottest, the strongest, the most cutting and most biting political epistle that we have ever read.

Every word in it was as sharp as a two-edged sword and went as straight to the mark as a rifle ball.

We care but little what some writers say about us, but there are two people in Georgia, Mrs. Felton and Tom Watson, with whom we hope forever to keep on terms.

And Tom Watson is a man of convictions. He isn’t afraid of abuse when it comes to taking a stand for what he considers right.

Smart as he is, he sees through the political scheme being worked in Georgia to defeat Hoke Smith and he denounces it in no uncertain terms.

Listen to him: “If Hoke Smith succeeds, if the people will but realize that Hoke Smith is the only anti-ring candidate in the field, if they will but realize that the candidacies of Clark Howell, Jim Smith, Dick Russell, J. H. Estill, Jack Robinson, and Hiram-Fat-and-Go-Last all tend to the same object; if they will but realize that these different candidates are jumping-jacks which Hamp McWhorter has strung upon the same string, and that when Hamp strikes the string with the straw they all dance in the most diverting and uniform manner: if the people will but use their common sense and refuse to be divided, then Hoke Smith’s triumph is assured.”

Listen again to this patriotic paragraph: “And in my purpose there is a motive so dominant, and a plan so full of the promise of glorious results for Georgia and the South, that I shall not allow the rigid limits of party lines to tie my hands; but shall hold myself perfectly free to serve my people in the best way that circumstances allow, and as duty directs.”

And nobody will close Watson’s mouth. On that score he says: “One-horse politicians devoted to the ring need not think that their permission is necessary for me to advise with the people of Georgia. Their consent will not be asked. As a Georgian I have a right to be heard. My people came here when the Indians still roamed in the woods, and have been a part of Georgia ever since, serving her dutifully in the time of peace, fighting for her manfully in the time of war. There never lived a man who was more devoted than I to the best interests of my state and of the South. As a Southern man, I resent from the depth of my heart the political degradation into which our state has fallen, and I am going to do my level best to help Hoke Smith redeem it.”—Lawrenceville (Ga.) Gwinnett Journal.

The bankers want more “currency”—so did the farmers a few years ago. At that time it was a crazy scheme—today it is sound finance!—Penns Grove (N. J.) Record.

Senator Depew is reported to be in failing health, owing to the storm of criticism which has forced him from many places of honor, and which may lose him his Senate seat. And this is the witty Chauncey who was wont to laugh away opposition and carry his points so easily! “Great will be the fall thereof.”—Hogansville (Ga.) News.

We move to amend Secretary Shaw’s motion for an elastic currency by striking out elastic and substituting adhesive.—Republican City (Mo.) Ranger.

Secretary Shaw’s scheme for an elastic currency is to authorize the national banks to strike from their notes as now issued the words “secured by United States bonds deposited with the treasury of the United States,” and to issue 50 per cent more notes whenever the demand seems to exist. Thus, if the National City Bank of New York had issued all the notes it could against Government bonds, and a big stock gambler asked for a loan of $1,000,000, the bank would issue notes in that sum, charge him, say 10 per cent, retire the notes when the loan was paid, and pocket the interest in excess of the 6 per cent tax to the Government. Very nice arrangement that for the national banks. Little wonder that Wall Street takes kindly to the candidacy of Mr. Shaw for the presidency.—Rushville (Ill.) Times.

Let’s see: Does this country lead the civilized world in progress? Well, hardly, since every other civilized country on the face of the earth, with the exception of Honduras and Costa Rica, own and operate their own telegraph lines and give a far more satisfactory service to the public for a far less consideration than it costs the dear people[145] in this country of progress, where corporations, have, by robbing the people, accumulated untold wealth with which they are enabled to evade such laws as prove obnoxious to them, and can buy law-makers and have odious laws repealed and new ones made, giving them all the powers they seek.—Cloverdale (Ind.) Graphic.

The Standard oil magnates have been again showing their contempt of law. Their attitude hatches more anarchists than all the Herr Most brand of incubators. The lawless rich and powerful are the real enemies of the republic.—Pennsboro (W. Va.) News.

The American agrees most heartily with Dr. Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard University, when he says the great movement of the world is toward democracy. This is the natural result of an advancing civilization.

America overthrew the false doctrine of the divine right of kings to rule when she wrote the Declaration of Independence and declared that all men were born equal. Since then we have created by law a person as great, as arrogant and tyrannical as the king—the Public Corporation.

How can all men have an equal footing in law when we give special privileges to the corporate person and enable that person to levy tribute at will on the wealth of the nation?

How can all have equal rights, when the corporate person can spend millions of dollars to corrupt our city councils, our state legislatures, our Congress and our courts?

The movement against these legalized law-created individuals is the awakening of the spirit of democracy, and it means the eventual wiping out of these public service corporations which occupy relatively the same position in this country that the king does in a monarchy. It means that genuine democracy, the rule of the people, will supplant the rule of the corporation. It means the public ownership of all public utilities.—Creston (Ia.) Morning American.

Whatever is said of Tom Watson, no one will deny that he has convictions and the nerve to stand by them. He knows no party lines when it comes to fighting for the principles he has so long advocated, and that is the reason he is now supporting Hoke Smith.—Dalton (Ga.) Citizen.

The Philippine tariff is a characteristic act of the present régime. We first shot and beat the poor savages into submission. We then took away the market for their goods and compelled them to sell to, and buy of, us. We followed this with the Dingley tariff both coming and going. The fact that this was simple highway robbery did not shame us. At the point of a gun they are compelled to stand and deliver. The House has now passed a bill providing that we will stop robbing these “wards” of ours except the poor Sugar Trust and Tobacco Trust and they shall only continue their robbery until 1909. And do you know that some Republicans are actually claiming some credit for such a law as that?—Frankfort (Ind.) Crescent Standard.

The author of our “Washington Letter” slops over this week in fulsome praise of Paul Morton, who at one time admitted his long-continued violation of the anti-rebate law—a crime which no honorable man would commit under any circumstances. The Herald approves of no such condoning of crime on the part of any man from the President down to the lowest.—Waseca (Minn.) Herald.

Burton cares not who makes the laws of the country, provided he gets his salary and mileage.—Cumberland (Md.) Independent.

By stepping inside of the door of the Senate chamber so that the journal clerk could view him for half a minute, Senator Burton of Kansas was enabled to claim attendance on the 59th Congress and draw $1,000 mileage therefore. No, Senator Burton will not resign while he can draw his salary of $5,000 a year and mileage, even though his reputation does rest under a cloud. That cloud has a silver lining.—Alva (Okla.) Renfrews Record.

A few years ago there was considerable riot in the subsidized press about the “disgrace” that had been heaped upon Kansas by the “Pops.” All manner of fun was poked at Peffer’s whiskers—but he was never sent to jail. This country had a good deal of fun over “Sockless Jerry,” but he was never accused of working any get-rich-quick concern. No “Pop” state officer has ever involved the state in such a scandal as has been hanging over the state treasury for the last three years. The “Pop” state secretary never loaded the state school fund up with a batch of worthless bonds. Honest now, how much has the reputation of Kansas been improved by the crowd that “redeemed it from Populism.”—Mankato (Kan.) Advocate.

It is an honor, not a crime, to hold a public office. It is a proper reward for activity in politics, but he who accepts an office should never forget that the moment he enters upon the discharge of his duties he becomes then an officer for all the people, not only those who voted for his election, but those who opposed it.—Indianola (Miss.) Enterprise.

As an evidence of the wide extent of the reform sentiment among Oregon voters of today, one has but to notice how anxiously eager the would-be candidates for Congress are to get into the reform band-wagon. At least two of the Republican aspirants are old-time ring politicians and probably care but little for most of the reforms demanded by the people further than to ride into office[146] on the reform wave. But reform is in the air, gentlemen, and if you keep in the swim you will have to join the throng, and be honest about it, too.—Scio (Oregon) Santian News.

H. H. Rogers of the Standard Oil Company the concrete expression of the rank insolence of a hundred millions of ill-gotten wealth.—Rush Springs (I. T.) Landmark.

All cities which have adopted municipal ownership of their lighting plant are glad they did it, and would not think of going back to private ownership. Why should Grand Island be a back number in the progress of the world?—Grand Island (Neb.) Democrat.

“The Ladies’ Aid Society of the church have undertaken the task of collecting half a mile of pennies,” said the Old Codger’s niece, “for the purpose of sending our pastor on a vacation trip.”

“A row of cents half a mile long,” persisted the lady, “will amount, so Sister Eunice Tubman has figured out, to $420.00, and—”

“I don’t care what they amount to!” doggedly declared the venerable curmudgeon. “While I’ve got any sense nobody will get any cents out o’ me for any such purpose! I don’t care a contaminated drat whether ‘our pastor’ stays at home or goes to the Whangdoodle Islands—whatever he does won’t be at my expense, lemme just rise to remark!”

“Yuss! And the less they labor the higher they want their hire to be! Labor!—huh! If more preachers would—aw, well, I won’t give an inch of that ’ere half mile of cents, and that settles it!”

“Why, Uncle, how can you talk so? You are generally ready to give to good causes, and—”

“To be sure, it is! And he is in every way such a worthy young man, and so intellectual, too! What possible grudge can you have against him?”

“Just told ye!—his name is Bertram! He also says ‘eyther’ and ‘nyther’, which pronunciations cheat me out of all the good his sermons might otherwise do me. I could overlook that, though, if his name wasn’t Bertram. For years that’s been pretty nearly a fighting word with me. When I was a freckle-nosed schoolboy in the old Head-o’-the-River district, there was a boy named Bertram there, who had a swifter sled than mine, and didn’t have to wear his Pa’s cut-down-to-fit-him clothes like I did, and who spelt me down the last day of school, and took from me the bashful affection of the pantaletted little girl who was all the world to me at that particular time. I couldn’t get even with him then for he could lick me, and did. And ever since I’ve—”

“No, but he’s a Bertram, and somehow all Bertrams have looked alike to me ever since. All these years I’ve been hostile to Bertrams, and have never been able to conquer the feeling, try as I might. Any Bertram affects me the same way—a Bertram is a Bertram, to me, and I simply can’t help it. The Lord loves a cheerful giver, and as I couldn’t any more give cheerfully to this or any other Bertram than I could sing a hymn while sitting down on wet ice, I won’t add a cent to that ’ere half-mile of pennies. That’s all there is to it.”

Home News

January 8.—Senator Rayner, of Maryland, attacks President Roosevelt’s attitude on the Santo Domingan question. He declares the President has twisted the Monroe Doctrine into a “Roosevelt Doctrine.”

President Roosevelt transmits the report of the Panama Canal Commissioners and the Panama Railroad directors to the Senate. The reports are accompanied by a letter from the President in which he challenges an investigation of the canal work.

Senator Bacon, of Georgia, introduces a resolution in the Senate asking President Roosevelt why the United States is mixing in the quarrel over Morocco, which threatens to bring about a European war.

A resolution is introduced in the House for a committee to investigate the treatment of Mrs. Minor Morris at the White House. On Jan. 4, Mrs. Morris was forcibly ejected by order of Secretary Barnes.

Standard Oil interests organize a Glucose Trust to control the entire glucose business of the country.

H. H. Rogers again testifies in the investigation of the Standard Oil Co. brought by the State of Missouri. He follows his tactics of refusing to answer questions, and expresses contempt for the laws of Missouri, and the Missouri Supreme Court.

A landslide at Haverstraw, N. Y., kills 22 persons.

January 9.—The treatment of Mrs. Minor Morris at the White House brings severe criticism on Mr. Roosevelt. Prominent senators and congressmen condemn the President’s treatment of them at the hands of his secretaries. The newspaper correspondents claim that he exerts a press censorship over the Departments and allows nothing to be given to the press except what suits him. Many acts of misconduct in the Departments have been kept a secret. A large force of secretaries and secret service men prevent officials from seeing the President on official business, unless the President cares to attend to such matters.

The House Committee on Postoffices and Post Roads requests Postmaster General Cortelyou to supply the Committee with all information he may have on the franking abuses.

The National Bank of Commerce, New York City, drops J. H. Hyde, J. W. Alexander, Senator Depew and Richard A. McCurdy from its board of directors.

Judge J. H. Paynter is elected United States senator from Kentucky to succeed Senator Blackburn.

The Senate accepts the President’s challenge, and orders an investigation of the Panama Canal affairs.

Speaker Cannon succeeds in winning John Sharp Williams’s support for the Philippine Tariff bill. This insures its passage.

A judge of the New York Supreme Court issues a writ ordering H. H. Rogers to show cause for not answering the questions of Attorney-General Hadley, of Missouri, in the Standard Oil investigation.

January 10.—Secretary Taft replies to Poultney Bigelow’s charges of maladministration in Panama. He virtually calls Bigelow a liar, but admits that negro women were sent to the Isthmus to be distributed as wives among the laborers. The charge that a boat-load of negroes from Martinique were clubbed is also admitted.

The Federal Grand Jury at Utica, N. Y., indicts the New York Central and Delaware and Hudson railroads for rebating.

Mrs. Minor Morris, the woman who was ejected from the White House, is in a critical condition.

Dr. William R. Harper, President of the University of Chicago, dies at his home in Chicago.

January 11.—The Senate committee, which has the Panama investigation in charge, subpœnas Poultney Bigelow to testify about mismanagement of the Canal affairs.

President Roosevelt declares that it will be the fault of Southern senators if the treaty with Santo Domingo is not ratified.

Ramon Caceres, who succeeded Morales as President of Santo Domingo, declares[148] that he favors the Roosevelt treaty, and that peace will soon be restored.

Senator Bacon’s resolution of inquiry into the Moroccan question is shelved.

January 12.—The House and Senate leaders reach an agreement to meet the retaliatory legislation of foreign countries with a maximum and minimum tariff. The minimum tariff is to be the Dingley law. The maximum is a 25 per cent. addition to the Dingley schedule.

Congressman Longworth, of Ohio, addresses the House on the Philippine tariff bill, and declares the Philippines to be a shiftless, worthless lot of people.

The Insurgent Congressmen, that is, the Republicans who oppose Speaker Cannon on the joint statehood bill, claim that they have 51 votes and will defeat the bill. Two of them are from Missouri. The President sends for the entire Missouri delegation and tries to whip the two members into line, but fails.

Mrs. Cassie Chadwick begins her term of imprisonment in the Federal Penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio.

Congressman McCall, of Massachusetts, warns his Republican colleagues that they must revise the tariff, or the Republican Party will be defeated at the next election.

District Attorney Jerome, of New York City, prepares to prosecute the guilty officials of the big life insurance companies.

The Clyde Line steamship Cherokee goes ashore on Brigantine Shoals, off Atlantic City, N. J. Tugs and life-saving crews have gone to the aid of the passengers and crew.

January 13.—President Roosevelt holds a conference with prominent New York Republicans with reference to ousting Odell from the leadership of New York State.

The President has a conference with Representative Hepburn and indicates that he favors the Hepburn bill on railroad rate regulation.

The notice to make H. H. Rogers testify in the Standard Oil investigation is argued before Justice Gildersleeve in the New York Supreme Court.

The debate on the Philippine tariff bill continues in the House.

Troops in the Philippines are being held in readiness to sail for China in case the feelings against Americans cannot be controlled by the Chinese Government.

Attorney General Mayer, of New York, prepares to bring suit against the McCurdys and the directors of the Mutual Life Insurance Co. for the restitution of illegal salaries and commissions.

January 14.—All of the passengers and a part of the crew are rescued from the stranded steamer Cherokee. The captain, two mates and the ship’s carpenter refused to leave the vessel.

According to statistics gathered by insurance men, 17,700 persons were killed or wounded in the factories and steel plants in Allegheny County, Penn., in 1905.

January 15.—Private Secretary Loeb denies that the President stated, while trying to whip the Missouri delegation into line on the Statehood bill last Friday, that money was being freely used by corporations to defeat the bill. About the time the denial is made, a delegation from Arizona returned from the White House, and stated that practically the same charge was made to them.

Secretary Taft declares that the Southern Pacific Railway, through its ownership of the Pacific Mail Steamship Co., is responsible for the congestion of freight on the Isthmus of Panama, and consequent hindrance of canal work. The steamship company refuses to move the freight on the Pacific side, hoping to keep the blockade on the Atlantic side so great that no Government boats can land there with more supplies. This will force shipment via the Southern Pacific to San Francisco, and from there to Panama via the Pacific Mail Steamship Co.

The captain with the remaining members of his crew abandons the Cherokee. The rescue of passengers and crew was made by Captain Casto, of Atlantic City, N. J., with his crew in his schooner Alberta.

The debate on the Philippine tariff bill is brought to a close in the House of Representatives.

The President prepares a message to Congress, favoring a lock canal. The Canal Commission asks for $5,000,000 to continue the work during the balance of the present fiscal year.

January 16.—Marshall Field, Chicago’s millionaire merchant, dies of pneumonia in New York City, at the age of 70.

The Panama Canal Commission decides to build the Canal by contract. The President has approved the plan.

Congressman Hermann, of Oregon, who is under indictment for participating in land frauds, takes the oath of office, and begins to draw his salary.

January 16.—The House of Representatives passes the Philippine tariff bill. The bill admits goods the growth or product of the Philippines into the United States free of duty, except sugar, tobacco and rice, on which a tariff of 35 per cent of the Dingley rates is levied. Philippine goods coming to the United States are exempted from the export tax of the islands. The bill further provides that after April 11, 1909, there shall be absolute[149] free trade each way between the United States and the Philippines.

The vote on the Statehood bill is indefinitely postponed because Speaker Cannon fails to secure a sufficient number of pledges to make its passage certain.

The annual meeting of the United Mine Workers of America is held at Indianapolis.

The Senate debates the question whether Congress has the right to delegate to the courts its power to fix railroad rates.

The resolution introduced in the New York State Senate, asking Senator Depew to resign, is lost by a vote of 34 to 1. The Democrats refused to vote on the resolution.

January 17.—Senator Tillman, of South Carolina, bitterly attacks President Roosevelt on account of Mrs. Minor Morris’ treatment at the White House. Senator Hale, of Maine, alone makes a protest, and that on the ground of propriety.

The House of Representatives passes 166 private pension bills.

Ex-Senator David B. Hill, of New York, asks that his connection with the Equitable Life Assurance Society be investigated by the New York State Bar Association.

Three midshipmen are dismissed from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis for hazing.

The 200th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin is celebrated in Philadelphia and Boston.

Suits for $2,000,000 are filed by the city of Chicago against two street railway companies for running cars overcrowded with passengers.

January 18.—Poultney Bigelow refuses to answer questions about conditions as described by him in an article on the Isthmus of Panama, before members of the Senate Committee. He is arrested for contempt, but is later released.

Secretary Root states that the United States has no political interest in the Moroccan conference, but has a trade interest, and for that reason the United States is represented.

Senator Tillman’s resolution, calling for an investigation of the expulsion of Mrs. Minor Morris from the White House is tabled.

Secretary Taft advocates the construction of a direct cable connecting the United States with Panama. The Secretary declares this cable indispensable to the military control of the Gulf of Mexico in time of war.

Eighteen miners are killed by an explosion at Paint Creek, W. Va.

Congressman Sulzer, of New York, introduces a bill to increase the President’s salary to $100,000 and the Vice-President’s to $25,000 per year.

The Keep Commission, appointed by the President to investigate the method of gathering statistics for crop reports, recommends that the reports on the cotton crops be restricted to monthly reports showing the condition of the growing crop during the growing season. The acreage planted and the ginning statistics of the Census Bureau should be the only Government reports on those matters.

January 19.—Luke E. Wright, former Governor of the Philippines, is appointed first Ambassador to Japan.

Representatives of the insurance departments of several states confer with Armstrong Committee, which conducted the recent insurance investigation in New York, with a view to bringing about uniform insurance laws.

January 20.—The Senate Committee on the Philippines takes under consideration the Philippine tariff bill.

Robert H. Todd, Mayor of San Juan, Porto Rico, appears before the House Committee in behalf of the Larrinaga bill to reorganize the Porto Rican civil government. He declares that American members of the executive council are doing the insular Government a great injustice by occupying as residences Government buildings needed for the housing of courts and departments of the Government.

January 21.—Eighteen negroes are killed and fifty injured in a stampede following the discovery of fire in a church in Philadelphia.

The thermometer registers 86 degrees in Pittsburg. One person is overcome by the heat. Cities all over the country report much suffering from the heat.

Congressman Sulzer, of New York addresses a mass-meeting of citizens at Washington, D. C., and declares that the Powers must end Russian cruelty. Congressman Rainey, of Illinois, in addressing the same meeting, said that the United States had saved Russia from the victorious Japanese and ought now to save her from herself. Congressman Towne, of New York, introduced a resolution thanking the President for his efforts in bringing about a cessation of the unspeakable crimes against the oppressed people of Russia.

January 22.—Senator Burton, of Kansas, who has been convicted of malfeasance, appears in the United States Senate for thirty seconds. This entitles him to collect his $1,000 mileage.

Secretary Taft denies that any member of the Philippine Commission or any army or naval officer owns directly, or indirectly, any lands in the Philippine Islands.

January 23.—Senator Spooner, of Wisconsin, attempts to defend the President’s Santo Domingan policy in the Senate. Senators Tillman, of South Carolina,[150] and Culberson, of Texas, make strong replies.

Both Republican and Democratic members of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce unanimously agree on the railroad rate bill introduced by Congressman Hepburn, of Iowa. The bill will be sent back to the House for passage at once.

Chief Engineer Stevens, of the Panama Canal Commission, appears before the Senate Committee, and advocates a lock canal.

The Government opens its case against the Beef Trust at Chicago.

Kansas oil refiners appeal to Commissioner Garfield against impositions of the Standard Oil Co.

A plot of anarchists to assassinate some of the leading men of the country is unearthed at Washington, Pa. Governor Pennypacker was one of the doomed number.

January 24.—Senator Lodge, of Massachusetts, addresses the Senate in defence of President Roosevelt’s Moroccan and Santo Domingan policies.

A rule for consideration of the Joint Statehood bill is passed by the House of Representatives. This practically assures the passage of the bill.

The Imperial Chinese Commissioners visiting this country are received at the White House by President Roosevelt.

State Senator Raines, introduces a bill in the New York Legislature providing for a recount of the vote cast in the recent New York City mayoralty election.

January 25.—The Joint Statehood bill, providing for the admission of Oklahoma and Indian Territory as the State of Oklahoma, and New Mexico and Arizona as the State of Arizona is passed by the House.

Senator Mooney, of Mississippi, criticises President Roosevelt’s Moroccan and Santo Domingan policies.

Attorney General Hadley, of Missouri, who is in Cleveland, Ohio, taking testimony in the Standard Oil investigation, charges the Standard’s officials with forgery committed in New York City, and offers to submit the proof to District Attorney Jerome in order that he may prosecute.

General Joseph Wheeler dies at the home of his sister in Brooklyn, N. Y.

Stephen Decatur, great-grandnephew of the famous Stephen Decatur, is expelled from the United States Naval Academy, at Annapolis, for hazing.

Stuyvesant Fish, of New York, President of the Illinois Central Railroad Co., declares that corporations need the knife of reform.

January 26.—President Roosevelt makes a public statement that an attorney for the Beef Trust paid a Chicago newspaper reporter to write accounts of the Beef Trust Trial favorable to the trust.

The members of Wisconsin’s legislative committee to investigate life insurance companies visit New York to confer with members of the Armstrong Committee about points to guide them in their investigation.

Luke Wright, former Governor of the Philippines, appears before the Senate Committee on the Philippines, and advocates the passage of the Philippine Tariff bill, recently passed by the House.

Chairman Shonts of the Panama Canal Commission appears before the Senate Interoceanic Canal Committee and tells what work is being done on the Canal. He declares that a great amount of work in the way of improving sanitary conditions and building houses has been completed, and that the actual digging will begin about July 1. Mr. Shonts admits that he is still President of the Clover Leaf Railroad, at the salary of $12,000 per year.

Mayor Billock and the chief of police of Monongahela, Pa., request Gov. Pennypacker to send troops to that place to aid in the capture of a band of anarchists. This is the same band which planned the assassination of Gov. Pennypacker and many other prominent men.

Attorney General Hadley, of Missouri, examines men engaged in the independent oil business at Cleveland, Ohio, in the investigation of the Standard Oil Co. by the State of Missouri.

The New York Legislature proposes investigation of the banking system similar to the insurance investigation made by the Armstrong Committee. The Iowa Legislature proposes an investigation of Iowa insurance companies.

January 27.—The Panama Canal Commission decides in favor of a lock canal. The final decision will be made by Congress.

The House passes the Urgent Deficiency bill making the appropriation to meet the present demands of the Panama Commission. The eight hour law is eliminated so far as foreign labor is concerned.

Insurance Commissioner R. E. Polk, of Tennessee, notifies all of the insurance companies which made contributions to campaign funds to return such funds or discontinue their business in Tennessee.

Counsel for the Beef Trust denies the statements that money was paid newspapermen to write accounts of the present trial favorable to the Trust.

William H. Van Shaick, who was captain of the steamer General Slocum, which was burned in the East River, New York City, on June 15, 1904, causing the death of more than one thousand persons, is found guilty of neglect of duty and sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary.

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January 29.—The House of Representatives passes the following resolution: “That the President is hereby requested to report to the House all facts within the knowledge of the Interstate Commerce Commission which show or tend to show that there exists at this time, or heretofore within the last twelve months has existed a combination or arrangement between the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, the Pennsylvania Company, the Norfolk and Western Railway Company, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, the Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington Railroad Company, the Northern Central Railway Company and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company, or any two or more of said railroad companies, in violation of the act of July 2, 1890.” The resolution was introduced several days ago by Mr. Gillespie, of Texas, and had been referred to a committee which had failed to make a report on it. Seeing that a majority of the railroad congressmen were absent from their seats, Mr. Gillespie put the resolution before the House and had it passed before the railroad men could be rallied.

Senator Heyburn charges that a press agency is maintained at Government expense in the Forestry Bureau. He also states that mining and agricultural interests are being interfered with in Idaho by the Forestry Bureau.

Senator Tillman, of South Carolina, calls up his resolution asking for an investigation of the Chinese boycott. The resolution is referred to a committee.

Secretary Taft asks for a reserve army of 50,000 men, at a cost of $2,000,000 per year. The reserves are to consist of men who have served one term of enlistment in the regular army. They are to be allowed to live wherever they wish in the United States, but to be subject to call by the President of ten days each year for instruction, and on the outbreak of a foreign war to be called into active service.

Attorneys for the Beef Trust testify that Commissioner of Corporations Garfield promised members of the Trust immunity from criminal prosecution if they would give certain information about Trust methods.

At Ormond Beach, Florida, an automobile is driven two miles in 58⅘ seconds.

General Wheeler’s body is buried at Arlington, the National cemetery near Washington, D. C.

The Senate Committee on Territories reports favorably on the Joint Statehood bill.

Secretary Taft states that it will be several years before any contracts for Canal work are let.

January 30.—In response to Congressman Gillespie’s resolution, President Roosevelt asks the Interstate Commerce Commission for a report on the Pennsylvania Railroad merger.

The Hepburn Railroad Rate Regulation bill is taken up by the House of Representatives. A vote on the bill is expected by February 6.

A resolution is introduced in the New Jersey Senate directing the Attorney General of that state to bring suits to forfeit the charters of the Standard Oil and its subsidiary companies.

The earnings of the Steel Trust for the quarter ending December 31, are $35,278,688.

Edward Morris, of Nelson Morris Co., testifies that Commissioner Garfield promised the beef packers immunity from prosecution when he inspected their secret accounts. Samuel McRoberts, Treasurer of Armour & Co., testifies to the same effect.

January 31.—Senator Patterson, of Colorado, a Democrat, makes a speech in the Senate in support of President Roosevelt’s policies in Santo Domingo, Morocco and railroad rate regulation.

The debate on the Hepburn railroad rate regulation bill is continued in the House of Representatives.

Justice Gildersleeve, in the New York Supreme Court, hands down a decision in which he refuses to make H. H. Rogers answer certain questions asked by Attorney General Hadley, in the investigation of Standard Oil methods, until the Missouri courts have decided on a similar case.

February 1.—Republican Senators deny that the President has issued an ultimatum to them on the railroad rate question.

The House of Representatives passes a resolution calling on the Director of the Census for all cotton statistics.

The debate on the Hepburn bill continues in the House.

Lieutenant General Adna R. Chaffee retires from command of the U. S. Army. Major General John C. Bates is nominated to succeed him.

The Democratic Senators are alarmed by Senator Patterson’s speech in favor of the Santo Domingo treaty, and call a caucus for Saturday.

February 2.—The President holds several conferences with Senate leaders on a compromise railroad rate regulation bill. Some of the Republican Senators are opposed to the Hepburn bill which is now before the House.

The Democratic senators threaten to bar all Democrats from future caucuses who support the Santo Domingan treaty.

The joint conference of coal operators and miners, held at Indianapolis, adjourns without reaching an agreement on a wage scale. The failure to reach an agreement is almost sure to result in[152] another great strike, beginning April 1.

The Government wrings an admission from the Beef Trust that the National Packing Co. is simply a “holding” concern. It buys all the cattle, but does all of its business through constituent corporations.

February 3.—The caucus of Democratic senators at Washington adopts a resolution that it is the duty of every Democratic senator to oppose the Santo Domingan treaty.

The National Executive Board of the United Mine Workers decides on a plan to raise $5,000,000 with which to carry on the strike of the coal miners, beginning April 1.

The Panama Canal Commission decides on an 85-foot level lock Canal. It is estimated that a lock Canal will cost $100,000,000 less than a sea-level canal.

February 5.—John F. Wallace, former chief engineer of the Panama Canal Commission, appears before the Senate Committee and explains why he resigned. He claims that incapable men were given greater authority than the chief engineer.

The leaders of the Pennsylvania coal miners are divided on the question of ordering the great strike.

The Democratic members of the House Committee on appropriations make a minority report opposing the appropriation of $600,000 for fortifying Manila and other cities in the Philippines.

The report of the Interstate Commerce Commission shows that the Pennsylvania Railroad really controls the Baltimore and Ohio and several other roads.

February 6.—President Roosevelt urges a modification of the hazing laws at the United States Naval Academy.

Thos. W. Lawson asks Gov. Cummins, of Iowa, to serve on a committee of five to vote New York Life and Mutual Life insurance proxies, given to Lawson by policy-holders.

There seems to be general dissatisfaction among the coal miners over the proposed strike. The miners ask the resignation of the president of the Pittsburg district, and the National President, John Mitchell, is called on to settle the dispute. The mine owners are laying up a reserve supply of 6,500,000 tons to meet the demand in case the strike takes place.

The House of Representatives continues to discuss the Hepburn Railroad Rate bill.

District Attorney Jerome orders witnesses to appear before the New York City Grand Jury with a view to criminal prosecution of the officials of life insurance companies.

The Standard Oil Co. is considering a plan to increase its capital stock from $100,000,000 to $600,000,000.

February 7.—A large number of amendments to the Hepburn Rate Regulation bill are rejected. The bill stands as the House Committee reported it.

The Senate hears evidence against Senator Reed Smoot, the Mormon from Utah. Professor Wolfe, a former Mormon, testifies that the Mormon oath contains the “seed of treason.”

M. Taigny, former French chargé d’affaires who was forced to leave Venezuela, reaches New York City.

Senator Patterson, of Colorado, who bolted the Democratic caucus on the Santo Domingan treaty, introduces a resolution declaring party caucus dictation unconstitutional. Senator Bailey, of Texas, replies to Senator Patterson, and severely criticises the President, the senator and the treaty.

February 8.—John A. McCall, former President of the New York Life Insurance Co., is seriously ill at Lakewood, N. J.

Richard A. McCurdy, former President of the Mutual Life Insurance Co., plans to leave the United States and make his home in Paris.

The New York Life Insurance Company’s “house cleaning” committee reveal that Judge Andrew Hamilton has received $1,347,382 from that company since 1892. This is $283,383 in excess of the total payments disclosed by the Armstrong Committee. The committee recommends legal action against John A. McCall for the recovery of the amount.

Senator La Follette, of Wisconsin, introduces a bill in the Senate making it a penalty for any Government officer, official or employee to accept a railroad pass or franking privilege over telegraph lines.

By a vote of 346 to 7 the House of Representatives passes the Hepburn Railroad Rate Regulation bill just as it came from the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce and declared by Chairman Hepburn to be exactly in accordance with recommendations of President Roosevelt on the subject.

The House of Representatives passes the General Pension bill for the year ending June 30, 1907. The bill appropriates $140,245,000. Congressman Gardner, of Michigan, declares that when the last pensioner on account of the civil war has disappeared from the rolls, $12,000,000,000 will have been expended.

Foreign News

January 8.—Another plot to kill the Czar of Russia is discovered.

The massacre of Jews in Russia is denounced at a public meeting in England.

King Edward dissolves the existing parliament, and orders the polling for the[153] new one to begin January 13 and end January 27.

Negotiations for a settlement between the Bermudez Asphalt Co. and Venezuela again fail. Secretary Root will probably ask Congress to settle the dispute.

A few minor disturbances occur in Russia. Many arrests are made by the police.

St. Pierre-Miquelon agrees to aid Newfoundland in her campaign against American fishermen.

January 9.—A general uprising in Siberia is feared by the Russian Government. Martial law is being extended to more provinces. The peasants continue to burn and pillage in the Baltic provinces. Russia pledges some of her railroads to secure a loan from Paris bankers.

The Japanese Government plans to give $75,000,000 in pensions and bonds to the soldiers and sailors who fought in the war with Russia.

January 11.—The cost of the Russo-Japanese war to Russia reaches $1,050,000,000.

Premier Witte states that the Government will not yield to the revolutionists’ demand for transforming the National Assembly into a Constituent Assembly for the purpose of formulating a constitution.

Russian troops kill 65 revolutionists who attempt to wreck a military train in Livonia. The revolt in Esthonia ends.

The feeling against foreigners is growing stronger in the Southern part of China.

Dispatches from Madrid, Spain, state that there is little fear of a serious difficulty between Germany and France over the Moroccan question.

January 12.—General Morales resigns as President of Santo Domingo, and prepares to leave for Cuba on the U. S. gunboat Dubuque.

Venezuela and France sever diplomatic relations. France will push her claims against Venezuela until they are fully recognized.

The worst of the insurrection in Siberia seems to be over. The leading members of the Warsaw revolutionary committee are arrested. Cossacks shell an Armenian seminary at Tiflis, killing more than 300 persons.

German Socialists prepare to hold meetings in Berlin to commemorate the Red Sunday in St. Petersburg, and to protest against suffrage restrictions in Prussia.

Dispatches from London state that the European Powers will aid France in her contentions against Germany on the Moroccan question.

January 13.—A. J. Balfour, former Premier of England and leader of the Unionist party is defeated for re-election to Parliament by T. G. Horridge, Liberal and Free Trader. So far the Liberals and Labor Party have gained eighteen seats over the Unionists in the present election.

Fears prevail in Paris that the Emperor of Germany will be too aggressive in the Moroccan dispute.

January 14.—France recalls her Minister from Venezuela. The French interests are placed in the hands of the American Minister.

The delegates are gathering at Algeciras, Spain, for the conference on the Moroccan question.

Carlos F. Morales, former President of Santo Domingo, reaches San Juan, Porto Rico. He declares in favor of the treaty between Santo Domingo and the United States now before the Senate for ratification.

The Santo Domingan troops rout the rebels in a battle at Guayubin, Santo Domingo.

M. Durnovo is made Minister of the Interior by the Emperor of Russia.

General Nogi is enthusiastically welcomed home by the people of Tokio.

January 15.—The election of members of the British Parliament up to date shows a landslide. The Liberals have elected 132 members while the Unionists have elected thirty.

The peasants are said to be committing all manner of horrible crimes in Orel, Russia. Maj. Gen. Lisooiki is assassinated at Penza. Assassins kill three sergeants of police at Riga. The revolutionists continue to resist the Government in the Caucasus.

Dispatches from Paris state that France will send warships to coerce Venezuela into paying France’s claims.

The Czar starts a movement to reorganize the Church in Russia.

January 16.—The Moroccan conference begins at Algeciras, Spain. The Duke of Almodovar, Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, is elected President of the conference.

The Liberals continue to gain over the Unionists in the election now being held in England. John Burns, President of the Local Government Board and a prominent labor leader, is re-elected by 1,800 majority.

St. Petersburg Police raid a meeting of the Workman’s Council and capture 22 members. Revolutionary documents, correspondence and the headquarters from which propaganda is conducted to the army and navy are discovered. In the Caucasus the rebels continue their resistance to the Government.

January 17.—Joseph Chamberlain and his seven candidates are returned to Parliament from Birmingham, England.

M. Fallières, President of the French Senate, is elected President of the French Republic to succeed M. Loubet.

Venezuelan officials prohibit M. Taigny, the French chargé d’affaires, from[154] landing in Venezuela. The heads of the French cable officers at Caracas and La Guayra are also expelled.

January 18.—Delegates to the Moroccan conference agree that the shipping of contraband arms into Morocco must be stopped.

After giving M. Maubourguet the Venezuelan chargé d’affaires, his passport, the French Government has him escorted to the Belgian frontier by special police.

Serious riots occur in Hamburg, Germany, between the police and Socialists. About 20 policemen and 15 Socialists are wounded when the police attempt to disperse a crowd of Socialists erecting a barricade in the street.

The Constitutional Democrats of Russia meet in convention in St. Petersburg.

Trouble continues in the Baltic and Southern Provinces, and the Czar is still afraid to leave his palace.

January 19.—The Constitutional Democrats of Russia vote to take part in the elections to the duma.

Dispatches state that three French warships have appeared off the coast of Venezuela.

The insurgent forces capture Quito, the capital of Ecuador. Vice-president Baquerizo Moreno assumes executive power and will appoint a new Cabinet.

According to advices received at the Japanese Embassy, at Washington, 680,000 persons are starving in the Northern Provinces of Japan. The condition is due to the short rice crops, which is only 15 per cent of the average.

January 20.—The new Government of Ecuador lasts one hour. Baquerizo Moreno is overthrown and General Eloy Alfaro made President. About two hundred persons were killed or wounded during the fighting.

The Venezuelan Government continues to garrison the ports and collect supplies for the troops.

January 22.—Two hundred and twelve men were killed and thirty-six injured by an explosion on the Brazilian warship Aquidaban.

After winning a battle in which three hundred men were killed and one hundred wounded, General Alfaro is recognized by all factions as president of Ecuador.

January 23.—The United States leaves France free to act as she sees fit in the Venezuelan case. French warships are reported under way to Venezuela.

The Powers are all using their influence to bring about a reconciliation between France and Germany over the Moroccan dispute.

The steamship Valencia, from San Francisco, is driven ashore on the coast of Vancouver Island. Grave fear is felt for the ninety-four passengers and crew of sixty, as the storm is too severe for any vessel to go to the rescue.

Fighting continues in the provinces of Southern Russia, where the rebels are holding their own.

January 24.—Reports state that 139 persons lost their lives in the wreck of the steamer Valencia near Cape Beale, Vancouver Island.

Reports from Algeciras, Spain, indicate that the Powers are inclined to favor Germany’s contention.

The Russian troops are restoring order in the Caucasus, Black Sea and Sidonia district.

The returns of the English elections show 578 members elected to the House of Commons. Of the total, the Liberals returned 312, the Laborites 48, the Nationalists 81, and the Unionists 137.

The revolution in Ecuador spreads. Two provinces are in the hands of the revolutionists.

January 25.—President Castro, of Venezuela, claims that the French Minister, M. Taigny, violated the laws of port in denying Venezuelan police and boarding a French vessel for protection.

Report from the Russian Baltic provinces show that the revolution is by no means suppressed. As soon as the troops capture one town, fighting breaks out in another.

January 26.—General Selivanoff, commander of the Russian troops at Vladivostok, is seriously wounded. The revolution has taken on new life at that place. Count Witte opposes giving any more concessions to the people.

The Cuban Senate appropriates $25,000 with which to buy Miss Alice Roosevelt a wedding present.

Dispatches from French West Africa state that the Sultan of Morocco is endeavoring to get the natives of the Soudan to organize a holy-war against France.

Thirty-seven persons are saved from the steamer, Valencia, which was wrecked near Cape Beale, Vancouver’s Island. All 154 persons left on board the vessel were drowned.

The revolution in the Russian Caucasus continues to spread.

France decides to boycott all Venezuelan products before making a naval demonstration.

French and German envoys to the Moroccan conference are holding meetings in hopes of reaching an agreement on the points in dispute.

January 27.—Reports from Vladivostok show that the revolution has not been crushed. St. Petersburg dispatches claim that the revolution in the Russian Baltic provinces is drawing to a close. A fight between troops and revolutionists takes place at Gomel and the town is burned.

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Discussion of the dispute of Germany and France continues at Algeciras, Spain.

Twenty-five members of the diplomatic corps at Caracas send a note to the Venezuelan Government disapproving of the treatment of M. Taigny, the French Minister.

Fighting between Raisuli and the Anjera tribesmen is renewed near Tangiers, Morocco.

January 28.—General Linevitch reports that the mutinous sailors at Vladivostok have been disarmed. Reports from Viatka show that school children held a fort against a battalion of Russian soldiers for fifteen hours.

Fighting continues in Morocco. The rebels are victorious in several fights.

January 29.—King Christian IX of Denmark dies suddenly at Copenhagen. The King was the father of Crown Prince Christian Frederick, of Denmark, Alexandra, Queen of England, Dagmar, Dowager Empress of Russia, King George, of Greece, Thyra, the Duchess of Cumberland, and Prince Valdemar of Orleans. He was the grandfather of the Czar of Russia and of King Haakon of Norway.

The Russian authorities again claim that the Vladivostok trouble has been terminated.

President Castro is making active preparations for a war with France.

January 30.—The Russian revolutionists assassinate Gen. Griaznoff, Chief of Staff of the Viceroy of the Caucasus at Tiflis. Tiflis is placed under martial law. Fighting is said to be in progress between the Armenians and Tatars in the Caucasus.

Frederick VIII, eldest son of the late King Christian, is proclaimed King of Denmark.

January 31.—Japan urges England to reorganize her army.

1,000,000 persons are reported starving in Japan

Fierce fighting continues in the Caucasus between Tatars and Armenians.

Russia is seriously divided over the elections to the Duma. Censorship of the press is rigidly enforced.

February 1.—Serious fights take place in Paris between the police and the congregations of Roman Catholic churches. The operation of the new law separating the Church and State causes the trouble.

British policy-holders in the Mutual Life Insurance Co. pass resolutions demanding representation, and that the company increase its securities in that country.

The conference on the Moroccan question continues at Algeciras, Spain.

The entire Italian Cabinet resigns because the Chamber of Deputies refuses it a vote of confidence. A new Cabinet will be formed at once.

Fire destroys buildings in Panama valued at $500,000.

February 2.—Church riots continue in Paris. China is reported on the brink of a revolution. Anti-foreign feeling grows, and trouble is feared.

The Czar of Russia receives a deputation of peasants and promises them assistance.

February 3.—Reports from Venezuela state that President Castro has ordered any French warship seen in Venezuelan waters to be fired upon.

The German Government declares that the failure of the Algeciras conference to reach an agreement on the Moroccan question will not lead to war between Germany and France.

Dispatches from Santo Domingo indicate that absolute peace has been restored.

Chinese loot the home of Rev. Dr. Beattie at Fati, China.

Fights over the separation of Church and State continue in France.

February 4.—The boycott of American goods continues in China, and another massacre of foreigners is feared at Canton.

Japan plans to increase the tonnage of her navy to 400,000 tons by the end of 1908.

February 6.—The agitation against Americans increases in China.

The elections to the Russian National Assembly are set for April 7. The opening session will be held April 28.

Advices from Vladivostok show that the Russian revolution has not been stamped out.

February 7.—The Emperor of Corea asks the Powers to exercise a joint protectorate over Corea in respect to her foreign affairs.

Conditions in the Eastern provinces of Russia show little improvement. Fighting continues.

Fifty men are killed in a riot at Oruro, Bolivia.

Recent events in China led the Powers to reconsider withdrawing their troops acting as legation guards.

Chinese revolutionists loot missions at Changpu, near Amoy. The missionaries escaped to the home of the local Governor.

The betrothal of King Alfonso, of Spain, to Princess Ena, of Battenberg, is officially announced at Madrid.

Dispatches from Algeciras, assert that the Moroccan conference will reach an agreement. It is understood that Germany will concede most of France’s claims.

Yin Tchang, the Chinese Minister to Germany, states that the anti-foreign outbreaks in China are evidence of the awakening of a new national spirit. He says China will no longer tolerate foreign aggression, and will not allow the Chinese abroad to be treated as an inferior race. The Minister thinks no one power will care to force a war with China, as she can now put a modern army, of 200,000 men, in the field.

There isn’t much to say this month about circulation work except that results have been highly satisfactory. We appreciate the loyalty and energy of our friends, and extend sincere thanks for their help. January was our best month, but at this writing (Feb. 8) the indications are that February will be still better. A great many subscriptions expired with the February number. Some weeks ago we sent out a postal card notice asking for renewal and one new subscriber. The prompt replies to this card made us throw up our hats and give three cheers for the Old Guard. Nearly every one who replied sent one to four new subscriptions with his renewal.

Remember that the subscription price is now $1.50, but as a favor to our present subscribers we will accept renewals and new subscriptions at the dollar rate until March 31. Get in before the time limit expires.

I made reference last month to Mr. Forrest’s advertisement and the results up to January 4—only a few days after the January number was placed on sale. Since then Mr. Forrest has received several thousand coupons, and more are coming in every mail. He writes me that the conference is assured, and that it will be a grand success. Mr. Bentley’s club organization movement is going right along and he expects to call a conference at St. Louis about May 1. I have suggested that he and Mr. Forrest join forces and hold but one conference. I can give no details of Mr. Bentley’s work, except that he is in touch with Populists in 1,800 counties out of some 2,800.

Organizations on a smaller scale are springing up all over the country. In Pennsylvania the Referendum Party is beginning active operations. A preliminary committee on organization has been appointed, consisting of the following gentlemen:

James William Newlin (Member of Constitutional Convention 1873), Philadelphia, Pa.

Headquarters are located at Pittsburgh. Address communications to Lock Box 305, Pittsburgh, Pa. The Referendum Party requests the active co-operation and financial support of all who favor:

The People’s Party State Central Committee of Kansas met at Topeka, February 2, and directed Chairman Babb and Secretary Fowler to call a State convention some time in July. Chairman Babb and some other members of the committee favored the organization of a voters’ league to question and secure pledges from candidates on the old party tickets, making no third party nominations—something on the plan devised by George H. Shibley, editor of the Referendum News, Washington, D. C. The committee was not, however, a unit on this point, several of the members insisting upon making straight People’s Party nominations. This, it seems likely, will be done.

“Union for the Common Good” is the name of a new organization just starting in Kansas. Rev. O. H. Truman, La Crosse, is one of the moving spirits. In the manifesto sent out by this new aspirant for political honors the committee say:

Our Advertising Manager, Ted Flaacke, is one of the Old Guard greenbackers; but not until recently could I convince him that some advertisers would “turn him down” because of the politics of Watson’s Magazine. Even then I didn’t do the convincing—but Ted knows now that I was right. He tried to get an ad. from a certain baking powder concern that was mixed up in a scandal over in Missouri not so long ago. Its product is claimed to be “absolutely pure,” but the Missourians were “shown” that some of its agents couldn’t truthfully say as much of themselves or their concern.

I’m right glad Ted got the icy stare. We need the money, no doubt—but “alum baking powders” won’t seriously impair our digestion. And we’ll feel better not to have had the ad., after all.

“Why, Flaacke,” said the man who places the advertising, “if Watson’s Magazine had a million circulation and the rate was a dollar a page, I doubt if we would use it.”

Yet some poor, simple souls still think business men—big, brainy, successful business men—never mix politics and business. They do. And I trust our people will not forget it.

Ever notice how a late train keeps falling behind and getting later and later the farther she goes?

Well, we had an experience similar last month with the February number. A combination of circumstances made it certain that we should be a few days late—say two or three. But in our wildest dreams we never imagined being over two weeks late. One after another something new arose to still further delay us.

I can sympathize now with the railroad station agent who is obliged to tell passenger after passenger that “No. 23 is 40 minutes late.... Yes, she’s due here at 11:44.... Yes, that would bring her here about 12:24.” And so on and on and on. From Mr. Watson’s editorials, however, I take it that station agents on the Southern Railway give out no information regarding late trains. Maybe they will after Hon. Hoke Smith is inaugurated governor.

Anybody inquire why the February Watson’s didn’t come? My dear friend, you would think so if you could see the stacks of letters and postal cards which poured in—hundreds and hundreds; yes, thousands, I believe. It made us a great amount of additional work and worry, but—

On the whole, we’re rather glad the February number was late, because it gave us conclusive proof of the high esteem in which Watson’s Magazine is held. People don’t worry and write postal cards and letters about publications in which they are not interested, that’s a cinch.

A few of the Old Guard were frightened. They thought we’d suspended! I can’t blame them for that. It has always been a rocky road for any radical publication, and especially so if it advocates Populism. But Watson’s Magazine will be an exception. Nothing but the accomplishment of the reforms for which it stands could kill it. That might, by removing the necessity for such a magazine, but not necessarily. The discontent of the masses is too great now not to furnish a most fertile field for Mr. Watson’s teachings—and his influence is growing at a tremendous pace. Even his enemies admit that. And that means a pronounced success for Watson’s Magazine.

Thanks to the Old Guard, Watson’s Magazine gets subscribers at less cost than any other publication. Everywhere these old veterans are plugging away for subscribers and scarcely one of them will take a cent of commission for his work. Some of the other magazines are spending a fortune in newspaper advertising, and, of course, building up big lists; but we are well satisfied with a slower growth of subscriptions that will stay with us year after year. February is forging to the front in fine style and we shall more than double our list by the end of March.

“Figures won’t lie,” asserts the oracle. “Thet’s so,” retorts the plain, old, common-sense man, “but liars kin figger.” And the old fellow is right. Witness some of the stunts done by Carroll D. Wright as to the increased cost of living, and young Garfield’s showing of a net profit to the Beef Trust of a dollar, “marked down to 99 cents,” on each steer slaughtered.

My old colleague, T. H. Tibbles, Mr. Watson’s running mate in 1904, and now editor of a 25-cent-a-year Populist weekly at Omaha, Neb., The Investigator, was editor of the Nebraska Independent when young Garfield made that justly famous report. As I recollect, Tibbles figured that the Beef Trust must have a secret railroad (not a rebate) to Mars and had smuggled in countless thousands of beef cattle from that little, old red planet, contrary to the Dingley Bill “in such case made and provided,” because—

There weren’t enough beef steers on this old earth of ours—and haven’t been since the days when Christ drove the “System” out of the Temple—to account for the Beef Trust’s fortune at 99 cents per.

I have never examined Tibbles as to his proficiency in arithmetic, but I’m willing to bet a hat—a wide-brim “Cady” (Eugene Wood, please analyze)—that Tibbles either made a Sherlock Holmes “deduction” regarding that Martian railroad, or—

Perish the thought, that the martyred President’s son—well, had been doing some “figgerin’” and other things.

I’ve been doing some real hard figgerin’. The P. O. D., which means in proper spelling, Post Office Department, insists that because we change to Watson’s Magazine, dropping the “Tom,” that we must apply for a new entry as second-class matter. Of course, as a matter of fact, as our legal friends remark—no, I won’t say that, in view of what Abe Hummel did and what Jerome is failing to do—our lawyer friends, rather, we never have been “second-class.” That’s a way Madden has of irritating publishers. Tom Watson’s Magazine always was first-class—now, wasn’t it?

At any rate, we have to tell the P. O. D. how many subscribers we have; how many we sell at news-stands, etc. Of the subscribers, we must show how many came direct, how many took a premium, how many subscribed through an agent or a newspaper clubbing with us.

It’s a big job to get this correct, because right now we’re swamped with new subscriptions and renewals. I think I got it right, however, and as the figures may interest you, I shall give you an idea what each State is doing.

Georgia still keeps far in the lead.[160] Texas, Alabama, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Illinois and Kansas follow in the order named, ranging from two to fifteen per cent of the total.

Florida, North Carolina, California, Louisiana, Indiana, South Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Oklahoma—in the order named—have less than two and one or more than one per cent. of the total.

Washington, Virginia, New Jersey, Minnesota, Michigan, Colorado, West Virginia, Montana, Massachusetts, Indian Territory, Idaho, Wisconsin, Oregon, North and South Dakota (tied), Connecticut, New Mexico, Maine, Arizona, Maryland, District of Columbia, Wyoming, Nevada, New Hampshire, Vermont, Canada and Rhode Island follow in the order named, each with one-tenth of one per cent. or more up to nine-tenths of one per cent.

And three-tenths of one per cent. of the total goes to Alaska, Cuba, Delaware, Hawaii, Mexico, Panama, Philippine Islands, Porto Rico, Utah and a number of European countries. Watson’s Magazine is not only national but international. Up in Nova Scotia, Manitoba, and Northwest Territory the radicals are enthusiastic over it. Uncle Sam’s soldiers and sailors are taking it in the far corners of the earth. The War Department has asked for subscription rates.

Yet Watson’s Magazine reaches more people in the Sunny Southland than most any other magazine, whether published south of Mason and Dixon’s line or north of it.

And it will bring business for the advertiser who wishes to break into the Southern field, because every subscriber and news stand buyer has confidence in Mr. Watson. Oh, dear, I forgot. Advertising isn’t my line at all. See Ted Flaacke about that. He knows. But I know I’m right, nevertheless.

THOMAS E. WATSON	Editor
JOHN DURHAM WATSON	Associate Editor
RICHARD DUFFY	Managing Editor
ARTHUR S. HOFFMAN	Assistant Editor
C. Q. DE FRANCE	Circulation Manager
TED FLAACKE	Advertising Manager

Editorials	Thomas E. Watson	1-28
Down in Georgia—Pinkerton’s Report to Ye Bankers—Wayland’s Mistake—Calhoun for Public Ownership—Judge Du Bose’s Letter and the Public Debt—Dr. Talmage in Russia—A Prophet Whose Voice Was Not Heeded—The Highest Office—Editorial Comment
Lookin’ T’wards Home	Helen Frances Huntington	30
Assessment Insurance	Michael Moroney	37
The People	John P. Sjolander	41
Back to Nature—Part the Way	Eugene Wood	42
The Philosophy of Money	J. B. Martin	50
The Little Path to Peace	Mary Small Wagner	54
The Captain, Davy, and General Kuropatkin	Robert Dunn	55
Where the Road Dips	Henry Fletcher Harris	63
Repeal the Land Laws	Hugh J. Hughes	65
The Triumph of Justice	Clarence S. Darrow	69
A Radical Corpuscle	Charles Fort	73
Election Reforms	J. C. Ruppenthal	76
Pierre, Sansculotte	La Salle Corbell Pickett	86
The New Party	C. Q. De France	88
The Municipal Boss	W. D. Wattles	91
The Silence of Johnny	Harriette M. Collins	93
Vanished Years	Helen A. Saxon	95
Letters from the People		97
Putterin’ Round	Cora A. Matson Dolson	111
Educational Department	Thomas E. Watson	113
In Passing	Lurana W. Sheldon	122
Home	Louise H. Miller	123
Books	Thomas E. Watson	133
The Say of Other Editors		139
His Grudge	Tom P. Morgan	146
News Record		147
Along the Firing Line	C. Q. De France	156
Chastened	Kate G. Laffitte	160