[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN]

was the radical of his day. Many of the views expressed in his letters
and speeches would strike a “good Republican” of today as extremely
radical.

ARE YOU ACQUAINTED

with the great commoner’s views on political and religious liberty,
on alien immigration, on the relation of labor and capital, on the
colonization of negroes, on free labor, on lynch law, on the doctrine
that all men are created equal, on the importance of young men in
politics, on popular sovereignty, on woman suffrage?

All of his views are to be found in this edition of “LINCOLN’S LETTERS
AND ADDRESSES,” the first complete collection to be published in a single
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WATSON’S MAGAZINE


THE MAGAZINE WITH A PURPOSE BACK OF IT

    _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_

April, 1906

    _Frontispiece_                                   _W. Gordon Nye_

    _Editorials_                                  _Thomas E. Watson_ _161_

       _Sam Spencer_—_The Ungrateful Negro_—_An Indignant Wisconsin_
       _Editor_—_The Man and The Land_—_Random Comment_

    _Machine Rule and Its Termination_           _George H. Shibley_ _193_

    _A Basket and a Fortune_                      _Louise Forsslund_ _201_

    _Control or Ownership_                    _Charles Q. De France_ _209_

    _The Sacrifice_                                 _Jack B. Norman_ _212_

    _Our Civilization_                          _Count Lyof Tolstoy_ _218_

    _A Coal Miner’s Story_                 _Charles S. Moody, M. D._ _219_

    _The Pessimist; His View-Point_                                  _227_

    _Those That Are Joined Together_                  _Charles Fort_ _228_

    _The Money Power_                                     _L. H. B._ _240_

    _The Russian Apostle of Populism_             _Thomas C. Hutton_ _241_

    _Lucianna’s Keep_                                _Elliot Walker_ _244_

    _Who Pays the Taxes?_                        _William H. Tilton_ _253_

    _Letters from the People_                                        _258_

    _Educational Department_                      _Thomas E. Watson_ _275_

    _Home_                                        _Louise H. Miller_ _277_

    _Books_                                       _Thomas E. Watson_ _290_

    _The Easter Hope_                        _Cora A. Matson Dolson_ _300_

    _The Say of Other Editors_                                       _301_

    _News Record_                                                    _306_

    _Along the Firing Line_                    _Circulation Manager_ _318_

     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.

      Copyright, 1906, in U. S. and Great Britain. Published by TOM
              WATSON’S MAGAZINE, 121 WEST 42D STREET, N. Y.

                 TERMS: $1.50 A YEAR; 15 CENTS A NUMBER




[Illustration: The Mockers of the Law and Despoilers of the People Have
in Their Pay Vast Numbers to Vent Spleen and Venom on the Man that Dares
to Speak Truth.]




_WATSON’S MAGAZINE_

               VOL. IV          APRIL, 1906          NO. 2




_Editorials_

BY THOMAS E. WATSON


_Sam Spencer_

Not long ago the Voting Trustees of the Southern Railway Company wrote to
Samuel Spencer, President of that robber combine, in the following terms:

“We congratulate you upon the success achieved in the extension and
operation of the property which have resulted in nearly doubling the
extent of its lines, trebling its gross earnings, and increasing its
net earnings above fixed charges, _over five hundred and twenty-five
per cent._ in the period of eleven years which have elapsed since its
formation.”

Bully for Sam!

He set out to please the men who bought him, and he has done it.

The Wall Street rascals who grabbed up the railroads in the Southern
States knew very well that they themselves could not do the work which
was required for the success of their schemes. The Belmonts and the
Morgans could not in person approach the editors, the politicians, the
legislators and the federal judges.

Strategy requires that local men be used in the looting of any given
state or section. One traitor inside the citadel is worth ten thousand
soldiers on the outside, when the object is to take the citadel. To bribe
somebody from within to open the gates is far more effective, vastly more
to be desired, than to attempt to breach the walls or batter down the
gates.

Consequently when Western states are to be plundered, the Wall
Street corporations use Western men as their tools. Local Western
corruptionists sell out to Wall Street, and do in Western states the
dirty work of their Wall Street masters.

So in the South, the Wall Street robber-gangs do not operate in person;
they act through Southern agents.

In pursuance of this subtle policy, the Wall Street corporations, who
gobbled up the various lines which now compose the Southern Railway
System, put at the head of it a Southern man, a Georgian, of the name of
Samuel Spencer.

They chose wisely. They generally choose wisely. The expert workman does
not better know how to select his tools than such men as Belmont, Morgan,
Ryan, Rogers and Rockefeller know how to pick out the men who can do what
Wall Street expects.

The Wall Street rascals had faith in Sam Spencer, and Sam has justified
that confidence.

Never did any robber-chief have an abler lieutenant than Belmont, the
Rothschild agent, has had in Sam.

The task to which they set him was hard. It demanded that he freeze his
heart and stifle his conscience. It demanded that he shut out from his
view of life every other purpose whatsoever, save the heaping up of
dividends for a ravenous gang of Wall Street rascals.

To make his work seem good in the sight of the men who had bought him it
was necessary that he combine railroads which the law said should not be
combined, that he destroy competition where the law said it should live,
that he charge excessive rates to shippers and passengers when the law
said the rates should be reasonable.

He has done this in spite of the law, in spite of the people.

How?

[Illustration: “One traitor inside the citadel is worth ten thousand
soldiers on the outside.”]

Editors have been bribed into collusion or silence; politicians have been
softened with boodle; lobbyists have been kept in clover; legislators
have been duped or corrupted. Railroad Commissions have been seduced or
defied, federal judges have been mellowed with favors, blandishments,
indirect temptings which poor human nature can seldom resist.

Bully for Sam!

He is victorious all along the line. From Washington City he rules the
South. In his native State of Georgia he is monarch of all he surveys.
He made Terrell governor, and he means to make Howell governor. He
controlled nearly all the daily papers, but he wanted another—so he had
Jim English to cut the ground from under the feet of John Temple Graves
and scoop the _Atlanta News_.

Hamp McWhorter is his hireling, and Hamp keeps the mechanism of
corruption oiled. Hamp keeps the Legislature in pliant mood. Hamp jollies
and greases the local politician. Hamp peddles the free passes. Hamp
picks and chooses the “local attorneys.” Hamp “sees” the editor who
appears to require “seeing.”

But the Brain and Will of the whole plot are those of Sam Spencer.

For eleven years that God-given brain and will have been concentrated
upon one purpose, only one—to heap up riches for Wall Street rascals!
Great has been the result. Sam Spencer’s masters are so highly pleased
with his work that THEY congratulate HIM!

How interesting! It seems to me that _they_ are the fellows to be
congratulated. Sam has doubled the amount of their property, he has
trebled the gross income from that property, and has increased their
_net_ revenues _over 525 per cent_!

Colossal profits these. _How were they made?_

By such a system of dishonesty, extortion, law-breaking, and reckless
disregard of human life as has rarely been known, even in the history of
modern commercialism.

The merchants and farmers throughout the Southern States have been
ruthlessly robbed. The melon growers, the fruit men, the truck gardeners
have, in thousands of cases, been so hounded and harried and victimized
by excessive charges, secret rebates and discriminations in favor of
other shippers, that they have been literally driven out of the field,
broken and despairing.

Roadbeds, bridges, safety appliances, have been so wantonly neglected
that almost every mile of the Southern Railway System from Washington
southward has known its tragedy, where men, women and children were
dashed to sudden, horrible death.

It was not the hard necessity of poverty that drove Sam Spencer to a
policy so heartless as this. He had the means wherewith to put his roads
in first-class order, had he wished to spend the funds in that way. It
was not necessary for him to rob the men who were obliged to patronize
his roads. If a fair, legitimate profit upon actual investment was
all that he sought, he could have got it without doing the slightest
injustice to any human being.

But he wanted more than that. A reasonable return upon the actual
investment was not enough. So, he neglected the bridge until it fell,
with its sickening horror, its shrieking mass of passengers doomed to
frightful death. He neglected the safety appliances, and the full force
of workmen, until some rotten crosstie, or defective rail, or open
switch, or telegram which the dulled brain of an overworked engineer
failed to comprehend, brought about derailments and collisions, with the
heartrending consequence of crushed and burning cars, of crushed and
burning men, women and children.

[Illustration: “The merchants and farmers throughout the Southern states
have been ruthlessly robbed.”]

Had the same proportion of the earnings been used to improve the
property, as is the universal custom in Europe, there would have been the
same security to the passenger that there is in Europe.

But the net profit to Wall Street would have been only a fair return upon
the money actually invested—as it is in Europe.

Wall Street demands more than that. Sam Spencer’s task was to get what
Wall Street wanted.

Have I not already said that Wall Street knows how to pick out its man?

It never chose a better tool for its purpose than Sam Spencer.

He has doubled the _amount_ of their property.

That is good.

But he has done better than that.

He has trebled the gross earnings.

And that is good, too.

But he has done still better than that.

He has increased the NET earnings more than FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE
PER CENT!

Good, _better_, BEST.

That enormous profit had to be made out of somebody.

Freight rates and passenger rates are taxes which the transportation
companies levy upon freight and passengers. When Sam Spencer added 525
per cent. to the net revenue of his masters, he had to tax it out of the
people who patronized the Southern Railroad.

Who were these people? Mostly, Southern people. The tax was levied upon
the South, and paid by the South.

Sam Spencer is a Southern man?

Bless you, yes!

Wall Street hired him to systematize the robbery of his own people, and
he has done it.

[Illustration: “We lost fewer lives to the invading host of Sherman than
we have lost to the railroads under Sam Spencer.”]

During the eleven years of his rule he has plundered his own people of
more money than they lost by Sherman’s “Marching through Georgia.”

The people of the South have lost more to the Wall Street railway
corporations than they lost to the whole of Sherman’s army.

The battles of the Civil War were bloody, for it was Greek meet Greek,
and it was, in truth, the tug of war. Especially were the battles bloody
when Sherman came down against us, for he brought Western troops—the best
that the Union had.

But we lost fewer lives to the invading host of Sherman than we have lost
to the railroads during the eleven years that Sam Spencer has been one
of their most relentless and unscrupulous lieutenants.

He and his allies in plunder and crime killed and wounded, last year, the
staggering total of 92,000 human beings.

The ghastly record grows bloodier every year.

Human life is nothing; dividends are everything.

_Five hundred and twenty-five per cent!_

And Sam Spencer’s bosses pat _him_ on the back and congratulate _him_.

Ah, yes; they were feeling good. They expanded. They bubbled over.

As who should say: “Sam, you are a trump. When we bought you, we believed
we had bought a good thing; now we know it. You have been tried, and you
have proven true. We set you to the task of plundering your own people,
and you have not flinched from the job. You have skinned them to the
queen’s taste. You have doubled our estate, trebled the earnings, and so
squeezed the train-crews, the section hands, the roadbed, the shipper and
the passenger, that you have swelled our profits more than 525 per cent.
We congratulate _you_—and, WE pocket the money.”


_The Ungrateful Negro_

_From a Newspaper_

THE AMERICAN FLAG INSULTED BY NEGRO BISHOP IN MACON.

DENOUNCED GLORIOUS EMBLEM AS A CONTEMPTIBLE RAG AT THE STATE NEGRO
CONVENTION.

MACON, GA., Feb. 16.—In an address before the five hundred delegates
attending the convention of negroes in this city to discuss racial
problems, Bishop H. M. Turner declared the American Flag to be a dirty
and contemptible rag. He further said that hell was an improvement on the
United States when the negro was involved.

In closing he said:

    “I have heard of both white and black men perpetrating rape
    upon innocent, angelic women, but no negro in this country has
    been tried by the courts and found guilty of the heinous crime
    of rape in fifteen years.

    “I know that bloody-handed and drunken mobs have said so, but
    what Christian people would accept what they say? Yet there
    are millions of men who pretend to be moral and claim to be
    sensible in this country, who go to these drunken mobs to get
    information relative to the conduct of colored men.”

How it came to pass is a question which human wisdom may not solve, but
in the earliest dawn of history we find the races of men separated by
color and by characteristics, very much as they are at this time.

In spite of all the comings and goings, the migrations and conquests,
the discoveries and colonizations, the world is pretty nearly the same
old world, so far as the distinct races of men are concerned. The Jew is
still the Jew, the Gentile still the Gentile. All the currents of the
ages have not washed the yellow man white, nor turned the red man yellow,
nor the black man red. The hot sun of the tropics pours down upon the
heads of the sons of men as fervidly as in the days of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob, but it has not been able to kink the hair, flatten the nose,
blubber the lips or blacken the hide of a single man, woman or child of
the Aryan race. The Chinaman, racially, is what he was in the time of
Confucius; the Hindoo is yet the dark man whom Khrishna sought to lead to
the higher life.

In Africa, the home of the negro, there has been a monotonous repetition
of the same old facts which historians learned from monumental
inscriptions and indestructible tablets thousands upon thousands of years
old.

The African negro has always been a distinct type, an inferior type,
a savage type, a non-progressive type. Left to himself, he wore no
clothing, built no houses, had no commerce, systematized no production
of any sort and never had the faintest conception of doing anything to
improve himself or his condition. He killed for the day the game he
needed for the day. For the future, he made as little provision as the
Indian and the Esquimau.

Beyond the herding of cattle he had no instinct for accumulation. His
normal state was that of warfare against some other black tribe. His
religion was the grossest superstition. He offered up to his heathen gods
the sacrifice of the negro child; and when his appetite for four-legged
animals was sated, he changed his diet by cooking and eating another
negro.

Where the sexual relations of the men and women were not promiscuous,
they were polygamous. Strictly speaking, there was no such thing as
morals known among them. Property rights which certain men had, or
claimed, in certain women might be respected, but the conception of
virtue was not reached.

They never evolved an alphabet. They never advanced beyond the crudest,
rudest, most brutal tribe-life.

They had chiefs, or kings; and these kings exercised, despotically, the
power of life and death over their ignorant subjects.

They had conjurers and witch doctors, and it was one of the time-honored
customs that the witch doctors should “smell out,” for death, the
wretched creatures whom the king wanted to kill, or whom the witch
doctors themselves wished to put out of the way.

Thousands upon thousands of years ago, negro warriors sold their negro
captives into slavery. Negro husbands would offer their wives and
daughters to foreign travelers. Negro fathers would sell their children.
In some of the oldest monumental inscriptions of the human race, the
negro appears as the chained slave of foreign masters.

Anybody on earth who wanted to buy him could do it. His king was ready to
sell him; his father was ready to sell him. The Egyptian, the Greek, the
Roman owned black slaves as far back as the records go; and the historian
Gibbon did no more than express the universal experience and opinion of
the ages when he wrote that the negro was a distinctly inferior race.

[Illustration: “His normal state was that of warfare against some other
black tribe.”]

Of all the negroes that have ever lived Tchaka was the greatest. He ruled
in Africa, in the eighteenth century.

He was a man of immense natural power. His ambition was boundless, his
soul untroubled by fear or scruple. Absolute master of a strong tribe, he
hurled it against other tribes, one after another, until he had conquered
and devastated an imperial territory. In his march to dominion, it is
estimated that he caused the slaughter of a million human beings, all of
whom were his brothers in black. But he never built a city; never put a
ship on the sea; never made two blades of grass grow where one had grown
before. He founded no institutions of any kind. He was densely ignorant
and superstitious himself, and he had no conception of anything higher or
better.

To kill, to conquer, to feast, to indulge bestial lust, to inspire
terror, to exploit and mercilessly abuse the abject servility of the
negroes over whom he ruled were his “pleasures of living.”

It was believed that he caused the death of his own mother; it is _known_
that when he buried her he buried fourteen young negro girls with
her—_buried them alive_!

It is _known_ that, during the “period of mourning” which followed, he
caused the death of some thousands of maddened and helpless negroes. It
is also known that his sisters got his brothers to assassinate him. Then
one of these brothers murdered the other, and so became king of that
happy land.

In Africa where the negro is still to be seen in his natural state, you
can still buy negroes from negroes. Husbands will yet sell wives, fathers
will yet barter daughters and sons. The buying and selling of negroes
goes on now just as it did in the days of the Pharaohs. There is not
so much of it as there used to be—to the regret, doubtless, of African
chiefs who have negroes they would like to sell.

[Illustration: One of the San Domingo Nobility.]

Not long ago there was a story which went the usual rounds. An English
traveler was about to set out from a certain coast town of Africa upon
a journey into the interior. He expected to be gone for several months.
In fitting himself out with camp equipage, he bought a negro girl to
carry along—to serve as his mistress. Her father sold her, and the
only surprise that was caused by the transaction was the amount paid.
The Englishman gave about one hundred dollars for the girl and it was
generally considered an extravagant figure. As to the girl, she seemed
proud to have been selected, and gratified at having been sold so high.
When the Englishman had finished his trip, he probably sold her at a
discount to some other white man who desired a complete camp outfit.

       *       *       *       *       *

Excepting those portions of Africa wherein the white man has set his
foot and impressed his will, the negro is at this day the same lustful,
brutal, besotted cannibal and voodoo slave that he was thousands of years
ago.

In Jamaica, the white man has to steer for him, and control him.

He did not even know what to do with bananas till Col. Baker, a white
man, came along and taught him.

In Liberia, he has gone back to heathenism and savagery, because the
white man’s strong hand is not there to guide and control.

In San Domingo, he had—as a starting point—one of the fairest
civilizations the world has known. Aided by the yellow fever, the black
man drove out the white; and now he has gone back into chaos, voodooism,
cannibalism and imbecility.

In the United States, negroes can run a bank, for they can see white men
running banks all around them and they are quick at imitation.

How is it in San Domingo, where the black man rules the white?

Apparently there is not a bank in San Domingo. If there is, it cannot be
trusted. Why do I say this?

Because that portion of the San Domingan custom-house receipts which was
to be paid to the creditors of the negro republic had to be deposited in
a New York bank for safe-keeping.

In the United States, the negroes can run colleges, manufacturing
establishments, automobile street-car lines, newspapers and magazines.
Why? Because they see how the whites run colleges, manufactories, and
automobiles, newspapers and magazines.

In San Domingo there is no Tuskeegee, Hampton or Howard. In San Domingo
there are no flourishing manufactories created and operated by negroes;
and no up-to-date automobile street-car lines, such as the negroes
started in Nashville, Tennessee.

The negroes of San Domingo ought to have a commerce—one of the most
profitable in the world; but they haven’t. Their navy is a myth,
and their army a joke. One revolution chases after another with such
confusing rapidity that when our Senate meets to debate the ratification
of the San Domingan treaty which Roosevelt had arranged, the “President”
with whom Roosevelt had made the treaty is a fugitive, whose “Cabinet”
has compelled him to take to the woods.

There used to be an “Order of Nobility” in San Domingo, with its Marquis
of Lemonade and its Duke of Marmalade; but as these eminent Noblemen have
failed to show up in the later turmoils I fear their titles have become
extinct, or that the “Order of Nobility” has been abolished.

Which is a pity. It would have been something worth living for to have
seen the Duke of Marmalade paying a visit to this country, receiving the
adoring attentions which New York’s “Swell Set” pay to all “noblemen”
whomsoever.

       *       *       *       *       *

Nowhere else in the universe is the negro treated so well as in the
United States.

He was once a slave, but his own people sold him. Either he was a captive
in war who would have been slain, broiled and eaten, if the English or
Dutch sailor had not come along and offered to buy him; or he was in the
power of his chief, his father or his brother, and was by them offered
for a price.

Some of the blacks who were brought to this country may have been
kidnapped, but, as a rule, there was no need for kidnapping. Negroes
could be bought for a song all along the Coast and all through the
interior of Africa. The most successful “kidnapper” was New England rum.

Yes, it is a literal historical fact that the negro was sold into slavery
by his own people, just as Joseph was sold by his brethren.

In the long run what was the consequence to the negro?

He was changed from a savage into a semi-civilized man.

In his native land he had been an ignorant serf whose life depended upon
the temper of a despotic brute—his chief.

He exchanged a slavery for a slavery; and the slavery to which he was
brought lifted him from a brute into a man.

We taught him how to work; we taught him how to read; we taught him how
to think; we taught him how to live.

To free him from the bondage into which his own brethren had sold him,
a million white men rose in arms. There were four years of terrible,
horrible strife; half a million white men fell in battle; six billions
of dollars were devoured in the flames of Civil War; and over all that
period of strife, and over the host which finally triumphed, waved the
flag which the freed negro—freed at such frightful cost—now safely
denounces as a dirty and contemptible rag!

When the “Brothers’ War” was over and while the former owner of the
slaves was prostrate, those who had fought that the black man might be
free, clothed him in the garments of citizenship, giving him the ballot,
giving him office, giving him power, at the same time that tens of
thousands of white men were outlawed.

“Show to the world that you are capable of government,” said the white
philanthropist to the blacks; and the result was a hideous carnival of
mismanagement, incompetency and gross rascality which at last made even
the professional white philanthropist sick and ashamed.

Taking out of the hands of the blacks the political power which he had
shown himself unfit to wield, the whites have ever since occupied toward
him the attitude of a guardian over a ward, manifesting for him a helpful
sympathy, aiding his advancement with substantial contributions, leading
him upward and onward by precept, example and wholesome control.

Schools were established for him. Churches were built for him. White men
and white women devoted their lives to lifting the black man, the black
woman, the black child into the nobler, purer paths. White men taxed
themselves to put an end to the negro’s ignorance and superstition. The
white man opened his purse to endow colleges for the negro’s special
benefit. The white man opened the door of opportunity to the black, and
gave him a chance in every field of human endeavor.

[Illustration: “We taught him how to work; we taught him how to read; we
taught him how to think; we taught him how to live.”]

Not for one month could the negro prosper in the United States, if the
white man became his enemy.

In one month, we could by concert of action, so smite the negro that his
mushroom growth would wither like the severed gourd-vine. The maddest
thing, the most suicidal thing that the black man could do would be to
arouse the enmity of the whites.

When that day comes, if it shall ever come, the white man will not any
more stop to count the cost of annihilating, or of driving out the
blacks, than Spain halted to count the cost of smiting and driving out
the Moor.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the United States the negro is seen at his best, because of the
constant example, guidance and control of the whites.

Nowhere else on the planet has the negro the religious establishment
which he has copied from us, with our earnest help.

Nowhere else has he the educational system which he has patterned after
ours, aided at every step by us.

Nowhere else has he the banks, manufactures, newspapers, magazines,
modernized farms, elegant professional offices which he has fashioned
upon our models, amid our plaudits of approval and encouragement.

By the hundreds, by the thousands, the negro has been admitted to
positions of honor and trust. He has been in the Senate; he has been in
the House of Representatives; he has been in the State Legislatures; he
has served on juries; he is in the army; he is on the police force.

In the proud, aristocratic city of Charleston doth not the redoubtable
Dr. Crum, a negro, sit at the Receipt of Customs, drawing a fatter
salary than was ever enjoyed by Matthew, the Apostle of Christ?

[Illustration: “To free him from bondage half a million white men fell in
battle.”]

There are no Dr. Crums in Africa or Liberia. And in San Domingo it is
the white man who sits at the receipt of customs—nobody being willing to
trust the negro with his own money.

Hath not our Roosevelt declared that when Judson Lyons, Register of the
Treasury, goes out, another negro shall take his place? _Thus it shall
continue to happen that Uncle Sam’s paper money will not be good in law
until a negro has set his name to it._

Once upon a time, a white man, in the United States, gave a negro school
a million dollars in a lump. Doctor Booker Washington got the money. I
wonder how long the learned Doctor would have to live in Africa, Liberia,
or San Domingo before he could get a million dollars with which to
operate a school.

Really, it sometimes occurs to me that if such negroes as Bishop Turner
are honest in their denunciations of the United States, they would pack
up their belongings and go right back to dear old Africa, the home of the
race. Nothing on earth prevents their doing so.

Rather than go to hell _I_ would go to Africa; and if I believed I was
living in a land which was worse than hell, I would even try San Domingo,
for a change.

       *       *       *       *       *

What _bosh_, nonsense and self-assertive insolence is embodied in Bishop
Turner’s denunciation of the Flag and of the Government!

Poor, down-trodden negro!

What a doleful howl he sets up when he is asked to ride in a separate
car; and when he is told that separate churches, separate schools,
separate hotels, and separate social life is best for both races. How he
raves and froths at the mouth when we tell him that for his own sake, as
well as ours, we who have, with desperate difficulty and hardship and
sacrifice, built up our civilization, cannot afford to allow it to fall
into the power of the inferior race. We have seen what they did with
this same Civilization in San Domingo when the French Revolution, most
unwisely, entrusted it to the blacks.

Reconstruction days taught us that the San Domingan experience would
be repeated here, if the negro rule continued. To save ourselves from
such a calamity, _and to save the negro from himself_, we put back into
the hands of the whites that civilization which had been the outcome of
centuries of effort on the part of the whites.

And when the Negro Convention of today has not met to howl but to
brag, what a beautiful, brilliant picture their orators can paint, as
they proclaim the progress and prosperity of the negro. What wonderful
statistics they use to prove that the negro has advanced in knowledge
more rapidly than the whites of Russia, of Hungary, of Italy and of
Spain! What a glittering array of accumulated millions do they claim, in
lands, chattels and hereditaments! With what vociferous gusto do they
“point with pride” to their farms, their stores, their banks, their
newspapers, their magazines! To listen to them when they have assembled
to jubilate instead of to howl, you would suppose that, so far as the
negro was concerned, the horn of plenty was full, the land flowing
with milk and honey. Even Bishop Turner, with an amazingly unconscious
inconsistency, fills his letter of so-called denial with boastings of
the handsome homes in which the negroes live, the furniture which the
white man just ought to go and see, the “library” which would delight the
scholar, the piano music and the organ melodies which, in negro homes,
soothe the ear and charm the sense.

Let us admit that every bit of this bragging and boasting is founded upon
solid fact. Then, in the name of common sense, let me inquire: “_Where,
oh, where, is the negro race doing all these marvelous things?_”

In what country, under what flag, is he piling up these millions of
money? Under what government is he outstripping the Russian, the
Spaniard, the Austrian? Where is it that he has bought so many farms,
established so many banks, built such fine houses, secured such
attractive furniture, and gotten an organ for ’Liza Jane and a piano for
Susan Ann?

Is it in Africa? No. In Liberia? _No._ In San Domingo? No.

The negro is doing the splendid things to which he “points with pride”
_in that country whose flag is a dirty rag, in that land which is worse
than hell_!

Poor, down-trodden negro!

He makes an idle wager in Baltimore that he will kiss a white girl, in a
white hotel; and he walks up to her in the public dining room, puts his
hands upon her and kisses her!

In Chicago, he sits down in a white restaurant, and beckons a white
woman waitress to come and wait upon him; and when she refuses, he goes
straight to a magistrate, swears out a warrant, has the girl arrested,
and sends her to prison!

Poor down-trodden negro! In New York City, and perhaps in other cities,
negro men hold white women in a state of slavery, _to minister to their
lusts_; and the political power of these negroes is so great that the
lawful authorities have been utterly unable to free these white slaves
from the bestial degradation in which they are held by their black
masters.

In Washington City—but that would require a chapter to itself. If there
is a Paradise on this earth, a Garden of Eden filled with ceaseless joy
for the non-producing, insolent, self-assertive blacks, it is our Capital
City of Washington, where more than two thousand negro men and women draw
Government pay in federal offices.

Oh, that Bishop Turner had described to the Macon Convention one of
those “Receptions” at the mansion of Judson Lyons, Register of the
Treasury—such as Judson often held. Oh, that the Bishop had told the
Convention how many of Judson’s colored guests came in automobiles,
which were left lining the sidewalk and obstructing the street. Oh, that
the Bishop had described to the Convention the similarity between the
negro “Reception” at the mansion of the Register of the Treasury and the
white reception of the President of the United States!

[Illustration: “Poor down-trodden negro!... he is sometimes compelled to
take dinner with John Wanamaker and lunch with Theodore Roosevelt.”]

Poor, down-trodden negro! In this land which is worse than hell, it
actually happens that he is sometimes compelled to take dinner with John
Wanamaker, and to lunch with Theodore Roosevelt!

       *       *       *       *       *

The amazement within me grows as I dwell upon the black man’s woes, and
I marvel that Doctor Washington, Judson Lyons, Bishop Turner “and others
among ’em” do not pack right up and go straight back to dear old Africa.

       *       *       *       *       *

And to think that the man who declared this country to be worse than
hell is a “negro preacher.” I had supposed that if there was any human
being who found the United States an ideal abode, it was the “negro
preacher.” He is the one incumbent whom I had been led to believe had a
mighty rich thing in salary, and a still richer thing in “_perqueesits_.”
If I had been asked to go out and find the man who could unreservedly
indorse the proposition that life _is_ worth living, I should have struck
a bee line for the nearest negro preacher.

Of course, if I had been unable to find _him_, my next choice would have
been the negro school-teacher.

The army of negro preachers is a shining host, waving palms of victory,
and apparently happy; the army of negro school-teachers is another
shining host, waving palms of victory, and apparently happy.

The white man’s money, directly and indirectly, supplies the sinews of
war to both these shining hosts—a fact which it did not suit the purpose
of Bishop Turner to mention in the convention which had met to howl, and
which, consequently, was bound to howl.

In Africa, in Liberia, in San Domingo, negro preachers have not
flourished, increased, or put their hands upon so many good things as
they have done in poor, little, old North America. And the shining hosts
of negro school-teachers, flush with the white man’s money, do not wave
any palms of victory beyond the limits of the country which is worse than
hell, the country whose flag is a dirty, contemptible rag “where the
negro is involved.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Take out of your pocket a five-dollar or one-dollar treasury note, or
certificate, and look at the name signed to give it validity.

“_Judson W. Lyons, Register of the Treasury._”

Do you find it?

Well, that name has been a legal necessity to every treasury note issued
by the Federal Government during the last eight years.

Judson W. Lyons is a negro.

For the last eight years he has been holding the high, responsible and
well-paid office of Register of the Treasury of the United States.

Nevertheless, this Judson W. Lyons went down to Macon, Georgia, to attend
a convention of negroes, and in this convention he heard Bishop H. M.
Turner, a negro, denounce the flag of his country as “A CONTEMPTIBLE AND
DIRTY RAG;” and Judson did not open his mouth to protest.

He also heard this ungrateful Bishop declare that—“_Hell is an
improvement on the United States when the negro is involved_.”

Still, Judson W. Lyons sat there in apparent acquiescence—he an officer
of the Government!

Now when you are told that every blessed son and son-in-law of Bishop H.
M. Turner was appointed to office under President Cleveland, and when you
bear in mind that Judson Lyons has so long been in the enjoyment of a
Federal office which pays him $8,000 per year, you can form a fair idea
of a radical defect in negro character. It is _Ingratitude_.

Bishop Turner has been treated with the utmost consideration by the
whites. He enjoys a larger income than he could hope to draw as witch
doctor in Africa, or as voodoo man in San Domingo. He lives on the fat of
the land, grows juicy himself, and yet runs no risk of being hot-potted
by hungry brethren—as he would in his native land of Africa. He dresses
in a manner which would have stunned King Tchaka; and to see him take his
ecclesiastical ease in a Pullman car is a sight for the sore-eyed.

_What is the Bishop angry about?_

Apparently for the reason that “drunken mobs” in the North, South, East
and West diabolically persist in accusing the negro of committing rape.

The Bishop says that the negro is innocent. Being innocent, he is
necessarily as innocent as a new-born babe. The Bishop declares that “no
negro has been tried by the courts and found guilty of this crime of rape
in fifteen years.”

This statement makes the other twin for Booker Washington’s assertion
that “not more than six” graduates of negro colleges have ever gone
wrong. A more precious pair of Siamese-twin lies have not been put in
type since the decease of the late lamented Baron Munchausen.

My opinion is that Bishop Turner, if he continues to cultivate the evil
spirit which broke loose in the Macon Convention, will some day know,
by experience, whether hell IS an improvement over the United States;
but, before that time comes, I would suggest that he step down to San
Domingo and soak himself in the luxuries of that region for awhile, as a
preparation for the other place.

[Illustration: “In New York a negro is at the head of the white slave
traffic.”]

_Note._—Public opinion expressed itself so hotly concerning his attack
on the flag that Bishop Turner felt driven into a perfunctory and
involved denial; but having read this so-called denial I am convinced
that the bishop did use substantially the words reported, because of
the significant fact that his so-called denial contains language quite
as offensive, quite as insulting, as that which he surlily pretends to
disclaim. Had this been the first time that Bishop Turner had denounced
the Government that has done so much for his race, had it been the
first time he had outrageously vilified the people among whom he lives,
there might be room for doubt concerning the Macon speech. But Bishop
Turner has for years been speaking and writing in precisely the vein
which appears in the reports that went out from Macon. He has become
conspicuous as a chronic assailant of the whites. Therefore I have not
the slightest doubt that he used at Macon in substance, if not in the
very words, the reports as telegraphed all over the country.


_An Indignant Wisconsin Editor_

Mr. John L. Sturtevant, whose card informs the interested universe that
he, the said John L., is editor of _The Waupaca Post_, of Waupaca, Wis.,
flew into a passion when he read the February number of this Magazine.

The why and the wherefore of his sudden rage are best explained in a
red-hot letter which I now give in full, just as it came sizzling from
the frying pan:

                                                     Feb. 17, 1906.

    _Thomas E. Watson, New York._

    DEAR SIR: In the February number of your magazine, on page 400,
    under the caption “Best on Earth” you state: “The big Milwaukee
    First National Bank burst and the people lost $1,450,000.” The
    statement is absolutely false. F. G. Bigelow, president of the
    bank, appropriated that amount from the bank’s funds to his own
    use, but the bank did not burst nor did the “people,” in the
    sense in which you use the word, lose one cent. The loss fell
    upon the stockholders and was fully paid from the surplus which
    the bank had accumulated during an honorable and successful
    career. Your magazine is full of just such reckless and
    libelous statements as this, which make thoughtful readers look
    with distrust upon the few truths it contains. Intentionally,
    or otherwise, you constantly do grave injury to many people and
    the pity of it is your readers who do not think or reason are
    led along the paths of populism, socialism and anarchy.

                         Sincerely yours,

                                                  J. L. STURTEVANT.

Touching the falsehood to which the furious John L. refers, I have this
to say: My article was based upon a “special” sent out from Chicago which
went the rounds of the Press, and which was not contradicted.

The “special” from which I took the facts, appeared, on December 19,
1905, in the _Augusta Herald_, one of the most reliable and conservative
Democratic daily papers in the United States.

The indignant Sturtevant does not deny that the bank was looted of the
sum stated by me, but because I said that “the people” lost the money
he charges me with having made a statement that was “absolutely false.”
Sturtevant alleges that the money was not stolen from “the people” but
from “the stockholders!”

He is equally indignant because I said that the bank “burst.” He alleges
that the stockholders were able to stand the theft of nearly a million
and a half dollars, and that the bank didn’t burst.

An Editor of a Magazine is at a disadvantage when compared to the Editor
of _The Waupaca Post_, of Waupaca, Wisconsin. Sturtevant evidently stands
at the head-waters of information, and gets his news fresh from the
spring. That’s one of the luxuries of living and editing at Waupaca.

A poor devil of a Georgia editor, like me, has to take his information
second-hand. In spite of all that I can do, it is impossible for me to be
there, all over the world, when things are happening.

Sturtevant was close to Milwaukee when Bigelow looted his bank, and
therefore, knew at first hand what the facts were. On the contrary, I
was thousands of miles off, and had to rely upon telegraphic despatches,
published in reputable newspapers.

In the “special” from Chicago which appeared in the _Herald_, of Augusta,
Ga., December 19, 1905, this language appears:

“The three big bank WRECKS which are still fresh in the public mind on
account of their size and recent date are: the Enterprise National Bank
of Allegheny, Penn.; The First National Bank of Topeka, Kans.; the FIRST
NATIONAL BANK OF MILWAUKEE, WIS.!”

Then in a tabulated statement, the “special” gave sums which were
classified as “losses.”

In this separate list of “losses” occasioned by “THE BANK WRECKS,” the
First National Bank of Milwaukee, heads the table with $1,450,000.

Therefore, instead of my statement in the Magazine being reckless and
false, it was carefully based upon a “special” sent out from Chicago
in December, which at the time my paragraphs were written had gone
unchallenged for more than a month.

Even when corrected by Mr. Sturtevant, how much good is done to the
National Banking system whose claim to be “the best on earth” I was
ridiculing? My point was that the lootings of this boasted “best system
on earth” were so frequent and so colossal that it was absurd to claim
that the system was “the best on earth.” How does the Waupaca Champion of
looted banks improve matters by explaining that the president of the bank
merely stole a million and a half from _the stockholders_?

How does he weaken my attack by saying that the bank was able to stand
the huge robbery?

Is bank rottenness saved from denunciation because the looted bank
happened to be rich enough to survive the blow?

Is bank gutting made respectable because the stockholders alone were
gutted?

Suppose the stockholders had not been rich enough to make good the
loss; suppose the bank had not possessed “a surplus” of that immense
size—wouldn’t “the loss” have fallen upon “the people,” and wouldn’t the
bank have “burst”?

Ah, Mr. Sturtevant! When you say that a National Bank has gained such
tremendous profits out of the privilege of creating money and lending
it to the people at high rates of interest that a robbery which runs up
into the millions does not stagger it in the least, you simply convince
the intelligent reader that National Banks reap far greater gains out of
Special Privilege than their champions are in the habit of admitting.

As to the “other” reckless and libelous statements which the Waupaca
Editor says I have been making in the Magazine, I can only invite him to
name them.

The Magazine is here to stay, and it is not conscious of having made
reckless and libelous statements.

The columns are open to brother Sturtevant, and to all others, who wish
to challenge any statements made therein.

Whenever I am shown to be wrong, I will gladly make correction, and, if
need be, apology.

If, on the contrary, the other fellow happens to be wrong, I will
endeavor, in a mild, conciliatory but earnest spirit to show him his
error.

Brother Sturtevant, of Waupaca, asserts that I am constantly doing grave
injury to many people.

I appeal to Sturtevant to furnish me a list—a partial one, at least—of
the people whom I am constantly injuring so gravely.

If he can establish the fact that in the 200,000 words or more, which I
have written for the Magazine, a grave injury has been inflicted upon any
man, woman or child, I stand ready to make the fullest amends.

_Make good, brother Sturtevant!_


The Man and the Land

Certain good friends of mine were shocked, a few months ago, when they
learned that I was one of those monsters who believe in the private
ownership of land.

Some of them deplored my ignorance, and urged me to go straightway and
read “Progress and Poverty.” Well, I had read Henry George’s book soon
after its publication, and had once had the precious advantage of serving
a term in Congress with the great Tom Johnson; yet I never had been able
to see the distinction, _in principle_, between the private ownership of
a cow and the private ownership of a cow-lot.

Some men are just that stupid, and when Ephraim gets “sot” on a thing of
that kind, even Louis Post, of _The Public_, has to let him alone.

Certain other friends made the point on me that I did not understand
Count Tolstoy. That is possible. In his various ramblings into various
speculative matters, Tolstoy, like our own Emerson, gets lost, sometimes,
in mazes of his own making; and he uses language which may delight
professional commentators, but which is sorely vexatious to an average
citizen who really wants to know what the philosophers are driving at.

Tolstoy is careful to avoid _History_. The flood of light which might be
thrown upon the land question by the records of the human race is shut
out altogether.

And _this_ is the weak spot in the armor of every champion who enters
the list against the Private Ownership of Land. If History makes any one
thing plain, it is that a Civilization was never able to develop itself
on any other basis than that of Private Ownership.

Like other champions of his theory, Tolstoy forgets the elemental traits
of Human Nature. He forgets how _unequal_ we are by Nature; how we
differ, in character, capacity, taste and purpose; how few there are who
will labor for the “good of all,” and how universal is the rule that each
man labors, first of all, for _himself_.

He forgets that every beast of the field has its prototype in some
members of the human family; he forgets that the _man_-tiger is now more
numerous than the four-footed sort; that the _man_-fox is more cunning
than his wild brother; that the _man_-wolf hunts with every human herd;
that the _man_-sloth is marked by nature with her own indelible brand;
that some men are born timid as the deer are; that some are born without
fear as the lion is; that the human hog grunts and gorges, and makes
himself a nauseating nuisance, on the streets, in hotels, in the Pullman
cars—in fact everywhere, but most of all where people have to eat and
sleep.

This is the fundamental error which doctrinaires are prone to make. _They
forget what Human Nature actually is, always has been, and perhaps,
always will be._

They argue about ideal conditions, unmindful of the fact that ideal
conditions require ideal men—and that we haven’t got the ideal men.

Every society, every state, must from necessity be made up of the Good,
the Bad, and the Indifferent and the law-makers of that society, that
state, will from necessity be compelled to frame laws suited to _that_
community. Hence, the laws will not be absolutely the best, considering
the question as an abstract question, but they will be the best which
_that_ community is capable of receiving.

All legislation, like all Society, is a compromise.

In a state of Nature I would be absolutely free. But I would be alone. To
protect myself in person, property or family, I would have to rely upon
my individual arm. My absolute freedom would be an absolute isolation and
a relative helplessness.

I would find that I could not endure such a life. I would therefore seek
companionship among other men who felt the same needs that I felt, and we
would come together for the “good of all.” One hundred families coming
together in this way form the nucleus of Society, of the State. Each man
gives up a portion of his individual freedom when he enters this union of
families which forms such a nucleus.

Why does he surrender a portion of his wild, natural, individual freedom?
Why does he agree to be bound by the will of the Community instead of
his _own_ will? Why does he consent to be _governed_ by the public when
he had previously been his own ruler? He does it because it is to his
interest to do it. He finds that, while he has surrendered much, he
has gained more. _The Community_ throws around him the protection of a
hundred strong arms where previously he had but his own.

_The Community_, in a hundred ways, ministers to his wants, his
weaknesses, his desires, his prosperity.

In other words, the Community gives more than it took.

Association which improves the Community tends to improve each member
thus associated; and from this association come all those blessings which
we call Civilization.

Resolve the Association back into its elements; let each individual
separate from the mass; let each one say, “I’m my own man,”—and what
becomes of Civilization?

It perishes, of course.

Now where will Tolstoy find the basis of Society _in Nature_?

In the human instinct for _getting-together_. And that instinct seems to
grow out of our hopes, and our fears, our profound belief that we _need_
our fellow-man, and that we are not strong enough to stand alone, _no
matter how much we would like to do so_.

Deep down in your heart you will find the primeval, natural craving for
independence, individuality, separate living, separate doing. With the
great common mass of humanity this tendency has been weakened by disuse
until it is not an active principle. It is like a muscle which has lost
its strength from inaction. Hence, the common man goes with the herd,
just as a flock of sheep follows the bell-wether.

       *       *       *       *       *

Society, then is a matter of convention: _Nature_ did not frame it.

Nor does _Nature_ impose upon us the relation of Husband and Wife.

Why do we adopt the present marriage system, which differs in so many
respects from Nature, and from former practices of the human race?

Simply because we believe it to be _an improvement_. We _know_ it is
better than the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes: we _believe_ it
to be better than Polygamy; we _hope_ that it will some day be a more
radiant success than the Divorce Courts would seem to indicate.

Now as to the land.

Undoubtedly, the earth was given to the human family as a home for the
family. Undoubtedly, Nature teaches that the earth belongs in common to
the entire human race.

Thus it was in the beginning. But, just as the wild horse became the
property of the bold tribesman who caught it and tamed it; just as the
natural fruit of the forest belonged to him who gathered it; just as the
cave or hollow tree became the dwelling of the first occupant, so the
well in the thirsty plain became the property of him that had dug down to
the waters; and the pasturage which one had taken up might not be taken
away from him by another.

Mine was the bark hut which my labor had built; mine the canoe which my
hands had hollowed out; mine the bow and arrows which I had fashioned;
mine the herds and flocks, the goats and asses which I had tamed and
reared and cared for till they had multiplied.

Should the idler, or the thief of the tribe, take from me that which my
labor had produced? Must _my_ canoe belong to the whole tribe? Must my
garment which I had made out of the skins of the wild beast belong to the
sloth who loafed in the tent while I risked my life in the woods?

_Nature said_, NO!

Nature, speaking through elemental instinct said: “That which _your_
labor made is _yours_.”

Yours the hut, yours the canoe, yours the garment of skins, yours the bow
and arrows—and that was the beginning of _Private Property in Personalty_.

       *       *       *       *       *

But look again at the ways of Nature and of the tribe.

Pasturage failed after awhile; natural fruits were no longer sufficient
to sustain life; game disappeared from the forest; fish grew scarce in
the streams. Something had to be done to make good the shortage. The
soil was there, suggesting cultivation. The products of Nature must be
supplemented by human industry. But before the soil could be cultivated,
the trees had to be cut away; cattle and wild beasts had to be fenced
out; the virgin earth had to be made the bride of toil before the
fruitful seed would bring forth harvests.

Now _who was to do the work_?

The Idler wouldn’t; the Feeble couldn’t; the Hunter didn’t; _the strong,
clear-headed Laborer made the farm_.

Those who assail private ownership of land say that “the man who makes a
farm doesn’t make it in the sense that one makes a basket or a chair.”
They see clearly that, if they admit that _the pioneer who goes into the
wilderness or the swamps and creates a farm, is to be put on the same
footing as the man who goes into the woods, gets material and makes a
canoe, or a chair or a basket_, it is “farewell world” to their theory
about the land. Therefore they say that THE FARM WAS ALREADY THERE,
waiting for the farmer. All the farmer had to do was to go there and
tickle the soil with a hoe, and it laughed with the harvest.

How very absurd! You might just as well say that the willows that
bent over the waters of the brook _were baskets waiting for the tardy
basketmaker to come and get them_. You might just as well say that the
hide on the cow’s back was a pair of ladies’ shoes waiting for the lady
to come and fit them to her dainty feet.

Must we get rid of our common sense, our practical knowledge, before we
can argue a case of this sort? Do not these doctrinaires know that they
are denying physical facts, plain everyday experience, when they say
that a piece of wild land in the desert, in the swamps, on the mountain
side, or in the woody wilderness _is a farm waiting for the farmer_?
Sheer nonsense never went further. But they are compelled to this extent
because of the necessities of their case. They see at once that if ever
they admit my position that _the laborer takes raw materials with which
nature supplies him, and out of those raw materials creates something
that did not exist before_, then the laborer is entitled to that which
his labor creates.

Now, do you mean to tell me, that for thousands of years there were farms
waiting the pioneers here in North America? Consider for a moment what
the New England, or the Southern, or the Western farmer had to do before
he had _made a farm_. He had to go into the woods with an axe in one hand
and a rifle in the other. Very frequently he was shot down before he
could make his farm, just as Abraham Lincoln’s grandfather was killed.
Very frequently he died from the fever engendered in the woods before he
had made his farm, just as Andrew Jackson’s father did, in the effort _to
make a farm_ in the wilderness of North Carolina. Supposing the farmer
was able to snatch up his gun quick enough to shoot the Indian who was
trying to shoot him, and supposing that his constitution was strong
enough to resist the malarial atmosphere in which he had to labor while
creating that farm, what was the process through which he went _in making
that farm_? He had to cut off an enormous growth of timber. He had to
grub up stumps and roots. He had to plow and cross-plow the soil until it
had become a seed bed. He had to inclose the farm to keep out the wild
animals which would have devoured his crop. If in a rocky section, he had
to remove the stones which encumbered the ground. If in a damp, swampy
section, he had to exercise skill, as well as labor, in draining the
soil. After four or five years, the laborer _had made a farm_—something
_as different from the wild land which he found in the woods as the pine
tree is from the lumber which lies upon the lumber-yard_; as different as
the wool on the sheep’s back is from the coat which you wear; something
as different as the willow and the bamboo are from the chairs and the
baskets which are made from them.

Now, the doctrinaires say that it would be a sufficient reward to that
laborer _to give him the crop that he made on the land_. Would it? For
what length of time will you give him those crops? If you ask the
laborer, he will say, “_I made this farm_; I risked my life in the work:
I shortened my days by the labor, the exposure, the drudgery of making
this farm. I never would have gone to this amount of toil if I had not
believed that society would secure me in the possession of the farm after
I made it.”

Having established him in his security of possession, which I say is
tantamount to title, suppose that laborer wants to change his farm for
a stock of manufactured goods, or for silver and gold, or for horses,
or for another piece of land, do you mean to say he shall not have the
right to do it? If so, you limit his title, and you have not the right
to do so. _That which he made he ought to have the right to dispose of
on such terms as please him._ His title having originated in the sacred
rights of labor, you should not limit his enjoyment or his disposition
of that which his labor created. If you recognize his right to exchange
one product of his labor for another, you recognize his right to exchange
all products of his labor for others. In other words, by plain course
of reasoning, you arrive at the principle that the bargain and sale of
lands is founded upon the right of the laborer to exchange the product of
his labor with those who may have product of labor which he could use to
better advantage than he can use his own.

Now, let us see. The laborer who made the farm dies. What shall become of
it? Away back in the origin of property, OCCUPANCY was the first title
recognized. As long as one individual, or one tribe, occupied a certain
spot their right to use it was recognized, but no longer. When possession
was abandoned, the next individual, or the next tribe who occupied that
spot, had the right of possession. When tribes ceased to wander about,
the occupancy of the spot which the tribe had taken possession of became
permanent.

Therefore, the title to that spot grew up in the tribe along with
permanent possession. _No civilization was ever created by wandering
tribes._ It is only when the tribe fixes its permanent residence in
some particular spot, recognized as exclusively its own, that there is
any such thing as law and order and civilization. It is clear enough
when we consider one tribe in its relations to other tribes. Let us
consider the tribe in its relations to its members. Each individual in
the beginning had a title _by occupancy_ to the spot which he cultivated,
and this security of possession lasted so long as the occupancy lasted.
If the tribesman abandoned his spot of land, with the intent to surrender
the same, then the next fortunate tribesman who came along could take
possession of it and hold it. But, in the course of time, this created
great inconvenience, because, as favored spots became more desirable,
the competition to get them was fiercer. Hence, there were feuds, bloody
struggles, disorders in the tribe. Consequently, by natural evolution
society was forced, first, to recognize the right of the individual as
long as he wished to occupy the spot which he had taken possession of;
second _to provide for the succession to that title when the spot became
vacant_.

The learned men tell us that, at the death of the occupant, his own
family, _his own children_, being naturally the first who would know that
he was dead, _were naturally the first who would take possession after
his death_. Therefore, the sons of the deceased tenant always became
the first occupants of the vacant land which had been left vacant by
the death of their father. This succession of the sons to the fathers
becoming universal, was finally recognized by the law of the tribe; and
in the course of time it was recognized further in the law which allowed
the tenant to make a will and to say who should take his property after
his death.

Thus by slow and almost imperceptible degrees, the tribe recognized,
first, the right of the man who had made a farm to hold it as long as
he lived; second, the right of his children to follow in his footsteps
and to receive the benefit of that which their father had created by
his labor; third, and last, came the law of wills and testaments which
allowed the tribesman to say what should go with his property after his
death.

If the occupant died without heirs and without having made a will, the
land went back to the tribe, or the state, to be disposed of as public
property. This principle is recognized to this day in the doctrine of
escheats.

Property in land differs in nowise from property in horses and cows.
The law of property is the same naturally in real estate as in personal
estate, and I can conceive of no revenue in any community which is so
just as that which lays itself with an equal burden upon all kinds of
property in proportion to the amount thereof. In the beginning, one
tribesman, like Abraham or Lot, might have his cattle browsing upon a
thousand hills, while another tribesman might have made a little farm
in some secluded valley, or upon some thirsty, rocky mountain-side
where vines were planted, or where olive trees bore their fruit to the
industrious citizen who had year in and year out watched and tended their
growth. Would there be any justice in compelling those little farmers to
supply the revenue for the common purpose of the tribe, and not compel a
contribution _pro rata_ from the men who owned “exceeding many flocks and
herds”?

The trouble about these doctrinaires is that they start at the present
day and reason backward, while I start at the fountain head and reason
down. I take things as history shows them to have been; they take things
as they think they ought to have been.

The doctrinaire further says that if the tribesman who made a farm had
been satisfied to fence in his farm, only, _the common_ would have
remained after all had been supplied. In this country, we have millions
of acres of “commons” now waiting any one “member of the tribe” who wants
to go and take his share. The truth of it is, the doctrinaire doesn’t
want to go out into the wild land and _make a farm_. He wants to stay
where he is, and _take one that some other fellow has made_. Especially
doth he crave a slice of the Astor estate, which doctrinaires have
talked of so much that they can almost identify their shares therein.

One of the doctrinaires quotes the following from “Progress and Poverty”:
“If a fair distribution of land were made among the whole population,
giving to each his equal share, and laws enacted which would impose a
barrier to the tendency to concentration, by forbidding the holding by
anyone of more than a fixed amount, what would become of the increased
population?”

I do not consider it any part of my task to assail the position taken
in “Progress and Poverty,” but I think it a satisfactory answer to the
foregoing question to say that in the very nature of things posterity
must be the heirs-at-law of the conditions of those who went before. To
say that we can so frame a social fabric as flexibly and automatically
to give an equal share of everything to every child born into the world
hereafter, regardless of whether that child’s parents were thrifty,
industrious, virtuous people, or, on the other hand, were thriftless,
indolent, vicious people, seems to me to be one of the wildest dreams
that ever entered the human mind. No matter how equal material conditions
might be made today by legislation, the inherent inequality in the
capacities of men, physically, mentally, spiritually, would evolve
differences tomorrow. There is no such thing as equality among men, and
no law will ever give it to them. What the father gains the children
lose; and the grandchildren may regain. While one man runs the race of
life and wins it; another man, equally tall and strong will run the race
and lose it. Just why, it is, in some cases, difficult to tell.

Some men naturally lead; some naturally follow; some naturally command;
others naturally obey: some are naturally strong; others are naturally
weak. The law of life to some is activity; others say that they were
born tired; and there is a certain pathos in their excuse for indolence,
for they _were_ born tired. One man is naturally brave—physically,
morally—and he will venture. Another man is naturally a coward—physically
or morally—and he will not venture. A dozen different traits, or
combination of traits, make failure or success in life, and to say that
success or failure, vice and virtue, good and bad, are the results of
environment and social conditions, is as misleading, _as a general
statement of fundamental facts_, as to say that the dove and the hawk,
the tiger and the sheep, the rattlesnake and the harmless “black runner”
are the results of environment. Nature in its act of creation made the
difference between the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, the
fish of the sea, the men and women who inhabit the earth. From the
remotest ages, of which we have record, human nature has been the same
that it is today. Paganism presented precisely the same types of man in
its savagery and its civilization that Christianity now presents in its
savagery and civilization. “There is nothing new under the sun,” and the
very theories which the doctrinaires now think are matters of modern
discovery, unknown to our ancestors, and which would have been adopted
had our ancestors been as wise as we, were discussed in the days of
Aristotle and had the very best thought of the sages of antiquity.

Let it be remembered, however, that I have always qualified the Private
Ownership of Land by acknowledging the supremacy of the State. The tribe,
the community, the State, the Government holds supreme power over the
life and liberty of citizens, and over the ownership of the soil. The
State calls for me to give up my individual pursuits, my individual
liberty, my individual preference, and to take my place as a soldier in
the ranks of the army. I am compelled to obey; that is an obligation
which rests upon me as a member of society. Thus the State can demand
my life of me whenever the State declares that it is necessary for the
defence of the State. In like manner, the State can restrain me of my
liberty. For instance, in times of epidemics, we have shotgun quarantine
which destroys my liberty of movement. I would be shot down like a dog
if I sought to break through the lines of quarantine, although to make
such an escape might mean my individual salvation, whereas obedience to
law amounts to sentence of death. In this case, as in the other, the
State practically demands my life as an individual as a sacrifice for
the good of the greater number of citizens. So, as to property, no man
holds an absolute title to land as against the State. The Government,
acting for all the tribe, for all the people, can tear down or burn my
house to stop the spread of fire. It can confiscate my property for
public purposes, when the public need requires it. It can take my land
for public buildings, for canals, for railroads, or for new dirt roads
through the country. My rights in the premises would be recognized in
the payment to me of damages. My individual rights would be assessed in
so many dollars and cents. Thus my home, which might be almost as dear
to me as my life, would be coldly valued in money, and although I left
it with bitter regrets, even with bitter tears and a bitter sense of
wrong, I would have to surrender my individual preference to what is
supposed to be by constituted authorities the necessity of the State.
This right of the public to take away any portion of the soil from the
individual, and to dedicate it to the use of the public, is called
the right of Eminent Domain, and is a remnant of the old system which
recognized that the title to all the lands was in the King. Of course the
King stood for the State. Centered in the personal sovereign were those
sovereign rights which belong to the people as a whole, and the people
as a whole, represented by the King, were admitted to be the owners
of the ultimate fee in the land, and could compel any individual to
surrender his individual holdings for the benefit of the entire people,
just compensation having first been paid to the individual. It is in that
sense that I say private ownership of land is just as holy a principle,
just as equitable, as private ownership in the basket which I made from
the rushes I gathered along the stream, or from the splints which I rived
out from the white oak; just as sacred as my right to the boat which I
hollowed out from the forest tree, or the bark hut, or the hut of skins,
which my labor erected to shelter me and my family.

The doctrinaire asks: “Could he not be as secure in his possession if the
land were owned and exaction made by all the people?” Certainly. That is
my contention. The whole tribe _did_ exercise dominion over the land, but
to encourage the individual member of the tribe to improve a particular
portion of the wild land, the tribe agreed to protect the individual in
that which his labor had created, namely a _farm_. My contention now is
that the ultimate ownership of the land is in all the people; but society
had a perfect right to divide it on such terms as were thought best and
to guarantee to each individual “security of possession,” or _title_, to
that which he had produced. The great trouble with Mr. Doctrinaire is
that he does not begin at the beginning. If he would study the condition
of the human race as it gradually evolved from the patriarchal state, the
tribal state, the nomad state, into that fixed and complex status which
we now call “Christian Civilization,” he would readily understand how
private ownership of land was the axis upon which the improvement of the
conditions of the individual and of the State turned. As long as tribes
wandered about from province to province, with their herds of goats, or
sheep, or cattle, nibbling the grass which nature put up, and moving
onward to another pasture as fast as one was exhausted, there could be
nothing but tent life, nothing but personal property. The house had to
move every time the family moved. Therefore, when the herds devoured the
grass in one place, and the tribe had to move to another, tents were
struck, the few household goods were packed on the backs of the wives, or
on the backs of other beasts of burden, and the family moved. When man
and beast multiplied to such an extent that nature no longer supplied a
sufficiency of food, it became necessary for the tribe to settle down,
and to divide the territory upon which they settled among the various
members of the tribe. That was done in Germany, as well as in various
other countries, but I take Germany because the German tribes were our
own ancestors. They divided the lands every year. It was seldom the case
that the same tribesman occupied the same home for more than one year.
Like the Methodist preachers of today, their homes were always on the
go. The farmer’s home in those days was precisely like the Methodist
preachers’ homes today—a matter to be fixed at the annual conference.
The Methodist preacher who today is preaching in the town may next year
be sent into the remote rural precincts: the mountain parson may next
year be sent to the seaboard. The church is fixed and the parsonage is
stationary, but the preacher and his wife and his children are forever
moving. Now in precisely the same manner the tribesmen of the German
tribes used to be going from farm to farm, and there were no considerable
improvements made while that state of affairs existed. Why? Because we
are just so constituted that we do not care to build houses for other
people to live in, if we know it. When we start out to beautify a home,
we may never enjoy it, but we expect to do so at the time, and without
that expectation there would be no beautiful homes.

Mr. Doctrinaire thinks because each tribesman would try to grab the
best piece of land, there was original injustice in allowing private
ownership. If he will think for a moment, he will realize that the native
selfishness of man does not make against the private ownership of land
to any further extent than it does to the private ownership of personal
property. When the tribesmen went out to hunt, each hunter sought
to bring down the finest stag. Each hunter naturally wanted to hunt
where the best game was to be found. Hence those eternal wars between
the Indian tribes which brought down the population on the American
continent. Hence also those feuds and tribal wars which desolated the
East in the times of nomad life.

We find Abraham and Lot in a bitter dispute over a certain pasture; but
as to the well which Abraham “had digged” there was no resisting his
claim, that _well was his property_. Why? Because in the quaint language
of the Bible, “He had digged that well.” In other words, while nature put
the water in under the soil, and while nature made the soil itself, it
was Abraham’s judgment which selected the place where he could find the
water, and it was Abraham’s labor that removed the earth which covered
the water. In other words, Abraham _made the well_, in precisely the same
sense that the pioneer in the wilderness _makes a farm_.

But, as I said, the competitive principle, each one wanting to get what
is best, reveals itself in all directions. Every fisherman has always
wanted the best fishing grounds. Nations have been brought to war by this
cause, to say nothing of tribal disputes and individual contests.

Nowhere have I contended that it was private ownership of land that
made it possible for the laborer to claim and retain the product of his
labor. I could not have said that because I know quite well that personal
property preceded property in land. In other words, the laborers acquired
a full title to the rude garments in which they clothed themselves, the
rude implements which they used in the chase, their weapons, canoes,
etc., long before they ever made farms. This has been explained fully
elsewhere and does not at all antagonize the statement that _after_
a tribesman has acquired by his labor an interest in the land, _the
government of the tribe may be so arranged that the produce of the
land will be taken away from the land-owner as fast as he produces
it_. Instead of robbery by taxation in land—products preceding private
ownership in land—the reverse is the case. To fleece the laborer of what
he produces on his farm was the after-thought of those who governed the
tribe.

This is shown by the wretchedness of the peasant class in Russia today.
Historians tell us that the Russian peasant formerly owned a very
considerable portion of the land, just as the French peasants did,
and in addition to the individual ownership which was in the Russian
peasantry, there was a large quantity of communal land which belonged
to each community of peasants as a whole. In the process of time, the
ruling class in Russia put such burdens upon the peasant proprietor that
he gradually lost his land and became a serf. Of course, Mr. Doctrinaire
recalls that in 1860 the serfs of Russia were freed, and they were given
a large portion of the land which had been taken away from them by the
Russian nobles. They also held the communal lands. What has been the
result? The ruling classes have put such heavy burdens in the way of dues
and taxes upon the peasants that their ownership of the land, communal
and individual, has brought them none of the blessings which they
anticipated. Thus we have a striking and contemporaneous illustration of
the great truth which I have sought to emphasize, namely, that the mere
ownership of land does not emancipate the people.

Arthur Young, the famous “Suffolk Squire,” rode horseback over the rural
districts of France, just before the Revolution broke out. He found
that the French peasants owned their own farms. He made a close and
sympathetic study of their condition.

And what was that condition?

Wretched to the very limit of human endurance. The king, the noble, and
the priest were literally devouring the Common People. Privilege, Titles,
Taxes, Feudal dues were driving the masses to despair, to desperation.

Yet the French peasant had “access to the land.”

In England, at that time, the peasants did not own land, and yet their
condition was incomparably better than that of the French.

Why? Because they were _not_ ground down by Taxes and Feudal dues.

Could you ask a more convincing illustration?

Mr. Doctrinaire makes the point that when one member of the tribe decided
to undertake the arduous task of making a farm out of a few acres of the
millions which belonged to the tribe, this industrious member of the
community “robbed” all the others when he claimed as his own that which
his hands had made. I can see no more “robbery” in this case than in that
of another tribesman who went and cut down one of the millions of forest
trees which belonged to the tribe, and with painful labor hollowed out
this tree and created a canoe. At the time the one tribesman made the
canoe, every other tribesman had the same chance to do the same thing.
At the time the one tribesman went into the woods and made a farm every
other tribesman had the same right. If Mr. Doctrinaire thinks that the
first occupant of any particular spot did not have the right to locate a
farm, he might as well say that the first finder of the cavern, or the
hollow tree, did not have the right to occupy that which he had first
found, and yet he knows perfectly well that this right of discovery and
occupancy was always recognized from the beginning of time and that
from the very nature of things it had to be recognized to prevent the
bloodiest feuds in every tribe. (A curious survival of this Right of
Discovery is to be seen even now in the claim to the “Bee Tree” by the
first to find it.)

Mr. Doctrinaire says, impliedly, that if the tribesman had fenced in no
more than the spot out of which he had made a farm, injustice would not
have been done to the tribe: but he says the tribesman went further and
fenced in a great deal more—“vast areas,” which he could not use, and
also “claimed” these as his own. How does Mr. Doctrinaire know that?
I did not state anything of the sort. Nor does the historian state
anything of the sort. I was tracing title to land to its origin, and
I contended that the origin of title to land was labor. Consequently,
my contention was that the tribesman fenced in that which his labor
had redeemed from the wilderness—his original purpose in fencing it in
being _partly_ to identify what was his own, _partly_ to assert his
exclusive possession, _but chiefly_ to protect his crop from the ravages
of the wild animals that were still roaming at large in the forest. Mr.
Doctrinaire must remember that the fencing of the farm was one of the
most tremendous difficulties that the pioneer met with. _He_ had no
barbed wire; _he_ had no woven wire, _he_ had no convenient sawmill from
which he could haul plank. No; _he_ had to cut down enormous trees, and
by the hardest labor known to physical manhood, he had to split those
trees into rails, and with these rails fence in that little dominion
which he rescued from “the wild,” that little oasis in a great desert of
savagery.

To put up the fence was heroic work. To keep it up was just as heroic,
for forest fires destroyed it from time to time, and the pioneer had
to replace the barrier against the encroachment of animal life and the
inroads of savagery with as great a tenacity and as sublime a courage as
that of the people of Holland, who tore their country from the clutches
of the ocean and barred out the sea with dikes. Tell me, that after the
pioneer had created this little paradise of his—rude though it might have
been—amidst the terrors and the toils and sacrifices of that life in the
wilderness, _it should be taken from him by the first man who coveted it,
and who said, “HERE, TAKE YOUR CROP, THAT IS ALL YOU ARE ENTITLED TO:
TAKE YOUR CROP AND GIVE ME YOUR FARM!”_ Would that have been _right_, at
the time private property was first recognized by our people in Germany?
Would that have been right at the time our pioneer farmers in New England
and Virginia created their farms, endured difficulties and dangers which
make them stand out in heroic outline on the canvas of history? No, by
the splendor of God! It would have been robbery and nothing less than
robbery for the tribe to have confiscated the farm which the pioneer
of America had made—partly with his rifle, partly with his axe, partly
with his spade—and throw it into the common lot where the idler and the
criminal would have just as much benefit from it as the pioneer _who had
made the farm_.

As to _the abuse of land ownership_, that is an entirely different
question. I agree that there should be no monopoly of land for
speculative purposes. The platform of the People’s Party has constantly
kept that declaration as a part of its creed. The abuse of land ownership
is quite a different thing from land ownership itself. I am not defending
any of its abuses. I am simply saying that _the principle_ is sound. All
those things which belong to the class of _private utilities_ should
be left to private ownership, because I believe in individualism; but
all those things which partake of the nature of public utilities should
belong to the public.

Mr. Doctrinaire says that railroads have their power based in the fixed
principle of private ownership of land. I deny this utterly. It was
always necessary for the civilized community to have public roads.
Even the Indians had their great trails which were in the nature of
public roads. A public road never of itself did anything injurious to a
community. The taking of land for a public road confers a benefit upon
the entire community. It is for that reason it is laid out. The amount
of land which is taken for a road, whether you cover it with blocks of
stone, as the Romans did, or whether you cover it with iron rails, as
modern corporations do, can inflict no injury whatever upon the community
_unless you go further_. For instance, if you erect toll gates on the
public highways and vest in some corporation the right to charge toll
on freight and passengers at those toll rates, then you have erected a
tyranny which can rob the traveler and injure the community. In that
case, you can clearly see it is _not the road_, it is _not the land over_
which the road passes, that is hurting the individual and the public.
_The thing which hurts is that franchise_ which empowers the corporation
to tax the citizens and the property of the citizens as they pass along
that highway. In like manner, the road which the transportation companies
use could never have inflicted harm upon individuals or communities. _The
thing which hurts is the franchise_ which empowers the corporation to rob
the people with unjust freight and passenger tolls as they pass along the
highway.

Mr. Doctrinaire mires up badly in trying to evade the point which I
made about Italy. I contended that while it was true that great estates
were the ruin of Italy, there had to be some general cause at work,
injurious to the average man, before the soil could be concentrated into
these great estates. This is very obvious to anyone who will stop to
think a moment. Mr. Doctrinaire thinks that the great estates in Italy
were acquired by simply claiming the land and fencing it in, by “each
individual claiming far more than he could use.” If all the land of
Italy had been claimed and enclosed, the power that these land claimers
had over subsequent comers is obvious; but _how_ did “the claimers” get
the lands? The most superficial knowledge of Roman History ought to
convince Mr. Doctrinaire that _Italy was cut up into small holdings_
until one branch of the government, the aristocracy, represented by the
Senate, gathered into its own hands by persistent encroachment all the
powers of the State. After that had been done, they fixed the machinery
of government so that the aristocracy were almost entirely exempt from
public burdens, whereas the common people had to bear not only their
just portion, but also the portion which the aristocracy shirked.
The ruling class, the patricians, not only escaped their burdens in
upholding the State but they _appropriated to themselves_ the revenue
which the Roman State exacted from the lower class, the plebeians. The
result was that the Italian peasant found himself unable to sustain the
burdens which the government put upon him and he abandoned his farm,
just as the French peasant quit the land, for the same reason, prior
to the French Revolution. In other words, _the small proprietor had to
sell out to the patrician_, and the patricians got these great estates
in the same manner that Rockefeller, for instance, got the estate
which he now holds at Tarrytown. The Standard Oil King did not simply
stretch his wires and “claim” land. He bought out the people who found
themselves unable or unwilling to hold their lands. Rockefeller stood
relatively on the same ground of advantage held by the Roman patricians.
Governmental favoritism, and special privilege, the power of money which
he had attained through unjust laws, made him more able to buy than the
individual owners around him were to hold. _Therefore he absorbed the
small estates_, and his estate became the “great estate,” just as such
great estates were created in Italy.

Mr. Doctrinaire can see the process going on around us. He can see how
great estates absorb small estates. Our legislation for one hundred years
has been in the interest of capital against labor. A plutocracy which
enjoys the principal benefits of government, and contributes almost
nothing to the support of the government, has been built up: charters
have been granted by which large corporations exploit the public; and in
this way great estates, whether in stocks or bonds, or gold, or land,
have been created.

The same principles, the same favoritism, the same privilege, working
in different ways, brought about the same results in France before the
Revolution, in Rome before its downfall, in Egypt, in Persia, in the
Babylonian Empire. If there is any one word which can be appropriately
used as an epitaph for all the dead nations of antiquity, that word is
“_privilege_.” The government was operated by a ruling class for the
benefit of that class, and the result was national decay, national death.

Mr. Doctrinaire asks me: “How did the ruling class at Rome come
to control the money?” I might answer by asking him: “How did the
controlling class in the United States come into control of the money?”
He would certainly admit that they have got control of it. How did
they get it? They took into their own hands, in the days of Alexander
Hamilton, the control of governmental machinery. They erected a tariff
system to give special privileges to manufacturers. Out of this has come
the monopoly which the manufacturers enjoy of the American market, and
the natural evolution of the tariff act which Alexander Hamilton put upon
our statute book more than one hundred years ago, produced The Trusts.

Again, the power to create a circulating medium to be used as money and
to expand and contract this circulating medium, thereby controlling the
rise and fall of markets, was a vicious principle embedded into our
system by, Alexander Hamilton, more than one hundred years ago.

Again, the granting of charters to private companies to exploit
public utilities is another means by which our patrician class has
secured the control of money. Now at Rome there was a similar process.
Instrumentalities were different, the names of things were different,
but the ruling class at Rome had the power of fixing the taxes, and they
appropriated to themselves the proceeds of these taxes. They had the
power of legislation in their hands and exploited the public for their
own benefit. In this way they secured, of course, the control of money.
The one advantage of paying no tax themselves and of appropriating to
themselves the taxes which they levied upon the plebeians was sufficient
to give them not only the control of money, but the control of the land
and of the man. In fact that tremendous power, to fix the taxes and to
appropriate the public revenue, is all that the ruling class of any
country need have in order to establish an intolerable despotism over
the unfavored classes.

Mr. Doctrinaire has the fatal habit of crawling backwards with his logic.
He says that the Roman Patrician could not have controlled the money
until he got control of the land. The slightest reflection ought to
convince him that this cannot be true. No class of men ever secured the
control of money by merely controlling the land. Just the reverse is the
universal truth. Without any exception whatsoever governmental machinery,
the taxing system, usury, expansion and contraction of the currency hold
the land-owner at their mercy. The land-owner, as such, never had them at
his mercy and he never will.

Another instance of the crawl-backwards method of reasoning is given
when Mr. Doctrinaire says that _usury grew out of land monopoly instead
of land monopoly growing out of usury_. When a man gets himself into
such a state of mind that he can deliberately write a statement of that
sort for publication, he is beyond reach of any ordinary process of
conviction and conversion. My statement was that usury is a vulture that
has gorged itself upon the vitals of nations since the beginning of time.
Mr. Doctrinaire says this is not true. On the other hand, he says that
land monopoly came first, and _then_ usury. If the rich people got all
the land first, so that they had a land monopoly, upon whom did they
practice usury? _How could they fatten on those who had nothing?_ If Mr.
Doctrinaire is at all familiar with the trouble between the Russians and
the Jews in Russia he knows that one of the accusations brought by the
Russian against the Jew is that the Russian land-owner has been devoured
by the money-lending Jew. If he knows anything about our agricultural
troubles in the South and in the West, he knows that the Southern and
Western farmer complains that he has been devoured by usury. If he
knows anything about the history of the Russian serf, he knows that the
money-lending patricians made serfs out of the small land-owners by
usury. If he will study the subject, he will find that in Rome, Egypt and
Assyria the small land-owner was devoured by usury, had to part with his
property and thus surrender to those who were piling up great fortunes by
governmental privilege and by the control of money.

Take the Rothschild family for an example. Did they have a land monopoly
which made it possible for them to wield the vast powers of usury?
Theirs is a typical case. Study it a moment. A small Jewish dealer and
money-lender in Frankfort is chosen by a rascally ruler of one of the
German States as a go-between in a villainous transaction whereby the
little German ruler sells his subjects into military service to the
King of England. These soldiers, who were bought, are known to history
as the Hessians, and they fought against us in the Revolutionary War.
This was the beginning of the Rothschild fortune, the transaction having
been very profitable to the Rothschild who managed it. Later, during
the Napoleonic Wars, the character of a Rothschild for trustworthiness
became established among princes and kings who were confederated against
Napoleon and many of the financial dealings of that day were made through
him. Of course, these huge financial transactions were profitable to
the Rothschild. Again, a certain German ruler, during those troublesome
times, entrusted all of his cash to the safe-keeping of a Rothschild,
the purpose being to put the money where Napoleon would not get it. For
many years the Rothschild had the benefit of this capital, and he put
it out to the very best advantage in loans and speculations, here and
there. By the time Napoleon was overthrown at Waterloo the Rothschild
family had become so rich and strong that it spread over the European
world. One member of the family took England, another France, another
Austria, another Belgium, the parent house remaining in Germany, and to
this day the Rothschild family is the dominant financial influence of
the European world. In other words, _by the power of money and the power
of usury_, they were able to make a partition of Europe and they are more
truly the rulers of nations than are the Hapsburgs, the Hohenzollerns,
the Romanoffs, or any other one dynasty which nominally wields the
sceptre.

Now, can Mr. Doctrinaire ask for a better illustration of the truth of
my statement that the power of money is not based upon the monopoly
of land; and that the monopoly of land is the fruitage of the tree of
usury? Originally, the Rothschilds owned no land. It was only after they
had become so rich that they were compelled to look around for good
investments that they began to buy real estate. Their vast fortune,
which staggers the human mind in the effort to comprehend it, was not
the growth of land monopoly, but _was the growth of usury_. What the
Rothschilds have done in modern times, men of like character did in
ancient times, and just as the modern world will decay and collapse if
these evil accumulations be not prevented, so in ancient times people
went to decay and extinction because no method of reform was found in
time to work salvation.

Mr. Doctrinaire asks me what is the cause of the Standard Oil monopoly. I
thought that if there was any one thing we all agreed about it was that
the Standard Oil monopoly had its origin in violations of law, in the
illegal use of those public roads which are called transportation lines,
the secret rebate, the discriminating service, the favoritism which the
transportation company can exercise in favor of one shipper against all
others, to the destruction of competition. You might end land monopoly,
but as long as the railroad franchises exist, the Standard Oil monopoly
will exist, if they can get the favored illegal treatment which they
got in the building up of their monopoly and which they still have in
sustaining it. The power of Privilege in securing money, and the power
of money in destroying competition, was never more strikingly evident
than in the colossal growth of Standard Oil. Mr. Doctrinaire might own
half the oil wells in America, but unless he made terms with the Standard
he would never get his oil on the market at a profit. The Big-Pistol
is not the ownership of the oil-well. The Big-Pistol is the mis-use of
franchises.

With all the power that is in me, I am fighting the frightful conditions
which beset us, but I know, as well as I know anything, that the
principle of the private ownership of land has had nothing whatever to do
with our trouble.

Repeal the laws which grant the Privileges that lead to Monopoly;
equalize the taxes; make the rich support the government in proportion to
their wealth; restore public utilities to the public; put the power of
self-government back into the hands of the people by Direct Legislation;
restore our Constitutional system of finance; pay off the National debt
and wipe out the National banking system; quit giving public money to
pet banks for private benefit; remove all taxes from the necessaries of
life; establish postal savings banks; return to us the God-given right to
freedom of trade.

With these reforms in operation, millionaires would cease to multiply and
fewer Americans would be paupers. Trusts would not tyrannize over the
laborer and the consumer, Corporations could not plunder a people whose
political leaders they have bought. Some statesman might again declare as
Legaré declared twenty years before the Civil War: “WE HAVE NO POOR.”

English travelers might have no occasion to say, as Rider Haggard said
last year, that our condition was becoming so intolerable that there must
be reform or revolution. On the contrary, the English travelers might say
once more, as Charles Dickens said in 1843, that an Angel with a flaming
sword would attract less attention than a beggar in the streets.

And with these reforms accomplished any man in America who wanted to work
a farm of his own could do it.

I cannot promise that he would get one of the corner lots of the Astor
estate, but I have no doubt whatever that if he really wanted a farm,
and were willing to take it a few miles outside of the city, town, or
village, he could get just as much land as he cared to work.


Random Comment

Sir Walter Scott used to say that he had never met any man from whom he
could not learn something. No matter how ignorant the humblest citizen
may appear to be, the chances are that he knows a few things which you do
not know; and if you will “draw him out” you will add to your knowledge.

The Virginia negro who happened to pass along the road while the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States was puzzling his brains
over the problem of mending his broken sulky-shaft, knew exactly the one
thing which John Marshall did not know.

The great lawyer was at his wit’s end, helpless and wretched. How could
he mend that broken shaft and continue his journey? He did not know and
he turned to the negro for instruction.

With an air of superiority which was not offensive at that particular
time, the negro drew his pocket-knife, stepped into the bushes, cut a
sapling, whittled a brace and spliced the broken shaft.

When the Chief Justice expressed his wonder, admiration and pleasure, the
negro calmly accepted the tribute to his talent and walked off, remarking,

“_Some_ folks has got sense and some ain’t got none.”

       *       *       *       *       *

That little story is a hundred years old, but it’s a right good little
story. A school-teacher, whom I loved very dearly, told it to me when
I was a kid. He was the only man I ever knew who had it in him to be a
great man, and who refused to strive for great things because, as he
said, “_It isn’t worth the trouble_.”

He was naturally as great an orator as Blaine or Ben Hill. He was far and
away a loftier type than Bryan, for he had those three essentials which
Bryan lacks—humor, pathos and self-forgetful intensity of feeling. But
after one of his magnificent displays of oratory he would sink back into
jolly indolence, and pursue the even tenor of his way, teaching school.
“It is not worth while. Let the other fellows toil and struggle for fame
and for office, I don’t care. They are not worth the price.”

Few knew what was in this obscure teacher, but those few knew him to be a
giant.

Once, at our College Commencement, the speaker who had been invited
to make the regular address was the crack orator of the state. He was
considered a marvel of eloquence. Well, he came and he delivered his
message; and it was all very chaste and elegant and superb. Indeed, a
fine speech.

He sat down amid loud applause. Everybody satisfied. Then the obscure
genius to whom I have referred rose to talk. By some chance the faculty
had given him a place on the program.

I looked at my old school-teacher as he waddled quietly to the front. I
saw that his face was pale and his eyes blazing with fire. I felt that
the presence and the speech of the celebrated orator had aroused the
indolent giant. I knew he would carry that crowd by storm—would rise,
rise into the very azure of eloquence and hover above us like an eagle in
the air.

And he did.

Men and women, boys and girls, laughed and cheered and cried, and hung
breathless on his every word, as no crowd ever does unless a born orator
gets hold of them. Actually I got to feeling sorry for the celebrity
who had made the set speech. He sat there looking like a cheap piece of
neglected toy-work of last Christmas.

The faces of the leading people after my old teacher had sat down, were
a study. The expression seemed to say, “Who would have thought it was in
him!”

I don’t think he ever made another speech.

The brilliant eyes will blaze no more. The merry smile faded long ago.
The great head, that was fit to bear a crown, lies low for all the years
to come.

He left no lasting memorial of his genius. Only, as through a glass
darkly, you may see him, in a book called “Bethany,” written by one in
whom he, the unambitious, kindled the spark of an ambition which will
never die.

       *       *       *       *       *

There being no smokers in the “smoker,” I went in there to stretch out.
The Florida East Coastline train was working its way down the peninsula,
and was doing it very leisurely.

Into the “smoker” came a young fellow with whom I opened conversation. It
turned out that he had been pretty much all over Europe. He had toured
Germany several times. On the Sir Walter Scott principle, I sought
knowledge from him, and he told me several interesting things.

One evening he had been at Heidelberg when the soldiers mounted guard.
This being a regular function many civilians had assembled to see it.

An officer was putting the men through some of their exercises, when, at
the order to “ground arms,” one of the privates let his gun down too slow.

The officer flew into a rage, rushed up to the soldier, slapped his jaws,
kicked him repeatedly on the shins, struck him with the flat of his
sword, and _spat time and again in the man’s face_!

Of course the officer was cursing the private for every vile thing he
could lay his tongue to, all the while.

Said my informant, “He not only spat in the man’s face once, but he did
it four or five times.”

       *       *       *       *       *

I asked, “Was there no murmur of disgust or indignation in the crowd of
citizens who were looking on?”

“None whatever,” he said. “The people took the occurrence as a matter of
course. It happens so often.”

Then the young man rose up in the smoker, and showed me how the private
had stood in his place, rigid, staring straight ahead, not daring to
change his position or expression while enduring the kicks and spits of
the officer. Not a word of protest or complaint did he venture to utter.

_That’s Militarism, gone crazy._

Not long ago one of our high-priced city preachers declared publicly that
we Americans needed an Emperor to head our army.

       *       *       *       *       *

Do you recall a story which went the rounds of the newspapers a few
years ago? In substance it hinted that William Hohenzollern, Emperor of
Germany, had compelled one of his young officers to kill himself.

My traveller related to me the particulars as he had learned them in
Germany.

The Emperor was holding a banquet, a revel, on board his yacht, the
_Hohenzollern_: wine had been drunk freely; loose talk was going on. The
Emperor made some insulting reference to the mother of a lieutenant who
was seated near him.

Upon the impulse of the moment, the brave boy did a most natural thing—he
slapped the brutal defamer of his mother in the mouth.

Consternation paralyzed the Emperor and all his guests.

The lieutenant left the yacht; no one tried to stop him. Going ashore,
he made ready to quit the world; and next morning he rode his bicycle
deliberately off a precipice and fell headlong to his voluntary death.

And the high-priced, city preacher declared that _we_ needed an Emperor!

       *       *       *       *       *

Frederick the Great was really a great man.

Riding along the streets of Berlin one day, he saw a crowd looking up at
a placard on a wall, Reining his horse, the old King inquired, “What is
it?”

He was told that the placard contained a lot of violent abuse of himself.

“Hang it lower, so that the people can read it better,” ordered the King,
and he rode on.

The pompous despot who now sits upon the throne of Frederick the Great
puts girls and old women, as well as boys and men, in jail if they dare
to say, or to write, anything disrespectful of _him_.

       *       *       *       *       *

Is democracy gaining ground anywhere? Are not those historic allies,
the Church and the State, encroaching steadily upon the masses? Are not
the High Priest and the War Lord constantly putting a greater distance
between themselves and the Common People?

Does not _the individual citizen_ have less power and recognition now
than at any other time since the founding of our Government?

       *       *       *       *       *

Poor General Wheeler! After all his efforts to please Northern sentiment,
they would not permit him to be buried with the Confederate flag in his
coffin!

       *       *       *       *       *

_The Nation_ is a mighty good paper, but it ought not to class General N.
B. Forrest as “a scout” and “guerrilla.”

General Forrest was named by General Lee, during the last year of the
war, as the best soldier that the Civil War had developed.

Forrest was greater than his commanding general at Fort Donelson, at
Murfreesborough, and at Chickamauga. He finally swore that he would not
obey any more fool orders from blundering superiors, and he struck out
for himself. During the short time that he held independent command his
achievements, considering his resources, rivalled those of Stonewall
Jackson in the Valley Campaign.

       *       *       *       *       *

Nor should _The Nation_ be too hard upon the West Point officers who
followed their native states out of the Union. Justice to those officers
requires one to remember that they were taught at West Point that the
States had the right to secede from the Union.

If _The Nation_ will consult the text-book from which Generals Lee,
Johnston, Beauregard and Wheeler were instructed in Constitutional Law,
it will discover that these young officers simply put in practice that
which their teachers had taught them to be their right.

The book to which I refer is Rawle’s work upon Constitutional Law.

       *       *       *       *       *

After General Wheeler had tried so hard to win the heart of the North,
_don’t_ you think they might have allowed the Confederate flag to rest
upon his folded hands?

_That_ was the flag which he had followed in the storm of actual war.
The Cuban business was nothing. It was child’s play, and pitiful child’s
play at that. But the Civil War was real, was colossal, rent a continent
asunder, and shook the world. It was the Confederate flag which had led
Wheeler to his fame. His youth, his first and best, had been given to
_that_; of all the banners on earth none could have been dearer, holier
to him than _that_.

To look upon it was to bring back the years and the deeds which had
brought him glory. It associated itself with the heroes who had listened
to his battle-cry, and who had sanctified their sacrifice to duty with
their blood. It spoke to him of the hopes and the griefs and the despair
of his home, the South; it recalled the enthusiasm and the heartbreak;
the splendid devotion of noble women, and the resignation of conquered
men.

Surely, surely the Confederate flag must have been the dearest emblem of
Duty and Sacrifice to General Joe Wheeler.

_Don’t_ you think that Charity might have softened the heart of the North
to the old warrior who was dead, and that they might have let him rest
under the “Conquered Banner?”

[Illustration: _The House: I give you warning, old man; it’s loaded!_

    _Bart, in Minneapolis Journal_]

[Illustration: _If George Washington Came to the Capital Today_

    _Morris, in Spokane Spokesman-Review_]

[Illustration: _The Stirring War Drama Entitled: “Chased By the Enemy;
or, Curfew Shall Not Ring This Evening”_

    _Opper, in N. Y. American_]




_Machine Rule and its Termination_

BY GEORGE H. SHIBLEY

_President of the People’s Sovereignty League and Editor of the
Referendum News._


Underneath the existing political and legislative evils in this country
there is found a common cause—the rule of the few through machine
politics. The powers of sovereignty are exercised by the few. Proof of
this is the fact that the evils complained of are banished, or are in
process of disappearing, wherever the people have established their
sovereignty—have established the right to a direct vote on public
questions. This system is the initiative and referendum. It is exercised
in combination with representatives, and the system as a whole is termed
Guarded Representative Government—the people’s sovereignty is guarded.

This improved system of representative government is an evolutionary
product, and being such it will gradually extend throughout the world. A
practical question is: How best can its spread be promoted? To arrive at
an answer, one must study the methods whereby the improved systems came
into being.

We find that the forerunners were third parties and non-partisan
organizations. The first declaration by a political party in this country
was the Socialist Labor Party in 1889. Next came a declaration by the
Knights of Labor in 1891. The same year there appeared “The Referendum in
America,” by Ellis Paxton Oberholtzer, Ph.D. The next year J. W. Sullivan
published his book, “Direct Legislation.” During the year the National
Direct Legislation League was organized. There was also published,
during 1892, “Direct Legislation by the People,” by Nathan Cree of
Chicago.

On July 4th of the same year, 1892, the newly organized People’s Party
commended “to the favorable consideration of the people and the reform
press the legislative system known as the initiative and referendum.”
And state conventions of the People’s Party and the allied parties also
paid considerable attention to the initiative and referendum. During the
Autumn the American Federation of Labor gave its emphatic endorsement
to the initiative and referendum by commending “to affiliated bodies
the careful consideration of this principle and the inauguration of an
agitation for its incorporation into the laws of the respective states.”

The same year the National Grange adopted a resolution recommending to
the state and subordinate granges the Swiss legislation method known as
the referendum and the initiative.

The following year the People’s Party, wherever it was in power,
endeavored to submit to the people a constitutional amendment for the
initiative and referendum, but as a two-thirds vote was required there
was a temporary failure.

In 1896 the People’s Party at its national convention came out strongly
for the initiative and referendum, as also did the National Party
convention, composed of 299 delegates who seceded from the Prohibition
convention. The Socialist Labor Party also reaffirmed its people’s
sovereignty plank of 1892.

The first legislation in this country for the initiative and referendum
was by the People’s Party in Nebraska, 1897. The voters in municipalities
were empowered to petition for the adoption of the initiative and
referendum system for local affairs, and the system was to be adopted
if approved by a majority of those who should vote upon the question.
Hon. John W. Yeiser was chiefly instrumental in securing the law, and he
endeavored to secure its adoption in Omaha, but without success.

The same year, 1897, the People’s Party representatives in the South
Dakota Legislature combined with the Silver Republicans and Democrats to
submit a constitutional amendment for the initiative and referendum. Most
of the Republicans in the Legislature fell in line and voted with the
promoters of the reform. At the next election, 1898, the voters adopted
the system. Afterward the Republican party, which then had a majority
in each house, enacted the statute to put it in operation. Since then
two sessions of the Legislature have been held and the effects of the
referendum (the people’s veto) have been splendid. The following words
are credited to the Republican Governor, Hon. Charles Herried, by a
member of the Toronto Parliament:

“Since this referendum law has been a part of our constitution we
have had no chartermongers or railway speculators, no wildcat schemes
submitted to our Legislature. Formerly our time was occupied by
speculative schemes of one kind or another, but since the referendum has
been a part of the constitution these people do not press their schemes
on the Legislature, and hence there is no necessity for having recourse
to the referendum.”

The initiative in South Dakota was crippled by inserting a “joker”! The
system provides that five per cent. of the voters may propose bills to
the Legislature, “which measures the Legislature shall _enact_ and submit
to a vote of the electors of the state.”

The year (1898) that the voters of South Dakota balloted upon the
question of adopting the improved system of representative government,
the People’s Party, Silver Republicans and Democrats in Utah submitted
to the voters of the state the question of adopting a constitutional
amendment for the referendum and initiative. At the next election the
voters adopted the system; but the Republican party gained control of the
Legislature and refused to enact a statute for putting the constitutional
amendment into operation. Two years later the same thing occurred.

The same year that the Fusionist Legislature in Utah submitted the
amendment a similar thing was done by a Republican legislature in
Oregon. A proposal for an amendment in Oregon has to pass two successive
legislatures; therefore the question was a live issue in the next
campaign—1900. The People’s Party, the Democratic and the Republican
state platforms each pledged that, should the party be placed in power in
the Legislature, it would permit the voters to ballot upon the question.
The Republican party secured a majority in the Legislature and submitted
the question. In the next campaign, 1902, the question was again a live
issue, for it was to be balloted upon by the voters; and again all the
parties declared for the improved system and advised the voters of the
state to adopt it, as also did the Granges and Organized Labor, likewise
both the United States senators and the Republican governor, and nearly
all the prominent men in political life in Oregon, together with most of
the newspapers in the state. All advised the adoption of the system, and
the vote of the people was 11 to 1 for the system.

Governor Geer’s advice to the voter was: “If the referendum amendment is
adopted by the people and made use of after adoption, it will be helpful
all around as a restraining influence over careless legislatures. Even
if not often brought into requisition, the fact that it is a part of the
state Constitution, ready to be used as a check against ill-advised
legislation at any time, will justify its adoption. It may not be needed
now any more than it was 100 years ago, but there have often been times
in the past when even ‘Our Fathers’ could have been wisely checked by
this wholesome reservation of the rights of the people.”

In Nevada, at the legislative session of 1901, the Fusionist party had
a majority in the Legislature and voted to submit to the people the
question of adopting the referendum. The next Legislature gave its
consent and submitted a constitutional amendment for the initiative.
At the following election the voters adopted the referendum, but the
Legislature elected was Republican and it refused to consent to the
submission of the constitutional amendment for the initiative.

The same year in Illinois, 1901, a Republican Legislature and governor
established the advisory initiative in municipalities and in state
affairs. Through this system the voters in Chicago have voted three times
for municipal ownership of street railways and the instructions are being
obeyed.

The Republican senators from Illinois, Cullom and Hopkins, are both on
record as favoring the initiative and referendum.

Since 1901 the progress of the initiative and referendum has been through
the systematic questioning of candidates by non-partisan organizations.
The start in this direction came from the successful experiences of
Winnetka, Illinois. These experiences began in 1896 and continued from
year to year with unvarying success.


THE WINNETKA SYSTEM

Winnetka is a suburb of Chicago, peopled largely by bright and active
business men. Certain would-be monopolists proposed to the village
council that it grant them a forty-year franchise for a gas plant. This
was opposed by the citizens, for they wanted public ownership of city
monopolies. They possessed a publicly-owned waterworks system and aimed
to keep themselves from the clutches of private monopoly. Fortunately,
at the time the gas franchise was asked for, there was being held each
month a public meeting to consider public questions. It was called the
“town meeting.” At the next town meeting, after the gas question came
up, a resolution was adopted asking the village council to submit the
question to the people. A deputation of leading citizens called upon the
city council at its next meeting and Mr. Lloyd was accorded the privilege
of speaking. After a warm time the council reluctantly agreed to submit
the question to the voters and abide by their decision. The polls were
opened and the proposed franchise received only 4 votes, with 180 against
it.

This settled the gas franchise and it did much more, for at the next
caucus for nominating village trustees it was proposed and decided that
only those men should be nominated who would stand up before their
fellow-voters and promise, if nominated and elected, to submit all
important questions to a vote of the people and abide by their decision.
This was agreed to by the voters present, and each nominee for village
trustee stood before his fellow-citizens and promised.

Thus was the system installed, for there were no competing nominations.
The casting of ballots on election day was a mere form.

From that day until the present time the people of Winnetka have been the
sovereign power as to ordinances. They are a Self-emancipated People.

Reviewing the foregoing, it is seen that the pledges for installing the
referendum system were secured by questioning candidates, while the
system itself is through rules of procedure, which may be incorporated
in the rules themselves or in an ordinance or statute. The system is
the advisory referendum, the candidates being pledged to carry out the
people’s advice. This they have done in Winnetka and elsewhere, as we
shall show. But the system is intended for use only until the usual form
can be installed. In fact, it is through an advisory initiative that a
change in the Federal Constitution is to be secured, and in the near
future.

Immediately after the election in 1900 the writer, who was a delegate
to the People’s Party National Convention of that year, withdrew from
the Bureau of Economic Research and began devoting his entire time and
energies to spreading the news concerning the Winnetka System, the
primary aim being to help establish the people’s sovereignty in national
affairs and to do so without waiting to change the written words of the
Federal Constitution—a practically unalterable instrument until such
time as the advisory initiative is installed. The following July the
second social and political conference at Detroit approved the Winnetka
System—the advisory initiative and advisory referendum—as also did the
National Direct Legislation League.

And Prof. Frank Parsons, president of the National Referendum League,
said: “The Winnetka System is clearly great in its possibilities—a bridge
ready for immediate use to the promised land.”

Mr. Eltweed Pomeroy, president of the National Direct Legislation League,
wrote: “I am also glad that you demonstrate that direct legislation
is not only a great scheme which will be of inestimable value in its
entirety, but that it is more than that, and can be applied on a small
scale here and now, and that almost anyone can exercise influence enough
to secure a first step.”

Mr. Louis P. Post, editor of _The Public_, visited Winnetka during
August, 1901, and in his paper of September 7 described the system,
saying in conclusion:

    This Winnetka Plan of securing the advantages of direct
    legislation without waiting for party action, has special
    merit. It can, for one thing, be easily made the subject of
    effective non-partisan organization. For another, if the
    organization were to become influential, it would completely
    effect its purpose. Meanwhile, here and there locally the
    purposes would be effected even though balked and delayed
    in the larger government divisions. Moreover, the plan has
    been for years in actual and effective operation at Winnetka.
    Finally, it contemplates a spontaneous command from the people
    as to public servants, not a petition from them as to public
    masters.

The Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor, at a meeting
in Washington, D. C., September 20, 1901, considered briefly the Winnetka
System, and the following is the published report:

    It was decided to issue an address to all affiliated
    organizations, requesting them to endeavor to secure the
    passage of local ordinances and laws for the initiative and
    referendum _on measures relating to local interests_, and thus
    to secure the beginning of this system of direct legislation,
    _with the view of subsequently enlarging the scope of that
    method of enacting laws in the interests of the people_.

Thus the new system—the systematic questioning of candidates for the
establishment of the people’s sovereignty—began and was endorsed
throughout the land. During the four and a half years that have since
elapsed the system has made steady and rapid progress.

In December, 1901, President Gompers, of the American Federation of
Labor, in his annual message recommended the system, and the convention
ordered that it be explained in the _American Federationist_, “in
order that Trade Unionists may be able to study it as carefully as it
deserves.” Accordingly it was published in an eighty page extra number
and 20,000 copies were circulated in addition to the regular mailing list.

Gov. Altgeld wrote concerning this extra number: “It presents the subject
of the initiative and referendum and representative government in the
most lucid, striking, and comprehensive manner that I have ever seen.”
He added: “Through the agency of the labor organizations it ought to get
into every neighborhood, and in time it will create a sentiment that will
be irresistible.”

Gov. Altgeld’s prediction is correct. The very first year after the
issuance of the extra number of the _Federationist_ the Winnetka System
was established in Detroit, Mich., Toronto, Canada, and Geneva, Ill.;
with the pledging of the Missouri Legislature for the submission of a
constitutional amendment for the initiative and referendum; also the
systematic questioning of candidates by organized labor in several other
states, and the questioning of candidates as to the initiative and
referendum by the granges in the state of Washington. The net result
of questioning candidates was a majority vote for the initiative and
referendum in six legislatures; also the pledging of nine of the sixteen
congressmen of Missouri for a national system of advisory initiative
and advisory referendum, and the pledging of the United States senators
elected from Missouri and Illinois. During the course of the campaign
the actions of four state conventions of the two great parties were
reversed—the Republican state conventions in Missouri, California and
Montana; and the Democratic state convention in Montana. The states where
the majority vote in the legislature was secured were Missouri, Colorado,
California, Montana, North Dakota and Massachusetts. In Illinois there
was a two-thirds vote in the House, but the Senate refused to act. This
Illinois vote was caused by an instruction from the voters through an
advisory referendum taken under the 1901 act of the Legislature. The vote
of the people was 5 to 1 for the establishment of the improved system.

Before the meeting of the legislatures, after the autumn elections, the
American Federation of Labor at its annual convention established a
national system for the questioning of candidates, the interrogatories to
apply to such measures as the organization should deem most important.

The next year, 1903, legislatures were elected in but ten states and, as
organized labor in these states had not yet been educated to the use of
the questioning system, except in Massachusetts, little was accomplished
for the initiative and referendum. In Massachusetts the labor people
found themselves almost alone in demanding the people’s sovereignty, and
during 1903 were quiescent. But in Kentucky Hon. J. A. Parker did valiant
work. Through his paper, _The Home Tribune_, he called for workers for
the referendum in Kentucky. At a joint state convention of the Allied
People’s Party and the United Labor Party, a platform was enunciated in
which existing political and legislative evils were outlined; and it
was pointed out that the remedy is an improved system of government—the
establishment of the people’s sovereignty through the initiative
and referendum, to be exercised in combination with representative
government. _The proposed change, it was declared, was the open door
through which all the desired legislative reforms would come._ It was
further declared that candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties
should be questioned, and wherever a reliable candidate would pledge in
writing for the improved system of government, no opposing candidate of
the Allied Party should be nominated, and that every possible effort
would be made to help elect the pledged candidate. The result in Mr.
Parker’s own words at the close of the campaign was as follows:

    In all my work I found but little antagonism. The one obstacle
    was the bitter, unreasonable campaign carried on in this state,
    in which all principle was lost sight of, and the issue made on
    the hanging of Caleb Powers. The election was a riot of fraud
    and dishonor, and showed too clearly what little hope there can
    be in partisan action. The last election, not only in Kentucky,
    but all over the nation _has shown that to gain any substantial
    reform we must concentrate all effort on pledging candidates,
    AND IF THIS EFFORT IS SUPPORTED BY INTELLIGENT LOCAL EFFORT
    WE CAN WIN IN ANY STATE._ An instance of this is found in a
    senatorial district in this state, where Dr. J. S. Dossey
    had enrolled perhaps 300 volunteers for Majority Rule. The
    Republican signed our pledge, and, the Democrat ignoring the
    matter until after the time fixed as a limit, I wrote letters
    to our workers stating the situation. Within forty-eight hours
    came the Democrat’s pledge with a strong letter to support it,
    declaring that if elected he would give our bill his hearty
    support.

The following year, 1904, the Presidential contest absorbed a large
degree of attention, yet the people’s sovereignty cause was triumphant
in four states—Montana, Nevada, Texas and Delaware—with considerable
progress in many others; and a 33⅓ per cent. increase in pledged
congressmen in Missouri, i.e., twelve of the sixteen are pledged to the
people’s sovereignty in national affairs through the advisory initiative
and advisory referendum, as also are five of the Chicago congressmen,
and scattering ones throughout the country. The Pennsylvania granges,
which are very strong, established a magazine of their own and questioned
candidates for the initiative and referendum and other measures.

The next year, 1905, like 1903, was a year in which few legislatures
were elected, yet one state and probably two were rescued from machine
rule—Ohio and possibly Massachusetts. In Ohio the required three-fifths
of the Legislature are pledged to the submission of a constitutional
amendment for the initiative and referendum; and in Massachusetts it
is hoped that an advisory referendum system will be established. The
Ohio campaign is especially noteworthy in that most of the Republican
candidates refused to pledge, while the Democratic candidates pledged
universally, the initiative and referendum being part of the state
platform. Election day was a surprise to every one, for many of the
people’s sovereignty candidates were elected where it was supposed they
were hopelessly beaten. The Democratic gain in the Senate was 47.5 per
cent.—an unprecedented landslide. The change was not caused by the
Anti-Saloon League’s work, for the Republican candidates were pledged
to its cause. The change was due to the independent voters, who had
been apprised of the attitude of candidates through the publication of
the answers to the initiative and referendum question. Early in October
the State Federation of Labor at its annual convention instructed that
all candidates for the Legislature should be questioned as to the
initiative and referendum, and the replies published. The Woman’s
Suffrage Association also questioned candidates as to the initiative
and referendum. Referendum Leagues were active, and years ago the Union
Reform Party had specialized on the initiative and referendum, thereby
instructing the voters—a lesson which they evidently did not forget.

This same year the State Federation of Labor increased most materially
their activity for the people’s sovereignty. The Pennsylvania Federation
of Labor set the pace. At its annual convention it provided not only for
the questioning of political candidates, but took steps to provide for a
people’s sovereignty committee within each union, and arranged in other
ways for an educational and non-partisan campaign for the initiative and
referendum. A fraternal delegate was received from the state grange,
which also is working for the people’s sovereignty. Later in the year the
New Jersey State Federation of Labor adopted the Pennsylvania program,
and a few weeks afterward the New York State Federation did likewise. At
the annual convention of the American Federation of Labor, representing
one-eighth of the people of the United States, the executive council
report recited the rapid spread of the people’s sovereignty cause through
the questioning of candidates, and said:

    The systematic questioning of candidates, to which reference
    has been made, is gaining in importance each year. More and
    more our state branches, central bodies and local unions are
    realizing the system’s usefulness. It enables our people to
    prevent the evasion of issues by party machines, and the
    self-interests of candidates cause them to answer favorably in
    most cases. And the success of organized labor’s political work
    without engaging in party politics strengthens the union in the
    sentiment of its members and increases their number.

    Co-operation is also advanced with other interests, such
    as organized farmers. In Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Indian
    Territory and Texas the organized farmers, with organized wage
    earners, are questioning candidates as to the establishment
    of the people’s sovereignty in place of machine rule. This is
    accomplished without a formal alliance.

    We recommend the general use of the questioning-of-candidates
    system.

The state Granges in sixteen commonwealths have declared for the
initiative and referendum. These states are: Oregon, Washington,
Colorado, Montana, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois,
Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Rhode
Island and Maine.

The Farmers’ Union, a rapidly growing organization (described in WATSON’S
MAGAZINE for February) has adopted the initiative for use within the
association. The National American Woman’s Suffrage Association declared
last year for the initiative and referendum, and this year’s convention
has urgently requested action by the state associations. Last year in
Ohio the Woman’s Suffrage Association questioned candidates as to the
initiative and referendum, and this year it is likely that the suffrage
association in every state will apply the system. The Referendum Leagues
are also questioning candidates.

All these organizations have learned or are learning that the questioning
of candidates immediately terminates the machine’s power to sidetrack
the live issues, provided there is an organization to take the case to
the voters. One individual in a state can easily co-ordinate the forces
for the questioning of candidates, and thereby secure the immediate
termination of the machine’s power to evade the live issues. One person
in a state has repeatedly secured this result; in fact, every reform
within a state is largely due to the engineering tact and skill of some
one individual. Today, as never before, it is easy and practically
costless to terminate machine rule by establishing the initiative and
referendum.


A NEW THIRD PARTY

Heretofore the essential element in questioning candidates as to people’s
sovereignty has been a State Referendum League, in order that the
business and professional interests shall be represented. But in January
a new departure occurred in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Referendum
League changed its form of organization to the REFERENDUM PARTY OF
PENNSYLVANIA. The platform is as follows:

    The Referendum Party urges the following legislative action as
    the only certain peaceable means of forever eradicating the
    gigantic evils that have gradually crept into our system of
    government:

    1. The calling of a constitutional convention to revise the
    state constitution.

    2. Granting to the people the right to veto unjust laws or
    ordinances by direct vote; this right to be exercised only if a
    vote is demanded on any law or ordinance, by petition signed by
    two percentum of the voters of the state or locality affected.

    3. Granting to the people the right to enact, by direct
    majority vote, needed laws which their Legislature fails or
    refuses to enact.

    This is known as the Referendum System. Wherever it has been
    in operation it has effectually stamped out bribery, graft,
    bossism and ring rule, and has made “government by the people
    and for the people” a practical reality instead of a mere
    theory.

    The Referendum Party invites the co-operation of all who favor
    this action.

The members of the preliminary committee on organization are:

    Clarence V. Tiers, Chairman, Pittsburg, Pa.,
    Clement V. Horn, Wilkinsburg, Pa.,
    H. F. Lea, Bellevue, Pa.,
    H. W. Noren, Allegheny, Pa.,
    Walter Becker, Allegheny, Pa.,
    John C. Innes, Pittsburg, Pa.,
    George D. Porter, Philadelphia, Pa.,
    John E. Joos, Allegheny, Pa.,
    Nathaniel Green, Swissvale, Pa.,
    J. Ludwig Koethen, Jr., Pittsburg, Pa.,
    Hon. W. F. Hill, (Master State Grange) Chambersburg, Pa.,
    James Wm. Newlin, (Member of Constitutional Convention 1873)
      Philadelphia, Pa.

Reformers will watch with great interest this new experiment in third
party politics. By limiting the demand to a constitutional convention
and the initiative and referendum, and proposing to endorse such of the
reliable candidates as pledge for the people’s sovereignty, the program
is largely that of a Referendum League, plus the possibility of making
an independent nomination. But a league can circulate nomination papers;
in fact, every league impliedly stands ready to do so, if necessary. One
thing is clear; that the _Pennsylvania situation was such that the change
to a Referendum Party put life and vigor into the referendum movement_.
Not only were hundreds of enthusiastic offers of support sent in, it is
said, and from every quarter of the state, but leaders in the minority
party and in the Lincoln party were brought to a point where they found
it desirable to take immediate notice of the organization.

One reason for this is that the granges in the state, large in number and
strong in membership, and organized labor, have not only declared for the
initiative and referendum, but are systematically questioning candidates
and publishing their replies. All that is needed to give great political
power to these voters is an organization that stands ready to nominate
referendum candidates. The mere existence of such an organization will
accomplish most of its purposes. In this connection the experience of Jo
A. Parker, in Kentucky, described above, should be borne in mind; also
the fact that the People’s Party Conference of 1902 at Louisville almost
adopted the program which Mr. Parker applied in Kentucky the following
year. But in states where the minority party is under progressive
leadership it is probable that a State Referendum League is the best
possible instrument.

Isn’t it clear that the thing for the People’s Party to do is to complete
at once the establishment of the initiative and referendum in America by
going at it through the Kentucky or Pennsylvania program? Or that the
workers in a state should organize an Initiative and Referendum League?

If we review the foregoing pages several things become clear:

1. That machine rule can be terminated and the people’s sovereignty
re-established without waiting to change the written constitution. All
that is required is a majority vote in the city council, legislature
or congress. By this means an advisory-vote system can be established
and then the candidates for public office can be pledged to obey the
will of their constituents when expressed by referendum vote. This is
merely the re-establishment of a direct vote system for instructing
representatives—a system as old as representative government itself. The
President of the United States is selected through an advisory vote by
the people and public questions are also being determined by advisory
vote; for example, municipal ownership of street railways in Chicago.

2. The basis of machine rule is an evasion of vital issues by both the
leading parties. This power can be terminated at once by the systematic
questioning of candidates as to vital issues, provided an organization
or candidate stands ready to take the case to the people. Another way
of stating the reason for questioning candidates is that the people are
entitled to know how the candidates will vote if elected.

3. A third party organization can question candidates and declare that
unless there is within each district a clear-cut written pledge by a
reputable candidate, it will place one in nomination.

Or the program can be to place on the third-party ticket some of the old
line party candidates, except in those states where fusion is prohibited
by law.

4. The People’s Party during its palmy days was a leading factor in
popularizing the initiative and referendum, and in securing its adoption,
and today, by centering its effort on the termination of machine rule
through the establishment of the initiative and referendum, it can at
once complete the rehabilitation of the American system of government.
Not only can the remaining states be redeemed within the next two years,
but it is thoroughly practicable to exert in national affairs this year
an influence that shall result in a pledged majority in the national
House and Senate—the pledges to be for the advisory initiative and
advisory referendum. The entire body of organized labor is centering its
efforts in this direction, the referendum leagues are demanding it, and
all that is needed to secure immediate victory is a political party that
stands ready to put up candidates. The mere existence of such a party
will win the day. How best can the desired end be attained?




[Illustration: A Basket And A Fortune

By Louise Forsslund]

AUTHOR OF “THE STORY OF SARAH”, ETC.


                   The Old Men’s Home, Indian Village, Long Island.
                                                       June 10, 19—

    To the Matron of the Old Ladies’ Home, Shoreville, Long Island.

    Dear Miss: The writer of this letter has had a windfall and
    he wants one of your woman-folks to have a share in it. He
    has lived in an old folks’ home himself for ten years, hand
    running, and he has a feeling for them others. My cousin
    Obadiah Hawkins died up to Lakeland last week. He never would
    so much as lend me a penny whilst he was living, but now he’s
    dead, he’s left me ten thousand dollars in ready money and a
    house and a home. There’s a pump in the kitchen. He never was
    no hand for investments and the money was all in an old silver
    water pitcher. It’s all good and the matron here has counted
    it over. I always wanted a home of my own and never was able
    to afford one. I always wanted a wife of my own and never
    could get up gumption enough to ask any woman to share my bad
    luck. Now the luck has turned. I got the home. All I need is
    the wife. I be going to drive over this afternoon and see if
    you got anybody that’s willing. I put it that way ’cause I
    ain’t much account if I have come into a tidy little fortune.
    I wear a wig and have spells of lumbago. It’s the lumbago what
    brought me here. There ain’t a lazy bone in my body. As for the
    requirements of the lady. She must be under seventy years old;
    she mustn’t wear a wig or dye her hair. I want one respectable
    suit of hair between us. She mustn’t squint or take snuff,
    and if she is sot on keeping chickens—some women be—she must
    keep them in the coop. I’ll build the coop. And she must love
    flowers and garden sass.

    Expecting them to be on deck this afternoon at three o’clock, I
    am,

                     Yours most respectfully,

                                                     Samuel Jessup.

A moment’s intense silence followed the matron’s public reading of this
letter in the large hall which served as the community room of the Old
Ladies’ Home. The matron, her young gray eyes twinkling and shining,
looked from one old face to the other. Some were broadly grinning under
their crowns of gray hair, some were hurt and scornful, some were only
puzzled and amazed—these belonging to the old ladies who had held their
shriveled, shaking hands as trumpets before their ears during the reading
of the letter. And some faces were marred by a shrewd, keen, calculating
look as if to exclaim: “I wonder if—!” The matron looked at them all, her
smile slowly growing broader, then quickly she looked down at her desk
and said with business-like briskness:

“That is a very honest letter. I wish you could all give it your serious
attention. There is no fraud in it, for I have telephoned to the Old
Men’s Home, and Mr. Jessup is a noble, straightforward character. Now,
are any of you willing to see him this afternoon? I suggest that all
those who can not or who will not give Mr. Jessup a chance for their
hands this afternoon, leave the hall.”

There was a curious reluctance on the part of the old ladies to move.
There was much wagging of heads, much nudging of elbows, whispers and
winks and murmurs from every quarter, but no one stirred. Those who
really had no personal interest or legitimate right to an interest in Mr.
Jessup’s quest for a wife stayed to see what the others might do. The
matron repeated her request. Then old Mrs. Smith, bent and humpbacked,
took up her cane and hobbled slowly toward the stairway.

“Ef he wanted me,” she declared with mock asperity, “he should oughter
come twenty year ago. Ye notice,” she added, looking over her shoulder
with her sharp, shrewd peaked face, “he didn’t tell how old _he_ was.”

“He’s sixty-nine,” laughed the matron. “Most men of his age would have
insisted on a wife of eighteen.”

There was a scurrying sound among the group of old ladies and suddenly
there darted across the hall a younger, slimmer, straighter figure than
Mrs. Smith’s.

“Miss Ellie!” protestingly called the matron, “where are you going?”

Miss Ellie paused, her face flushed with shame to think she had not fled
from the hall before. She paused and looked at the matron. However old
she was, Miss Ellie did not look more than fifty years. Her hair was
luxuriant, half silver, half gold, faded, yet giving a curious effect of
a halo of moonlight. The flush mounted higher up the spinster’s cheeks
until it crept over her forehead to the edge of her hair. For a moment
she stood thus, looking at the youthful matron. Then, with a world of
reproach in her tones, she said simply: “Miss Jessica!” Then she went up
the stairs with quick and trembling limbs, but with an air of dignity
that acted as a rebuke upon those lingering the hall.

“Proud Miss Ellie!” murmured Jessica, herself feeling ashamed.

“I do think,” began Mrs. Honan in a loud, strident key, “I do think
myself that the man didn’t show very fine feeling. The idea of him
a-spectin’ a woman ter jump at his head. Ef he wanted a wife, why didn’t
he come a-lookin’ around modest an’ quiet-like in the good, old fashioned
way?”

With that she swept out of the hall. She was down on the register as
having passed her seventy-third birthday, and anyway, she mused, she
had always preferred a yard full of chickens to a yard full of flowers,
because chickens are more lively. They keep you better company, she
said. Then, with or without verbal excuse, one woman after another left
the hall. There were two with the deplorable squint, several far on the
shaded side of seventy, some who wore honest wigs, and some too honest
to proclaim either that they did not dye their hair or that they had
never sniffed at the contents of a snuffbox. Then there were the dear
old ladies loyal to their dead husbands, the old ladies who did not care
to give up the serene, uneventful security of the Old Ladies’ Home for
a house shared only with a man afflicted with lumbago and very decided
notions. However, ten remained, openly ashamed, yet not sufficiently
ashamed to reject Samuel Jessup’s hand before they had seen him.

“It don’t mean that none of us promise to take him, oh no!” said Mrs.
Young, a woman living in the memories of her long reign as a belle. “It
only means that we’d like to get a good look at him. We’ve had plenty of
chances all our lives. We ain’t none of us here because no man wanted
us—neither us widders nor us maidens. We’re here from ch’ice, Miss
Jessica, from _ch’ice_! But still if there’s another ch’ice open to
us with a real, kind honest man—his letter shows he’s that, bless his
heart!—we’d each of us ten like to have one tenth of a show at him.”

Then, greatly flustered at having spoken with such unmaidenly freedom
on such a subject, Mrs. Young moved away from the desk across the hall
and out of doors, where she could take a good long breath. After she had
gone, one of the nine remaining candidates wondered aloud how Mrs. Young
would look without her false front, for of course no one would deceive
Samuel Jessup as to her quantity of hair.

“But the rest of it?” whispered another. “You can’t wash all that dye off
in one day, can you?”

“Waal!” retorted a third, coming hotly to Mrs. Young’s rescue, “a man who
wears a wig hasn’t no right ter be so particular.”

Said the first one firmly: “She shouldn’t deceive him.”

Answered a third: “Deceive him all she wants ter as long as it’s in
somethin’ no man would have wit enough ter find out.”

At three o’clock to the minute, Samuel Jessup appeared, emerging from a
closed coach together with a plump middle-aged woman who carried with
extraordinary care a large market basket covered with a red tablecloth.

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Mrs. Young, peeking with half the household
from the upper hall windows. “He’s been an’ picked up a wife on the road
an’ come to offer his apologies.”

She laughed merrily at the possible joke against them all. And yet what a
pity that would be, too, for Samuel was a pleasant, self-reliant looking
little man with his head hanging sideways as if he had never lifted it
from a one-sided attack of the mumps. Somehow this attitude made him
appear younger. But the wig! That was too much in evidence and they all
decided that it must be clipped at once. Samuel did not scan the house
with lover-like eagerness as he came up the steps. Instead, he watched
the basket with intense interest—so intense that he stumbled on the way.

“I bet he’s got a dog in it!” cried one of the candidates. “I will not
stand no leetle measly pet dog around the house, a-sheddin’ hair all over
the parlor sofy. I ain’t agoin’ downstairs!”

But she went with the others and met Mr. Jessup. The woman with the
basket was nowhere in sight, having been relegated to the dining-room. No
attempt whatever was made to explain her to the old ladies. Samuel Jessup
was immediately enthroned by the matron in her private office; and one
by one in alphabetical order of their names, Jessica sent the candidates
to him, thinking that this would be more delicate than to have them all
face him at once. Delicacy in this affair did not seem so difficult after
coming face to face with little Mr. Jessup. Very modestly, and with his
head more on one side than ever, he told the matron that she must convey
to the ladies his doubts as to any one of them accepting him. He thought
it was very kind of them to receive him anyway, and—this with a quick
keen look into Jessica’s wise and bonny face—he hoped that they would not
laugh at him.

The first five filed out of the room after only a few moments’
conversation, each briefly explaining in her turn why Mr. Jessup “hadn’t
took” with her. One did not like the way he held his head. One never
could stand that wig. She knew that it got askew every time he took a
nap. One thought him too much like her dead husband. One thought him too
unlike her departed John to make a happy union possible. One said she
never could bear a pump dribbling water in the kitchen; and he was too
stubborn and “sot” in his ways to take it out. Then went in the sixth—she
who had not rebuked the deceit of Mrs. Young’s dyed hair and she who
hated pet dogs. After a longer period, she came out and with customary
candor bluntly declared that she would have had Samuel Jessup in a
minute, but she saw that she did not take with him.

“The woman that gits him will be lucky,” she declared, “basket and all.”
Nothing more would she tell. Then into the private room went the seventh
old lady. She immediately demanded of Samuel an explanation of the woman
and the basket; whereupon Samuel said that he refused to be questioned by
any woman and he knew that they could not get along well together. She
came out sniffing contemptuously, and vowed that in her opinion there
was something very mysterious about this man. Number Eight went in even
more eagerly, on tip-toe. She had read romances all her life. She loved
mysteries and she was so sensitive about living in an Old Ladies’ Home
partly on charity that she would have married any man that asked her.
Almost any man—but not quite. She and Samuel Jessup talked together for a
long time.

“I am sure we would git along,” said Samuel at last, his heart stirred
to sympathy for one who hated a Home of this sort with the same proud
hatred that he had borne. “But,” he went on, “before I let you decide, I
be agoin’ to take you into the dining-room and show you the basket. What
belongs in the basket belongs with me an’s agoin’ with me. I ain’t much
ter git, but come an’ see the basket!”

Her romantic old heart beating high with excitement, Miss Ruby tip-toed
ahead of him, across a tiny, dark back hall into the dining-room. On the
very threshold she paused, her eyes popping out of her head as she looked
within; then she uttered a faint scream and went scuttling into a corner
among the shadows of the dim passage.

“Good-bye, Mr. Jessup!” she called tragically. “Good-bye!” and there
ended Samuel Jessup’s affair with Miss Ruby.

A humorous light twinkled in the old man’s eye as he went back into
Jessica’s office and waited for the ninth candidate. She was a woman
famous in the Home for always managing to find some one to wait upon her,
and she wanted a house of her own with several servants, an unobtrusive
husband, and stained glass windows in the parlor.

“I kinder fancied stained glass winders myself,” said Samuel. “But you
can’t be keepin’ a hull passel o’ servants. One servant gal—that’s all I
agree to, ma’am.”

She thought that one servant might do if they put out the washing. Samuel
looked dubious for a moment, seeing himself a henpecked husband, and then
that twinkle came again into his wholesome eye.

“Before we decide, m’am, I want ter show you what I got in that there
basket. Me an’ the basket be inseparable.”

She preceded him into the dining-room, her shoulders high and her nose
uplifted. She stood for some moments staring at the contents of the
basket, the basket’s owner, and the basket’s guardian staring at her.
Slowly her face grew rigid. She shook her head once. She strove to speak,
swallowed hard and then gasped;

“How dast you presume, Samuel Jessup!”

Samuel winked at the guardian of the basket and chuckled soft and low.
But then he realized that he really wanted a wife, a companion in his
old age, a mistress for the snug little home, and now there was but one
candidate left. To be sure he might find some one outside the Home,
but he had wanted in truth to share all that he had—the basket not
excepted—with one who had tasted as he had the well buttered bread of
charity in an old folks’ home. Soberly he went back to the private room,
and Mrs. Young came drifting leisurely in to him. She congratulated
herself on being the last. She wanted never to be twitted with having
failed to give the others every possible chance, and she knew that had
she entered the private room first the result would have been the same.
She would be the wife selected by Mr. Jessup if she wanted him. A woman
with real charm for old men, a woman who could have graced many a home in
her lazy, yet pleasingly frivolous ways, she felt that Samuel could not
resist her if she chose to throw her charm around him.

“This is a very ridiculous position,” she began, with a quavering little
trill of laughter. “I never went a-seekin’ a man before. They always
sought me.”

This was more than Samuel’s natural gallantry could withstand. He took
her small lean fingers in his and drew her down beside him on the couch.
Her fingers twined around his hand. She wore jewels—relics of bygone
splendors—which seemed pitifully out of keeping with her present state.
To Samuel they told a long, familiar story, and sent a feeling of pity
out from him to her.

“Mis’ Young,” he said gently. “I am jest as much obliged to all of you
folks fer seein’ me as I kin be.”

“To us _all_?” she asked and lifted her eyes.

They had been very fine blue eyes once and now they were bright in spite
of their puffy lids. And her thin hair, parted simply in the middle, was
more becoming than the false front had been. He wondered that she had no
gray hairs, but was too straightforward himself to suspect the deception.
What a very pretty woman she still was, and, with that not displeasing
girlish attempt at flirtation, how exceedingly feminine!

“Obliged to us _all_?” she repeated, her eyes still uplifted, her hand
still clinging to his. She remembered how eloquently hands can speak and
so did Samuel, but of a sudden he felt that his horny old hand had become
tongue-tied. He knew that she wanted him to say: “I be obliged to _you_
in perticular, Mis’ Young.”

And he did stumble through some such gallant speech, but all the while he
was thinking: “So I have got to take this! This frivolous old lady with
a spot of red paint on either cheek and a pair of penciled eye-brows.”
Why had he not mentioned rouge in his letter? Mrs. Young still looked at
him, still held his hand, remembering of old the value of long looks and
of silence. Of a truth many and many a man had she captivated in this
way in the days of long ago and once again in her mind’s eye she could
see suitor after suitor at her feet. She had refused them all, after the
first one had given her his name and then gone into the unknown world.
Even after coming into the Old Ladies’ Home, she had refused offers of
marriage, and yet, now of a sudden, she wished to share the good fortune
and the ill fortune of Samuel Jessup. She laid her free hand on his
shoulder and murmured a line from her favorite Browning—Browning who was
a mere name and scarcely that to Samuel:

    “Grow old along with me,
    The best is yet to be.”

Samuel was embarrassed. He pushed his wig back from his brow and, going
opposite to the natural, sidewise slant of his head, it gave him a rakish
expression, delightful to Mrs. Young’s eye. Then all of a kindle with the
light of an eager hope went Samuel’s own brown orbs.

“Yes, yes,” he said glibly, “but the best ain’t _ter be_. It’s here,
right now, in the dinin’-room. Come along with me.”

He was so mixed as to his own desires and emotions that he half hoped,
half feared that she would stand the test, but when she saw the basket
and its contents, first horror crossed her face, then the shadow of
a deep disappointment fell among the wrinkles and the rouge and the
penciled eye-brows. Sadly she faced Samuel Jessup as if certain of his
answer before her questioning:

“And you insist on a-keeping it?”

“It’s mine. It belongs ter me. I had it jest half a day, but now all the
women in the country couldn’t make me give it up. I don’t want ter be
imperlite,” added Samuel in a milder tone, “but them’s the facts. Me an’
the basket, or ‘Good-bye, Samuel.’”

She interpreted him literally. Holding out her fragile, jeweled hand, she
clasped his warmly, yet with honest sadness and compassion:

“Good-bye, Samuel. If it hadn’t been for the basket—.” She paused, slowly
withdrawing her hand, and then went on again: “You’re makin’ an awful
mistake. Who’d a thought it of a man o’ your age! I shall never forget
you. Good-bye, Samuel.”

With one swift, half hungering, half frightened glance at the basket,
she slipped out of the room. Samuel did not laugh and his eyes did not
twinkle as he went up to the matron’s desk.

“Miss Jessica, they’ve all practically refused me. What shall I do?” He
had a vision of an endless quest of an eligible, willing old lady from an
old folks’ home.

Miss Jessica thought a long while, biting the end of her pencil, and at
last she said slowly, half reluctantly:

“There is one more—who—answers your requirements, but she was too proud
to enter the lists.”

Samuel’s face lit up. Proud women can be very tender and only a tender
soul could accept the basket. Moreover, a woman with sufficient spirit to
resent his action today was a woman after his own heart. He lifted his
head from its sidewise slant and, throwing back his shoulders, looked
Jessica square in the eyes:

“What’s the woman’s name?”

“Miss Ellie Smith.”

“Waal, I be goin’ ter change it!” vowed Mr. Jessup. “Whar be she?”

The matron hesitated, wondering whether she could play the part of the
traitor to dignified, self-reliant Miss Ellie, but Jessica was very
young. She looked down the long years that these two had traveled, and
seeing how dusty and stony and hard the road had been, wondered why they
should not come into a restful, fragrant garden at last. Ellie, she knew,
even yet, with the help of the right man, could make the garden. And now
as she looked keenly into Samuel Jessup’s eyes—eyes shaded by iron-gray
brows, but deep, dark brown eyes, limpid, sparkling, full of tenderness
and an appealing hunger for tenderness—she felt that Samuel could play an
all-sufficient Adam to Ellie’s Eve, in the garden.

“Miss Ellie’s all alone in the kitchen, hulling strawberries for supper,”
she said very low. Then bending far over her desk, as if completely
absorbed in her books, she went on: “It’s the south dining-room door. Go
right in, take the basket with you—no, no, not that woman, too—and ask
Miss Ellie if she won’t take charge of your basket for an hour or so.”

Samuel grinned. He wagged his head back and forth until his wig shook
in sympathetic anticipation. Years and years seemed to fall from him,
until with his small, thick-set figure and his sparkling, youthful eyes
he looked like a boy getting ready to steal apples. With short, firm,
quicksteps he entered the dining-room. No one would have thought him a
victim of lumbago from his gait now. Then of a sudden, Miss Jessica, no
longer able to contain herself, went into her private room, where he had
consulted with the ten, and danced around with glee.

“Miss Ellie, you darling!” she whispered to herself. “I know you’ll do
it!”

Miss Ellie, in a prim, dainty blue gingham dress, with a great bib apron
enveloping her slender figure, sat at the south kitchen window hulling
berries, the basket of red fruit on the table beside her, a yellow
earthen bowl in her lap. Her silver-gold hair caught sunbeam lights from
the window until each single thread danced and twinkled. Little curls
of silver gold nestled against the nape of her slender neck. Her face
was that of an April lady’s—first the clouds chased across it, clouds of
contempt, of anger and of regret; and then it took on a soft blaze of
tenderness and of passionate longing.

She did not want Mr. Samuel Jessup or any other man. She scorned the
woman who might take him today for his home and that little sum of money;
but why—why had she with all her power of loving and of attracting love,
all the unspent passion of motherhood that had been her ruling passion
since the doll-baby age—why had she come to see sixty-one without finding
Mr. Right? Lovers in moderate numbers she had had in the days of long
ago, and old people do not forget the loves of the springtime, but all
the while—all through the spring and the summer and this swiftly passing
autumn—or was it really winter-time?—there had never come to her one
whom she would rejoice to call her mate! Him she did not regret so much
nowadays, or she regretted him with a vague, indistinct feeling. He
might have liked strong drink and smoked a strong pipe indoors. But the
children! Ah, the children that had never come!

She had outlived all her people. There were no nieces, no nephews, no one
in all the world whom she could call her own, and there had never been
and never could be a little grandchild to pull at her skirts.

“Dran-ma! I love oo, dran-ma!” Only yesterday she had heard a little
child lisp this into the ears of Mrs. Young.

“Dran-ma, I love oo, dran-ma!” whispered Ellie, bending far over the
berries with the hot gushing of tears coming into her eyes.

Both the ache of motherhood and the ache of grandmotherhood were upon
her. Never to have felt the touch of her own babe at her breast! And,
now that old age had withered the breast, never to hear the prattle of
grandchildren in her ears! And her ears were still so finely attuned,
unlike the average grandmother! Miss Ellie looked up from her berries at
the window. Her eyes were too dim to see, and wiping the tears away she
looked out of the window again, down the garden. So, young girls stare
wistfully as if they would look to the very end of the world and discover
what, in the very end, may come to them.

The dining-room door opened. Miss Ellie turned back to her task. She
scorned to look up and ask her fellow inmate of the Home who had won
Samuel Jessup. It was probably Mrs. Homan coming to help with the supper.
Steps came across the kitchen. Ellie bent far over the yellow bowl and
went on with her berry hulling. It needed a great many berries to supply
that supper table. The sunbeam darted down from the top of Ellie’s head
to seek out with its twinkling, gold-shod feet the silver-gold curls in
Ellie’s neck. The steps paused close beside Ellie. Suddenly the spinster
realized that they were not Mrs. Homan’s steps and she looked up. Scorn,
indignation, amazement, and then something more subtle, something which
one sees in faces everywhere all over the world, and something which
makes the world more beautiful, crossed her face. There stood Samuel
Jessup with the huge market basket in one hand. He held out the basket to
Miss Ellie. He looked at her eagerly, almost with piteous appeal, as if
to say:

“They would have none of it, but—_you_! _You?_”

The red table cover had been thrown off the basket. There lay the
contents before Miss Ellie’s eyes. A big white pillow and resting upon
it, a baby—a real, live, pink-and-white, wide-awake baby. More than this,
a baby who at first sight of Miss Ellie holding poised in her hand a
huge, red strawberry, struggled up into a sitting position, held out his
two pudgy, dimpled little hands and cried with the softest, most ecstatic
little cry imaginable: “Dranny!”

The baby’s grandmother had died last week, but neither Miss Ellie nor the
baby knew that, and Samuel Jessup kept a wise silence.

Trembling, agitated, scarcely able to see or hear for the moment
following the baby’s cry, Miss Ellie put down the red berry, placed
the bowl on the table, and then turned to take the baby. She asked no
questions. She simply took him. She knew that he was hers. Even now
again—would her heart burst with joy and her ears lose their power of
hearing!—even now again he was murmuring and mumbling: “Dranny! Dranny!”
Now she knew that she would hear the prattle of one she called grandchild
in her ears and guide with her shriveled old hands the unsteady movements
of these little feet. Samuel Jessup counted not at all just then; but if
he had attempted to take away that baby, she would have fought him like a
mother-tigress.

Samuel had meant to say much. He said nothing, but simply put his hand
against his throat and looked at her. He saw her devour with eyes and
lips the tender little form—saw her seek out the baby wrinkles in the fat
little dimpled neck—saw her munch hungrily at the baby’s yellow curls—saw
her feel every bone of the little body through the stiff starchy white
dress as if she loved each one more than the other. And then at length he
watched her unfasten the shoes, pull off the tiny white socks and then
adore with the pent-up passion of the lonely years the adorable little
rosy heel of his baby.

Samuel cleared his throat with a loud noise and walked across the room.
He noticed a red calico curtain at the cupboard door and wondered
whether Miss Ellie had made it. In his mind’s eye, he saw another
kitchen, smaller than this, cosier, but still with red calico curtains
at the cupboard door and crisp white swiss ones—as crisp as the baby’s
dress—at the windows. He knew that Miss Ellie would not want to get
those curtains stained up with tobacco smoke—she looked so dainty—so
he would volunteer to do his smoking on the back porch. If she left the
window open, he could look through and talk to her and the little one.
He came beside Miss Ellie’s chair and stood looking down at her lovely
head and the baby’s cheek pressed against her own. The baby, quieted with
happiness against that breast, was profoundly still.

Through the open door came a wonderful fragrance—as the fragrance of
youthful love—blown in from the syringa bush beside the kitchen door.
They must plant a syringa beside the kitchen door-step in the new home,
thought Samuel. Out of the stillness, he spoke, his voice very husky.

“You be a woman arter my own heart—I knowed it when I see you a-settin’
here a-hullin’ berries. It’s more than I ’spected. I never dreamed it
could be: I was that old. But, Miss Ellie, you be—you be—” He lost his
voice entirely for a space and fearfully, reverently, he lifted in his
trembling fingers one of the silver-gold curls that lay on her neck,
lifted it and immediately let it fall in place again. “You be,” he
whispered, “a woman arter my own heart. I never found sech a one when I
was young. I know it now, fer ef I had, I wouldn’t ’a’ been afeared of no
bad luck fer neither her ner me. I’d a took her an’—” another pause and
then with brave, masculine assurance, “she’d ’a’ took me.”

Miss Ellie did not move, she did not speak. She felt that his voice was
very far away, away off back in her youth where she had dreamed of the
mate who was yet to come. Closer she pressed her cheek to the baby’s and
so assured herself that baby and the man who had brought her the baby
were real and belonged to today.

Samuel was speaking again, his hand now on the back of her chair, so that
it brushed against the ruffle that ran across the shoulders of her apron.

“I allers wanted children, an’ when I got too old to have the hope o’
ever a-marryin’, I used ter say ter myself: ‘Oh, ef they was only leetle
grand-younguns now!’ Then the fortune come. Says I fust thing: ‘I’ll
have a baby. I’ll be a granddaddy yit.’ Thar wa’n’t much mean about me.
I be sixty-nine, but I wanted my own home, an’ my own wife, an’ my own
baby. But I wanted the baby most of all. So the fust thing I done when
the money come was ter go to that thar Margaret Jane Orphan Asylum an git
this here baby. He hadn’t been there but a week. Jest lost his grandma
an’ his grandpa—didn’t yer, yer pore leetle cuss, yer? He’s legally
adopted. His name is Samuel Biggs Jessup, Jr. Ain’t he a wallopin’ fine
feller!”

Samuel exploded at the last. His bashfulness, his self-depreciation,
his afraidness, were all gone. He bent over, his hands on his knees,
and looked into the baby’s face. The baby’s face was very close to
Ellie’s. The baby’s face was dimpled and smiling, while over Ellie’s
face there was a flush of joyous young motherhood together with the
proud, all-wondering delight of grandmotherhood, and blending with both,
a sweet shame and shrinking such as no one but a virgin can wear. Oh,
exquisite, young-old Miss Ellie! Your eyes swimming in unshed tears were
so beautiful then with the inner light that Samuel blinked to see them.

“Miss Ellie,” he whispered. Very still was the kitchen. The syringa
outside the door shook out its perfume just for these two. The wind
murmured through the fragrant flowers—it murmured:

“Again and again and again! Even for the old, this same old story!”

“Ellie,” whispered Samuel. “I want you even more than I want the baby.
Will you marry me?”

Again the silence fell, and after a long while, the voice of Ellie’s
dream-swept, ideal-keeping youth came from within the curves of the
baby’s cheek where her lips were hiding:

“Samuel, you been a long time comin’.” Her voice faltered and then
gathering a girlish tremor went on, “But, even ef you hadn’t brought the
baby, I should say you was wuth all the waitin’.”




_Control or Ownership?_

BY CHARLES Q. DE FRANCE


Few men who have studied the question, and who are free to make a frank
statement of their views, see much hope for a “square deal” in railroad
rates under private ownership. Most of those who really want a square
deal, however, are giving the President their moral support, not because
they expect him to solve the problem with his formula of “control,” but
because they feel that the agitation he has caused and is fomenting will
inure to the benefit of the public ownership and operation idea. His
opponents charge as much—and they are correct. Many of their arguments
against control are valid, too, if we grant that private ownership in
this age of our civilization is best. Of course, we do not grant that.

It seems certain at this writing (March 4) that the Hepburn-Dolliver bill
will become a law—one of those dead letters, so many of which already
encumber our Federal and State statute books. That it cannot and will not
be enforced, except in a few spectacular instances to fool the multitude,
is as certain as anything in human affairs. The roads will continue to
take all that the traffic will bear, to give rebates, and to water stock
in the good old way. If any doubt this, let them read the intensely
interesting letters in various newspapers sent out each week from
Washington by Lincoln Steffens. Mr. Steffens has, after most thorough
investigation, reached the conclusion that our people are suffering not
so much because of bribery and corruption as from having abdicated in
favor of the railroads and other big corporations. It is not necessary
now for a railroad corporation to bribe a congressman or senator—because
most of these supposed people’s representatives are actually the railroad
representatives, and many of them heavy stockholders.

Mr. Steffens can lay no claim to a patent on this information by right of
original discovery, for Populists said the same thing (only not so aptly,
perhaps), twelve to fifteen years ago. But he is reaching an audience
that the Populists did not and possibly never could reach. And he tells
the story so well that we must accord him the highest meed of praise. I
cannot refrain from quoting a paragraph concerning the spectacle he sees
in Washington (New York _World_, March 4):

    “We, the people of the United States, are the petitioners.
    (For railroad rate legislation). We are coming here asking
    through the President that that bill (Hepburn-Dolliver) be
    passed so as to relieve us from certain abuses practised
    everywhere by our chartered common carriers, the railroads.
    And the representatives of those railroads and their allied
    corporations sit here enthroned; and they decide upon our case.
    They may decide in our favor but—the intolerable fact of it all
    is—they decide. They rule; they may be good rulers; but they
    rule.”

That is the deliberate statement of a man who has gained an enviable
reputation for thorough-going investigation. He is not a demagogue or a
writer of penny-dreadfuls. He is on the ground and supports every one of
his general statements with concrete examples.

Mr. Steffens blames the people for the present state of affairs. I
heartily agree with him. But I believe we should try to reason out where
the first big mistake was made and arrive at a conclusion as to the best
way out of the difficulty, unless, perchance, our people really like the
rule of railroad oligarchy. I believe it is a useless task to chide the
people for lack of civic righteousness, for indifference, for supineness,
for failure to go to the primaries, etc., unless we point out clearly how
complete sovereignty may be secured. It is useless to scold a man for
not filling his lungs with oxygen, if you advise him to stay in a room
overcharged with carbonic acid gas.

The present state of affairs is due primarily to two great causes, or
really to one cause operating through two different channels:

(_a_) The private ownership of railroads.

(_b_) The private control of the issue and circulation of money.

The latter cause, in my judgment, is immeasurably greater than the
former; but public opinion is now directed toward the former, so that
a discussion of it is sure of a careful hearing. I do not insist that
permitting the private ownership of railroads was an irremediable
mistake; in fact, there is much good argument in favor of the contention
that under private ownership the roads were developed faster and better
than they, in all likelihood, would have been under public ownership. And
we may admit, without at all prejudicing our case, that in the evolution
of railroading, private ownership was best at the start. This is not
capable of demonstration—but we need not quarrel over it.

A railroad is a highway; and a highway is one of the attributes of
sovereignty. Whoever owns and controls the road is to that extent a
sovereign. And under our aggravated system of _laissez faire_, ownership
and control always go together, except with the slightest modifications.
Hence, with private ownership of railroads, it was inevitable that we
should reach just such a state of affairs as Mr. Steffens pictures.
Why shouldn’t “representatives of those railroads and their allied
corporations” sit here enthroned?

The owners of those roads are absolute sovereigns over the principal
avenue for the distribution of commodities; and under our highly
developed methods of production, with extreme division of labor, a great
distribution of commodities is absolutely essential. With power to tax at
will all users of highways, their owners can control, in a great measure,
all productive industry.

I am not a believer in total depravity. I can see no necessity or reason
for calling railroad magnates hard names, or accusing them of unpatriotic
scheming for power—except, possibly, for the purpose of arousing a
lethargic people to a sense of their own wrongs. Being an actual
sovereign, because owning the highways—the real, vital highways—and
possessing the power to tax, I can understand how the railroads were,
in a great measure, compelled to unite _de jure_ and _de facto_
sovereignty. With non-railroad or anti-railroad men in the legislative,
administrative and judicial bodies, “sand-bagging” and hold-ups were
common. In self-defense (for no man ever lived who likes to be deprived
of power), the railroads bribed and corrupted. They were by no means the
sole culprits. The taker of a bribe is just as despicable as the giver.
But gradually the system evolved to its present state—the union of all
sovereign powers. The Government persisted in its refusal to go into
the railroad business—so the railroads quite naturally went into the
governing business.

We cannot undo what has been done. We cannot turn back the wheels of time
and begin all over again with public ownership of railroads; but we can,
and I think we will, in not many years hence, take over the railroads
and make them public property, operating them by Government officials.
The union of sovereign powers is now complete: the owners of highways
and “their allied corporations,” by their representatives, are now
enthroned as the actual Government. This is as it should be, except that
the ownership is too limited. _It should be made to include the whole
people._

[Illustration: _Will It Come to this at Niagara?_

    _Morris, in Spokane Spokesman Review_]

[Illustration: “_What, Doctor, All of This?_”

    _Warren, in Boston Herald_]

[Illustration: _Puzzle.—Which Way Is He Going?_

    _Handy, in Duluth News Tribune_]

[Illustration: _R. R. Magnate: I cannot tell a lie. I am going to do it
with my little hatchet._

    _Handy, in Duluth News Tribune_]




[Illustration: THE SACRIFICE

BY JACK B. NORMAN.]


“Don’t think that I ain’t willin’ for you to have the home-place like pa
wanted you to, Indie,” said the thin, tired voice that was fast wearing
into silence, “’cause I am. It’s no more ’n right after all you’ve done
for me ’n pa. The t’others has all got homes o’ their own an’ you ain’t
got nobody to fall back on. But, Indie, promise me you won’t close the
door agin poor Tom if he should come back. Give him shelter an’ welcome
for my sake, won’t you?”

Indie promised solemnly. Her thoughts went back to one still, tranquil
night years before, when the doors of that same home had been closed
against the wayward son by the father who vowed never to look upon his
boy’s face again. The mother—a frail, submissive, toil-worn woman—had
mourned in secret, but her prayers had been unanswered.

“You’ve been dreadful good to us,” the dying voice murmured; “I hope the
Lord will make it up to you somehow, Indie. Do you reckon the girls will
git here ’fore I die?”

“Yes, Aunt Viney, I really b’lieve they will. But you go to sleep if you
can. I’ll wake you as soon as they git here.”

By and by the sick woman fell into a gentle doze that deepened into the
sleep that knows no earthly waking. The married daughters came too late,
but if they were greatly grieved over their mother’s death they made
little outward sign. They stayed at the home place for two days, during
which the will was read. It deeded all that remained of the Pasely farm,
that had been divided and subdivided to supply marriage portions for
four, to Indie, in consideration of her faithful services for the old
folks.

“Maybe you can ketch Lem Powers with this bait,” was Louise’s spiteful
comment, after the reading was over. “Everyone knows you always wanted
him bad enough.”

Mary, the eldest cousin, laughed dryly. “Indie can’t complain of the way
our folks treated her,” she said with ill-concealed bitterness. “This
farm is worth a thousand dollars above the mortgage money. It ain’t many
poor relations that has property like this left to ’em.”

“I guess Indie knows that she didn’t come by it plum honest,” the third
cousin remarked. “She knowed how to work around the old folks so’s to git
’em to leave her what they had. Well, we ain’t the kind to make trouble
even if we _have_ been wronged.”

When they had gone, Indie abandoned herself to a passion of helpless,
piteous grief. She recalled one cruel hour long ago when her cousin
Louise had accused her of caring, unasked, for friendly, pleasant Lem
Powers, whose off-hand calls on the family stood out in Indie’s memory as
the brightest events of her lonely, toilful life. Indie was twenty-three
and plain, for the flower-like prettiness of her early childhood had long
since succumbed to the triple blight of care and drudgery and loneliness.
It had been known among her neighbors and acquaintances that Indie, at
the age of eighteen, had never been “spoke for,” wherefore she had meekly
accepted the stigma of spinsterhood that comes very early to the Southern
country girl and had withdrawn from the mild frivolities of youth to
become a household drudge in her uncle’s family in order that her cousins
might have more leisure and freedom. After the death of her hard-working
uncle, she had stayed with her ailing aunt while the girls married and
left her.

“I wisht I’d died instid of Aunt Viney,” Indie sobbed in utter loneliness.

For two years Indie lived quietly and comfortably in the old home, paying
her simple expenses by raising garden truck for the town hotel. Then a
letter came from Tom’s widow imploring his people to send her enough
money to defray Tom’s funeral expenses to avert his threatened burial
in the potter’s field. It was a pathetic appeal, involving the brief
story of Tom’s struggles, how he had worked his way with his little
family from Texas to the old home state, where he had obtained employment
in a factory. He had met his death through a boiler explosion the day
before the letter was written. Tom had always hoped for a reconciliation
in spite of his father’s unyielding hardness, the widow wrote. In
conclusion, she begged his people not to allow his body to be consigned
to a nameless grave.

Indie went straight to Mr. Griggs, the real estate agent, who held the
four-hundred-dollar mortgage on her farm, and asked him to lend her a
hundred dollars. He refused gently but firmly.

“Why, Indie, by the time you sell that farm it may not be worth five
hundred dollars in all,” he said. “The interest on the mortgage is about
due now and here you are wanting to borrow more!”

“It’s for a particular purpose that can’t wait a day,” Indie told him
anxiously, trembling in every nerve with the fear of disappointment.

“I can’t help that. Business is business you know, and every man must
look out for his own interests. There is only one way to get that money
and that is to sell the place as it stands before the debts eat it up
completely. I know a party that would buy, probably.”

“Oh, I couldn’t sell the only home I’ve got,” Indie said piteously.

“It’ll come to that in the end, anyhow,” Griggs answered indifferently.
“My advice is to get rid of it now, while there is a few dollars in it
for you. Anyway, you can’t raise that hundred you want any other way. If
I was in your place I’d sell and go down to Birmingham and get work in
the factory, where you’ll make something besides a mere living.”

Indie’s heart almost stopped beating at the very thought of leaving the
old familiar haunts for a strange city. Yet, Tom must have a decent
burial at any cost to herself.

“What could you get for the farm?” Indie asked huskily.

“Eight or nine hundred I reckon.”

“Could you let me have the hundred right now if I agree to sell the
place?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll sell—because I’ve got to have that money right off.”

Indie hurried home and began to put things to rights. She packed up her
personal belongings and moved all her humble furniture into one room,
where it could be easily got at in case she should send for it a little
later, if she were fortunate enough to secure steady work in the factory
which Mr. Griggs had referred to. He had even given her a clipping from
the Sunday paper containing an advertisement calling for twenty new
hands, “experience not necessary.”

Indie was sweeping the back yard when some one strode up the pebbled walk
with brisk, business-like steps, which she mistook for Mr. Griggs’s walk,
for he had promised to stop in on his homeward way. But it was not the
agent. It was Indie’s old friend Lem Powers, whom she had so timidly
avoided for years. His broad-brimmed hat was turned up squarely in front,
framing his dark, strong, sunny face in a sort of a rough halo.

“Evenin’, Indie,” said he, with a tug at his up-standing hat-brim. “Do
you happen to have a wrench about the place? My buggy wheel’s locked an’
I ain’t got no tools with me.”

Indie shook down her sleeves hurriedly, keenly conscious of her
unpleasing appearance. “Won’t you set down while I hunt up the wrench?”
she asked, nodding toward the veranda bench. “I’ve done packed up
everything, but I can find the wrench easy’s not.”

“Packed up!” the young man echoed in blank astonishment, with a sweeping
glance at the denuded premises. “Why, you don’t aim to move, do you?”

“I expect to leave Shallow Ford to-morrer mornin’,” Indie answered
solemnly.

“You don’t say so? Goin’ to live with your cousins?”

“No, oh no,” Indie answered quickly, with a dry smile. “None of them
ain’t never asked me to live with ’em, and even if they had I wouldn’t
go.”

“I didn’t know you had other kin.”

“I ain’t. I aim to go to Birmingham to work in the factory. I seen a
advertisement callin’ for twenty new hands and I thought it would be a
good chance to get started.”

“Whatever put that idee into your head, I’d like to know? I don’t b’lieve
you’ll like the work one bit, Indie,” the young man said with grim
conviction. “It ain’t healthy, to begin with. Don’t you rec’lect how pale
an’ peekedy them Baldwins looked when they come back here on a visit
after havin’ worked in the thread factory down at Birmingham? They didn’t
have the sperit of a jack rabbit between ’em, an’ their ways was plum
changed too—sorter forrard like. You won’t like the sort of company they
keep, Indie.”

“I’ve got to go now,” said Indie, doggedly, “cause I’ve done put the
place for sale. Mr Griggs thinks he can sell it without any trouble.”

“He may. Indie, is it on account of the mortgage you’re leavin’?”

Indie shook her head. She could not tell Lem her real motive.

“’Cause if it is,” said Lem, earnestly, “I’d be only too glad to stand
good for the debt if you’ll let me.”

Indie’s pale face reddened painfully, and her head went back an inch or
two, for she had her pride in spite of her helplessness. “I couldn’t ever
raise enough truck to pay off the debt, anyhow,” she answered coldly.

“You could rent the place an’ pay off that way. I do wish you would let
your old friends do a little something for you, Indie,” he pleaded,
growing red and embarrassed under her increasing coldness.

“It’s too late to rent now, ’cause it’s way past corn-plantin’ time,”
Indie objected, “an there ain’t nothin started but two acres o’ roastin’
ears an’ some garden truck.”

“I should think you’d hate to leave the old place,” Lem observed, letting
his bright gaze wander over the green pasture strip and the narrow creek
bottoms where the young corn waved idly in the evening breeze.

Indie’s thin face clouded with the shadow of regret, but she made no
reply, for she would not have admitted, on pain of death, that her heart
ached with the pathos of renunciation.

“Ain’t there nary thing I can do for you, Indie?” Lem asked, after
an awkward pause, in what seemed to the listener a very off-hand,
indifferent voice.

“No thanky. There ain’t a thing to do but to take the cow over to board
with the Bankses. Seems like I can’t bear the thoughts of sellin’ her
to out-an’-out strangers, so I thought I’d board her till some of the
neighbors gits ready to buy her. Miss Clayton’s goin’ to keep Billy for
me till I get settled, so’s I can take him.”

Billy, the big tortoise-shell cat that purred on the door step, lifted
his head at the sound of his own name and blinked contentedly, whereupon
Lem stooped and stroked his glossy fur. “I guess Billy’ll miss you if no
one else does,” he remarked dryly.

Then he rose and held out a big brown hand. “Well, good-bye, Indie, an’
good luck to you,” said he. “If ever I can do anything for you, let me
know, will you?”

“Good-bye,” said Indie gravely.

Indie went away the next morning—a morning full of balm and peace. Fresh,
fragrant winds scattered the rose petals thickly over her shoulders as
she hurried down the garden path to meet the stage. She did not trust
herself to glance back, for some strange, dumb emotion tugged at her
heart-strings and soundless voices called to her out of the sweet silence
that enveloped earth and sky.

She shivered as she entered the hot, sultry, dust-laden train with its
burden of dull, spiritless travelers. “It must be the air,” she murmured
to herself as she sank into a seat. “These cars is awful clost with the
sun beatin’ down on ’em an no air stirrin’. Now, if a body was at home
they could open the doors an’ winders an’ set in the shade.”

“Home! Home! Home!” said the swiftly revolving wheels that bore her
relentlessly away from the old, sweetly familiar scenes toward an
unknown, lonely future. She watched the green fields and woods that
whirled past the windows until they grew less and less frequent, with
dingy little stations squatted between them. The landscape changed and
the car grew hotter and the smoke thicker, for the train was approaching
the factory district of Birmingham, the Alabama metropolis. Children,
with unclean, pallid, faces, stared up at the car windows as the train
pulled through their grimy quarters, and men in blackened, greasy clothes
lounged along the tracks in the occasional shade of a sweltering brick
wall.

Indie found the squalid home of Tom’s widow after much patient wandering
about the uneven, unswept streets. Many minutes passed before her ring
was answered; then a white-faced woman opened the door a very little way.
Yes, she was Mrs. Pasely. Did anyone want to see her?

“I am Tom’s cousin, Indie,” the caller announced simply. “I’ve brung the
money for Tom’s funeral.”

The widow cried a little at first while she told Indie of Tom’s tragic
death, but her mind was too absorbingly occupied over the funeral to
permit of the luxury of self-pity. She dressed hurriedly and went out
to communicate with the undertaker, leaving Indie with the children,
three little, frail, colorless, old-young beings, who reminded Indie of
cellar-grown plants. The widow was not long away; late that afternoon the
two women and their three charges followed Tom’s remains to consecrated
ground.

“I never can tell you how thankful I am,” was all Mrs. Pasely said to
Indie concerning her sacrifice, “for now I feel at rest about poor Tom
bein’ laid away like he ought to be. If the baby was just well I’d try
to start out an’ make a livin’ and do my best without Tom,” she added
mournfully, “but it seems like I ain’t got no heart to do nothin’ while
he’s so weak and puny. He ain’t been to say real well since we left
Texas, where we lived right out in the country. I’ve tried everything I
could think of but nothin’ don’t do him no good as I can see. The doctor
says he won’t never git well till I take him back to the country, an
maybe not then. Me’n Minnie’s got promise of work in the factory next
week, but if little Tom ain’t no better I can’t leave him with jest Jim
to look after him. If we only could git back to Texas agin we’d all git
well an’ stout, an’ I wouldn’t care if we _was_ poor. All I care about is
for little Tom to git well.”

Oh, if she could only take them all back to the farm with her, thought
Indie. A great wave of home longing surged through her heart as she
thought of the peace and beauty of the deserted home. She knew just where
the shadows of noontide lay darkest over the old rose-bordered yard—knew
that the back veranda where she always ate her simple midday meals with
Billy purring at her feet was just then in the thickest shadow of the
china-berry trees, and that all was still and sweet and tranquil in
that far-off haven of rest. Instead of factory walls there were green,
blossomed hedges; instead of the strident clamor of motor cars and mill
gongs there was a ceaseless chorus of song birds, and instead of the hot,
smoke-tainted air of the city, there was the fine, earthy fragrance of
the good sweet soil that lay fallow while so many weary toilers sweltered
in their city prisons.

Indie made Tom’s widow understand the whole situation, then she offered
herself in any capacity that could serve little Tom, who had the look
that she dimly remembered in young Tom when she first went to live with
his parents. Indie would take work in the factory as she had planned to
do and board with Tom’s widow to help along all she could, or she would
take them all back to the farm and work very hard to make a mere living
while little Tom had a chance for his life.

“Why, I’d be willin’ to work day an’ night on a farm!” the widow answered
earnestly. “I’m jest plum certain Tom will git well way off there in the
country. Oh, do take us back with you! Me’n Minnie an’ Jim can make a
real good crop between us. You’ll see!”

That was what Indie wanted. She would sacrifice the last thing that
remained to her—her pride—and ask Lem to help her by standing good for
the hundred-dollar note, and far the rest she would work as she had never
worked before.

“We’ll go tomorrow,” Indie announced. “You git right to work packin’ up
what you want to take.”

The world was aflame with the splendid fires of sunset when the little
party alighted before the farm gate on the following evening. “I’m real
glad it’s light enough for you to see the flowers an’ things,” said
Indie, as she led the way up the rose-bordered walk that seemed to greet
her with sweet familiarity. “Good thing I left the key under the porch
steps right where I could find it handy. There, now walk right in an’ set
down, while I kindle a fire an’ git some supper.”

She had bought a few eatables the last thing before leaving Birmingham,
which she speedily converted into a tempting meal. Her guests rewarded
her industry to a gratifying degree, even to little Tom, who seemed to
have acquired a good appetite which delighted his frail, worried mother
beyond bounds. “He ain’t et like that in I dunno when!” she exclaimed
with tears of joy.

It was close upon Indie’s usual bedtime when her ministration ended. She
slipped out for a quiet rest on the front door-step to enjoy the peace
and loveliness of the perfect spring night, but hardly had she seated
herself when the garden gate creaked rustily and someone strode up the
walk with heavy strides. At the sight of the dim figure on the step the
intruder stopped precipitately.

“Who’s there?” asked a familiar voice.

Indie rose tremblingly. “It’s Indie Bright,” she answered. “Did you want
to see me?”

“Indie!” exclaimed a voice so thrillingly joyous that the listener felt
herself quiver from head to foot with a strange, inexplicable ecstasy.

“Ain’t it Lem Powers?” she asked. “Has anything happened?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” came the surprised answer. “I thought you
was gone!”

Indie told her story briefly, carefully deflecting all merit from
herself. “I’m real glad it happened that way,” she finished, “for I did
hate to sell the old place.”

Lem drew a deep breath. “You’re jest five hours too late, Indie,” he said
in a queer voice, “for the agent sold the farm this afternoon at four
o’clock.”

Indie felt the solid earth recede beneath her. “Sold it!” she echoed
fearsomely. “Oh, Lem, whatever _shall_ I do!”

“I dunno. There ain’t no use in tryin’ to buy it back, ’cause the man
that bought it won’t part with it for anything, except——”

He paused and went a step nearer. “Except you’ll give him what he’s
always wanted—yourself. Indie, I never did want no other girl but you,
an’ never will.”

Indie shrank away, but a strong, warm hand found hers in the shadow,
while the low earnest voice went on to tell her of a miracle that
thrilled every fibre of her being with unspeakable happiness.

“I aimed to ask you the day you told me about leavin’,” Lem confessed,
“but by the way you talked I thought it wouldn’t be no use, so I bought
the place hopin’ you’d want to come back some day.”

“Lem,” said Indie, after a long, happy silence, “I never had no idee
that—that you ever wanted me. I thought it was Cousin Louise you wanted.”

“Louise—after I’d seen you!” Lem cried incredulously. “Why that would be
like chosin’ a bit o’ glass instid of a real diamond. It was Louise as
told me how you’d took a dredful dislike to me from the very first, an’
of course I couldn’t help but believe it by the way you always acted when
I was around. I tell you, Indie, that made a heap o’ difference to me.
I’d a done anything in the hull world for you an’ would yit if you’d only
let me.”

Indie drew a deep breath that sounded strangely like a stifled sob. “Oh,
Lem, that’s just the way I’ve always felt about you,” she confessed very
softly and hesitatingly.

After a long, long while, during which the years and their burden of care
and loneliness and heart-ache slipped away from Indie’s heart like an
wornout garment, she drew her hands away from Lem’s close clasp. “You’d
better go now, Lem,” she said very gently, “’cause it’s gitting late an’
I don’t want to wake the folks up after they’ve got to sleep.”

“All right, Indie. I’ll be back tomorrow to see about putting in a late
crop o’ corn for Tom’s folks to work out. We’ll jest let ’em keep the
place free of rent for a while an’ see to it that they make enough to
keep ’em. You can look after ’em all you want to, for it ain’t but a
little piece from our place over here. Good night, Indie.”

Indie lingered in the soft, starry dusk for a few moments after Lem had
gone, to gloat over her great happiness; and presently something dark and
small scuttled out of the lilac hedge and bounded into her lap with a mew
of welcome. It was Billy, quivering with elation and delight.

Indie caught her pet to her breast with a cry of rapture. “Oh, Billy,
Billy, ain’t it lovely to be home again!”

[Illustration]




_Our Civilization_

BY COUNT LYOF TOLSTOY


Men say that civilization, our civilization, is a great good. But they
who have this conviction belong to the minority who live not only in this
civilization but by it; who live in ease, almost idleness, in comparison
to the lot of workmen.

All such men; kings, emperors, presidents, princes, ministers,
functionaries, soldiers, proprietors, investors, merchants, engineers,
doctors, scientists, professors, priests, writers, are so sure our
civilization is a great good that they cannot bear the thought that it
should disappear or that it should even be changed.

Ask, however, of the great mass of agricultural people, slave people,
Chinese, Hindus, Russians—ask nine-tenths of humanity whether this
civilization, which seems a superlative good to those who are not
agriculturists, is really a blessing or not? Strangely enough,
nine-tenths of humanity will reply in the negative.

What they need is soil, fertilizer, irrigation, sun, rain, forests,
harvests, and simple farming implements that one can make without
abandoning the agricultural life. As for civilization, either they know
nothing of it, or it presents itself to them under the aspect of the
debauchery of cities, with their prisons and their bagnios; or under the
aspect of taxes and useless monuments, of museums, of palaces; or under
the aspect of duties which prevent the free circulation of products; or
under the aspect of cannon, of armor and of armies that ravage whole
countries. And they say, if that is civilization it is of no use to them,
and that, it is even hurtful to them. The men who enjoy the advantages
of civilization maintain that it is good for all humanity; but in this
case they cannot bear testimony because they are both judges and parties
concerned.

One cannot deny that we are now far along the road of technical progress;
but what is far along on that road? A little minority lives on the back
of the work people; and the work people, they who serve the men that
enjoy civilization in the whole Christian world, continue to live as they
lived five or six centuries ago, profiting only from time to time of the
leavings of civilization.

Even if they live better, the breach that separates their lot from that
of the rich classes is rather wider than it was six centuries ago. I
do not say, as many think, that, since civilization is not an absolute
good we should throw out at one stroke the structure men have devised
for the struggle against nature; but I do say that, to make sure this
structure shall really serve men well, it is necessary that all and not
only a small minority enjoy it. No one must be deprived of his due by
others under the pretext that these benefits will return one day to his
descendants.

The good and reasonable life consists in choosing, of many ways that lie
open, the way that is best.

Therefore Christian humanity in the present situation should choose
between two things: either to continue along the path of wickedness in
which existing civilization gives the greatest number of benefits to the
smallest number of people, keeping the others in poverty and slavery; or
immediately, without postponing it to a future more or less remote, to
renounce in part, or wholly, the advantages which this civilization has
given to certain privileged ones, thereby preventing the liberation of
the majority of men from poverty and serfdom.




_A Coal Miner’s Story_

BY CHARLES S. MOODY, M. D.


The average worthy citizen reclining beside an open coal-grate, reading
the press accounts of the latest coal strike, has little interest in the
matter further than his interest in the probable effect of the labor
disturbance upon the price of his winter’s fuel. When he reaches that
part of the narrative that tells of the troops having been ordered to the
scene of action, the powerful arm of the military invoked to put down
the uprising among the working-men, he heaves a sigh of relief that now
the strike will be of short duration and the price of coal will not be
advanced. Seldom does he consider the matter from the standpoint of the
man who mines the coal.

Were that one big lump glowing warmly in the centre of the grate gifted
with the power of speech, it would tell a tale that might well harrow up
the feelings of the most callous. Alas! it is dumb, just as the man who
dug it out of the bowels of the earth is dumb. It glows its heat away,
crumbles into gray ash, and the worthy citizen retires to his rest with
mind untroubled by any unpleasant thought of want or penury among those
who go down into the unwholesome deeps of the mine and toil all day shut
out from God’s gracious light that he and you and I may enjoy comfort and
warmth.

At one time of my life the relentless wheel of Fate in its ceaseless
revolving whirled me to its nadir, and spilled me into the squalid chaos
of a coal-mining town, and, not content with that, hurled me into the
nethermost hell of all that seething vortex of toil and poverty.

That the worthy citizen may see something of that side of the shield—the
side sable—I will attempt to tell it, not with the graces of one skilled
of pen, but in all its plain, naked, glaring hideousness.

At this point allow me to crave pardon for the frequent use of the
personal pronoun. I am speaking as a coal-miner, and can tell it better
by using the first person.

I was raised in the Far West. My life had been spent among the green
mountains of the Pacific Coast, and I knew but little of the land beyond
the Rockies. When ambition came, as it comes to youth everywhere, I
dreamed of other lands where that ambition might find its full fruition.
I left the mountain home, and set out to conquer the world of my dreams.
My journey ended at the little town of Excello, in Northern Missouri. I
was moneyless, and, as I soon ascertained, friendless. Disappointment
glared at me from every door. Every vocation in life seemed filled, and
all the avenues leading thereto were crowded with men eager to push the
possessor of a job from his place and occupy it in his stead. I tried
every possible chance for work, but without avail. Not even a country
district school, with all its manifold possibilities of poverty, was open
to the stranger.

Not far from Excello, the Kansas and Texas Coal company have opened up
extensive mines at Ardmore. At last, desperate and in absolute despair, I
turned to the coal mines that wait with black, widespread maws to suck in
such flotsam of humanity as I was then. I set out from Excello on foot in
the bleak dawn of a March morning, for the only Mecca left open to me.
A donkey-engine drawing a train of coal-cars soon overtook me, and the
engineer stopped his train and took me on. It was but a trivial act of
kindness to a stranger, but it stands out so distinct and vivid by reason
of its rarity that I must speak of it here. Motives of the most sordid
meanness so completely actuate the principles of those people that the
simple act of one of them giving a tramp a ride glows from out the grime
of greed like a gem.

The little engine grumbled and rattled its way down the banks of a dirty
yellow stream, dignified by being called a river, until it halted beside
the head-house of one of the mines, and I was permitted to take my first
view of Ardmore, one of the worlds that I had come so far to conquer. Ah,
the irony of it all! What a contrast to the mental picture that the boy
had painted upon the canvas of fancy not so many weeks before!

First the tall head-house and hoist, with the coal-screens all under
one roof standing black and grimy at the mine’s mouth. Then the long
incline, up which crawled the laden cars from the mine, looking for all
the world like filthy serpents from some subterranean world. Off to one
side towered the culm-pile, emitting its choking sulphurous smoke and
polluting the muddy water of the little stream that wound about its base.
Off yonder, on either side of the same stream, perched a double row of
squalid grimy shacks, like gigantic carrion birds waiting to pounce upon
the filth that flowed down the current of the river. These were the homes
of the miners. Home! What a travesty on the sweetest word in any tongue!
In the distance clustered the offices of the Company and the Company
store, that most powerful tentacle of the giant octopus by which the
Company holds its operatives.

I made my way down the narrow sidewalkless street, past the rows of
miserable huts with their reeking front yards filled with children in
no less degree reeking, past that bane of all mining towns, the low
doggery, where for a few cents the miner buys the vilest of vile liquor,
on to the town proper. The contrast between the two was startling. The
officials must perforce reside where they collect their tithes, but
they strive to make life bearable. Every house was neatly painted and
every lawn set with trees and smoothly kept. I saw ill-clad women and
low-browed men black with the grime of the mine entering a large building
which I rightly surmised to be the Company store. The offices were on the
other side, and those who entered there did so with an air of the utmost
servility, as though they fully expected to be kicked into the street.

It is wonderful what an influence one’s surroundings will have upon their
character. Here I had been in Ardmore, only thirty minutes and I caught
myself approaching that office in the same servile manner affected by all
whom I saw enter there. I stood for some minutes hesitating before the
portals where sat enthroned those who held my destiny in their hands.
Cold and hunger are grim and determined drivers, however, and both were
flaying me with their whips. Summoning my manhood I entered, approached
the employment window and begged the right to earn my bread. The clerk
gave me one keen look that swept me from head to foot and tersely
assigned me to servitude in Mine 33, the one I had passed in the morning.
He handed me an order on the store that entitled me to a miner’s outfit
to be paid for out of the first money earned. He also assigned me a
number by which I was henceforth to be designated in all my dealings with
the Company. I became Number 337, and if I differed in any particular
from the man bearing that same number in the Jefferson City penitentiary
I was unable to detect that difference. True, I was permitted to walk the
streets unmolested, but the product of my toil belonged to the Kansas
and Texas Coal Company. I felt relieved. I had passed from the ranks
of the unemployed. Henceforth I was to be a sovereign American citizen
enjoying, as such, the Constitutional right to earn my bread.

I passed into the store and purchased such things as appeared needful,
using one of the miners as a model from which to deduce my needs. A
coarse pair of heavy shoes, ducking overalls and shirt, a pit cap with
place in front to carry the lamp, the lamp itself, a gallon of lard oil
for the same, a dinner-pail called a “deck” and the necessary picks and
shovel about completed the outfit.

One of the clerks rather grudgingly answered my question regarding a
boarding-place by informing me that there was a house on the hill that
made a practice of feeding miners. Carrying my bundle, I called at the
designated house and secured board and lodging. The house was slightly
better than those I had passed before and, standing upon higher ground,
was rather less filthy. I soon found that the miner is expected to do
without all the luxuries and generally all the necessities of life. Water
seemed the only article that could be obtained in plenty and for that I
soon had reason to be truly grateful. The table fare was of the coarsest
and cheapest variety possible. It possessed the sole merit of sustaining
life, and that to me at the time overbalanced all other considerations.
The beds were arranged in rows in an upper room. Two people were expected
to occupy one bed. I had assigned to be my bed-fellow a young Cornishman,
and I suspect the landlady selected him for that position owing to the
fact that he was slightly less dirty than her other boarders.

That evening my “buddy,” that is, the man who was to be my working
companion, called to see me. He was a man of middle-age who had spent
his life in the mines. He had the pronounced stoop that I noticed in all
the miners and which I very soon acquired. His skin was of that sickly
yellow hue characteristic of convicts and coal-miners, brought about by
being shut out from the light of day. It seems that I drew a very lucky
number in having this man assigned me for “buddy.” The other miners told
me that he possessed a “machine.” That is, after years of toil in the
mines he had been able to save enough to buy a drilling-machine that
retails at the Company store for fourteen dollars. Wonderful fortune!
Almost a lifetime spent in labor, and all that he had to show for it was
a fourteen-dollar drilling-machine! We talked long into the evening and
I found him not without ideas that were expressed in a crude way, but
above all, and, what was of vastly more importance to me just then, he
was a practical miner. I do not know what he might have thought about it,
but he had the tact not to hint anything about objecting to a green hand
as “buddy.” Indeed, I suspect that the Company would hardly tolerate any
criticism of their actions in that regard.

I appeared next morning clad in the habiliments of a coal-miner. My
“deck” was filled and handed me and I followed the long line of stooping
figures headed for the mines. We paused at the mouth of the pit and
lighted our lamps and swung them from the front of our caps. Then,
stooping still lower, passed down the long incline that leads into the
coal vein. Soon the gloom surrounded us, and the flickering yellow-light
from the burning lamp became our only guidance. Once upon the level of
the coal body, the air became oppressive and warm. Used as I had always
been to the free air of the mountains, I paused and gasped for breath.
I was merely one atom of the inward moving black stream and was pushed
onward. I soon grew accustomed to the lack of oxygen and before many
days learned to exist upon a minimum supply of that article just as I
learned to exist upon a limited supply of many other articles that in my
ignorance I had considered essential.

I neglected to state that I had been met at the pit mouth by my “buddy,”
who escorted me through the mazes of the underground streets of the
mine to the Third West, which was the field of our future efforts for
some time to come. On the way in he conversed very cheerfully about the
condition of one of his children who was ill with pneumonia and not
expected to live the day through. I half suspect that he secretly hoped
that the Death Angel would come, and not only relieve the little one of
her sufferings, but relieve him of one hungry mouth to feed.

It was over a mile from the surface to where our work lay. It consisted
in “turning off a room”—that is, making an entrance into the bare face
of the coal at right-angles to the direction of the tunnel. This was
necessarily slow work and we accomplished but little the first day.
All day long I sat upon my heels and picked a narrow trench from top
to bottom into the resisting body of the coal. Long ere night came my
cramped limbs refused to move another inch. I was simply racked from
head to foot with pain. There never was a more welcome sound than the
signal at the head of the entry to begin firing. Soon the boom of shots
reverberated down the entry like the sound of cannonading, and the miners
began straying out past us. We gathered up our tools and, placing them
in a safe place, followed them. Ah, the blessed exhilaration of that air
as I reached the surface! It was like being conveyed into another and
better world. I glanced at my “buddy.” He had not changed one muscle of
expression. With dogged, shambling footsteps he was setting off toward
one of the miserable shacks.

Curiously I watched the miners as they appeared. All nations seemed
gathered there. Italians, Czechs, Russians, Finns, Hungarians, Slavs,
Cornishmen, Americans, yes and negroes. While the colored man was not
permitted to become a miner in that particular mine, he was employed in
various other capacities. I saw children of tender years going from work,
their dinner-pails upon their arms, the stoop already in their shoulders,
the hectic flush already in their cheeks. “Merciful God,” I thought,
“this greedy giant, not content with sucking the life-blood of men, must
rob the school as well to sate its lust!” I learned afterward that there
was a child-labor law on the statute books of good old Missouri, but
that it was openly and flagrantly violated, and that the Commissioner of
Labor was a party to the violation.

I passed on homeward. Every step seemed weighted with lead. I dragged
myself up the long hill and entered the house. I was shown the wash-room
and my particular washing-tub filled with steaming hot water. The room
was already filled with miners taking a bath. I stripped and found that
though I had been in the mine but a day my body was black with coal-dust.
The next half-hour I spent in trying to remove the grime, with but poor
success. The other miners finished their ablutions and departed. I was
shocked at the manner in which the most of them performed that important
duty. A dash of water on the head and neck, a wet towel over the body,
rubbing off the most evident particles, a brisk scrubbing of the head,
neck and ears, and they were ready for supper. I was so long at my bath
trying to accomplish the impossible that the landlady tapped on the
door and informed me that supper only waited my appearance. I overheard
one of the miners designate me as “that new dude” when I entered the
dining-room. To be cleanly, then, was considered among these sons of
toil as being a species of foppishness. (I soon learned to perform my
ablutions more scientifically, and remove a maximum amount of coal-dust
in a minimum length of time.) I was too tired to eat, too weary to sleep.
All night long I tossed about in that comfortless bed and sighed for the
coming of morning. It came at last and dawned upon another day of labor.

Today we drilled our first hole and placed the first shot. I had the
satisfaction of loading my first box of coal, affixing my leather tag to
it and starting it on its journey toward the weighing office, thereby
satisfying a small part of the Company’s claim against me for the
clothes I wore. My “buddy” had lost his child the night before, and this
afternoon the little one was to be buried in the graveyard on the hill
back of the town. He asked me, as though requesting a favor, whether he
might attend the funeral! Asked me, almost a stranger, whether he might
attend the funeral of his own child! Heavens, what a system! My heart was
so heavy that I could not work, but he seemed to take it all as a matter
of course. In fact I detected a cheerful note in his voice as he informed
me of the demise.

During the afternoon I had nothing to do but carry the picks out to the
blacksmith-shop to be sharpened, for which service we are to pay the
smith each a dollar per month. After they were prepared I returned with
them to the mine and employed the time in looking into the other rooms
where the miners were at work. In almost every instance I found them
idle. Inquiry revealed the fact that they were waiting for coal-boxes.
They had plenty of coal to load, but no boxes to load it in. The Company
makes it a practice to allow no man to get ahead. Once he falls into
their grasp the idea is to keep him there. Even at thirty-five cents per
long ton, the price paid, the miner could make fair wages if he were
furnished boxes, but the Company does not intend that he shall make fair
wages.

Our room advanced rapidly now, and we always had coal ahead to load what
boxes came to us, which were few enough. The most we ever got in any
one day was six, that is three for each of us, and could we succeed in
placing a ton in each one we would have made the munificent sum of $1.05.
Out of that princely wage we were supposed to pay for board, lodging,
hospital fees, blacksmith, and powder. By the way, there is the greatest
steal perpetrated by the coal companies. They furnish the miner with his
powder at a cost to him of $2.50 per keg. Of course they do not say in
so many words that he shall not buy his powder from other dealers at 90
cents per keg, but if he does do that they see to it that his tenure in
the mine is very short, and they have divers ways of disposing of him
without discharging him outright.

There are two methods of mining soft coal. The method used in Mine 33
was what is known technically as “shooting off the solid,” that is,
drilling a deep hole in the solid coal body and blasting it down very
much as rock is blasted in railroad building operations. This method,
while it procures the greatest amount of coal with the least expenditure
of labor, is at the same time very expensive to the miner who must buy
his powder and in addition to his regular blacksmith tax must pay for the
sharpening of all the drill bits.

It is in these blasting operations that so many men in soft-coal mines
lose their lives. The force of the blast loosening the coal at the same
time jars the slate roof of the mine. When the workman returns and starts
picking down the standing column of “shot” coal the treacherous top gives
way, and, like a deadfall, buries the unfortunate man beneath tons of
slate. Then there are three bells signaled to the top and down comes
the padded car, if the man is not entirely dead, and he is carted away
to the hut miscalled a hospital. The next day some of his friends are
around with a paper and each miner is supposed to contribute a box of
coal to the relief of the injured miner. Should the accident, however,
result in the instant death of the man there is no such ceremony as
calling the padded car. He is simply dumped into an empty coal box and
hauled to the surface with the next trip going out. Once there, his very
existence is forgotten in the mine and work goes on as before. The same
formality regarding the gift of the box of coal is gone through with for
the benefit of his widow and orphans. In all my mining experience I never
knew of a miner refusing to subscribe to a fund of this kind, though they
could ill afford to do so out of the scanty wage they were earning. You
feel inclined to do it, for you know not what instant you will yourself
require like assistance.

One method employed by the Company in getting rid of an objectionable
miner is so ingenuous in its simplicity that it deserves mention. They
have what is known as a sulphur bell. If a miner loads a lump of sulphur
into his box that is so large that he might be supposed to detect it the
men at the screens pull a rope that rings a bell in the weighing-office
and the unfortunate miner has a check placed against his number. He
not only has that box of coal docked about half, but he gets a demerit
as well. Three of these demerits results in his dismissal from the
mine. Now, let us illustrate. In the first place, there is so much of
the sulphurous mineral scattered through the coal body that it is an
absolute impossibility to remove all of it down there in the half light
of the underground world. There is hardly a box of coal that reaches the
weighing scales that does not contain several pounds of the substance.
That some miners do place lumps of it in their boxes to increase the
weight is perfectly true. A miner becomes objectionable to the powers
that be by reason of talking too much (for some of them _do_ think and
express their thoughts to their fellows) and the powers that be decide
to get rid of him. They could simply call him into the office and hand
him his time, but that is not the policy. The word is passed to the man
at the bottom of the screens to “bell” Number so and so out. The Argus
eye of the man is upon every box of coal that comes sliding down the
incline. He hears this man’s number called and detects a lump of sulphur
sliding along with the descending coal. He reaches up, yanks the bell
rope and that miner is one-third out of a job. It may take several days
to complete the task, but Fate is no more certain than that it will be
completed. Usually a miner who knows himself to be under the ban and sees
a sulphur check opposite his number takes the hint and calls for his
time. Wonderfully simple. Charmingly effective.

Another and equally effective method is that of slow starvation. The
banned miner finds that he is not getting an equal number of boxes
with his fellows. He complains to the driver and obtains but scant
satisfaction. Things go on until pay-day and he finds himself behind
with the company. He is questioned very closely as to the reason for this
and solemnly warned not to allow it to occur again. Naturally it does
occur again and he is forced to look elsewhere for work.

These instances are, however, comparatively rare. It is the policy of the
octopus to hold securely every victim who falls into the slimy toils.
Only when a man has the courage to assert his manhood does he become
objectionable to the company. So complete is the system that there are
few such.

It does not require one skilled in the economics of the labor problem
to point out the glaring evils of a coal-mining system. They are so
evident that even he who runs may read. They are so patent that even the
dull creatures who toil under them feel in a blank way that something
is wrong. Just what, they cannot say. They realize that they are always
hungry, always toiling and always in debt. There are three things that
the strong arm of the judiciary should suppress—child labor, peonage, and
weight frauds.

I have purposely placed child labor first, for it deserves the first
place. Children of very tender years are forced into the mines, where
they serve in various capacities, some of them even being utilized by
their parents in the actual mining operations. This is done that the
parent may obtain an extra supply of coal boxes by reason of his having a
“buddy,” though the coal is all loaded out under his number. Principally,
however, the little fellows are employed as “trappers,” to open and
close the immense valves that direct the air current down the various
entries. All day long these infants stand in the noisome draft and swing
back and forth those heavy doors. With the strong current of air pushing
or pulling against these valves it is no light task for even a man to
perform. Then the damp air, playing about the half clad figure, induces
colds, pneumonia and consumption. It is a rare thing to see one of these
little “trappers” who is not coughing with some form of respiratory
trouble. The parents lie cheerfully regarding the child’s age, and the
child itself lies just as cheerfully. Poor creatures, they are hardly to
be blamed! The few pennies that are thus obtained help to keep the almost
empty pot boiling at the squalid home.

The system of peonage is worse far than African slavery ever could have
been. From year’s end to year’s end the miner never sees money. He is
paid in coupon books good at the store for the necessities of life and
that is all he is expected to have, and precious few of them. In almost
every instance the Company has sold to the miner one of the miserable
houses, for which he is to pay a certain sum every month. The Company
proudly boast that their miners own their own homes. The miner is given a
contract to be held in escrow (by the Company) whereby upon the payment
of the purchase price he is to have a deed to the property. It is a very
significant fact that there were only eighteen deeds on record in Macon
County covering these properties. In other words, only eighteen miners
actually owned their homes. It was never the intention of the Company to
allow the miner to secure title to his “home.” If any considerable number
of them showed symptoms of making good on the payments, the Company had
many ways of causing them to default and thus violate the ironclad terms
of the contract.

The contention regarding weights is one of long standing. The miner is
supposed to mine a long ton of 2240 pounds. In reality he mines nearer
3000 pounds. The scales are hidden from the view of the miner and the
weigh boss cheerfully deducts from the weight of the miner’s box anything
that he sees fit and he usually sees fit to deduct about one fourth. This
systematic robbery is carried on all the time. Could the miner obtain
what his labor actually produces, his condition would be less miserable.
He does not obtain it, however, and he seems powerless to bring about
change. Now we will return to my own personal experiences in the mine.
Our room was a good one, save that the slate top was very treacherous
and we took particular care to keep it well timbered. My “buddy” was a
thorough miner and fully knew the virtue of propping the top perfectly.
The room had been driven up some sixty yards when the accident happened,
that brought home to me the dangers of mining.

We fired a fourteen-foot hole in the evening, before leaving the mine.
The next morning my “buddy” arrived before I did, and began loading the
box that was standing in the room. Upon my arrival I found the box half
filled, but my “buddy” nowhere in sight. A mass of slate had fallen and I
knew instinctively that my “buddy” was beneath the mass. I called some of
the nearby miners and, after propping the top, we fell to work removing
the debris. First an arm showed; then the entire body was exposed to
view. He had been instantly killed. I loaded the body into the half
filled box and accompanied it to the top. It became my duty to inform
the wife of the misfortune. She, poor woman, took the news stolidly,
as though she had long expected it. Indeed, I think they grow to look
forward to the time when the husband will be carried in, crushed out of
all semblance to a human being. We buried him in the bleak graveyard on
the hill and, as his “buddy,” it became my duty to carry around the paper
that asked assistance for the widow. In her stolid way, I suppose, she
was grateful for the charity, but she never showed it by any emotion of
the face, taking the whole thing as a matter of course.

It had been a very wet Spring and the falling rain had completely
saturated the ground and, soaking through, had loosened the slate and
soapstone top until falls were of almost daily occurrence. As yet we had
not been visited with any that were disastrous in nature. A few tons of
rock in some of the rooms, a miner killed or hurt, was about all. In
June, however, occurred the fall that imprisoned several hundred of the
miners in the West entries for two days. Down toward the beginning of
the first West an old deserted room caved in, carrying with it the top
above the entry proper. For several days the miners had noted that the
room was “working,” that is, the top was pressing upon the props. This
was evidenced by the collection of fine flakes of slate that covered
the room and the entry when we entered the mine in the morning. With
characteristic negligence the matter was passed up and nothing done but
to remove the iron track from the room. One day I paused at the mouth
of the room, attracted by a peculiar noise. At intervals there was a
sound like the snapping of an overwrought violin string. I afterward
learned that the sound was produced by the bending props throwing off
fine splinters. That evening when we passed out the props were snapping
as they broke under the enormous pressure. A faraway rumbling was heard,
like wagons passing over a covered bridge. The room was certain to fall
during the night, the old miners said.

It did not, however, for it was still “working” the next morning.
Sometime during the forenoon I heard a sound as of distant artillery
fire. Boom, boom, boom,—the sound came up the entry, causing a current of
air to flare the lights hither and yon. This continued for an hour; then
the room caved. There was a crash of falling stone, a sound impossible
to describe in any other words than terrible, a great gust of wind, and
every lamp in the entry was extinguished. We rushed down the entry to
find that all egress was shut off. The fall of the room had carried with
it the entry as well, and we were prisoners behind thirty feet of solid
rock. The pit boss instantly ordered every man to put out his light and
lie down. Every cubic foot of air must now be conserved, for it would
be hours at least before the pipe could be driven in to supply fresh.
There we lay in the Stygian blackness in that foul atmosphere waiting the
signal from the relief party. Hours passed, and no signal from the other
side. Every minute the air became more foul until at last we were panting
for breath, the sweat running from every pore. Then came the faint tap
that told us the rescue party was driving the pipe. Never a sound came
with such melody to my ears. It seemed an age before the steel-nosed pipe
broke through and a welcome rush of oxygen was forced in by the air-pump.
The pit boss signaled along the pipe that all was well. Then the work of
rescue began. All day they picked out and carted away the fallen rock.
All night the work went on without ceasing. Another day and another night
followed before they broke through the barrier, and we streamed out of
the mine, hungry, thirsty and weary from loss of sleep.

I was beginning to realize that while in time I might become an
accomplished coal-miner, my chances for living a long life to enjoy that
trade were exceedingly limited. I decided to sever my connection with the
Kansas and Texas Coal Company, fully realizing that the Company would not
mourn much at my loss, and I had no intention of falling on its neck to
weep at the parting.

The incident that crystallized my half-formed ideas into immediate action
took place in the room one day when I approached nearer the swift current
of the Dark River than I cared to do. By accident the driver shoved a
box into our room (by this time I had a new “buddy”) and we had no coal
with which to load it. A box was so valuable that we could not afford to
allow it to be taken out unloaded, so we cast about for sufficient coal
for the purpose. Sometime since we had shot a small blast on the pillar
and the pit boss, coming in, had ordered us to let it stand as we were
too far to the south. This shot was still standing. The coal was loose
and needed only to be mined off for us to have sufficient coal to load
out the box. That duty devolved upon me, and I shoved the box back and
began mining off the shot. In a short time I had it all cut round save
a small portion that I could not reach with the pick. I returned to the
“face” and procured a long chum drill and with it began to cut down the
standing coal. I was seated tailor-like upon the floor, my legs doubled
under me. When the coal mass gave way it rolled toward me and pressing
the drill across my body pinioned me beneath it. I felt no danger, for my
“buddy” could soon extricate me from the position. I called to him and
he started in my direction. As he did so I glanced up and was horrified
to see several yards of the slate top easing downward. Frantically I
grasped the drill that was binding me down and gave it a wrench. It gave
and another wrench broke it in twain. To flop over and crawl on my hands
and knees out of the way of danger was only the work of an instant. As
I did so the great slab fell, tearing off my shoe soles as though they
were but paper. I owe my life to the fact that the top did not give way
instantly, but broke gradually. So thoroughly frightened was I that I sat
in a stupor for some time. When I had sufficiently recovered to be able
to walk I made my way out of the mine, went to my boarding place, removed
my pit garments and bade Ardmore a lasting and affectionate farewell.

I have torn a few soiled and tattered leaves from my book of life and
have here given them to you. That the story is not well told I fully
realize. That it is true in every particular must stand its only merit.

[Illustration]




_The Pessimist; His View-Point_


Sermons should be practiced before they are preached.

A reformer’s idea of fun is to spoil other people’s fun.

No man can fix a clock and at the same time sing a hymn.

Sacrifices on the altar of foolishness never cease for lack of material.

I wonder why they don’t charter Polygamy under the laws of New Jersey.

There are a great many more fools in the world than they have any idea of.

Sometimes they are editorials, and the rest of the time they are
idiotorials.

And, oh, if the great problems solved by the graduates would only stay
solved!

The reason why I am so well is that I have always been too poor to stay
long at a health resort.

There are two kinds of women who cannot be reasoned with: the one in love
and the one not in love.

The best way to preserve the beauty of a finely shaped nose is to keep it
out of other people’s business.

                                                           TOM P. MORGAN.




[Illustration: THOSE THAT ARE JOINED TOGETHER

BY CHARLES FORT]


You are standing on an Eighth Avenue corner, looking down a side street
toward the ugly black streak made by the Ninth Avenue elevated railroad.
You see peddlers, right hands curving at the sides of their mouths, left
hands holding pails of potatoes; a woman with a basket of wash, which
is tucked under a sheet; many fire escapes that look like a jumbling of
giant gridirons, when seen from the corner. You notice the signs over
doorways: a gilded boot; a carpenter’s sign projecting a little farther;
glazier’s sign, of stained-glass squares trying to eclipse signs of
shoemaker and carpenter; tailor’s sign almost obscuring all of them.
In the tailor-shop windows are prints of the latest fashions, labeled,
“Types of American Gents.” American gents, going to work, in overalls and
sweaters, pause to enjoy the very latest in riding, golf, and hunting
costumes, and perhaps go in to order a three-dollar pair of breeches.
The tailor shop occupies the first floor of a three-story frame house—a
grimy-looking house; its grimy clapboards are stained by streaks of rain
dripping from the rusty fire-escape.

The McGibneys lived in the second-floor rooms. McGibney was log-shaped;
he seemed as big around at his ankles as at his chest, and, though
he wore collars, it was because everyone else wore collars, and not
because his neck was perceptible. Close-cropped hair, a rather sharp
nose, bright, alert eyes, cheeks red and all other visible parts of him
pinkish. Mrs. McGibney was a plump, delicately featured little woman,
who could express most amazing firmness upon her small features. When
she had household cares, she worried; when she had household duties, she
bustled. And it would surely please you to look at Mrs. McGibney when
she worried; left forefinger beginning over the fingers of the right
hand; left forefinger lodging on right little finger, Mrs. McGibney
pausing to look into space, counting up to assure herself that the
butcher had not cheated; forefinger beginning again and dealing with the
grocer, this time; another fixed look into space to be sure the grocer
had not imagined a can of tomatoes or a pound of flour. It would please
you, because you would know that not one penny, worked so hard for by
McGibney, would be wasted. When Mrs. McGibney bustles—ah, now that is
pretty! That means a very keen sense of responsibility, nothing shirked,
nothing that will make McGibney’s comfort neglected. Bustling to the oven
door, opening and shutting it; fingers dabbing at under lip and sizzling
on under side of a flat iron; frying-pan moved back on the stove; quick,
short steps to the table to roll out breadcrumbs; dash to a window to
sharpen a knife on the sill—when Mrs. McGibney bustles!

Evening! Both of them in the cheerful kitchen. Very cheerful kitchen!
Three conch-shells, like big pink ears, up on the mantelpiece, and four
palm leaves, painted green, stuck in a flower pot, just like a bit of
Florida. The dish-pan, on the stove murmuring; a subdued rattle and
good-natured growling of bubbles forming on the bottom of the pan, and
dishes fluttering on them. The oil-cloth was bright and new-looking,
except in the corner where heavy McGibney sat. There, chair legs had
indented as if someone had beaten around at random with a hammer. And in
his corner, reading the newspaper, sat McGibney, his wife sitting beside
the table his elbow was on, frowning, puzzling, and counting her fingers.
“Yes,” said Mrs. McGibney, “I can keep expenses down to five dollars a
week, but you mustn’t charge on my book what you spend. I don’t think I
ought to mark down the cent for your newspaper, do you? I’m not going to
have my book any more than it’s got to be. I’ll cross off this two cents
for a stamp. Now, you know you oughtn’t to charge me for that; it was for
your own letter—don’t sit like that! How often have I told you you ruin
the oil-cloth?”

McGibney not only continued to tilt back and dig into the oil-cloth but
rocked himself on the hind legs of the chair; one is sometimes tempted to
torment severe little women when they are too serious.

“Oh, I don’t care; you’re not harming me. Go ahead, if you feel like
paying for new oil-cloth.” McGibney could not sit straight without some
demonstration to cover his accession; he put out fingers like tongs and
pinched just above her knee. If you are an old married man, you know just
how far from dignified and severe that immediately made McGibney. Then
McGibney sat straight, sat as if he would have sat straight anyway.

A rap on the door. Mrs. McGibney put away her account book as if it were
wrong to keep account-books; McGibney sat crooked as if it were wrong
to sit straight. No matter what one is doing, one feels that someone
else coming makes a difference. Mrs. McGibney started toward the door,
went to the stove instead, and covered the dish-pan; started again but
paused to twitch a curtain; finally got to the door and opened it, but
had glanced back twice and had motioned to McGibney to put away a bag of
crackers.

“Oh, it’s you, Clara?” exclaimed Mrs. McGibney. “Why, come right in!”

Into the room came a stocky person, with a broad, flat, amiable face.
Everything about her seemed to suggest that she was made to work hard
and suffer, usually not complain, but, quite without reasoning, flash
into short-lived rebellion against hardships now and then. Like your
impression of peasantry more than a century ago, down-trodden, without
leaders, should be your impression of Clara. In her heavy arms was a huge
bundle, done up in a sheet, four corners of the sheet hanging loose at
top. She appeared to be carrying a monstrous turnip, all white, loose
ends like white turnip-tops.

“Why, good evening!” said Clara awkwardly, turning to the right, turning
to the left, with her huge bundle, looking for a place to set it down,
but still clinging to it, her chin buried in the top of it, the big
bundle making her look like a pouter-pigeon.

“Mrs. McGibney,” said Clara, turning to the right, to the left, still
clinging, “I don’t like to ask you, knowing you ain’t got accommodations,
but could you lend me the loan of your ironing-board for the night? I’ve
flew the coop on him for good and all this time, and tomorrow will get a
room for myself; but, if you can let me have your ironing-board, I can
sleep on it here, on the floor tonight. This is my wash, which I brought
with me, not to leave him so much as a stitch that’s mine. Would it be
too much to ask for your ironing-board?”

“Why, put down that heavy bundle, Clara!” cried Mrs. McGibney, having
dabbed at the bundle, but missed it; “it’s sopping wet!”

“Sopping wet!” repeated Mrs. McGibney, as if pleased. And she was
pleased, for here was an occasion for her to bustle around the room.
Very much did Mrs. McGibney like to bustle around a room. And Clara, by
the door, sat at the table at the other end of which McGibney sat.

“It’s wet because I just took it in off the line, not to leave him
anything of mine,” said Clara. She moved uneasily in her chair. And she
winked, as if in physical distress.

“I can’t move my line, because the rain’s made it too tight,” said Mrs.
McGibney, “but we can hang up the wash here to dry. Ironing-board?
Ironing-board, how are you!” She pounced upon the huge turnip, seizing
turnip-tops, plucking them apart. “No, but we can make you comfortable
in the front room, Clara.” Sheet spread out and wash in a mound. “And
you’ve carried this with you all the way through the streets? I’ll fix up
lines.” Two parallel lines, rigged up one from each end of the table to
the opposite wall, sheets thrown over them; kitchen looking like Monday
morning in your back yard. Room divided into three compartments: Clara
in one, by the door; middle one, including the table, reserved for Mrs.
McGibney; McGibney isolated in the third. Mrs. McGibney hung wash on the
backs of chairs, and, forgetting how picture frames collect dust, jumped
up at comers of picture frames, with more wash. Then she returned to her
chair, which was in the middle compartment.

“Not bothering you too much,” began timid Clara. An expression of pain
suddenly shot across her broad face. “Oh,” she breathed, “I guess that
must be the tintypes! Anyway, don’t bother about me. Oh! yes, I’m sure
it’s the tintypes. Tintypes has such sharp corners, even if there is pink
paper frames to them. I had nowhere else to carry my belongings, which
I’d not leave behind, as I have flew the coop on him.”

Clara stuck one foot out and lifted her skirt somewhat. Untied a
handkerchief from somewhere, though I have heard that the material is
usually more elastic—never mind; in a most matter-of-fact way, Clara
untied the handkerchief. As if it were the most natural thing in the
world to do, and very serious about it, she delved and drew forth an
alarm clock, a comb, shoe-strings, a looking-glass, a tea-strainer, a box
of matches, the tintypes——

“It was the tintypes!” cried Clara. “I knew, because they got such sharp
corners and was sticking me, all the way over, most every step I took.”

Mrs. McGibney and McGibney, who drew his sheet aside, stared at the
astonishing collection on the table and then laughed heartily. Clara,
looking calm and unintelligent, drew forth a can of baking powder.
Nothing to laugh at could she see, but the others seemed amused, so she
smiled sympathetically with them.

“Yes,” said Clara, no longer timid, for it was her way to be awkward at
first and then feel as much at home as anybody, “I’ve flew the coop on
him forever. I’ve said I meant it before, but this time I do mean it.
And he can be so nice when he wants to be. You know that yourself, Mrs.
McGibney.”

“He always seemed a perfect little gentleman whenever I saw him,”
declared Mrs. McGibney.

“It’s a shame you two can’t get along better!” was heard from behind
McGibney’s sheet. “I’ve always found Tommy all right.”

And Clara exclaimed: “He’s the nicest little man in the world! This time
I have flew the coop on him forever.” She smiled at her sheet, so that no
one within hearing should be depressed, just because she had troubles.

“I don’t know!” said Clara, with her broad, slow smile, “it’s pretty hard
for a woman to come home from her day’s work, and find the man stretched
on the floor before her sleeping it off. Isn’t it?” she asked, as if by
no means sure and wishing to hear what others thought.

From behind two sheets:

“It certainly is hard!”

Rumbling up over McGibney’s sheet:

“You hadn’t ought to put up with it! It is hard!”

“Isn’t it!” cried Clara, as if crying. “There, I was right, after all!
I thought, myself, it was hard, and here’s others thinks the same. And
then, when you’re getting along nice, both working and laying by a
little, and going to buy the brass lamp in Mason’s window, and get a
whole half-ton of coal instead of by the bag, which is robbery, and then
he goes out to change the savings into one big bill which you’d never be
tempted to break, and comes back in the morning without one cent—” Clara
paused. She would not like to be ridiculed for regarding trifles too
seriously. “I don’t think he does right by me—does he?”

Both sheets agitated. Over both sheets:

“He certainly don’t do right by you!”

“Does he!” cried Clara, almost excited, also triumphant, hearing her own
suspicions verified.

“He oughter be ashamed of hisself!” rumbled McGibney.

Clara looked up, and there was a slow heavy frown, instead of the slow
heavy smile.

“There’s worse than him!” she said sharply.

“I’ll never speak to him again!” declared Mrs. McGibney.

“You might speak to worse, Mrs. McGibney. I’m sure he always spoke most
kind of you——”

“How could he speak otherwise of me?” demanded Mrs. McGibney in quick
anger.

“Now! now! now!” rumbled McGibney, thrusting his sheet aside and looking
warningly at his wife.

“Not making you a sharp answer, Mrs. McGibney,” pursued thick, slow,
heavy Clara, “he never said nothing but kind words of you. There’s lots
worse than him and he was always a good husband to me, excepting when he
was bad, and I hope I’ll never lay my two eyes onto him again.”

And Mrs. McGibney looked at the McGibney sheet as if to say, “You’d best
always keep quiet!” and her resentment was over, for she was fond of
Clara and had known her many years.

“I’ll get a pint of beer,” said McGibney. “Can I leave youse two without
there being a clinch? You like a little ale in it, don’t you, Clara?”

“Don’t never mind me!” said Clara restlessly. “I just remember I left the
gas burning and him sleeping his buns off. Do you think the gas would
go out and then start up again and not burning? I’ve heard tell of such
cases. Not meaning to go back to him, maybe I’d better go back and turn
the gas out.”

“Do go back, Clara!” urged Mrs. McGibney, feeling through the sheet for
Clara’s hand and impulsively seizing Clara’s nose, trying again for the
hand, closing fingers upon Clara’s ear, Clara leaning over, with head
near her knees, “Give him another chance. A wife’s place is at home.
Don’t mind what others tell you—your husband is dearer to you than all
the rest of the world. Go back and make him promise to do better.”

“I don’t wish him no harm,” said Clara, hesitatingly. “This time I’ve
flew the coop on him forever, even if he is the nicest little man in the
world when he has a mind to be—if I thought the gas would go out on him,
I might go back and turn down the gas, anyway.”

Oh, then, here was a fine chance for Mrs. McGibney to bustle. Down came
everything on the lines, as if it were Monday night in the back yard.
Down came everything from the backs of chairs and from picture frames.
Back into a bundle with everything! Big white turnip again, loose,
sprawling turnip-tops.

“I might try him again for a week, anyway,” decided Clara. Out and
away and back home with her big white, turnip and its pouter-pigeon
effect, too bulky for her arms to go around, her chin lost in fluttering
turnip-tops; back home with bundle, alarm clock, looking-glass, box of
baking-powder and tintypes taken one almost impossibly happy day at Coney
Island.

An evening or two later. McGibney out for a walk. Mrs. McGibney up to
her elbows in the washing that had driven him out, for if he had remained
in he would have had to carry boilers of water to the stove from the sink
in the hall. So McGibney had said, “Marietta, I ain’t getting fresh air
enough. I don’t sleep good unless I take a little walk in the evening.”
Mrs. McGibney had to fill the boiler one dishpanful at a time and that
was satisfactory to McGibney.

Rap on the door. Mrs. McGibney quickly concealed socks with holes in them
and turned to the door. Vain little Mrs. McGibney! She paused to rummage
through the wash until she found curtains. They were very fine lace
curtains. The very fine curtains were placed where a caller would surely
see them and note how very fine they were. Then Mrs. McGibney’s hand did
around and around on the door knob, hand slippery with soap-suds, until
the slipperiness wore off and she could open the door. She exclaimed:
“Why, Tommy! come right in.” The “nicest little man in the world” was an
uneasy, squirming, twisting, little man; bald-headed; Hebraic nose like
a number six inclining at forty-five degrees; chin with a dimple looking
like a bit gouged out of it; very neat; fussy. And a very polite little
man, scraping, bowing, grinning.

“Sit down, Tommy. You won’t have much room to stir. The old man is out,
but will be back almost any minute. Sit down, but first I’ll trouble you
to fill the boiler for me, if you don’t mind. How is Clara?”

Tommy seemed to scrape and bow to the boiler, before lifting it, seemed
to scrape with his right foot and bow to the wash-tub as he passed it and
went scraping and bowing down to the sink, filled the boiler, came back
with it, set it on the stove and stood grinning, prepared to scrape and
bow, if given half a chance to, until invited again to sit down.

“My!” said Mrs. McGibney, “the wash does gather on one so!”

Tommy opened his eyes wide and wrinkled his forehead to express
profoundest sympathy. Not only with eyes and forehead, but with elbows,
feet, knees and hands, it was his way to show how very attentively he
listened to anyone speaking to him; ready to laugh heartily at anything
he might be expected to smile at; equally ready to commiserate with
anybody.

“Are you feeling pretty well?”—soap dabbed on a McGibney shirt. “How
is—” laundry-brush up and down where the soap was, which was at elbows;
McGibney _would_ lean on elbows. “Clara? Is she—” up and down with the
shirt on the wash-board—“feeling pretty—” wringing out and dropping shirt
on pile, on a newspaper, “well?” Pile too high and toppling over, top
pieces falling on the floor outside the newspaper. Not a speck on them,
but rubbing over for them, anyway.

“Oh, yes, ma’am; Clara is very well. I have left her.”

“You’ve what? You’ve left her?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am!” said Tommy, head bobbing, shoulders, arms, knees, all
of him bobbing. “I called to see would you keep these tintypes for me?
I’m going to Maddy-gascar, where I hear there’s openings.”

“Why, Tommy, what’s the matter?”

“She don’t keep the house picked up—not saying a word against her,”
answered Tommy. “These tintypes is mine, and she can have everything
else; but these is mine, and it was my money paid for them down to Coney
Island, me and her in them, and all I got in the world I care about, and
will you keep them for me till I can send for them from Maddy-gascar?”

“Why, of course I’ll do that, Tommy; but you know you’d never do such a
thing as leave Clara. That would be very wrong of you.”

“Oh, yes, indeed, ma’am, very wrong of me! Not saying one word against
her, she lies in bed all day and won’t so much as do any sweeping.
There’s never any cooking, and I’m tired to death of the delicatessens
and rather go to Maddy-gascar and eat spiders, me going in the spider-web
industry there. She don’t do no wash like you, Mrs. McGibney, but just
rinses out in cold water. She’s so lazy she washes dishes by rubbing
newspapers on them. That ain’t so bad as when she does wash them; she
washes clothes in the dish-pan and then washes dishes after them—not that
I’d say one word against her. So, will you mind the tintypes with her and
me in them, ma’am? They’re all I have to care about, ma’am.”

“Oh, now Tommy—” But how could one possibly argue with Tommy? With eyes
and forehead and elbows and knees, he would most emphatically agree with
everything said to him.

“Your wife is a very good woman.”

Of course she was! Best in the city! Best in the whole world! But would
Mrs. McGibney care for the tintypes?

“It’s very wrong of you, Tommy!”

Wrong? Shocking! Heartless! Wicked, shocking, heartless Tommy! Of course
he was, and he admitted every word of it; but would Mrs. McGibney take
care of the tintypes until he could send from “Maddy-gascar” for them?

Tommy left the tintypes on the mantelpiece, hoping he was disturbing
nothing by so doing; imploring Mrs. McGibney not to bother with them
if she thought they would take up too much room, begging her to throw
them in the ashes or burn them, or jump on them if they should be the
slightest annoyance to her; then he went away.

Back in five minutes. Well, after all, “Maddy-gascar” was pretty far away
and he had heard stories about the Esquimaux there, so he would take the
tintypes back with him; Clara might wonder where they were. Five minutes
later. Back again. Perhaps Mrs. McGibney had better not say anything to
anyone about the tintype matter. Bowing, bobbing, scraping.

Oh, not a word would Mrs. McGibney say! Rest assured of that! Indeed, she
had quite enough to do in attending to her own affairs. Mrs. McGibney
promised to say nothing, and like a busy little housewife with too much
to do to waste time gossiping, breathed not a word of it till McGibney
came in.

“It’s all Tommy’s fault!” said McGibney.

“I’m afraid Clara is a good deal to blame,” said Mrs. McGibney.

“Oh, yes, always stand up for the man, of course!”

“Oh, yes, take the woman’s part every time, won’t you?”

The next time the McGibneys saw Clara, there was no persuading her to go
home. She had no home.

“Because,” said Clara, “when we found there wasn’t no use in our trying
to get along together, we just broke up and gave away everything in the
rooms and went down the stairs and down the stoop together. We didn’t so
much as say good-bye nor nothing; he went up the street and I went down.”

“That’s right!” declared McGibney, “when two people can’t get along
together, it’s best for them to part, I say!”

“You say!” cried indignant Mrs. McGibney. And scornful Mrs. McGibney!

“Well, I’m entitled to speak, ain’t I?” grumbled McGibney.

“No!” firmly. “Leastwise, not when you talk like that.” She looked her
scorn and continued:

“No, Clara, there’s nobody dearer to any woman than her own husband.”
Looked at McGibney as if he were a pile of wash just toppled over into
the ash-pan. “Your husband will be with you when others are far away.”
Looked at him as if he were two piles of wash toppled over into three
ash-pans. “There ain’t any luck in any such advice as he’s giving you.
I know how I love my own dear husband, and you know you’re the same,
and you’ll find what the world is when you’re alone in it.” Glared her
indignation, scorn, contempt for McGibney, who mumbled, with an air of
sagacity, astonishing to himself:

“Ain’t wimmen the queer things, though!”

“I’ve flew the coop on him forever!” said Clara, with her broad, amiable,
unintelligent smile. “I got a little hall room for myself, and—me go back
to him? Oh, my! is that a step on the stairs? I wouldn’t wish it, not for
the world, for him to find me here! I never want to see the face of him
again!” Clara looked around for a place to hide; ran to the door of the
front room, and, with her hand on the knob, stood listening.

“’Tain’t him! It’s someone going upstairs,” she said, smiling her relief.
“I’ll never go back to him.”

A week later. Clara again. And Clara was out of breath.

“Oh, Mrs. McGibney, has the man come yet? I thought I saw him over on
Ninth Avenue, and I run clear around the block for fear he’d be after
me and track me here. I was just buying a bit of furniture and going to
start rooms for myself, when I get a few bits together. And is it too
much to ask you to store them for me till I get rooms, Mrs. McGibney?”

“We’re only too glad—” began Mrs. McGibney.

“Oh, on your life, don’t stir! It’s him! He mustn’t know where I am,
or he might try to get me back! I don’t never want to see him again!”
whispered Clara. “On your life, not giving no orders, don’t stir, or
he’ll know you’re in and see me here.”

There was a rap on the door.

“Oh, my! Look out—would he hear us?”

Out in the hall:

“McGibney! Anyone know where McGibney lives?”

“Oh!” breathed Clara, “that’s all right. It’s the furniture men.”

And two men from a Ninth Avenue furniture store came in with a bureau.
At least they set it in the hall, and turned to hasten down the stairs;
paused to do little better than that, and rolled the bureau half way into
the room; turned to run back to the store, but, in turning, thrust back
with their heels, and pushed the bureau quite into the room, which was
conscientious enough delivering of goods to suit anybody.

“I bought that!” said Clara, proudly. The bureau was rolled into the
front room, and she helped, her hands caressing more than pushing. There
was no back to the bureau. The varnish was worn off. Some one had broken
open the top drawer, splintering the wood on each side of the keyhole.

“It’s mine!” said Clara rapturously. “It took three days of hard
scrubbing on hands and knees, for me to buy that. It’ll be every bit
as good as new, with a few boards nailed on the back, and a little oil
rubbed over it.”

The bureau was rolled to a corner of the front room, but Clara could not
leave it, hovering over it, stooping and pulling out drawers, one by one,
gazing delightedly at the disgraceful old wreck.

“Yes!” said Clara. “The other day when I was scrubbing the restaurant
floor, there was customers looking at me, and they says, ‘Look at that
poor woman! Ain’t some got hard lots in life!’ They needn’t of pitied me!
I was earning that! Just a few boards and a little oil is all it needs,
and I’ll get as fine a home together as anybody’s got—what’s that?”

Clara ran to the kitchen to listen.

“I’m so afraid he’ll find me that I do be hearing sounds all the time!”
she said. “Ain’t that bureau something elegant? I’ll have my own bit of a
home and never see him again.” Then, as McGibney came out to the kitchen,
shutting the front-room door behind him, she asked;

“Ain’t that sounds of excitement in the street? Maybe there’s a fire!”
Clara ran to the front room and pretended to look out the window. She had
heard nothing; it was only a pretext to get back to the disgraceful old
wreck. On her own hands and knees she had earned it.

“Ain’t it nice!” said Clara, ecstatically. “I got my eye on a gilt-framed
mirror I’ll buy next week. It’s nice, ain’t it?”

Clara went away. Back in five minutes.

“I guess maybe I left my rolled-up apron in the front room.” Whether she
had or not, she stood looking at the bureau; turned to go; looked again;
moved it to get a better light on it; stepped toward the door; paused
and looked back.

“I bought that!”

And she went away, leaving McGibney standing in the front room. With an
expression of deep melancholy he stood looking at the clumsy, broken
bureau. He looked at his best furniture surrounding it—fragile, gilded
chairs, on a big rug better than any other rug in the neighborhood—a
sideboard with French plate glass in it; the very fine curtains. He was
a log-shaped man, and not remarkably æsthetic, but his eye was sorely
offended.

“Oh, well,” said the melancholy, log-shaped man, “if us poor folks
don’t help each other, who will?” And the eye of Mrs. McGibney was
equally offended; but Mrs. McGibney was not melancholy, for here was an
opportunity for her to bustle. Out with the sofa and around in front
of the bureau! The standing lamp placed where it would help to conceal
the bureau. To hide the bureau was quite a problem, but Mrs. McGibney
rejoiced in it. She bustled.

The next Saturday night Clara bought a wicker rocking-chair.
Fearful-looking old rocking-chair! Interstices of it filled with white
paint; all paint worn off wherever arms, legs, and backs had rested on it.

“It’s nice, ain’t it?” said Clara, dreamily, fondly.

McGibney sat straight, as if he had just dug through the oil-cloth and
feared reprimanding. Then he fell back limply.

“Yes, ve-ry,” he said, without enthusiasm.

“It’ll fill out your front room nice, while I’m waiting for it, won’t it?”

“Oh, ye-es; it’ll be ve-ry nice.”

“And so comfortable!” said Clara. She sat in the chair and clumsily
rocked it. “Try it, Mrs. McGibney! You ain’t got no idea how comfortable
it is. You sit in it, Mr. McGibney. Just lie back and push with your feet
and see what a comfort it is. My! I can just see myself in it, me with my
shoes off and resting after the day. Such comfort in it! I don’t guess I
ever made such a bargain before. But what do you think? That mirror I was
so set on was bought! That’s mean, ain’t it? I was awful provoked when
I heard it. Just the same, I got my eye on a stove that’s fine and well
worth the four dollars they ask for it. It’s all nickel in front, and
only one of the bricks broken, and can be fixed with five cents’ worth of
fire-clay. It’ll look nice in your front room, won’t it?”

“Ve-ry nice!” answered distressed McGibney.

Clara got up to go. Had to sink back and take another rock in the chair,
so comfortable after the day’s work, and one’s shoes off. It was indeed
worth scrubbing for! Up to go. Well, just one more rock—away back and
slowly down again, you know. And you, too, look again at it! My! but what
a bargain! And Clara bought it! On her own hands and knees she had earned
it. Before going away, Clara lingered at the door. Perhaps they would
laugh at her if she should take another rock, but she might look at the
chair for another moment.

“Ain’t this pretty oil-cloth you got!” Looking only at the chair.

“I must get a kitchen table like yours.” Looking only at her own
rocking-chair. She left McGibney staring gloomily, but saying, sturdily:

“Us poor folks must help each other!”

Mrs. McGibney bustled.

It was a different Clara when seen again. Her face was flushed; the
unintelligent but soft eyes were like eyes that could not see outward
things, as if they were engaged in the unusual occupation of looking
within at her own mind. Convince Clara that she had a grievance, and
thick, obstinate brooding replaced uncomplaining stolidity.

By force of habit, Clara’s slow, amiable smile flickered, but her eyes
were as if turned upon brooding within.

“Someone’s did that a-purpose!” said Clara, slowly, deliberately,
staring, seeming to see neither McGibney nor Mrs. McGibney. “Me that
thought I didn’t have a enemy in the world! Where would I get a enemy,
me always kind to everybody? I had my heart set on that stove that only
needed a little fire-clay. Someone’s bought it, just to annoy me. When
the mirror went, I didn’t think nothing of it, but the stove too, is to
annoy me. They won’t make nothing by that, and bad luck will come upon
them for it.”

“Why, Clara, it only happened that way,” reasoned Mrs. McGibney. “Nobody
would go and be as mean as that to you, specially as they’d have to spend
money.”

“It’s tricks done me!” declared sullen, dogged Clara. “Oh, there’s
somebody at the door. Maybe it’s him after me. Say I’m not here, Mrs.
McGibney! On your life, don’t let him find me! I got to work for my
living, anyway, and I’ll work for myself and not divide with no man.
Never—oh, I guess it’s the kitchen table!”

“A kitchen table, Clara?” demanded McGibney. “Did you say a kitchen
table?”

“Yes!” said Clara, brightening. “It’s nice! You can put it in the centre
of your front room and maybe have ornaments onto it. It’s a very nice
kitchen table.”

Door opened; a table thrust into the room; heels flying down the stairs.

“Don’t you think it’s nice?” Clara asked eagerly.

“Nice?” repeated honest McGibney. “Oh, is that the table?”

Scratched legs to it; two plain boards forming the top of it; heads of
nails sunk in the boards, and once filled with putty; putty fallen out.

Clara shook it to show that the legs were firm. She would varnish
it and cover it with a beautiful table cover she had seen in the
five-and-ten-cent store, though there was one just as good in the
three-and-nine-cent store.

“Next week,” said brightened Clara, “it’s going to be portcheers.
They’re chenille and grand for a doorway. No room ain’t complete without
portcheers.” She again shook the table to show how firm the legs were and
then went away.

McGibney and Mrs. McGibney stood out on the front stoop of the
rust-stained frame house, looking at the tailor, who was putting up a new
sign: “Pants pressed, ten cents. Full-dress suits cleaned and pressed,
one dollar.” McGibney thought of “full-dress” suits and looked down the
street, at rags and dirt and ashes. It was Saturday night and they were
going over to Ninth Avenue, to Paddy’s Market. Along came Clara, reaching
the stoop, starting up the stoop, half up the stoop before she saw the
McGibneys.

“Oh, is it you?” said Clara, with only the beginning of the slow, amiable
smile.

“The portcheers is gone!” she said, without excitement. “My heart was
set on them—the portcheers has gone. Would you say to me, now, that it
only happens that way, Mrs. McGibney? Is there somebody playing mean, low
tricks on me, or ain’t there? Does three times in succession just happen?
The portcheers was bought last Monday. Was that only accident? Oh, but
I came around to see would you lend me fifty cents? There’s a hat-rack
I want. It’s meant for a front hall, but the mirror in it is nice and
there’s a bit of marble to it, and it’ll look nice in my rooms, where,
to my longest day, no man’ll ever hang his hat on it, unless you, Mr.
McGibney, when you and Mrs. McGibney come and see me. I don’t like to ask
you for fifty cents, Mrs. McGibney, and you just going to do your bit of
marketing.”

“There’s fifty dollars in the bank that you can have any time you say so,
Clara!” exclaimed McGibney.

“We’d rather have you owing it than have it in the bank, Clara,” said
Mrs. McGibney, “because the bank might bust.”

Clara looked embarrassed. “Don’t you want to come look at the hat-rack?”
she asked. “It’ll set your front room off fine!” The McGibneys pinched
each other’s arms, as if saying, “Oh, Lord, preserve us!” All three went
down the street toward Ninth Avenue, Clara preferring one side of the
street; then, thinking the other side was darker, choosing the darker
side so that if they should meet “him” he might not recognize them.

Torches on wagons, wagonloads of oranges, twenty for twenty-five cents;
pairs of rabbits slung on headless barrels, plump rabbits hanging
outside, furry rags, shot to pieces, inside the barrels; piles of soup
greens and mounds of cabbages; cries of “Everything cheap! Only a few
more left!” Paddy’s Market! Then the second-hand furniture store, with
bed springs and pillows outside it; stoves with covers and legs in the
ovens; rolls of matting; everything second-hand, even crockery and
tea-kettles. Clara went into the store, Mrs. McGibney having paused to
dig a thumb-nail into potatoes to see whether they were frozen, McGibney
lingering with her, because he would have to carry the potatoes.

Clara came back to the sidewalk. Again her eyes were unseeing. “The
hat-rack,” said Clara, staring at nothing visible, “is sold. I ain’t been
gone from here ten minutes. It’s sold. Everything I got my heart on is
sold. I don’t know who’s doing it, but they’ll never have a day’s luck
for it.”

“But what could I do, lady?” The furniture man came cringing out to her.
“You know you didn’t leave no deposit. Would you like to look at some
mats for your front hall? You didn’t leave no deposit, so what could I
do? I got a very heavy, rich and elegant mat here for your front hall;
though the number of a house is onto it.”

“Look here, Jack,” said McGibney. “Who’s buying up all the things this
lady looks at? Is it any particular party?”

“Come to think of it, it is,” answered the furniture man. “He’s the gent
took the unfurnished rooms upstairs. ‘What’s he look like?’ Well, he bows
most polite every time my wife waits on him and I see his head was some
bald——”

“Wait for me!” said Clara. “Up on the next floor, you say? Just only wait
one minute for me, Mrs. McGibney, and I’ll only go to tell him what I
think of this latest meanness he’s playing me. Then I’ll be through with
him forever. This is the last trick he’ll play me!” And she went to the
stairs leading to the rooms over the store.

“It must be Tommy,” said McGibney.

“And I always took him for such a perfect little gentleman,” was Mrs.
McGibney’s comment.

“Just wait a minute!” Clara had said; but, after several minutes,
McGibney became uneasy.

“I’ll go up and see,” he said. “It maybe ain’t Tommy, and Clara may start
mixing it with some stranger that’s got as much right to the furniture as
her.”

But it was Tommy, for, as the McGibneys went up the stairs, Clara’s
words, plainly audible, told them so.

“Never!” they heard—“Was it my dying day, I’d never forgive you. It was
too cruel and I’ll never forget it.”

“Ain’t she the stubborn thing!” snapped Mrs. McGibney.

“Did I live to be as old as Mickthusalem, I’d not forgive you for it!
Oh, Tommy, how could you go up the street when I went down? To treat me
so! Don’t never mind nothing else; play me tricks and scold me and don’t
do right nor anywheres near right, but how could you do that? Oh, Tommy,
how could you go up the street when I went down? Me expecting your feet
after me every second, me looking back at the corner. You going up, and
me going down! Rob me of them portcheers I see you got there, and play me
tricks with that mirror, and do like you want to about all the hall-racks
in the world, but you never come to find me when I was hiding away! Have
the red portcheers and welcome to everything my heart was set on, but you
never come to me when I was hiding, and how could I tell you where I was
hiding away? Oh, I been so unhappy without you, Tommy; there’s nobody
got any sympathy for a deserted wife, but just a jeer at her and say,
‘No wonder he left, if you take one look at her big platter face’—but my
eyes is nice and my hair is lovely, I was always told. Take away the red
portcheers my heart was set on, Tommy, and I know you don’t love me,
but we belong to each other, just the same, but don’t—oh, if you ain’t
looking to break my heart—don’t never again go up a street when I’m going
down!”

The McGibneys saw them standing in the centre of the room, arms about
each other, hands patting each other’s shoulder-blades.

Tommy began to whimper. Arms mothered him. Steady tapping away on his
shoulder-blades. Then Tommy blubbered outright:

“Oh, Clara, I been missable! I been missable something fierce, living
alone! I ain’t ate nor slept, but been working straight along and got
a good job and doing pretty good, and so much as a day’s work you’ll
never have to do. No! not if it’s your longest day!” A bow and a bob
and a scrape, for he had discovered the McGibneys standing irresolute
in the hall. He continued to blubber and he continued to tap away at
shoulder-blades.

“But why didn’t you come to find me, Tommy, when I was hiding away? I
told the Finnigans and everybody, so you must of known where I was hiding
away!”

Clara would not have seen a hundred McGibneys. Clara was tapping most
mightily with both hands upon shoulder-blades.

“On account of the brass lamp!” blubbered Tommy. A bob and a bow and a
scrape! “I done fierce bad spending our savings that was for the brass
lamp, and I couldn’t go find you where you was hid till I had that here,
in this new home, for you to see, and be complete, and then you’d know
I was sorry and it would prove I was going to do right. But it wasn’t
tricks, Clara! Honest, it wasn’t tricks! Me standing on the other side
of the street, and looking in the store window at you, and no overcoat,
because I needed every cent to show I was going to do right. And you look
at the mirror. I say, ‘Clara likes that mirror. Then Clara must have
that!’ Me standing with my toes all pinched up, as my shoes is bad, and
you looking at them red portcheers. Then Clara must have red portcheers!
Me jumping up and down, like I’m froze, but standing there every Saturday
night to see what Clara likes and Clara’s going to have that!” Bobbing,
bowing, and scraping toward the hall, from Tommy; from Clara, rather a
look of resentment toward the hall.

A final tap on shoulder blades and: “Why, come in and see where we’re
going to start up again!”

“Ain’t it strange!” said calm, stolid Clara. “He found me, after all!”

And from all four of them, and all four meaning every word:

“In all the world, there ain’t nobody like your own! If it ain’t but big
enough to hold a trunk, there’s no place like your own!”

“And,” said supremely happy Tommy and Clara, “now we’ll celebrate!”

[Illustration]

[Illustration: _Will It Keep Them Off?_

    _Carter, in New York American_]




_The Money Power_


“All things come to him that waits.” Fifteen or sixteen years ago, when
the Farmers’ Alliance was flourishing throughout the West and South, it
was a matter of common occurrence to hear some old horny-handed farmer,
on a Saturday at the county seat, disputing with his neighbor about
existing conditions. Almost invariably the Alliance man blamed the “money
power” for causing things to go criss-cross. Occasionally the country
merchant or small banker would butt into the discussion. “The money
power,” he would say, with infinite scorn, “Humph! Why, you poor fool,
there ain’t any such thing as ‘the money power.’ Might as well talk of
the agricultural power, or the mercantile power. There are rich bankers
and rich farmers and rich merchants—but that don’t make them a ‘power’ in
the sense you use that term.”

For a number of years the “money power” has been given a much needed rest
in the West and South. Most of the pioneers there have substituted the
term “plutocracy.” But in the East reformers are just now beginning to
sit up and take notice. One hears the term frequently. “Roosevelt,” said
Jacob Riis, in a recent interview in the _New York Herald_, “is fighting
the greatest tyrant of them all. Slavery affected only the South, but the
Money Power means the enslavement of all human beings and all homes.”
Many an old, long-whiskered farmer said the same thing just as well
fifteen years ago—and the _Herald_ called him an anarchist.

“The Senate,” says Ernest Crosby in the March _Cosmopolitan_, “is now the
agent of the Money Power—the representative of Wall Street.” Absolutely
true; and no one can doubt the sincerity of either Mr. Crosby or the
_Cosmopolitan_; but when the farmers of the West and South said the same
thing fifteen years ago, they were greeted with hoots and jeers from the
East. I don’t say that Messrs. Riis and Crosby joined in the hooting and
jeering; I am quite sure they did not; but they are accorded a respectful
hearing in making statements for the making of which thousands of
respectable men fifteen years ago were branded as anarchists, wild-eyed
fanatics, lunatics, and so forth.

The world _do move_.

                                                                 L. H. B.

[Illustration]




_The Russian Apostle of Populism_

BY THOMAS C. HUTTON


Fifty years ago a grayheaded prisoner, neglected, gaunt, unbefriended,
died in the dungeons of Schlüsselburg, and today a thousand Russian
cities are ringing with the name of Mikal Bakunin, the apostle of
Populism, one of the many reformers who were stoned by a contemporary
public and sainted by its descendants.

Russia spurned the impassioned orator; Germany exiled him, after a few
months of toleration, and now his projects are discussed by millions who
seem determined to give them a fair trial.

“A pack of knout-serving flunkeys,” Bakunin called the German officials
who enforced the frontier-laws in the interest of the Czar, and soon
after a messenger in uniform served him with a copy of the Prussian
press-laws, and a hint at the expedience of making himself invisible.

His virulent tongue hurt him a good deal, and his popularity was somewhat
modified by his social radicalism; but the long neglect of his revenue
plan is one of the strangest facts in the literature of political
economy. One might as well reject Kepler’s solar hypothesis, because the
great astronomer got a little cloudy on the question of witchcraft.

And, after all, Bakunin only whispered his matrimonial theories, but
shouted his tax-protests before multitudes who ought to have known better
than to class them with his chimeras.

Briefly stated, his main reform plan is this: That governments ought to
earn their own revenues as they cast their own cannon and build their
own battleships.

“Look at your great Government stud-farm of Trakehnen,” said he, in a
speech on the old Breslau market-square. “Model stables, model granaries,
fine pastures, all more than self-supporting, monthly auctions of forage
and surplus horses. Oats are barreled in airy magazines, and, for greater
security, the granary warden breeds cats, and hires two boys to take care
of them.

“All lovely, so far. But now suppose those boys were to break in a
private cottage and snatch away a poor youngster’s kitten, on the
pretext that the Government might have need of it? At sight of a club,
the little lad would have to let his pet go, but could you blame him
for growling?—Why don’t you get oats of your own? And let my little
kitten alone?—And that is exactly what I am growling about when I see
tax-collectors confiscate a poor man’s last milch-cow or nanny-goat.”

The orator then described the estate of Prince Gorkas, a semi-independent
land-magnate near Tiflis, in the southern Caucasus. The Prince’s tenants
pay a moderate rent; freeholders keep his good will by buying his cattle
and coal. Free schools, fairly good, and no tax-collectors—a pattern of
what an empire ought to be on a large scale. Foreseeing the eventual
need of money for the purchase of a neighboring estate, the Prince had
a mountain-side planted with plum trees, to sell the dried fruit. His
engineers opened a mine of cannel-coal, and soon had a large market.
Their master hoarded and was thought capable of driving a sharp bargain,
but gossips would have risked the lunatic-asylum if they had spread a
report that Prince Gorkas had broken into the little crossroad store and
helped himself to a share of the old storekeeper’s savings.

Fruit plantations are also managed by the Shah of Persia, and mines of
vast values by the Russian Government. Prussia and Austria own extensive
timber forests and realize a handsome profit after paying reasonable
wages to thousands of wardens, rangers and woodcutters.

Saxony operates national mines and large national glass-works.

Do kings need ordnance? Let them hire foundries to cast it for them. Do
they need gunpowder? Hire chemists to mix it for them.

Do they need money? Why, let them hire business-men to earn it for them.
Not the faintest ghost of a doubt but it can be done.

A little more difficult than raising royal race-horses? Perhaps so. But
does that give His Majesty the right to race down a peddler and take his
money away from him? Now reflect, and do not let your verdict be biased
by the idea that might makes right, or that a long-established absurdity
becomes reasonable.

Why collect revenues by Government highway robbery, by Government hold-up
methods, by harpies in Government uniform, when the test of practical
experience proves that revenues can be raised by Government industries?

Would you bring the State in unfair competition with individuals?
“Don’t for one moment,” says Bakunin, “believe that lie of lazybones.
Secretaries of Finance find it easier to hire marauders than to hire
skilled mechanics, that’s all.”

Who is hurt by the great stockfarm at Trakehnen? It could be enlarged
twenty times, and still give private enterprise a chance to raise
prize-horses at a considerable profit. Who complains about Government
forestry? It gives bread to hundreds of thousands; it protects the
fountains of fertilizing streams; it prevents droughts, but does not
prevent individuals from conducting timber-plantations at a profit
exceeding that of grain farms.

The Belgian Government owns coal-mines, but private mine-owners will
continue to prosper till they exhaust the supply of the mineral. No
glass-worker has ever objected to the Government glass-works of Saxony.
They invite co-operation; the demand for artistic glass products exceeds
the supply.

If Government mines and factories, why not Government commerce, and,
above all, Government real estate transactions—Government landlordism
to an extent that will hurt no other landlord, and benefit millions of
tenants?

Found new communities on the plan of reserving a certain percentage of
building lots for state purposes, and lease those reservations for five
to ten years to the highest bidder. If the Government erects buildings,
let them be models of their kind—fire-proof storehouses, sanitary
tenements.

Government plantations ought to be drained till gnat-plagues are no more;
equipped with improved machinery, with airy cottages; a blessing to all
concerned, and yet an undoubted source of revenue, since experience
proves that wholesale farming operations are the most profitable.

One tobacco plantation of the French Government yields a yearly net
revenue of 2,000,000 francs, and the only objection is the nature of
the crop; national agriculture could raise profitable harvests without
catering to a stimulant habit. Government commission houses should import
Jamaica bananas, rather than Jamaica rum.

On the Bakunin plan, national revenue industries should, as a rule,
select their ground where the strain of competition is the least likely
to be felt. After that, objectors should be referred to a chronicle of
such alternatives as trust despotism.

“No governments,” he asks, “decline to dirty their hands delving for
boodle? Oh, ye prayerful pirates! Lineal descendants of the bushwhacker
princes who preferred clubs to spades! Below their dignity to cut wood,
but did cut purses and throats. Too highborn to clean out a pig-sty, but
did clean out peddlers and often whole caravans.

“And now the descendants of those beautiful buccaneers, too proud to
mine or farm, but not ashamed to fall upon a poor farmer’s homestead
and confiscate his last horse! Not too dignified to hold up a crippled
huckster and collar two-thirds of his hard earned pennies. Too sensitive
to work the windlass of a silvermine, but rough-handed enough to wring
silver from a consumptive shopkeeper. Our grandiose rulers, I should say,
are in small business when they break in to snatch a widow’s kettle and
cot-bed.

“Yet that’s done every day in the year. Statistics claim that somewhere
on earth a child is born every second. And at least every minute sees the
birth of a child that will have to die of hunger, because its mother’s
bread has been filched by tax-collectors.

“Have Governments a right to supply their needs at the expense of widows
and orphans, while thousands of able-bodied young men stand ready to earn
revenue for them?”

High tariff bullies, says the Russian reformer, are marine highway
robbers. At first sight, the burden of spoliation seems shifted to the
shoulders of foreigners, but, look closer, and you find natives obliged
to buy imports at extortion rates.

Passengers, waiting to be examined by custom-house officers, says
Bakunin, always remind him of travelers, lined up to be searched by
footpads.

“How commerce revives,” he says, “wherever those shackles are partly
removed! How would it flourish if they were altogether abolished?
Traffic that now obliges skippers to starve their sailors could be made
abundantly profitable.”

A hundred years before the birth of Henry George, a revenue system,
closely resembling the “Single Tax” plan, was recommended by the father
of Gabriel Mirabeau, and by the Roget School of French Communists.

“It _would_ relieve some classes of our wage-earners,” says Bakunin, “but
would burden others, and why harass them, if we can undoubtedly find ways
to get along without direct taxation?”

Why make land the scapegoat of a sin that might be avoided?

In 1849 the Russian Government got its clutches on the bold reformer,
and silenced him by the usual argument of despots. The voice that had
entranced mass-meetings in a hundred cities of southern and western
Europe was stifled in the catacombs of Schlüsselburg.

But Time, the All-Avenger, has made the martyr’s name a rallying cry of
East-European reformers, and America should honor the memory of Mikal
Bakunin as that of a hero and pioneer of reform—a man whose marvelous
gift of intuition had recognized all the ideals of Populism, all its
principles and promises, but who succumbed to the superhuman task of
effecting its progress under the handicap of a monarchical government.


_Naturally_

KNICKER—There goes a man who would rather fight than eat.

BOCKER—Soldier?

KNICKER—No, dyspeptic.




[Illustration: LUCIANNA’S KEEP

BY ELLIOT WALKER.]


“I’ve got twenty dollars for the rent an’ fifteen more for what’s likely
to come up,” observed Enos Matchett cheerfully, as he put down his
teacup. “There’s nothin’ to worry about this first of month, anyhow. Eh,
Martha?”

His wife fingered her napkin in a nervous way, usual to her when the
appalling call of their landlord was due, not to mention others who
fished from pockets soiled packages of rubber-banded slips to draw out
tentatively and none too expectantly those alarming accounts marked at
their tops with the discredited name of Enos Matchett.

Poor Martha. The “Oh! Yes. I’ll speak to my husband about it,” and the
hundred other subterfuges were growing gaunt with repetition. She had a
regular repertory of excuses to apply as conditions demanded. For a first
presentation a fixed and nonchalant smile and a “come ’round next month,”
caused quick riddance of the unwelcome. “Next month,” it was, “I declare,
I guess Mr. Matchett overlooked that little bill. Perhaps, you’d better
leave it so he’ll keep it in mind.”

From then on, rang the changes of high prices, hard times and
honest intentions until at last came the sharp, bullying threat of
the collection lawyer and the crawling process of paying by small
installments.

Sometimes she tore up the bills, sometimes they went into the fire,
never, until her last bridge had collapsed, did she worry Enos.

He worked, hopefully, from morning to night at odd jobs and occasional
bits of carpentry. A fortunate month might fatten their attenuated
exchequer to a bulge of sixty dollars, but the months were not all
fortunate and there was seldom a penny came in that remained over a
fortnight. To meet the rent was imperative. That had to be met. For the
rest—wits, hopes, and a somewhat shattered faith in the Lord’s providence.

However, when the Lord endowed average femininity with a high scorn of
bills and an abnormal intelligence in the evasion of payment much was
done for man.

Enos, undoubtedly, would have become as flighty and irresponsible as was
Lucianna, upstairs, had he been obliged to face the shafts which his
worried better half so successfully foiled to the last ditch.

Now, Martha gazed across the table at him, with the smile of one
temporarily relieved from anxiety.

“That’s good,” she answered. “It’s queer how we’ve kep’ along.”

“Ain’t it?” responded Mr. Matchett. “I was consid’rable pestered ten
days ago as to how we’d come out this month, but Miss Joslyn paid me,
an’ I had a week steady on Doctor Bullen’s fence. No one in particular
a-hurryin’ us jest now, I s’pose?”

“Don’t think of any special tormentor,” returned Martha, biting her thin
lips. Indeed, no obvious projection in the wall of torment occurred to
her at the moment. Their creditors were “lined up,” in equal aggression.
One was as bad as another.

Enos tugged at his gray mustache—a sparse adornment, getting white at the
ends.

“Guess we’ll blow a dollar on something for Lucianna then,” he ventured
generously.

“Guess not!” exclaimed Martha, with decision. “The child’s got
toys enough. Feedin’ her is more to the point. I never see such an
appetite. She’s happy. Let her alone and put your money where ’twill be
appreciated.”

Lucianna, now a child supposed to have attained twenty-five years, and a
very queer one at that, had employed most of her day in making faces at
such of the passers who did not meet her approval, and smiling at those
who did. These courtesies were accentuated by taps on the window panes.

The poor harmless creature could be allowed little liberty as she ran
away and sat on doorsteps, proclaiming herself a burglar of kittens.
Given a kitten, or stealing one, Lucianna would go home delighted.

The influx of kittens became too trying. Enos, a soft-hearted man, would
do no murder. Martha, steeled to crime through desperation, had disposed
of several, really unfit to exist, and found homes for more. Lucianna
forgot them over night. Therefore, it had lately become necessary to
confine her to her room, where she was allowed one kitten during the day.

This satisfied Lucianna completely. Besides, she possessed six dolls,
toys galore, and when these joys palled there was the window.

Whatever possessed the Matchetts to make a home for the unfortunate girl
was a mystery to their acquaintances, as she was no kin. Years before,
when life was younger and brighter, with Enos at a paying job, and
Martha ambitious for a servant yet unable to afford a regular domestic,
Lucianna, then a pretty child of about thirteen, had appeared and asked
for something to eat.

She was well grown and seemed strong, although exhausted by walking and
hunger.

Martha took her in, and an idea seized the good woman, after certain
questions had been put and answered.

It was their plain duty to keep this little stranger until somebody
claimed her, and in the event of no one turning up for the waif, why not
train her for service?

Lucianna was reticent about her past career. Enos thought she lied.
Martha said she was too young to remember. It seemed a case of no mother,
a father who had gone away leaving her with unkind people who did not
love her.

In corroboration of this last statement Lucianna exposed a plump arm
decorated with small bruises of various ages and colors.

“Pinches,” she explained, snuffling. This settled Enos, who went down
cellar and split more kindlings than he had ever done at one bout.

When he came up, perspiring and still glaring, Lucianna had been fed and
put to bed. Martha was washing the soiled socks, and singing thoughtfully.

“Seems nice to have a child in the house,” she remarked.

“We’ll keep her along,” returned Mr. Matchett. “Good little thing.”

“As gold,” affirmed his wife.

This was the advent of Lucianna. Beyond the fact of her surname being
Crowson, her clothes plain, her eyes blue, her light hair cut short, and
that she bore marks of abuse, the worthy couple knew nothing.

Neither did they go out of their way for information. Lucianna proved
affectionate, willing and useful, with a passion for cats.

In a year she had become almost as their own. Enos worshiped her. Martha
did, too, but made Lucianna work, as befitted her position as helper.

Another year and the girl developed peculiarities that worried them. She
eyed them shyly. She grimaced at Enos most impertinently when he trod on
her cat’s tail. Martha spanked her. Lucianna laughed.

A few months more and she became erratic, irresponsible and useless, but
always good natured. As Enos expressed it, “Lucianna had gone back to
bein’ a kid.”

Some money went for medical advice. There was but one opinion.
“Weak-minded. The patient might grow worse, but hardly probable if kindly
treated. With great care under expert treatment she might improve. Such
cases were outside the regular practice. Would recommend a sanitarium,
or an asylum. Of course, if they wished to have her remain at home, no
objection could be raised; but a burden—a burden.”

“We’ll keep her along,” announced Enos. “We’ve got hands and hearts yet,
hain’t we?”

“God forgive me for spankin’ her,” wept Martha. “The poor thing couldn’t
help her actions, an’ she never held it against me. Jest laughed, she
did, takin’ it all in good part.”

“She sha’n’t go to no asylum,” cried Mr. Matchett, rising to the
occasion. “Sanitariums an’ expert doctors ain’t for our pockets. She come
to us for carin’, growed to be our little girl, an’ by Josh! Lucianna
will be kep’ along.”

She was; and always reported to be “about the same.”

Ten years of it—ten long, trying, down-hill years, but neither Enos
Matchett nor his wife had ever wavered in loyalty or love to their
charge. Indeed, the worse things got, the more they thought of Lucianna.

Her daily airing (on the wiry arm of Martha), her whims, her playthings,
were all attended to, religiously.

If, as frequently happened, she made a bright remark, her devoted keepers
nodded sagely, saying, “She’s gettin’ better.”

As for the expense, whatever their thoughts in secret, both kept a
guarded silence. Only this evening had Martha for the first time
deprecated the failing of Enos to “blow a dollar for Lucianna.”

He stared at her, curiously, and grunted.

“Pooh!” said he, recklessly. “Got fifteen ahead.”

Martha’s tongue uncurbed at this unseemly boast. Her long nose twitched.

“Ahead!” she snorted. “You stay in my place tomorrow, Enos Matchett. You
mind the door for one mornin’ and see how much you’re _ahead_.”

“All right,” returned Enos, his placid features animating resentfully.
“I can spare the time till noon. No need of snappin’ at me as I see. No
sense in deprivin’ Lucianna of a little pleasure, neither. There’s nobody
pressin’ us hard—said so yourself. What’s a dollar, anyway?”

Alas! to the contempt of Mr. Matchett for the single dollar was due much
of their financial tribulation.

“I’m going up to visit with the girl,” he added. “_She_ won’t be snappy.”

This parting thrust rankled in Martha’s bosom, and the supper table was
cleared with rather unnecessary clatter. The improvident, easy-going Enos
always let her have her own way. He turned over his earnings to her more
careful hands, spending very little on himself, and trusted implicitly to
wifely wisdom in all household matters. A real quarrel between them had
never occurred.

Responsibility, shifted from his fat shoulders to her narrow ones, was
both agreeable and natural to Enos. His make-up was that of the man
who never “troubled trouble,” until cornered. Then he became actually
belligerent and invited war. Up to this rare point Mr. Matchett bluffed
good-humoredly.

When assailed by creditors on the street he was invariably in a hurry to
perform some important and paying job—a fictitious pleasantry.

“Can’t bother about that now,” he would grin. “Drop ’round to the house
an’ see Mis’ Matchett. She ’tends to the finances, an’ if she hasn’t
spent all I give her lately, you’ll get something.”

This ingenious disposition of duns was not meant to be unkind.

“Martha’ll fix him,” Enos would chuckle, trotting along. “She don’t mind.”

So the brunt fell on Martha, and it was patiently borne.

But nerves grow irritable under constant pricking until they are ready
to snap. Martha did mind. Of late she had felt like hiding whenever the
door-bell rang. It took a long breath, a determined effort, a clutch at
her quick beating heart for an appearance of unconcern, and her poor
brain quivered with apprehension at its dearth of successful excuses.

“Let him have a turn,” she muttered, wiping the dishes. “The rent
collector won’t be ’round ’till afternoon, but there’s a-plenty of others
likely to show up. His fifteen dollars will get melted fast enough. _I_
could sprinkle it right, but he don’t know how. The first feller will get
it all, an’ then——”

Martha paused to laugh, dismally. There was another side. How about
future calls from those turned down by Enos? He might lose his temper.
All the worse for her.

“I’m most hopin’ nobody’ll come,” she faltered. “I ain’t so sure of
gettin’ the best of this.”

However, the following morning saw her marching off smilingly, with
Lucianna in high feather at the prospect of a long stroll.

Enos regarded their departure with complacence, expecting an undisturbed
session. At the most, some small bill might be presented. He knew
just how he would pay it; carelessly, with a jaunty, indifferent air,
as if the amount was a trifle. This was his unvarying attitude of
settlement—when he settled.

With newspapers and a pipe, it would be quite a holiday. He established
himself comfortably, soon forgetting indebtedness in perusing the details
of late murders.

Shortly after nine o’clock came a ring of the bell—a feeble peal—Enos
went to the door.

The caller was a stranger to him,—a dapper, gentlemanly man whose
pleasant face bore an embarrassed expression.

“I—I wish to see Mrs. Matchett,” he began.

“Out for a walk,” said Enos, a bit pompously. “Any message? I’m Mr.
Matchett.”

“Well,” the man pursed his lips and hesitated. “I—I wanted to speak with
your wife about an account. Something of her own, you know—er—wearing
apparel. If I could get the money today it would be a great convenience.”

Enos laughed indulgently.

“Clothes, eh? You needn’t be modest about that. I don’t rec’lect her
havin’ any new ones for years, but it’s all right, I guess. I’m payin’
the bills. Trot it out an’ I’ll settle right now an’ glad to.”

The man looked relieved. “If it’s perfectly convenient?” he said.

“Perfectly,” puffed Enos. “I’ve got the stuff ready for any little thing
that may come up.”

He unfolded the paper and glanced at the total under a short list of
items. It was just thirty-five dollars.

Matchett gazed at the figures, too appalled to change countenance beyond
a drop of the jaw.

Slowly, he pulled out his precious roll, and counted the money into the
other’s hands.

“Receipt that bill!” he grunted.

“I’m ever so much obliged,” said the man glibly, his eyes on the paper as
he signed the long name of a well known dry goods house, “and I wish you
would explain to Mrs. Matchett.”

“I will,” returned Enos shortly.

“You see, we’ve sold out recently,” pursued his caller. “We are
collecting all old accounts. This, as you perceive, is very old. We have
never bothered Mrs. Matchett. I hated to come, really I did, but the
present conditions made it imperative. Before your wife purchased the
goods, she went to Mr. Morley—head of the old firm, you know, and told
him so honestly that she couldn’t tell when she would be able to pay, and
her reasons for buying, that it quite tickled the old gentleman. He came
to me—I have charge of the dress goods department—Parker is my name.

“Says he, ‘Parker, wait on this lady and I’ll speak to the bookkeeper
as to the bill.’ He gave orders to keep it back, so it’s never been
presented. Very unusual and unbusinesslike, of course, but Mr. Morley had
peculiarities. Pity he died. Our new head is a very different sort. Very
strict. So I felt it was my place to see Mrs. Matchett, as I sold her the
goods and she would remember. Ladies are apt to forget their little bills
if not reminded. I think your wife will remember.”

“I think so,” said Enos. “Well, the thing’s paid and that’s all.” His
voice was steady, but deeper than usual.

“That’s all. Yes, sir. Sorry to trouble you, and very many thanks. I’m
much relieved to find it was no inconvenience. So many people complain of
hard times. Good day.”

Mr. Parker skipped down the steps. Mr. Matchett locked the door.

He went to the most remote room in the house and sat for two hours in
a state of apathetic despair, broken only by short bursts of wrath.
Oh, Martha should long recollect this day! Several times the bell rang
insistently, but Enos paid no heed.

At last he settled on a plan of action and went wearily down to unlock
the door.

The two women came in, shortly before noon. In the sunshine and freedom,
Martha had cast care to the winds. Her eyes were bright. In her thin
cheeks played a faint color. Lucianna had behaved beautifully. Now, she
giggled at sight of Enos, and clamored for dinner.

“We’ll have some soon,” said Martha, stirring about. “Had a quiet
morning, husband?” mischievously.

“I ain’t seen a bill against me,” replied Mr. Matchett, calmly. “I’ve
set still till I’ll be glad to get into the air. Let’s eat, an’ I’ll be
startin’.”

The eye-brows of his wife lifted in wonder. After all, she was glad of
the news. It would have been too bad to have Enos upset.

He ate in silence while she chatted volubly of her outing, not remarking
his lack of attention.

“Through?” he asked, as Martha rolled her napkin and sat back.

“All through,” she smiled.

“Well, _I_ ain’t,” said the man, leaning forward, his eyes stern and
reproachful. “Nor you, neither. We’ve a bit of dessert to chew on,
Martha Matchett. I told you I hadn’t seen a bill against _me_. I’ve seen
one against you, an’ I’ve paid it! Yes, marm. Paid it! Here!” he thrust
the paper at her.

“Dear God!” moaned the woman, after a lightning glimpse. “It’s come on
to me at last. Oh! Enos, husband, don’t look so at me. It was for Cousin
Minna’s weddin’—four years ago;—I wanted to go. I didn’t have no dress,
nor fixin’s. You was away. I went to Mr. Morley’s store an’ had ’em
charged. He said I could pay when I had the money. I’ve never had it. The
dress I’ve never worn since. I—I hid it away till I could pay for it,
Enos—oh, dear, oh, dear.”

She sobbed, piteously, staring wildly at him through her tears.

“An’—you—paid—it,” came her horrified gasps. “Every—cent—we had.”

“You can attend to the rent, Martha,” the voice of Enos was unmoved as he
arose. “I’m goin’ to rake lawns.”

He went out without another word or look, leaving her weeping and rocking
to and fro.

From the outside he gazed at the house. It was a pretty cottage of a
cheap kind. They had lived there for three years, and Martha’s vines
had grown. Her flower bed, so carefully tended, how pretty it was! On
the opposite side of the road lay a great vacant lot—a pasture on the
city outskirts. Trees were there—and cows. In summer, children played
among the grasses. In winter, they coasted. It was just the place for
Lucianna—for Martha—for Enos, too.

“Got to leave it,” groaned the man. “No use talkin’. It’s pay or get
out. Plenty wants it—and old Craddock won’t wait again. Third time we’ll
have moved. Confound Minna’s weddin’ an’ a deceivin’ woman. If I’d known
it—oh! if I only had—but I said I’d pay an’ I did. Now, _let_ her do some
payin’.”

Lucianna tapped on the window and beamed at him. His answering smile was
a ghastly farce. Tears were on the round cheeks of Enos as he hurried
away. Last night he had been so confident and happy. He stumbled, walking
on.

No suspicious moisture showed on Martha’s cheeks, as she marched over her
doorsill twenty minutes later. Her tears had dried. A hard determination
glittered in the black eyes. Under her hastily arranged bonnet, Mrs.
Matchett’s face, strained and set, was tense with resolve.

Lucianna did not witness her departure, else there would have been
wailing and much pounding on the window. Fortunately the girl had fallen
asleep. Only on occasions of great moment was she left alone. This was
one of them.

Martha hastened along.

The old sign of “Morley, Cowperthwait, Rensellaer and Company” still
remained over the entrance of the great department store—but the kindly
old founder was gone.

Martha knew that—she had read of his death, and the passage of the
business into new hands. But that old bill wouldn’t be a worry. She had
a whole string of excuses and explanations for the lingering liquidation
of her debt in the case of the resurrection of this buried but haunting
ghost. Now, Enos had “gone and paid it,” to the ruin of them all.

Through the throng she pushed and elbowed. How changed everything was.
How busy and big. Martha had not entered that growing emporium since the
date of her reckless purchase.

For a second her heart failed at the enormity of her mission. Then she
clenched her teeth and grabbed a passing bundle boy by the shoulder.

“Say!” she exclaimed, hoarsely. “I want to see the head of the firm, the
man who is attendin’ to Mr. Morley’s work. Where is he?”

The startled lad pulled away, blinked and grinned.

“Guess not,” he retorted. “He’ll take yer skelp off. He won’t talk to
nobody this time o’ day.”

“It’s important, I tell you,” cried the woman, fiercely. “It’s a money
matter an’ I _will_ see him.”

“Gwan ter trouble, then!” said the boy, pointing a mischievous finger at
a closed door marked “No admittance.” “I’ll call de ambulance. He ain’t
no Mr. Morley. I see you come out a flyin’ in jest two seconds.”

But Martha was past him, her grasp on the knob, and the door closed
behind her as he stared.

“Here! Here!” ejaculated a stout, bald man, turning impatiently from his
desk with a twist of his revolving chair. “You’ve made a mistake, madam.
Go right out, please.”

“I won’t,” said Martha. “I’m here on important business—an’ I’ll state it
before I move one step. You’ve taken Mr. Morley’s place. You’re the head
of things, an’ I’ve come straight to you.”

A queer smile crossed the broad face. The man took out his watch. “I’ll
give you just one minute,” he said, coolly. “What’s the trouble. Talk
fast, now.”

Martha talked fast.

“I got thirty-five dollars worth of stuff here most four years ago,”
she began, excitedly. “Mr. Morley said I could pay when convenient. Now
you’ve sent to my house when I was out, an’ my husband paid it. I want
that money back.”

Her listener laughed outright.

“Why! Why!” he coughed. “My dear woman, you have a very accommodating
husband; that’s evident. Four years! What were you thinking of? Madam,
the account should never have run so long. You owed it. It’s been paid.
The transaction is closed. We cannot give you back the money. What a
ridiculous request!”

The woman drew in her breath, shudderingly.

“People must settle their obligations, you know,” pursued the man patting
his fat leg. “That is the rule of business. If _I_ owed you anything I
should pay it. If you owe me, you have to pay also. Such a demand as
yours is absurd. Can’t you see that?”

“I can see me an’ Enos turned out of our little home.” Martha’s voice
was stony. “The money for that bill of mine was every penny we had. The
rent’s got to be met before night. My husband’s an honest man—too honest
to have any credit. I can see him growin’ old an’ gray in some shanty. I
can see a poor half-witted girl cryin’ for the room she loves. These are
the things I can see. Yes, sir, that’s the worst of it. Lucianna won’t
understand——”

“Eh!” interrupted the merchant sharply. “Who?”

“Lucianna, sir. Not our own daughter, but most the same, poor thing.
We’ve been glad to have her, an’ make her a home, an’ never minded the
cost. She was so little when she came to us for shelter, smart an’ bright
as anybody with her blue eyes an’ yellow hair, winnin’ us like she was
our born baby. ’Twasn’t her fault she got queer. We wouldn’t put the
child where she’d be abused again, so we kep’ her. Now, to root her out
from comfort into the Lord knows what—I can’t bear to think of it. Me an’
Enos might get along somehow, but there’s Lucianna. I want that money
back!”

Martha’s tone became sharp as she remembered her errand. Tears had
blinded her eyes during the rapid explanation, quite forgetful for the
moment of all save the coming deprivations of her loved ones.

Now, she winked them away to glare at the man in the chair. His ruddy
face had gone to a dreadful whiteness. His hands were working. A strange
sound came from the thick throat before he stammered feebly:

“I—I—lost—a little girl. Her—this—one—do you know the last name?”

“I’ve most forgot—she’s had ours for so long.” Martha began to tremble.
“Let’s see? Yes. Say, it can’t be, your name is Crowson? That’s hers,
Lucianna Crowson.”

“My God!” the stout man sprang up. “It is! It is! Everything points to
her being the same. It must be so.”

He seized Martha’s hands with such vehemence that she recoiled with a
startled, backward step.

“Don’t act so crazy!” came her alarmed exclamation. “You let go an’ be
careful. The blood’s clean to the top of your head. Set down an’ behave.”

“Yes! Yes!” cried Crowson, releasing her, to pace the small room with a
broken laugh and a fierce curse. “Wait! I’ll be myself in a minute. She’s
my girl—I tell you. They wrote me she was dead—the people I left her
with—after the child was cured. I’m her father, my dear woman. Don’t mind
me, I’ll pull up directly. Wait!”

Martha shrank against the wall, as he laughed wildly and growled
imprecations.

Presently he steadied, tightening his muscles and breathing deep.

“I’m all right,” said he, huskily. “You must excuse this, Mrs.—Mrs.—”

“Matchett,” answered his caller. “Certainly! ’Tain’t no wonder you felt
shook up, if you’re really Lucianna’s father.”

“There is no doubt about it;” the man sat heavily in his chair. “Listen!
She was eleven years old when she fell off her pony and injured her head.
I was a comparatively poor man then, but I got the best surgeons. For
months my little one lay in a hospital. We had no settled home. My wife
died long before. Business called me away. When I returned Lucianna was
pronounced cured. At least it was deemed safe to place her with some
family where she would have every care, and no excitement. Should the
trouble recur, an operation would be necessary.

“I found a home for her. Matters were arranged. Again I went West.
Letters reached me regularly for many months. All seemed to be going
well, in fact so satisfactorily that I, immersed in the starting of
a business, ceased to worry. Yes, it must have been two years before
I stopped my remittances, although those crafty letters had grown
infrequent.

“I wrote the Harpinsons that I would be East soon and intended to take
the child back with me.

“Then I received the shocking news of her death. Diphtheria, they said,
and very sudden. A malignant case, and—well—the burial had been at night.
Everything was done as if she belonged to them. As soon as quarantine was
over they were going to move and would inform me of their location.”

Martha stood with her mouth open.

“Did they?” she hissed. “We must have had Lucianna for a good while
before those critters said she was dead.”

“Yes,” said Crowson, frowning. “They bled me as long as possible.
I received one more letter, postmarked Boston—a few details of no
importance, but I had no suspicions. Since then, my letters have come
back stamped, ‘no such party at address.’”

“But—” broke in Martha.

He held up an appealing hand.

“I know, I know,” he interrupted. “I should have gone on at once. Yet
what could be done? The quarantine—the detention from business—the added
grief. My child was gone. All was over. Nothing seemed left to me save
strenuous work and the making of money. I own three stores like this, the
result of losing Lucianna. Now I have found her, I’ll not work so hard.”

“She won’t know you from Adam,” said Martha, jealously.

“Perhaps—in—time,” replied Crowson, stroking his forehead. “Thank God!
I’ve the means to find out.”

“Have we got to give up Lucianna?” quavered the woman. “If—if it’s for
her good, I s’pose I could stand it, but what will Enos say? She won’t
want to go, neither.”

The man turned his head suddenly, and coughed.

“We will fix everything right,” he said, gently. “I’ll take no step
without your consent. Let’s see! To get back to business—” he smiled,
whimsically. “You mustn’t think a personal matter can influence our
regulations. That bill of yours must be settled.”

Martha jumped. In her excitement she had quite forgotten the landlord,
the house and the gravity of the Matchett situation.

Speechless, she drew herself up. Could this hard-headed man be so devoid
of humanity, after what had happened, as to refuse her assistance?

“Still,” he went on in his matter-of-fact tone, “I’ll give you a little
more time on it. Till next week, say. Here is the money, but say nothing
about it. Quite against rules, you know.”

He pulled out a wallet and handed her four bank notes, three tens and a
five.

“Thanks!” said Martha, counting them mechanically. “I s’pose you want
this;” she held out the receipted bill.

“Oh yes—I must have that.” He put it carefully in a pigeon-hole.

“I’m ever so much obliged,” murmured the woman, “an’ I’ll try to scrape
up something by next week. I s’pose you’ll be ’round to see Lucianna—an’
talk with Mr. Matchett.”

“Very soon.” Crowson’s mouth trembled at the corners. “How long have you
had Lucianna?”

“Twelve years come Saturday. Enos was sayin’ so night before last. We
call it her birthday, an’ most always give her something. Not this year,
though. Can’t afford it.”

The merchant figured on a pad. “Twelve. Six hundred and twenty-four,” he
whispered. Then aloud. “The Harpinsons charged me ten dollars a week for
Lucianna’s keep. It was none too much.”

“They skinned you,” said Martha, adjusting her bonnet. She felt dazed
and tired; quite bewildered at the prospect of losing Lucianna, uneasy
regarding Enos, yet thankful for the temporary financial respite.

“I’ve got to hurry home,” she announced. “There’s nothing more to say
except that I’ll do my best to settle my bill and I’m obliged to you. I’m
mighty glad for you, sir, but the thought of what we’re losing makes me
fairly sick. It ain’t right to say so, but I most wish I hadn’t come.”
She turned with a choke.

“One moment,” said Crowson. “I want your address. What is your full name,
Mrs. Matchett?”

“Martha.”

“Any middle name?”

“Hum! Lupkins,” returned Martha reluctantly. “We live at 462 Goodland
Avenue—used to be Squash Street. You’ll find us easy enough—good day.”

“One thing more. It will take only a minute. You have arranged your old
account. There’s another you seem to have overlooked.” He touched a
button on his desk.

“There ain’t another!” declared Martha, defiantly. “I don’t owe a cent
here besides this.”

The door opened quickly. A young man bustled in.

“Hinkley,” ordered Mr. Crowson, and his eyes twinkled, “draw a check at
once to the order of Martha L. Matchett for six thousand two hundred and
forty dollars.”

When Enos crawled into supper, he was a weary, conscience-smitten person.
His anger had dissipated. What should come he knew not, but Martha’s
feelings must be considered, first of all. He pictured her in the depths
of despair—forlorn, distracted, possibly “packing.”

An appetizing odor filled the house. Enos sniffed.

“Beefsteak an’ onions an’ coffee,” he commented, gratefully. “Jest my
likin’s. She wants to make up. Where did she get the meat?”

Drawing his chair to the table, Mr. Matchett gazed at his spouse with a
dismayed visage.

Surely there was something wrong here. The display of luxuries, Martha’s
unnaturally bright eyes, her compressed lips, the new black dress, her
air of superiority.

“What’s the matter?” said Martha. “Pitch in. I’ve got a nice supper an’
dressed up to show you how smart I can be under afflictions.”

Enos took a mouthful.

“I—I guess Craddock didn’t come for the rent,” he essayed. “Never knew
him to skip us before.”

“He come,” replied Martha, loftily.

“An’ you—” the man’s fork shook against his plate.

“Paid him, of course,” said Martha, airily. “You told me to attend to it.”

Her husband half rose from his seat. “You ain’t right, my dear,” he said,
soothingly—“what’s affected you?”

“Set down!” commanded the woman, laughing. “We’ve found a friend, an’ our
girl’s found a father. It’s all straight, Enos. In case you want a bit of
spendin’ money, I’ve endorsed this over to you.”

Mr. Matchett did sit down. His countenance underwent many changes as he
fingered the check. “Wh—what’s it for?” he stuttered.

“Lucianna’s keep,” said Martha.

On the pleasant days, when the roads are fine, an automobile stops before
the Matchett’s door. Presently it rolls slowly away. Martha sits very
erect by the side of a golden-haired companion, and an Angora kitten
nestles between them. There is a good deal of laughing and talking, and
sometimes passers stare, but no one in the big car minds. The stout man
in front with the chauffeur turns, smiling at the women.

“Pretty distressing for us all, the removal of that lesion,” he says,
“but she’s reading little books, now.”

And when Enos asks a question with his eyes, upon Martha’s return from
these trips, he gets the same old words: “She’s gettin’ better.”

[Illustration]




_Who Pays the Taxes?_

BY WILLIAM H. TILTON


The residents of a small New Jersey village were recently called together
for the purpose of considering the advisability of incorporating the
village into a borough; and the Philadelphia newspapers reported that
an application for incorporation had been signed by a large number of
“taxpayers and citizens.” What is meant by this dividing of the people
into two distinct classes? This question becomes of more than passing
importance in view of the fact that the case cited is not an isolated
one. For instance, during the political campaign of 1905, in New York
City, a prominent newspaper spoke editorially of the candidacy of William
R. Hearst for Mayor on a municipal ownership platform as an “appeal to
the _untaxed_ and an attack upon the _taxpayers_.”

The Secretary of the National Reciprocity League, in an address at
Chicago, is reported to have said that “Municipal ownership and operation
of street railways had become a craze; that people who do _not pay_ taxes
are the most enthusiastic supporters of the craze, as those who _pay_
taxes are opposed to the idea.”

The late Charles T. Yerkes, in reference to the election of Judge Dunne
as Mayor of Chicago on a municipal ownership platform, said: “The city
will run heavily in debt. Will the poor man suffer? No; because the poor
man does not pay taxes. Men with property pay taxes; these will suffer.”
Mr. Yerkes did not say just what kind of _property_ was meant; but as
the returns of personal property in Chicago are said to be less today
than they were twenty years ago (although the city is three times as
large, with six times the wealth), it is evident that the owners of that
kind of property—stock-owners of that kind of property—stocks, bonds,
mortgages, paintings, jewelry, silver services, etc.—are not going to
suffer to any great extent if they can help it. Then it must be the real
estate owner, again, who is expected to do the suffering, because of the
increase of taxes, should there be any such increase.

Day after day we read in the newspapers communications in reference to
public questions which are signed “Taxpayer,” or “Property Owner,” as
if that fact should give more weight or influence to their opinions or
suggestions. Others go still further. A Pittsburg preacher in a recent
sermon denounced universal suffrage, saying, “Only property owners should
vote and all others should be disfranchised.” Numerous other instances
could be cited which tend to show a growing tendency to consider the real
estate owner as the only person who pays taxes.

Now the great majority of our people have probably not looked upon these
signs of the times with any apprehension as yet; but “great oaks from
little acorns grow,” and this increasing disregard for the rights of men,
as men, this creating of class distinctions with a tax-bill as a line
of demarcation, on the theory that one small class pays all the taxes
and is, therefore, entitled to rights and privileges that are denied to
others, is dangerous and contrary to all principles of Democracy.

Owing to the inherent defects of human nature, no doubt there will always
be those among us who will expect and demand more than they are entitled
to, but the average American is satisfied with a square deal. When
deprived of what he considers his just rights, however, he is, like most
other people, inclined to become indifferent to the rights of others.
Sooner or later he helps to swell the large army of the discontented; and
history teaches that discontent is not only the mother of progress, but
the mother of trouble. “On the contentment of the poor rests the safety
of the rich.”

It is not intended to discuss in this article the justice or injustice
of any particular tax, but simply to consider the question of taxes—how
they are paid and who pays them—in the hope that we may thereby the more
intelligently render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s.

Let us consider first the tax on real estate, one of the most important
illustrations of the so-called “direct” taxation which Mill has defined
as “that which is demanded from the very person who, it is intended or
desired, should pay it.” Now it is, of course, true that this tax is
levied against the property and the tax-bill is rendered in the name of
the nominal owner, who is, naturally, expected to pay it; but whence
comes the money with which he discharges this debt against his property?
If the premises are rented or leased, are not the taxes, insurance, cost
of repairs, interest on investment, etc., all added to the rental which
is asked of and paid by the tenant? There are leases drawn today which
contain a clause providing “that any increase in the taxes shall be
added to the rental.” And yet, during the late struggle in Philadelphia
over the attempted lease of the gas works to a private corporation for
seventy-five years, a gentleman appeared before the committee of councils
on behalf, as he said, of the taxpayers _and_ rent-payers.

During the passage of the mortgage bill through the 1905 session of
the New York Legislature, a member of the committee appointed by the
real-estate owners to oppose the measure said: “The result, should the
bill pass, will be for the real-estate owners to raise the rents. It is
the public who will have to bear the burden, not the real-estate owners.”
So we appear to have very relevant testimony to the effect that the man
who receives the tax-bill, the man “on whom the tax is levied and who
is expected to pay it” really acts as an agent, collecting the tax from
his tenant and passing it on to the authorities. Is the tenant then a
_taxpayer_ or a _citizen_? As more than eighty per cent. of the people
of the United States occupy rented houses, the sooner this question is
satisfactorily answered and each of us understands his own individual
responsibility, the better for all concerned.

Would not the rent-payer hesitate to cast his ballot for corrupt
municipal government—with its accompanying reckless and dishonest
expenditures of the public money—would he not hesitate to strike or riot,
if he knew that the expenses (the teamsters’ strike in Chicago, in 1905,
is said to have cost the city $100,000 a month for special policemen) and
losses would eventually have to be paid by increased taxes _added to his
rent_?

The United States Steel Company is said to have done much to eliminate
strikes at its different plants by selling a portion of the capital stock
of the company to its employes. Every man who owns even one share now
feels that he is a part of the organization, that its interests are his
interests, its losses his losses; and he is not inclined to do anything
that will injuriously affect himself. When property owners understand and
admit it, and rent-payers realize that they are a part of the municipal
corporation, of the state and of the republic, that the public interests
are their interests, the public losses their losses, that we must all
rise or fall together, a great deal will have been accomplished toward
the creation of better feeling and a consequent improvement in existing
conditions.

Adam Smith says of taxation that “the subjects of every state ought to
contribute toward the support of the Government as nearly as possible in
proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the
revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the states.”

Montesquieu defined taxation as “that portion of a person’s property
which one contributes to the state in return for protection in the
enjoyment of the balance.”

Both these eminent authorities look upon the payment of taxes as a duty
which the citizen owes to the state in return for something which he
receives from the state; but neither says in just what manner that duty
must be performed, and there are undoubtedly numerous ways in which the
obligation of the citizen may be discharged.

A very important phase of the tax question to be considered here (owing
to its being the source of almost the entire income of the United States
Government) is what is known as “indirect” taxation, or the tax on
commodities, processes, etc. This is more easily collected than a direct
tax, because the consumer hardly realizes that he is being taxed when
paying for articles which he may use his own discretion about purchasing;
but it bears most heavily upon the poor, as only articles in general use
will yield the necessary revenue.

For instance, the tariff on imports, for the fiscal year ending 1905,
produced more than $260,000,000. This enormous amount was, of course,
paid at the custom house by the importer of the goods, but it was then
added to the cost of the goods and finally paid by the consumer. This tax
is great or small, depending entirely upon the necessities or desires of
the people.

The higher the social and economic development of a people, the greater
will be the burden of this tariff tax; as what were once considered
luxuries eventually become necessaries of life, and a larger proportion
of income is consequently expended for food, wearing apparel, household
goods, etc. Under such circumstances, a man who is in receipt of a
fair-sized income (even though possessing little or no taxable property),
if he buys freely for the wants of himself and his family, may
contribute more toward the support of the Government than his wealthy
landlord, who buys sparingly, swears off his personal taxes, and collects
his real estate taxes from his tenants.

The internal revenue tax on spirits, fermented liquors and tobacco
produced in 1905 about $230,000,000, which, while also paid primarily by
the manufacturer or distiller, is then added to the cost of production
and included in the selling price, which is paid, of course, by the
consumer. Not only the man who smokes or drinks, but everyone who uses
spirits in the manufactures or arts, in patent medicines or drugstore
prescriptions (many of which contain large quantities of liquor), is
contributing a share of this tax. Oleomargarine produced during the same
period over $600,000, and playing cards about $425,000.

Another very important source of income, levied in times of emergency, as
during the war with Spain, is the stamp tax, which produces millions of
dollars. The man with a small bank account pays as much for a stamp when
issuing a check for one dollar, as does the man who issues a check for
$100,000 or more; and each pays the same when purchasing an article of
manufacture which is sold under a stamp.

Again, we should not overlook such items as license fees, financial,
mercantile and franchise taxes, which, while levied by the city, state or
national governments upon some particular person, firm or corporation,
are really added to the cost of production or operation and ultimately
paid by the general public. For instance, during the political campaign
of 1904 in New Jersey, when equal taxation of railroad property was the
burning issue, the Republican candidate for governor, in a speech at
Trenton, stated: “No matter how high the tax on railroad property is
made, the people who pay the freight rates and passenger fares will, in
the end, pay it.” As a railroad director, he undoubtedly knew whereof he
spoke. Like the salesman’s expense account—which included an overcoat,
although it didn’t show—the freight and passenger rates also include the
franchise taxes, which tend to increase the cost of everything we eat,
everything we wear, every article of use or adornment in the home, every
portion of the material required in building the house, which ultimately
has its effect on the rent the tenant must pay. In the light of these
facts it would seem that, instead of there being question as to “who pays
the taxes,” the problem is to discover the man who does not pay taxes in
some form.

Again, there are thousands of Americans who do not own one dollar’s
worth of real estate, and many of them very few household goods, but who
have a birthright in this free land by reason of descent from the heroes
who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor for the
liberties we now enjoy; who fought and bled and died for the principle
of equal rights, no taxation without representation, and who established
upon this continent a “government of the people, by the people, for the
people.”

And the men of ’61! Have they not as much right to a voice and vote in
the affairs of the nation as those who remained at home and laid the
foundations of a fortune during that critical period? Had the soldier
remained at home, perhaps he too might now be a heavy taxpayer, or
tax-dodger. But he answered the nation’s call in the hour of need, he
sacrificed his opportunities and offered his life upon the altar of
his country. And, if he escaped with his life, he returned home, after
years of privation, suffering and hardship, probably ruined in health or
crippled for life, compelled to make a new start. Has he not discharged
his obligation to his country?

Who are the men who would rob an American of his birthright, who insist
that none but property owners should vote or hold office while all
others—the payers of rents, of the tariff, of the internal revenue, of
franchise and stamp taxes, etc.—should be disfranchised? Can they show a
better title than the men, or their descendants, who do the work in time
of peace and the fighting in time of war, but who may not have been able
to secure any real property—honestly or otherwise?

The Constitution of the United States provides that no man shall be
deprived of his right to vote on account of race, color or previous
condition of servitude. What right have we to attempt to deprive any man
of that privilege because he does not own property and pay “direct” taxes?

Mettius Curtius said that “Rome’s best wealth was her patriotism.”
Yet that patriotism was deadened and destroyed by privilege and class
distinction, and Rome fell. Patriotism is unquestionably the best wealth
of any nation; but it cannot be aroused or fostered in a republic by
dividing the people into classes, the rulers and the ruled, on the basis
of ownership of property.

    Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
    Where wealth accumulates and men decay.

The success, progress and safety of this republic rests upon the
contentment of the _whole_ people, and that contentment depends upon
justice and fair dealing. And every citizen, “unless he goes naked,
eats grass, and lives in a hole in the ground,” is a taxpayer to a
greater or less extent, according to the benefits he derives. He has
the same interests in the national welfare; the same responsibilities;
is entitled to equal rights and privileges before the law; and when we
have fully realized the fact we will have established a higher standard
of citizenship, we will each have more respect for ourselves and for one
another, and a deeper, truer love and higher regard for our country and
its institutions.

[Illustration: _Their Joke on the President_

    _Davenport, in N. Y. Evening Mail_]

[Illustration: _Our Uncommon Carriers_

    _Bart, in Minneapolis Journal_]

[Illustration: _Sick ’em!_

    _Macauley, in N. Y. World_]




[Illustration: _Letters From The People_]


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.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _J. D. Steele, Charleston, W. Va._

I have been a reader of your Magazine since its first issue, and while
I partly agree with Mr. George H. Steele, Rockham, S. D., that none of
us are perfect, I admire you for having the courage of your convictions,
and it would be impossible to estimate the good your publication has all
ready done.

As a remedy for the evils existing, as set forth by Mr. Bert H. Belford,
Widners, Ark., I would suggest that our poor, ignorant, down-trodden
farmers in the South get posted. There certainly is no reason for any
grown up man of the present generation not being able to read, and almost
every daily and weekly newspaper would put the most ignorant backwoodsman
in possession of the facts which Mr. Belford states the farmers are
ignorant of.

I believe I have never seen a letter from this state, but West Virginia
hasn’t waked up yet. She is always behind in everything except graft.

May you live long and continue the good work you have undertaken!

       *       *       *       *       *

    _A. J. Jones, Parlier, Cal._

TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE is one of the greatest educators of the age, stands
prominent in its class, is fearless, bold and decisive, is just what
the people want. Every Populist should read it and give it the widest
circulation possible.

Watson’s editorials are great and to the point. The Letters from the
People are very interesting. Would be pleased to hear from our workers
throughout the United States every month through the columns of TOM
WATSON’S MAGAZINE. In regard to the work in California, we are preparing
our petition for a place on the ballot, and will have a People’s Party
ticket in this State this coming election. Our slogan is: “The middle
of the road now and forever!” We take no part in any other party in
existence, or coming into existence. Let us profit by past experience.
The people here, regardless of party, are ready to accept our
principles. You may hear something drop in California in 1908. We have a
press ready to join us at once. Let us get busy at once. Brothers, the
fields are white for harvest.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _G. S. Floyd._

The lucid manner in which you expose the evils of our banking system
should convince any one not blinded by ignorance or prejudice of the
evils lurking therein, even as at present conducted, but if they secure
the additional special privileges that they seek, what may we expect?

Brother Starkey of Nebraska who writes discouragingly in the December
number should take heed, as the worm has turned in Pennsylvania and Ohio,
and one may hope and believe that your efforts have helped to produce
that result.

I was in Kansas in the early seventies when the horde of bogus Greenback
editors, shipped out from New York and New England with rolls of Wall
Street money, bought up the Greenback press throughout the West,
pretending loyalty to the principles until secure in possession, when the
hireling traitors came out in their true colors and the Greenback press
vanished like mist before the noonday sun.

The President’s eulogy of the pension office is worth no more than his
certificate of character to Paul Morton. To judge from observation and
the star-chamber methods of that bureau one would conclude that it is
run primarily as a factor in politics, and that the only criterion
for the grade and tenure of a pension is the whim or discretion of
an irresponsible official. Evidently the system is rotten and needs
overhauling or revolutionizing. From the nature of the service it is
doubtless true that irregularities are inherent therein, but certainly
there is room for improvement.

Conventionality, a parent of aristocracy, is responsible for the
misfortune of Midshipman Meriweather; herein we see one of the evils of
militarism; the discipline they recommend so highly is the discipline of
an underling, and this is mainly why they desire it.

Hurrah for Hearst!

You give Henry George, Jr., a severe prod in the current number. The
single tax is sprung by the plutocrats when they wish to confuse and
demoralize the reform forces.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _Nelson D. Stilwell, Yonkers, N. Y._

The non-appearance of the February number of your magazine caused me
genuine concern. I stand by you, every inch, in what you advocate and
teach, and wish the circle of your readers might be extended many fold. I
first had my attention called to the present evil condition of things by
reading Lloyd’s “Wealth vs. Commonwealth,” and that but paved the way for
further reading and investigation until my present condition of freedom
from the bondage of ignorance has been attained.

I have observed the trend of things for ten years last past and confess
that instead of improvement and reform, I see a steady progress towards
further enslavement. What will be the end of it all? I am beginning to
doubt the maintenance of society and law and order if the entrenched
forces attempt to maintain their control. God forbid that our country
should be baptized again with blood. But upon the heads of these “fools
and blind” men be it, who cannot see the handwriting on the wall.

Your articles on finance and money interest me and absorb all my
attention and edify me very much. Your Magazine has a purpose back of it,
and no one will give a more ready acquiescence than the writer.

To be a reformer is to align oneself with the noblemen of bygone days
whose hearts throbbed for the people. No greater example could be found
than Christ, whose kingdom is called “the times of Reformation.”

Permit me to bid you God-speed.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _Horace C. Keefe, Wallula, Kan._

I have somewhere said “this is the decade of the three Toms”—Tom Watson,
Tom Johnson, and Tom Lawson. They are each or all likely to leave lasting
footprints on the century, and I’m anxious that my Tom’s shall not be the
least. I say “my” because Tom Watson stands for all that the country—if
not the world—must come to, to have peace and answer the daily Christian
pleadings—that “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven”; to be His
will it must embody all that the doctrine of brotherly love contemplates;
that is ideal, that is Populism. The other Toms stand for that part of
the whole they contemplate or are willing to concede from a more or
less selfish standpoint. Your Magazine is startlingly convincing in its
arguments and facts—but, my dear fellow, it lacks that dignity that a
Presidential candidate for a great principle should command. I know your
excuse will be that your appeal to the masses must be in such style—DON’T
DO IT.

It is the aggressive intelligent few that shapes the destinies of
countries, and that will be so with ours; if the reverse were true, why
does not the labor class have 50 or more, the farmers 100 or more, the
socialists a like number of members in Congress? Such a result would show
intelligence and a hope that something would result. Cut out such queries
as—Why the negro maids? Deductions and conclusions are debatable but not
style. The writer is one of the martyrs for the cause and has been your
ardent admirer and well wisher. There is no question as to the ultimate
outcome—though you and I may not be permitted to enter in.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _W. E. Arrant, Alto, Tex._

I read and will say that your Magazine is interesting and entertaining
in many respects, and I admire your ability and style in showing up the
evilness and corruption of this age, which no doubt is doing good in the
way of educating the readers thereof on the main cause of the present
economical and industrial conditions that now confronts the whole people
and oppresses the poor that labor and toil that they may share a small
portion of their labor: while the rich revel in riches and the poor live
in poverty.

I have been a student for several years, studying the economic
conditions, the causes and effects of present conditions. The more I read
and learn of the causes and effects, the more I wonder how and why the
masses of the people have been so completely deceived so long.

I have been a Populist for several years. Was discouraged and disgusted
with the fusion act in 1896, and since that time I began to read and
study the Socialist doctrine to find out what they had to offer as a
remedy for the whole people. Through this search for knowledge I found
that the Populist Party was only a reform measure dealing with the
effects and only a national movement, while the Socialist Party is
international, and goes to the root of the cause of the unjust system of
exploitation, and means the emancipation and freedom of the whole human
family—a plan and system by which one can not rob another by a plan of
legalized system of robbery. It means a system to be established upon
earth by which one can live for all and all for one. It means that we
shall establish a righteous system by which one nation shall not have its
hands at another’s throat for pelf. It means a system by which it will be
possible for all Christians to live a pure Christian life and practice
the Golden Rule in fact and truth.

I realize the error of having more than one party representing the
interest and prosperity of the whole laboring and working people;
therefore, judging between the two, the Populist and the Socialist,
have cast my lot with the Socialists, and expect to make the fight for
justice and emancipation for wage slavery in the Socialist Party.

I appreciate your position and hope that you will accomplish much good
with your valuable Magazine in the way of educating the people. I fail to
see how you can ever expect to help to finally free the laboring people
from economic bondage of slavery, without joining the Socialist Party.
You have asked the people to give their ideas as to what they think about
the existing conditions. I have given my views as I see them. I can
realize no permanent hopes for relief outside of the Socialist and the
co-operative commonwealth.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _Harry Partington, City._

I took the publication since the first number and today I have in the
house only the December copy, as I want to get everybody to read them
that will and thereby have persuaded several to buy them, and you can
depend on me to continue to do so, and will try and get others to do so.
I look at it that I am in the city and can get it at the news-dealers
with more certainty than as a yearly subscriber.

What I think of TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE can never be told. I would like
it semi-monthly, but I know I shall have to wait possibly some time
before that comes. Dear sir, believe me, I am a very sincere believer
and practicer of his doctrine and have been since the Democratic party
undertook to carry the 16 to 1 doctrine under the auspices of W. J. B. of
Nebraska. Sorry Billy failed then and 1904.

Hurrah for W. R. Hearst, but the money power is too strong yet. But
hammer at them and teach us to be steadfast.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _David Meiselas, Brooklyn, N. Y._

I have at last determined to congratulate you upon the success you have
made with your Magazine. It is, beyond any doubt, good work. In reality
I can hardly think to write all the praise the editorials are worth. I
enjoy them as I would some classic by Shakespeare, or some scientific
work by Darwin. The more I read them, the more I like them. They are
digestible; and talk about brain food—it is the best.

Yes, Thomas E. Watson should be well considered as a champion for the
cause of the people. Either he is a second Hearst or Hearst is a second
Watson. They are so much alike in their fights for the people you can
hardly tell which is which.

Over here in New York we are having a grand time, viz:

Murphy telling things about McClellan and vice versa. The big insurance
grafters howling for more. Mr. Ivins telling things about the “reform
grafter,” Mr. District Attorney, etc., etc.

Abraham Lincoln said we should have a “government of the people, by the
people and for the people.” I must say we are living up to it, in New
York—nit. We are having “a government of McCarren, by McClellan and for
Murphy.” Great government, is it not?

If this is not the age of wonder, I don’t know what. But, Mr. Watson,
keep up your steady work; don’t forget the Hon. Platt and Depew, the
former our Chinese advocate and president of the largest express company;
the latter the champion lobbyist of them all. Don’t forget our generous
Senator Knox (with his generous rate bill). There are many more whom you
should prey upon.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _G. White, Enloe, Tex._

Yes “I will help”; it is one of the very, very few papers and magazines
that I can heartily indorse from the old Liberty Bell to the last sheet
of its reading matter; the gags and brakes that are applied to other
editors, or a great majority, at least, disqualify them as editors.

The things that we most need to know are suppressed and the reading
public are kept in the background on the most vital questions of the day.
There is a mighty storm gathering in this once glorious republic; its
muttering thunders can be distinctly heard. The glaring, forked tongues
of wrath can be plainly seen over the tops of the distant hills that
hedge in our eighty million people.

The old ship on which we have sailed thus far is out of repair; the pilot
asleep, or cares nothing for the safety of his passengers; the captain
has bought most of the crew; the breakers are just ahead.

I know not how my fellow-countrymen may feel over the affair, but for
your humble Texas farmer it’s a sad picture. The light that once burned
so bright not only lit up North America from Alalch Mountain to the
Rockies, but crossed both oceans and gave to the world an object lesson
of what a free people could do.

The same light guided Prescott at Bunker Hill. It was the never-setting
star at Valley Forge that led Washington to the gate of glory at
Yorktown. Is it true that the territory bequeathed to us (“and it was
paid in blood”) is to be betrayed into the hands of the enemy for the
small pittance of thirty pieces of silver? Is the money-bag of America
to rule or ruin? Or will those who think and yet have a chance to act
demand a settlement? TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE is one that is asking for a
settlement. May the day soon come.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _N. M. Hollingsworth, Terry, Miss._

I see that you contemplate enlarging and improving the Magazine. I can
see the place for enlarging, but not improving in the subject matter,
except by enlarging and perhaps improving the material, etc. It is as
good as human agency can make it. I only wish it could be read by every
man, woman, boy and girl in the land. It is such an educator as we need,
and it is being read by a great number.

I was at our county cotton-grower’s meeting last Saturday and was
delighted to find so many reading your splendid Magazine. I secured a
subscriber and have promise of several more which I will forward in a day
or two. I have seen your letter to the _Atlanta Journal_ in which there
is enough exposure of Clark Howell’s perfidy, etc., to consign him to the
garbage heap.

If you think it worth while in the Educational Department of the next
number of your Magazine, tell us what effect bucket shops and trade
exchanges have on the price of such produce as are dealt in.

Wishing you and your Magazine all the good that can come to a mortal and
a great publication, I remain your devoted friend and admirer.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _S. T. Z. Champion, Sterrett, Pa._

I am a constant worker and reader of this great reform movement and have
been for the past twelve years, and have voted the ticket straight till
they got me to straddle W. J. B. one time and I got such a fall I fear I
will never live to get over it. I am getting old. I am one of Robert E.
Lee’s old web-foot boys and stacked my old Enfield rifle at Appomattox
Court House on the 9th of April, 1865. It looks like a miracle to see the
fingers pushing a pen that pulled the trigger 40 years ago, and yet when
I think of the blood that was shed for this great nation’s freedom and to
see it being stolen away from us by those money knaves it makes me feel
like I am just 16 years old. I have nine boys, all Populists. Oh, how I
want us to live to get at least one more vote for that grand and noble
boy, Thomas E. Watson, for our next President. Don’t you all feel me
rejoicing over New York’s election, but I fear they will not let Hearst
have his seat as mayor of New York. I have just read Watson’s answer to
Hoke Smith’s letter. It is a grand reply.

You can count on me when the last roll is called. I’ll be there. Yours
for reform.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _W. H Thomas, Fairhaven, Mo._

After spending 25 years in the thickest of the fray I could hardly go
back to the “wallowing in the mire.” No, my brother, I never say die, but
am still pegging away. Yes, I am a Populist. I am a rampant Socialist
and I think that most of my old comrades have followed my example and I
can see no reason why all Populists should not do the same. You know,
my brother, that the Socialists are growing as no other party ever grew
and they are bound to become a dominant factor in politics in the near
future. It is evolution. Reforms do not go backward. The Populists have
done a grand work, but Socialism is inevitable and I would rejoice to
see all old Populists get aboard the band wagon. You are doing a noble
work and to show you that I appreciate it I am going to send you a dollar
for the magazine and 50 cents for that fountain pen, although I can
illy afford it, as I am 65 years old and dependent on my labor for the
support of my family.

Don’t Teddy, the Trust-buster, make you tired? I think he is the biggest
fraud that ever sat in the Presidential chair.

Wishing you long life and abundant success, I am with you till the battle
is won.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _James A. Logsden, Moline, Ill._

I have read with great interest the editorial, “Tolstoi and the Land,”
in the October number of TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE, and while I cannot agree
with you in the position you take upon the land question, I accredit you
with sincerity and honesty of purpose. In common with many others of us,
you are giving of your time, energy and substance, to bring remedial
justice and economic truth to human society.

Being fair-minded and in earnest pursuit of economic truth and equity,
you will, I am sure, accept honest criticisms of your opinions.

In the outset you propound three questions, which are as follows:

    “Is it true that the real grievance of the masses is that the
    land has been taken away from them?”

    “Will no reform bring them relief until the land has been given
    back to them?”

    “Will universal happiness be the result of putting an end to
    private ownership of land?”

To negate these questions you call upon history to bear witness:

    “As a guide to our footsteps the past must always be to some
    extent our light, our guide.”

With this I am heartily in accord. It has been rightly said:

    “History keeps the grass green upon the graves of former
    civilizations, and stands as a beacon light to future ones. It
    is the ever-living Janus, peering both into the past and into
    the future.”

But history does not prove, as you assert, that civilization exists as a
result of private ownership of land. These are your words:

In passing upon this and statements appearing in subsequent paragraphs, I
think I shall have fully answered your three previous questions. When it
“became a matter of _self-interest_ for some _individual_ to improve the
land” was it because of his ownership or of his _security of possession_?
When you admit that “as long as each individual felt that his parcel of
land might go out of his possession at the next regular division there
was no incentive to improvement,” you have admitted the latter. “Not
until the individual became assured that the _benefit of his labor_ would
accrue to himself did the waste become a farm and the hovel a house.”
What was his assurance—private ownership or security of possession? That
it was not private ownership is proven by the tenant system in vogue
in every civilized country in the world. Obviously it is not private
ownership that impelled the landless tenant to go upon land owned by
others, clear away the forest and “make the land a farm.” Then what is
his assurance? Security of possession—the knowledge that he will be left
unmolested to enjoy the “product of his labor.” This tenant enjoys his
security of possession because of the _tribute_ he has been compelled to
pay to the owner to leave him unmolested in his possession and enjoyment.
Could he not be as secure in his possession if the land were owned and
the exaction made by all the people?

Therefore, “if the history of the world shows anything at all, it shows
_this_,” that civilization has developed and progress has gone forward,
not by reason of private ownership of land, but in spite of it.

    “If, what is manifestly impossible,” says Mr. George, “a fair
    distribution of land were made among the whole population,
    giving each his equal share, and laws enacted which would
    impose a barrier to the tendency to concentration by forbidding
    the holding by any one of more than a fixed amount, what would
    become of the increase of population?”

Your assertion that there would be no improvement under such a condition
as you mention is self-evident. But this, instead of being an argument
against the Henry George philosophy, is, in fact, an argument in its
favor.

What Mr. George _does_ propose I shall endeavor to make clear in
subsequent paragraphs when I touch upon your hypothesis regarding the
primitive tribesmen.

Before passing to this, however, I desire to direct your attention to
your observation that “the right of each citizen to hold as his own began
with the laborer who claimed the product of his labor.” The convincing
power of this statement is lacking, because you have failed to prove
to us that without private ownership of land man can not “claim the
products of his labor.” As a matter of fact, you can not furnish such
proof because it is manifestly untrue. Before the savage, wandering in
the primeval forest, ever dreamed of laying claim to any parcel of the
soil as his own, did he not so lay claim to the fish and game he took?
Did he not so lay claim to the fruits and berries he gathered? Did not
the tribesman who followed his flocks and herds over the plains so lay
claim to them as the product of his labor? Without ever a thought of
the private ownership of the soil, he had produced them as truly as
the stockman of today produces the cattle he sends to market, and he
valiantly disputed the right of any person to any share of them. Most
truly he who labors is entitled to labor’s product, but to say that in
order to claim such product it is necessary to privately own land is to
fly into the face of obvious fact. How many of the wage earners of today
are land owners? How much is added to the wages of those few who are,
by reason of this fact? You yourself raised the point that it is not
necessary to own land in order to fleece the public, laborer, land-owner
and all out of their earnings. If this be true how do you harmonize it
with your former claim that it was private ownership of land that first
made it possible for the laborer to claim and retain the product of his
labor.

I come now to the case of the “score of tribesmen” of whom you speak.
While the score were fishing, hunting, drinking or gambling, the one
cleared the wild land, fenced out the rest and claimed it as _his land_.
But, in fact, did this make it his land? By virtue of what did it become
his land? You doubtless had this question in mind when you attempted to
answer it in the following:

    “Having put his labor into the land, having changed it from a
    waste into a farm, it was the most natural thing in the world
    that he should claim it as his own. Why shouldn’t he? _He_ made
    it a farm.”

What was his ultimate purpose in putting his labor into the farm? Was it
not the products which his labor, applied to the land, would bring forth?
You say “he made it a farm.” He found it a farm awaiting his efforts.
You will agree that he was entitled only to the result of his own labor.
In fact, this is the truth for which you are contending. What were the
results of his labor, the farm or the products? Manifestly the latter.
These he enjoyed. Upon what possible ground, then, could he go still
further and claim also the soil as belonging to himself and his heirs
forever?

Moreover, you will concede that before this tribesman determined to
abandon the spear and the rod and become a farmer, this piece of ground
could have been taken by any of the other twenty men; in other words it
was common. It must be further conceded that in casting about to find
a suitable location for his farm, he chose the site which offered the
best natural advantages relative to fuel, water, fertility of soil, and
proximity to the tribal bartering place. At this point let us carry your
illustration still further and assume that all or part of the other
twenty tribesmen decided to become farmers also.

In the same manner as their forerunner, they look about for the best
location, and the one offering the best advantages. But it is taken, and
the others must take second, third or fourth place, according to who gets
located first. But these men have equal rights. Why should some of them
enjoy the exclusive ownership and possession of those sites which give
them natural advantages over the others? Manifestly, they should not. But
how can they equalize these advantages? Just to the extent that farmer
number one holds advantage over farmer number twenty-one—just to that
extent should number one compensate the little community as a whole for
the privilege which he enjoys. And so with all the others. A community
is forming, with its _natural_ demand for revenue for _common purposes_.
Here is the _natural revenue_. Here lies the fundamental principle which
political economists call the Law of Rent. Here reposes the very essence
of the law of compensation. Here also is found the basis principle of
economic justice, which, traced to its last analysis, as civilization
advances, is capable of developing the highest expression of human
society. Here is the answer to your question,

    “Will universal happiness be the result of putting an end to
    private ownership of land?”

It was not “just that the twenty idle tribesmen should take away from the
one industrious tribesman that which his labor had created.” Neither was
it just that he should rob the other twenty when they came to exercise
their equal right to the use of the land, as he manifestly would if he
were left to the exclusive use of the soil, or the best portion thereof,
without compensating those he has excluded.

Let him retain possession of the farm and his products under these
conditions, and you have, not private ownership of land, but common
ownership.

Another point that you have obviously overlooked, and one that goes to
the heart of the social problem, is the element of land monopoly. Your
tribesman was not satisfied with selecting the best land, and fencing
so much thereof as he could till by his own exertion, but he fenced in
vast areas that he could not use, and also claimed that as “his own.”
By so doing he not only enjoyed the fruits of his own labor, but forced
the other twenty to share their products with him as a tribute for using
that part of “his land” which he himself could not, or did not, care to
use. You may say that they had equal opportunities with him to get first
choice. Even if this were granted, it makes no difference in principle.
The fact still remains that he has the power to wring unwilling tribute
from them. Only one could have the best, and though his contemporaries
may have been justly punished for their lack of foresight—which I do not
admit—there is yet another side to the question. What is the status of
future generations in relation to this proposition? Are they guilty of
sleeping upon their rights when all the land has been taken before they
were born, or are they born into conditions which they have had no voice
in making?

If your lonely tribesman, for whose welfare you manifest such
solicitation, had been content with the amount of land he could utilize
to good advantage, had he been willing to contribute his just share to
the common expense, and had he been sufficiently just to recognize and
respect the equal rights of his compeers, the common would yet have
remained after all had been supplied. What was true of the primitive
state is true today in our highly organized society. Shifting conditions
make no changes in universal principles.

“Society” (did not) “as a matter of self-preservation admit the principle
of private ownership of land.” It admitted it because it did not know a
better plan—because it did not know the Laws of Rent and of Compensation.

You deny that “great estates were the ruin of Italy.” “Before a few could
buy up all the land there must have been some great cause at work, some
advantage which the few held at the expense of the many.” “What was that
advantage?” you ask. No better answer can be given to this query than
to refer you back to your own illustration of the farmer tribesman. Did
he buy the land? You say he “fenced it in and claimed it as his own.”
In like manner did all land pass into private control, each individual
claiming far more than he could use. After all the land of Italy had been
“claimed” and enclosed, or that of any given community thereof, the power
that these land _claimers_ held over subsequent comers is obvious. The
only asset of the individual without material wealth is his labor, which
is only one—the active—factor in production. Under circumstances such as
the foregoing, he is debarred from the passive factor—land—and can apply
his labor to it only by paying tribute to those who have _claimed_ it.

In the circle of the human family, those endowed with keen, unerring
foresight are comparatively few. It cannot be gainsaid that those few,
knowing that land is fixed in quantity—which cannot be expanded as
population increases, and as demand for it increases—saw in the early
periods, as they see today, what a powerful advantage they could wield
over their fellows by “fencing in” all the available land—by fencing out,
not only the cattle, as you put it, but also their fellow-men. Is it
not plain that this was the source of the power of which you complain?
Was it not this that furnished the advantage you name? Can you not see
the stream of unearned tribute wrung from the hands of honest labor
constantly flowing into the coffers of these land owners? And seeing it,
can you then maintain that great estates were not the ruin of Italy?

What made the “ruling class of Rome, that had concentrated into their
own hands all the tremendous powers of the State?” What gave them the
power to “fix the taxes” and enact the “infernal laws” which you rightly
contend ought to have been repealed? “Ah!” you say,“they _controlled
the money_.” By what power did they come to control the money? Was it
by a power inherent within themselves, or was it not the power which
they derived from the corner which they held upon the _natural revenue_
which they diverted from the public treasury into their own coffers, thus
making it necessary to provide for the common expense by unjust taxes
upon the products of labor?

“They controlled the money.” But what is money? Is it the means or the
end? Is it not merely a labor-saving invention to facilitate trade? Is it
not money only by common consent? Is it not merely a commodity converted
for convenience into a medium of exchange? You make the point that by
controlling the money, they controlled commodities. But if they had not
controlled the land, which is the source of all commodities—even the
money itself—how could they have controlled the money?

Can you not see that men divorced from the toil and permitted to produce
only on the terms of some other person are forced into the labor market,
to vie with each other in a competition that grows keener and more
vicious as a population increases?

You say that “the power to fix taxes is the power to confiscate.” The
very opposite is true. The power to confiscate is the power to tax.
Give that power to one class and what more does it want? Let that class
confiscate land values, which you agree are naturally common property,
and you give it the power to rob its victim, not merely to the “limit
of their capacity to pay,” but to literal starvation, if they choose
to carry the principle of private ownership of land to its logical
conclusion. For certainly to recognize the right to private property in
land is to recognize the owner’s right to do with _his land_ what he
pleases. To recognize this is to recognize the land-owner’s right to deny
to the landless either the use of _his land_, or any of its products,
on any terms whatsoever. Thus, in carrying the principle of private
ownership of land to its logical conclusion, and recognizing it as a just
principle, is to sanction literal murder. Can a system that has this for
its ultimate, be other than a vicious system, even though it may never
be carried to that extent? It is by means of this vicious system that
human sufferings are augmented by a thousand fold and the sum of human
happiness is correspondingly diminished.

Do not the foregoing facts prove to you that your statement that “_usury_
is the vulture that has gorged itself upon the vitals of nations since
the dawn of time,” is economically untrue? Is it not clear that usury is
only an effect of a deeper-seated cause inherent in land monopoly?

As proof that the universal condition of inequality is _not_ inherent
in land monopoly, you say that the Rothschilds and other “kings of high
finance” do not “buy up vast domains that they may be served by a lot of
tenants.” But when touching upon this phase of the question, you should
always bear in mind that all land is not farm land. The power of the
coal barons to exploit does not arise so much from the fact that they
own large tracts of land, as from the fact that it bears large deposits
of coal. Nor does their power to exploit affect merely the miners of
coal. Coal is a public necessity, and the ownership by these barons of a
comparatively small area of land places them in a position to place—by
reason of unreasonable prices—a tax upon every user of coal.

What is the basis of the railroad’s power for unrestrained exploitation?
Unquestionably it arises from its exclusive franchises, inherent in its
rights of way.

Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan and others of his class do not derive their
unearned revenues from their power to tax. But whence this taxing
power which affects every user of their several products?—Monopoly
of franchises, monopoly of mineral resources, such as mines,
quarries, etc.? What is the source of the Standard Oil monopoly?—Its
ownership of oil land or enough thereof to force independent owners
to sell on the company’s terms, and its consequent power to force
railroad discriminations in its favor? Where did the beef trust and
other industrial corporations derive their monopoly power? Railroad
rebates—“the big pistol”—railroads with their monopoly franchises. And
the railroad monopoly and these other breeds will be extinct in an
instant. End land monopoly and make railroad franchises common property
and the railroad monopoly will be at an end. Had not the Amalgamated
Copper Co. controlled the majority of the copper-bearing lands of the
world, “The Story of Amalgamated” would never have been told.

Referring again to the railroads, was it not largely the great land
grants donated to them by our Government that were the beginning of
their power? These grants operated in two ways to the advantage of the
railroads. First, they greatly increased the wealth of the railroads,
and, second, they diminished the power of the people by diminishing the
area of land open to settlement.

“Land is plentiful and it is cheap. The country is dotted with abandoned
farms that can be had _almost_ for the asking.” You say “almost for the
asking.” This implies that he who takes these farms must pay something
to him who has “abandoned” them. Why _almost_? Why not take them, as in
the case of the primitive tribesman, without asking? You state that they
have been abandoned because the owner could not make a decent living upon
them. Then why make the condition of the next owner more hopeless by
levying tribute against him for the use of a worthless farm?

Make land common property, safe-guard the interests of all by assuring to
each land-holder perpetual use, providing he pay his equitable share into
the common treasury—which in each case would be the increment of value.
Then “_abolish all other forms of taxation_.” This will secure every one
in the enjoyment of his labor’s product, will abolish monopoly and the
individual or corporate taking power, vicious tariffs, and all. This is
all you have demanded.

Your demand is a just one, but—as I trust you may be brought to see—your
remedy is superficial and cannot be made effective. You must dig in
deeper soil, else your laudable efforts are vain. The abrogation of
offensive legislative enactments and the enactment of other statutes
dealing with effects will avail nothing. Nothing save the rooting out of
the mother of evils can possibly accomplish the end for which you are so
courageously and manfully striving.

Your work is a noble one, and its power for good is measured only by the
number of people whom you can reach. I admonish you to give the land
question thorough and painstaking investigation. I trust you will bear
with me for what may seem excessive frankness. But you are not looking
for bouquets, but simple, unembossed truth. When I say to you that in my
opinion you have not familiarized yourself with the philosophy you are
attempting to refute, you will accept this criticism in the broad view of
public interest.

I have gone into greater detail in my comments upon your editorial than
I expected to go in the outset, but it has seemed advisable, in order to
get a clear view of all the points raised by you. However, I trust I have
not gone beyond the limit of the space that may be available.

       *       *       *       *       *

    A VETERAN REFORMER HITS THE TARIFF HARD

    E. S. Gilbert is close to ninety years old but uncommonly
    well preserved, having been interested in every Presidential
    campaign since he was a boy of sixteen, and has acquired a
    vast fund of political knowledge, of which he still has a firm
    grasp. He has seen and remembers nearly every President from
    Andy Jackson down—nineteen of them—and talks interestingly.
    He says as he sees things now the political situation is
    just as it was in the early fifties. Then two minor parties
    were dying, and the leading party—the Democratic—was
    undergoing disintegration. Today, as he sees it, Democracy and
    Populism are dying, and the Republican party is undergoing
    disintegration. The Republican Party sprang up in the fifties,
    and he looks for a new, strong party to come out of the present
    chaos in a few years. Following is a thoughtful article, from
    Mr. Gilbert’s pen, which recently appeared in the _Lincoln
    Independent_:

Editor Independent: Here are a few figures for men who think.

In the year 1901 there was manufactured in the United States thirteen
billions of dollars’ worth of goods. Authority, Secretary Shaw.

The average rate of duties upon imported merchandise is 52 per cent.
Authority, Walter Wellman.

Now, fifty-two per cent of thirteen billions of dollars is
$6,770,000,000, which the present tariff of duties authorizes the
manufacturers to collect of the American people each year, if they can.
It actually enables them to collect a large portion of it—but not all.
The probabilities are they collect about two-thirds. They collect nothing
for goods exported.

There is honest competition on some classes of goods, such as flour and
the cheaper cotton fabrics, and perhaps some others, that prevents them
from collecting it of the people. So, in order to be fair, we will cut
this sum in halves.

We then have the sum of $3,385,000,000, which is considerably less
than is probably collected. In order not only to be fair, but to be
absolutely safe, we will cut off the $385,000,000, and we have the sum
of three billions of dollars—three thousand millions—collected by the
manufacturers and paid by the people as the result of the Dingley tariff
bill.

Bear in mind, that this is over and above what is collected in duties
for the support of government. Bear in mind, this money is paid to the
manufacturers, the capitalist and not to the laborers. Bear in mind that
if this three billions of dollars were divided among the employees of the
manufacturers, it would give to them something less than six millions of
laborers a little over $500 apiece. Bear in mind, that this would pay the
entire labor bill of all the manufacturers of the United States.

Then ask yourselves: Is this state of things the result of the
intelligence or genius of the people? Or is it the result of
misinformation or stultification?

                                                            E. S. GILBER.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _W. F. Short, Eurekaton, Tenn._

I am well pleased with the Magazine and think it is superior to any
other magazine that I ever read. It is just what I expected our brave
and noble Tom to get up. Yes, the Magazine is all right. The language
is beautiful, forcible and courteous. I was a subscriber from the first
issue and have sent in my renewal for this year. I have more confidence
in Tom Watson than in any man who has tried to right the wrongs of the
people. I believe him to be so conscientious that he would not sacrifice
principles for any office in the gift of the people, and I do wish we had
one thousand men like our true and honest Tom to battle for justice and
rights of the people. I stand for the principles advocated by Jefferson,
Jackson and Lincoln.

I can make but one suggestion for the Magazine, and that is to place it
in a better wrapper, so it will not be lost in the mail.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _R. Brown, Buck Knob, Ark._

I am no writer and no scholar, but I write a few lines to you in order to
congratulate you on your Magazine. I think it the best magazine on earth
and the _Missouri World_ the best paper and the most patient publishers
on earth. I could not have the patience to publish a paper and send it
out among so many prejudiced block-headed farmers and laborers and get
so little return for my labor. I live in the mountains of Arkansas and I
have been lashing with my tongue and knocking at these old Mossbacks with
T. E. WATSON MAGAZINES and the _Missouri World_ for one or two years.
Some of them won’t read a reform paper when it is given to them, but I
give T. E. WATSON’S MAGAZINE and the _Missouri World_ to them all the
same. On some of them the moss I see is loosening. I am going to try to
organize a club in our township shortly. I am for government ownership of
all the railroads, coal mines, oil fields and all manufactures that take
a company to run and government money, and no one man to own more than
one hundred and sixty acres of land and not that unless he lives on and
cultivates the same. I will fight for all this and more as long as I live
and have a dollar that my family can get along without.

I am nearly sixty-four years old and have eight sons, all of whom will
vote the Populist ticket and all be old enough in 1908 to vote, and will
vote the Populist ticket.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _Stephen Lewis, Martin’s Ferry, O._

Your article in the January issue of your Magazine in regard to the
high-handed methods of the U. S. _Steal_ trust in obtaining property
from defenceless people has been read with much interest, and I approve
of your bold and fearless manner in attacking unlawful corporations and
lawless promoters.

That part in your article on the _Steal_ trust where you raise the point
as to whether the men who demolished the widow’s home were union men or
not was noted in particular and I venture the opinion that they were not,
because Pittsburg, with all its much vaunted prosperity is and has been
recognized by union workmen as the cradle from which that disreputable
class of workmen known as _scabs_ have come. Pittsburg harbors more scabs
than any other city in the country, regardless of size. The man who made
the _Steal_ trust possible operated his mills at Homestead with scabs
at the sacrifice of human life and forced a lower scale of wages upon
the men with the state militia. Yet this man is regarded by a great many
so-called respectable people as a philanthropist because he is erecting
monuments to himself in the form of libraries in different parts of the
country.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _M. G. Carlton, Zolfo, Fla._

I appreciate the Magazine and feel that it is one of the best. I am a
Populist and took great pleasure in casting my vote for you at the last
election, knowing at the time that the chances for success were bad. Yet
I cast the vote with as great pride and satisfaction as if I had known
you would be elected. I know how to sympathize with a defeated candidate
as I myself ran on the Populist ticket for Representative against the
noted Zuba King—the wealthiest man in De Soto County and one connected
with one or more of the best banks of the country, and got beaten, of
course, but I was not whipped but beaten by the money crowd and I believe
as strongly in the principles of the Populist Party as I ever did. I am
just the same today.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _W. Scott Samuel, Pawhuska, Okla._

Thinking that TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE might like to hear from a locality
where politics “rules the court, the camp, the grove,” I relate this
little incident. A few weeks ago, when the town sites of the Osage
reservation were to be opened for sale and an auctioneer appointed to
sell the lots, the news was published that a certain man, Amos Ewing,
had received the appointment of auctioneer. Now, the reputation of this
man, Ewing, is a stench in the nostrils of every honest man in Oklahoma.
From petty defalcations to embezzlement of trust funds, which he was
forced to disgorge, comes the reputation of the versatile and oleaginous
Amos. And so, when it was known that our great “square deal” bear hunter
had through his secretary named Amos for this promotion of trust and
emolument, it was not long before the mails were loaded with protests
from different localities in Oklahoma where the seductive Amos had
exercised his peculiar grafts. Did it do any good? Alas for the square
deal! When the sale of lots commenced at Pawhuska this creature, Ewing
was in the position that should have been filled by some one at least not
a self-convicted grafter, and _he’s there yet_, and all the protests,
charges, etc., filed against him are as though they never happened. How’s
that for the “square deal”?

In conclusion, permit me to compliment TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE for its
fearless _exposé_ of moral rottenness in high places. Hoping the good
work will go on, I desire to share in the glory of the time when its
principles shall prevail.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _Malcolm B. Webster, Atlantic City, N. J._

I have been an interested and delighted reader of your Magazine for some
time past, and feel that I am getting from it a political, social and
economic education such as I should not have known where to look for else.

While still but very young, I have long felt that I could say upon the
above subjects:

    “Myself, when young, did eagerly frequent
    Doctor and saint, and heard great argument
    About it and about—but evermore came out
    By the same door wherein I went.”

Now I begin to feel that there _is_ a _back_ door used by the “powers
behind the throne,” and that your Magazine leads one to it to observe the
edifying spectacle of the manipulation of the puppets by the powers.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _James Porges, Chicago, Ill._

Keep up the good work. You have the support of thousands in your efforts
to awaken the lethargic American public to the fact that they are being
robbed with the aid of our corrupt laws and the special privilege
Government.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _T. B. Rogers, Logansport, Ind._

I don’t know how to praise that book enough. I think it is the strongest
political document we have. Surely, if we could get the voters of the
nation to read it, we would have reform, for if any reasonable person
reads it he can’t help but endorse those principles. I have been loaning
those magazines I received to my neighbors, and they all acknowledge that
the book tells the truth. I think I can get up a club in the near future,
for those that read them promise me they will subscribe for it.

As for myself, I don’t need any literature on the subject, for I have
been in the front ranks of the movement ever since 1872. I was a Peter
Cooper man and have marched along in that line ever since. Never voted
for anything else. When I cannot vote the Populist ticket, I don’t vote
at all. There were a few of us that started the movement here in Cass
County, Indiana, and we worked hard and spent a good deal of money. We
had some of our best speakers here to help us. We had the Hon. Jesse
Harper of Danville, Ill., N. H. Motsinger of Sholes, Ind., Judge S. W.
Williams of Vincennes, Ind., and a number of other good speakers, and
the result of our work was that we cast over 900 votes for the Populist
county ticket. We felt very much encouraged, but when the next campaign
came—well, you know what happened to our Party.

We are right and all we can do is to keep on fighting. I am in favor of
staying in the fight until the last ditch is taken.

I will close by wishing you great success.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _Thomas Knox, Bennett, Neb._

I appreciate reading your Magazine. I also appreciate your manly and
courageous way of putting the truth before your readers. My only hope is
that I would like to have the pleasure of knowing that the writings of as
strong a reasoner and clear thinker could enter every home of the common
herd so that reason could displace prejudice or party insanity. We all
regret the disconnection of that able defender of the common people, Mr.
T. H. Tibbles, from the editorial columns of the _Nebraska Independent_.
We hope for his health and his early return to Nebraska, to continue the
battle for us common people. In conclusion I hope for Mr. Charles Q. De
France’s health and happiness. May his labors be a power for good and
light to the people. I also hope Thomas E. Watson’s health and life may
be spared for many years in the good cause.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _H. L. Fagin, Kansas City, Mo._

Is it not good to feel that the present wave of civic, economic and
industrial righteousness seems practically certain to sweep every thing
before it? There is a quiet, studious earnestness and determination
everywhere existent, that portends certain and tremendous results. The
best part of it is that the masses have largely been educated to the
point where they no longer expect to accomplish everything in a day, but
rather realize that to get even a large share of what they insistently
demand they must begin in the primaries and conduct a continuous campaign.

You are doing a great work and you have your reward and will have it.
Every honest and ardent spirit everywhere communes with and strengthens
every other such. No more honest, open, fearless man than you is on earth
today. That might be better expressed, but the meaning is there—I will
let it pass.

The universal spirit of righteousness encompasses and permeates you—you
are surely a part of the divinest essence. Being a man, you must like to
know that other men appreciate and approve—and to the utmost. And that
they do in an ever expanding circle. The days of sophistry, of deception,
of class and special privileges, of municipal, state, and national
corruption are rapidly passing. The people are becoming wise. They know
their friends. They know who is true, despite the tremendous efforts
of a press, largely subsidized to mislead and deceive. But there are
newspapers and newspapers, just as there are magazines and magazines.

I need not tell you to keep on straight ahead. You couldn’t stop if you
wanted to. Tell the truth just as you are doing, and as much of it as
you have space for, in allopathic doses. I cannot agree with all your
conclusions, nor will any thoughtful student; but in most I do most
heartily concur, and I do know that all your influence is for good.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _John McFord, Sheridan, N. Y._

I like your Magazine very well, but I would like it much better if you
and your Magazine would come out flat-footed for Socialism. If public
ownership or collective ownership of the railroads, telegraphs, etc. is
a good thing for the people, why not have public ownership, or rather
collective ownership, of the lands, the machinery, etc.? Political
democracy without industrial democracy is futile and amounts to nothing.
I had the pleasure of voting for you in ’92, and it is a matter of
profound regret to me that you cannot see your way clear to step forward
into the Socialist Party, where all true middle-of-the-roader Populists
logically belong. Populism is a compromise, a half way measure. Socialism
is the whole cheese.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _John P. Thorndyke, Canaan, N. H._

You publish more _real stuff_ than any magazine I have ever read in my
life. I am sixty years of age, and we take seven other magazines, and
without any exaggeration it is but justice to your efforts to say that
there is by far more real, good, well-seasoned, relishable food for the
digestion of the average brain, than is afforded in any other magazine
I have seen. Having practiced medicine for a number of years, I have
sometimes volunteered my diagnosis of the disease troubling some of our
great (?) men and I flatter myself that an observance of that particular
case has proven the correctness of my examination at a distance. For
instance, I think the main trouble with our great Senate is constipation
of the brain, which invariably forbids the entertainment of honest
thought. Now I hope that some one with sufficient “sand” in his gizzard
will see that every member of the present Congress and Cabinet receives a
copy of your very valuable Magazine. It will be worth more to them than a
post-graduate course in the schools of Rockefeller and Morgan.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _John B. Bott, Grant, Pa._

To a constant and appreciative reader of TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE (purchased
monthly at the Union News Co.’s stands) it does seem strange that so
great and good a man as “Tom” should, under the stimulus of praise and
success or the twittering of a pert maid, really become ashamed of his
familiar cognomen and his old clothes.

For two days I have been searching, here and there, high and low, for
_Tom_ WATSON’S MAGAZINE: always explaining that “_Tom_” has gone into
“innocuous desuetude” and “_Watson_” has stript himself of his old
clothes and donned _full regulation uniform_, but all to no effect.

Am hoping the new clothes won’t make _Mister_ Watson too vain, and that
at least his relations, Populist friends and host of well wishers will
not fail to recognize him in his docked designation and fine regimentals.

I wish to add that it was the “Tom” that appealed to me, above all things
else, when the news agent showed me No. 2 of Vol. I. and asked me if I
had seen TOM WATSON’S. I replied that I had not, but that “Tom” had the
true flavor and I’d take a dose.

There are, I am sorry to say, Watsons big and Watsons little; Watsons
wise and Watsons foolish; Watsons mediocre galore, but only one “_Tom_”
Watson, and he seems to be, God forbid, going to the bad.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _Robert L. Cooper, Savannah, Ga._

I have been, previous to the last year, what may be termed a “Tom Watson
hater.” Like a lot of other “pig-heads,” I have heard the other side all
the time, declining to read or look upon with reason anything you wrote
or said. I was prevailed upon to read your “Napoleon.” I followed it up
with “France” and “Jefferson,” together with a number of your speeches,
letters and magazines. I have arrived at the conclusion that of the very
few sincere men of the day, WATSON STANDS IN THE FRONT RANK.

You have my unbounded admiration and very best wishes for the
splendid fight you are making for improvement of conditions in our
country—especially our beloved state, Georgia. I may add that there are a
great many other young men in this community who are of the same opinion.

That your books are being read is attested by the frazzled-out copies in
our public library, and the difficulty one has in securing the use of
them even for the short time allowed for the use of a popular book.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _Aaron McDonald, Galveston, Ind._

I received a copy of the old guard news letter some time back, and was
not in shape to respond at that time, and when I got in shape to, I took
sick and was not able; but now as I am able and in shape I will send one
dollar to help pay expenses of organizing. It seems that through this
part of the country Populists are dead. There are lots that are sick on
account of the rascality of the officers of the old parties, but speak
to them about Populists and you can seldom get a grunt out of them.
It may be a calm before the storm. Hope it is, for I think there are
Independents enough in this neighborhood to cut things short when they do
get at it. The hardest pull seems to be in giving up the old name. They
seem to think that reform must come through their party. I have asked
several how they expect to get reform when Wall Street owns the Cabinet
and Senate. That is like putting the devil in the pulpit to preach the
gospel.

Hoping you will meet success.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _H. B. Paxton, Wheatland, Mo._

I am 66 years old, and have been in the reform movement from Cooper to
Watson, except once for Bryan. Everything is being quiet with us—politics
as well as everything else. We had at one time 500 Populist voters in
this Hickory Co., about one-fourth of the voting strength of the county.
As we haven’t any organization in the county, I haven’t much idea what
our strength is at this time, but there are quite a number of true blues
yet.

Your Magazine is all right. Will send my renewal soon and I assure you I
will try to get others to subscribe.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _T. T. Mattox, Hope, Ark._

I am still a Populist and read WATSON’S MAGAZINE. Think there are no
words nor figures to enumerate or define the good effect it is having
on the one big National party made up of the new parties, Democrat and
Republican. There are but two National parties now—the Watson and the
Swollen-tails. Good news gone to Canada and the nations of the globe.

Dear Watson, you are doing more good than if in office.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _H. E. Pomeroy, Mason, Ill._

I think you are fooling away time and money. Look at William J. Bryan in
the last National convention. See Judge Parker now. This nation is too
wealthy to be ruled by patriots. Wall Street is the government. You can’t
do anything with Wall Street. The masses have no principle above whiskey
and tobacco, and the churches are in the hands of priestcraft. If you
have a copy of Æsop’s Fables read about the fox and the flies.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _J. A. Dahlgren, Bradshaw, Nebr._

I cannot let this opportunity go by without telling you what I think
of your Magazine. It is undoubtedly the very best reform magazine now
published. Your editorials certainly have the right tone. Your article on
the situation in Georgia gives us Northerners new light on the subject.
While we do not have the negro problem to contend with here in Nebraska,
we nevertheless have the railroad question to fight over from year to
year. We must pay tribute to Harriman and Hill, and other Wall Street
kings, besides countless two-by-four politicians who apparently have no
other aim in life than to serve the railroads and betray the people. I
am glad to see that grand old man Tibbles writing for WATSON’S MAGAZINE.
Before I close I must ask you to give us another story something like
“Pole Baker.”

       *       *       *       *       *

    _George Chapman, East Cleveland, O._

I am prompted to write you from the fact that I believe you to be the
right man in the right place, and I honestly think that the seed that you
are now sowing will take root and bear fruit, as they are being sown in
fertile soil.

No party, or parties, can long withstand your bombardments, no matter how
well fortified they may be, as your guns are loaded with facts.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _W. S. Stanley, Logansville, Ga._

I feel it my duty to express that in my estimation, which I take from a
national and reasonable standpoint, Tom Watson is one of the greatest
Americans living and his Magazine the best I ever read.

I earnestly hope that some day not far distant, Tom Watson will be our
Commander-in-Chief of our National Government.

How any honest and patriotic man can oppose the principles advocated by
Tom Watson, I cannot see.

Tom Watson is a great man. Why? Because he is honest, brave, fearless and
aggressive. Because he is standing for the rights of the great mass of
people at large, leading them onward and upward from a Government of the
privileged few to a Government of the unprivileged many.

For the last fifty years our Government has been leading more and more
toward anarchy.

Tom Watson, may you live long to voice the principles of Jeffersonian
Democracy!

       *       *       *       *       *

    _J. J. Hall, Hutchinson, Ark._

Tom, why don’t you knock that “intrinsic value” rot into a cocked hat?
I think that policy is one of the greatest barriers to progress of the
masses in studying finance. The sooner they learn that value does not
exist in substance but in the mind, the better. This is the first and
most important fact to be learned by the student of monetary science, and
when once understood all the relative facts are easy. Take a shot at it,
Tom. You can make it both instructive and readable.

Yours for success.

_Of course I like the Magazine._

       *       *       *       *       *

    _Alfred French, Washington, D. C._

I look forward to the arrival of your Magazine every month with a great
deal of interest. Other magazines I give away, but yours I do not care to
part with.

I shall speak for it, have spoken for it, and very likely shall continue
to stand by it so long as you condemn the discrimination made by
officials in favor of the bankers. I have said for years that the men who
own the railroads and the bankers rule the country.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _L. R. Green, Spottsville, Ky._

I am proud of being one of the “old guard,” having marched without
halting in the “middle of the road,” without ever lowering our colors or
ever thinking of surrender.

Am proud of our matchless leader, Tom Watson, and his Magazine, his
two-edged sword. Friends of popular government, let’s give the Magazine a
million subscribers and make its editor President in 1908!

       *       *       *       *       *

    _Arthur F. Mann, Brooklyn, N. Y._

The Magazine is O. K. The February number is strictly 100%. It would be
cheap at 25 cents. Thank you for the sample copy received today. I’d
already purchased mine of my news-dealer. However, I’ll see the sample
copy is put into good hands and hope it will “work.” Mr. Watson, you are
doing “_us plain Americans_” a world of good. Keep it up. May your life
be spared to us for many years to come!

       *       *       *       *       *

    _F. F. Gordy, Richland, Ga._

Aside from the fact that both Howell’s and Smith’s friends claimed the
victory at the joint debate, was the further fact that Tom Watson got the
greatest ovation of any. The first half of Howell’s speech brought out
your name, which caused the audience to rise en masse and the applause
shook the building. While I am for Smith, still I am looking beyond him
to something better.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _C. Will Shaffer, Olympia, Wash._

The Magazine is all right and is on the right track.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _M. W. Henry, Waelder, Tex._

I am a reader of your most excellent and truly demo-republican Magazine.
Our adversaries assumed the garb of angels to serve the devil in. There
is not a single fundamental principle contended for by our patriotic
democratic-republican forefathers contained in either the democratic or
republican party platforms, but both parties are thoroughly Hamiltonized
and irretrievably committed to the aristocratic British Banking and
Bonding System which financiers know to be absolutely incompatible with
the perpetuity of democratic institutions. All of the enemies of our
free institutions are in one or the other of these parties and their
bosses are engaged in making dupes of the common voters. The interests
of the capitalists are the same whether North or South, and as they have
complete control of both the old parties the people have no reasonable
hope of relief from oppression from either. Direct legislation is
essentially democratic and is what the enemies of our free institutions
most fear. Its triumph will be the triumph of human liberty over
plutocratic despotism. It will restore the Government into the hands of
our people, from whom it has been wrested by the boodlers and grafters,
prompted by conscienceless greed and avarice. A victory along this
line will be a greater victory for humanity than that of Yorktown or
Appomattox.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _Thomas S. East, Anderson, Ind._

One of the very best magazines that I have ever read. I want to say to
you that the good seed you are sowing will live long after you and I
and others of the “Old Guard” have passed to the other side. And just
as soon as my business matters will permit, I want to send you a large
subscription list and in this way help on the good work. For I truly
believe all who have the cause at heart will at this time lend their
influence to the work, so that Plutocracy and all the attending evils
that flow out from the corrupting influences that spread and grow like
vile and obnoxious weeds in a corn field, may be rooted out.

Ever yours for the cause of humanity, I am in the fight to the finish.

I have every number of the Magazine up to date.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _Fred Diehl, New York._

I am very sorry to hear that you are not well and permit me to send you
all the good health wishes I can give. We need you in our struggle for
progress. You should be preserved for our work in the coming crisis that
I believe will soon take place in the world, especially in this country.

This article on the Chinese question I send you contains my innermost
convictions on that problem and I believe should be listened to before
we create another problem almost impossible to solve. I do not want to
impose upon your good nature, but if you find it possible to publish in
your Magazine, would you kindly do so?

If not, then kindly send it back to me.

My mind is for what is right. I would like to work for the betterment and
right adjustment of all conditions in need of improvement.

There are, to my mind, many reasons why Chinamen should be restricted
from coming to the United States. The Chinese are not eligible to
citizenship. It is not good policy to encourage immigrants to come
here in great numbers that cannot become citizens. Every man (and let
us hope every woman, in the near future) should bear his portion of
responsibility to the government. Chinamen do not seem to grasp the
idea of freedom as do the people of Anglo-Saxon and Latin origin, nor
do they appreciate our rights and privileges for which we struggled
for centuries. Chinamen would, perhaps could, not use these rights
intelligently nor enthusiastically.

They bring to us peculiar oriental vices from which we are yet free, but
they would contaminate us and undermine our lives.

Economically and socially they are impossible; economically, because
they would undersell the American workman and destroy our standard of
living; socially, because they lack the necessary elements to make a
congenial race. It is not true, to my mind, that a race is superior
because it can undersell another any more than a herd of rats is superior
over man or tiger and lions over man because they can overcome man by
numbers and ferocity. The Chinese themselves protected and preserved
their civilization from invaders by building that huge wall around it
thousands of years ago. It was Chin, it is said, the great reformer,
as he was called, that did it and the great land today bears his name.
The Huns invaded Germany and robbed the unprotected peasants. The fact
that the Germans could protect themselves from endless invasions through
fortifications and armed resistance showed the superiority of the Germans
over the Huns.

I believe I am a friend of humanity and that is the reason I believe in
the restriction of the Chinamen (our brothers) from coming here. One of
the reasons (and I think it is the greatest of all) should be sufficient,
that is that they are in great danger of being massacred through the
economic struggles and competition and the inevitable crash is sure to
come. We had already symptoms of such massacres in the West. The killing
of the Jews in Russia will look mild in comparison. Chinamen coming here
in great numbers would result in greater disasters than we can imagine.
We would create another race problem. Have we not enough with our negro
problem? There is an excuse for people coming here whose homelands are
overpopulated and who can easily and naturally assimilate. China has vast
unoccupied lands with unopened resources and its population, great as it
is, is not actually compelled to seek foreign territory. The Chinamen
should pioneer their own great land. Let them stay at home and open their
unworked national wealth. We cannot blame the ignorant peasants for
coming here. They do not know the possibilities of their own country and
if they did it would do them no good. It is the so-called intelligent,
progressive Chinese that are to blame. The people of China are hampered
and restricted by their own ancient customs fatal to themselves. Chinamen
are coming to the United States to reap the benefit of civilization of
another race with which they have little in common. It does not seem that
the Chinese come here to become actual settlers, and such immigrants are
not beneficial to the land in its present state of development.

May the time be not far distant when all can go where they wish without
any barrier or restriction. When that time comes we must free first
ourselves and within our own countries. We must not endanger another land
with our own shortcomings.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _Joel B. Fort, Adams, Tenn._

In your valuable Magazine you hit the “Rascals,” who have combined in
violation of law and good morals to rob the producer and consumer, to
suit me exactly.

If it should come in the way of your comments, the good people of the
Dark Tobacco District of Tennessee and Kentucky would rejoice with
“exceeding great joy” if you in your inimitable style would hit the
infernal Tobacco trust a _jolter_. This, the most heartless of all, took
possession of this District, composed of about twenty-two counties, and
laid it off in territories and appointed an agent to buy the tobacco (the
only money crop) at his own price. No one was allowed in his territory,
and consequently there was no opposition or competition. They took the
tobacco at two dollars less than the cost of production. The condition
became pitiable and laborers who were unable to support their families
left the country and went to the cities, railroads and mines. The people
became angered, and on the 24th of September, 1904, organized “The Dark
Tobacco Protective Association.” This association controlled 75% of the
tobacco, and in six months raised the price to double the former price.
Now tobacco is selling for more than twice its price under the Trust
rule. We appealed to the law, but had we waited for the law to protect
us we would have starved. We went after the thieves red-hot and for more
than a year hell would have been a good cooling place for them. Any help
you can render us in your excellent Magazine, which is largely read in
this section, would be greatly appreciated.

Before I close let me pay you the tribute you richly deserve by saying
that any heart breathing the gentle and ennobling sentiment found in
your pieces “In the Mountains” and “A Day in the Autumn Woods” lives
close to his God and fellow-man, and a man who could write the “Widow
Lot” can never die, and is a national benefit. Great men have always had
the misfortune to die before their works were appreciated and admired:
I sincerely hope you may be spared to fight the battle of the people
against Snobbery, Shams, Hypocrites, Grafters, and the Robber Barons of
the Trusts.

I send you a copy of a speech against the Tobacco Trust; if you have time
to read it you will see why it is that I so eagerly await the issuance of
every number of your Magazine.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _James Griffith Stephens, Valdes, Alaska._

I am reading every number of your Magazine with great interest. I notice
that you never touch on subjects pertaining to Alaska; have you forgot
that we are on earth? Listen to this tale of woe.

Alaska cost the United States seven million five hundred thousand
dollars in the year 1867. Since then Alaska has paid into the treasury
the sum of one hundred and fifty million. Note the interest on the
purchase. Still we have no means of representation. There are today in
the District of Alaska 60,000 population who stand in the same place that
our forefathers stood when the tea-party took place. It is a shame that
in this land of the free we are denied ANY means of representation. There
is a mistaken idea that Alaska has a territorial form of government. It
has no voice from the people whatever. We are peoned. And why? BECAUSE
ALASKA AFFORDS ONE OF THE CHOICEST TREES IN THE ORCHARD OF GRAFT. And
its political plums are distributed among the carpetbag grafters who
enforce their presence upon the pioneers who are fostering and fathering
the country. There is not an elective office in the District. Our mining
laws are obnoxious and afford the greatest chance for official graft. Did
you ever stop to consider what a great country Alaska is, and how it is
controlled? If I may, without taking too much of your valuable time, I
will call your attention to the following facts.

Alaska is one-third as large as the United States.

It is not an iceberg, but affords future homes for millions.

Alaska is in the same latitude as England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and
Russia.

Alaska has the greatest fisheries on earth. These fisheries are
controlled by the beef trust. GRAFT!

Alaska has great beds of finest anthracite coal, now being gobbled up by
the Pennsylvania coal barons. GRAFT!

Alaska is covered by fine forests now being taken up by means of
soldiers’ fractional script. GRAFT!

Alaska has the largest stamp mill on earth. The mine has produced over
$22,000,000 in gold, more than three times the cost of the District. This
mine is not timbered and there is an average of one man killed a day by
caving. GRAFT!

Alaska has the only fur-seal islands in the world. These islands are
leased to a big corporation. GRAFT!

Alaska has a navigable river twenty-eight hundred miles in length, a
reservation at the mouth controls the harbor and permits are issued for
warehouses to two big corporations only, so Alaskans again have to stand
for GRAFT!

I could go on giving cases of graft for a month, but time is limited. An
article by a well informed writer in Appleton’s _Booklovers’ Magazine_,
entitled “The Looting of Alaska,” is well worth reading.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _S. C. Le Baron, Smiley, Tex._

Three numbers of your Magazine received, for which I am truly thankful
inasmuch as it stands for the principles which have been my political
platform ever since the Greenback party was organised. It is only
financial inability that kept me from becoming a subscriber at the start,
for I felt very certain it would be a powerful educator, and the copies
at hand prove my hopes fully realized. If it could be gotten into the
hands of those who feel the need of a change in conditions but still
can’t be made to understand the cause of these conditions, it would
indeed be a powerful factor in the reform movement. The copies received
are out doing missionary work; there is enough strong and conclusive
argument in any one of them to set an unprejudiced mind to thinking
seriously whether these things are so. I have been in this movement over
thirty years, and having passed my eighty-first birthday, feel that I
am not destined to work much longer, but when I see the circumstances
which inevitably tend to an enthrallment of the masses, I feel like doing
my best to avert the coming disaster. My hope lies in the integrity of
an intelligent citizenship and it is through outspoken literature that
intelligence can be acquired.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _E. J. Whelan, Tipton, Mich._

I like the way you write and the way you put it, but I am discouraged.
It doesn’t seem as though the rank and file will ever see the point.
The most of them will agree with me about the condition of the country,
but when they come to vote, they vote the same old ticket. That is the
way they do. Some one gets hold of them before election and they vote
it straight. Only a short time ago a friend of mine said to me that he
thought we as a Government were getting right where Russia is, and it
would take the same internal revolution to get rid of the monopolies
and trusts that are holding us down. Now I will venture anything that
that same man will vote with the old G. O. P. and vote a straight ticket
too. Now it makes me sick, but I think if they can stand it, I can, and
have made up my mind to let the whole thing go to the devil. It looks as
though the men with Hon. before their names were thieves. It is called
“graft” now.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _F. A. Jeter, Alto, Tex._

I am on your side, never have been on any other way and I know that if
the laboring people do not get some relief, and that soon, we are gone.
Your Magazine has done good here. Has changed hot-headed Democrats to
Populists.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _A. C. Shuford, Newton, N. C._

In a letter some time back you stated that you believed the “Money
Question” to be infinitely more important than any other before the
American people. You are undoubtedly correct in the view you take of the
matter. People take the same superstitious view of money that they do
of religion, and how to reach the reason of the average man through all
this thick covering of superstition is quite a problem. I have thought
over this problem for years and am not much nearer the solutions of it
now than when I first began. I have practiced caution in my contact with
men, and to look back for twenty years I can see quite a change has taken
place in my own neighborhood as well as elsewhere. I have been a great
admirer of Jefferson and have read everything he has written which I
could get my hands upon. His boldness in attacking the church is a marvel
to me. Here is the power which enslaves the minds of the people and keeps
them from using their thinking machines. The result of such methods is
that the average man is afraid to think for himself. No step of progress
can be made until this vast machine is shattered, and yet care must be
used in doing so, because man must have some foundation upon which to
stand. Do not misunderstand me, please. I am a believer in Christian
principles as I understand them.

The money power and other monopolies are allowed to maintain their grip
through the church largely. How best to expose and open this organisation
to attack is a problem I wish you or some other man would solve. The
average politician knows well how to play upon this feeling which the
Church creates and as long as the organisation is allowed to continue its
process of enslaving the minds of our children, just so long will the
crop of “Grafters” be an abundant one.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _Sallie T. Parrish, Adel, Ga._

I believe your Magazine is more eagerly awaited than any other
publication extant, and I think the people read what you write first. I
am sure I do. You are the only writer who has ever made politics more
fascinating to me than romance.

I used to read your paper when I was a child almost as ardently as I read
the Magazine now. Some of the editorials appealed to me so strongly that
I preserved them in my scrap book, not because I understood them then,
but because I felt intuitively that there was something sublime in them.

Not long since I showed one of those selections—The Highest Office—to
a young man—a Democrat and a teacher in the same school that I was. He
finished reading it just as the bell rang for the morning session. The
moment the opening exercises were over he sprang upon the rostrum, shook
his black hair out of his face and exclaimed: “Children, I have found a
gem! Let me read it to you.”

Your Magazine is being read by many honest Democrats who a few years ago
thought the Democratic party was all it claimed to be and that you were
wrong. Now they frankly endorse your principles and praise your courage,
honesty and brilliant intellect.

I must thank you for a clearer knowledge of political questions, public
affairs and economic conditions than I ever would have had had it not
been for you.

Your “Bethany” I consider one of the treasures of my modest collection
of books. Not long ago one of those reasonable, broad-minded, intelligent
Democrats was telling me how much he liked your Magazine. He said he
read everything in it—“Pole Baker” and all the rest—that he didn’t think
you had ever written an uninteresting sentence in your life and that he
thought you the purest, most upright man in public life today.

I asked him if he had read “Bethany.” He had not, but when I told him
about it he was anxious to do so. I sent him mine. He is a man near sixty
and he read it with all the intensity and abandon that a sentimental girl
of sixteen would devour one of Laura Jean Libbey’s novels. He and I were
alternate day watchers at the bedside of a convalescent patient—one very
dear to us both—but I had it all to myself that day until late in the
afternoon, when the blessed trained nurse decided to forego a part of her
nap and relieve me awhile.

I think you have done and are doing the world more good than any other
man in it, and I hope that you may be granted many years of life and
strength to champion the cause of humanity and labor for justice, truth
and equity, and I know that some time your noble life will be rewarded.

I am very glad you have added the department of “Books” to your Magazine.
I don’t think it could be improved now, unless you were to add an amateur
or young writer’s department.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _Mrs. B. C. Rude, Lyons, N. Y._

I am getting TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE from the news-stand and like it very
much. It is refreshing to see one man who _dares_ say what he believes.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _Halley Halleck._

I have read every issue of your Magazine up to and including December
publication. It is certainly the greatest publication of the kind in
existence. As an educator it has no equal. It expresses more opinions and
views and in the most fearless manner of any paper in the world. Long may
it live and reach all parts of the globe!

The question which you are so ably advocating is taking root and
spreading and arousing public opinion so as to bring the monarchical
money-kings to justice. May God speed the time when they will be handled
as other criminals, to wear the stripes, balls and chains!

That local state government is no exception I got from that
ex-representative of the Legislature, the King Lobbyist, Hamp McWhorter.
He has an office in the Equitable building, and any senator he thinks he
can use he simply ’phones one of his henchmen at the Capitol, telling him
to send such and such a senator to his office, where he gets in his dirty
work.

In another instance, when a member a few years ago introduced a
resolution to have the Governor appoint a committee to investigate the
merging of railroads, the vice-president of the Southern Railroad was
soon in a seat beside him, making inquiries as to what would satisfy him.
Well, the member was appointed local attorney at a salary of five hundred
per annum for a number of years. The motion was quickly withdrawn and if
this individual ever represented the road in a case I never heard of it.
However, he drew the salary and rode on a free pass.

This lobbyist is for suing. He commences with his free pass on probable
candidates. As I remember, at a station a man who was a country merchant,
farmer and mill owner presented a pass to the agent and asked if it was
valid. The agent informed him it was genuine. Sure enough, he was a
candidate and elected as senator the next race.

Don’t you think the Texas law should be applied, which is that the guilty
party is taken out and given a good thrashing the first time and for the
second offence double the dose?

       *       *       *       *       *

    _W. D. Wattles, Winchester, Ind._

Permit me to express my appreciation of the February number of WATSON’S.
It is the best Magazine I have seen, and I have seen most of the good
ones. I like your practice of publishing short, pointed articles,
and your cartoons are of the best. Your educational and news summary
departments seem to me to be especially valuable. I shall take it into my
pulpit Sunday evening, and read from your editorial.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _D. C. Pryor, Uvalde, Tex._

When I was a boy I saw a carpenter place side by side three pieces of
lumber which he was pleased to call “dimension timber.” These pieces were
something like forty feet long and were two inches wide and eight inches
deep. He took iron spikes and nailed the three pieces together until
they looked to be all in one piece. He told me it was “a girder” for the
“warehouse” he was constructing. I wanted to know why he did not use a
solid piece of timber of the same measure. He answered by saying that the
three pieces united together with the stronger part of the one fitting
opposite the weaker part of the others would give the girder a greater
strength in the power of resisting the immense weight that would have to
be borne than if the girder had been made of just one piece of lumber.

In connection with the foregoing incident I wish to draw a pen picture
of a scene which is passing before my vision: At Washington, within
the shadow of the Capitol, standing side by side facing the west upon
the steps of that magnificent structure, are three of the greatest
men of renown the world has ever known. In the centre of the group
stands the “Immortal Lincoln,” to the right of Mr. Lincoln stands the
“Irreproachable Jefferson,” and to the left stands the “Irrepressible
Watson”—whose mind is the very incarnation of Jeffersonian principles.
Above this scene on either side, hanging toward the centre at half mast,
are our national colors, beneath which is a life size portrait of “The
Father of Our Country.” Above the portrait in raised letters I read
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

Now I wish to impress upon those who may care to read this article and
who are tired of living under the present system of “graft and greed,”
and to those of us who have always believed in party lines and are more
or less prejudiced in favor of our political tendencies, that there can
be no reformation ever made in either of the old parties that exist at
the present time. I therefore believe we should endeavor to secure the
very best “dimension timber” that can be had out of the now scattered
ranks of the Republican, Democratic and Populist parties, and with the
nails of iron and bands of steel bring them together and make of them
a girder for our country that the gods of ancient Greece could not
knock asunder! And why not at an early date advertise this new party
and organize party clubs throughout the land and let the watchword be
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”?

I would suggest that we name this “new party” Demo-Re-Polican or so word
the name that each member from an old party may not feel that he had lost
all of his former identity. I have not the least hope of electing as the
chief magistrate of the nation a Southern man for years to come, and it
is useless to put one at the head of the ticket to be slaughtered just to
make a Roman holiday. But Mr. Watson can be our leader, and when we win
“There will be glory enough for us all.”

                                                          “CONCKALOCHIE.”

(This is an Indian word for encampment, or a bringing together of the
tribes for the exchange of commodities.)

       *       *       *       *       *

    _Edwin Hyde Nutt, Dresden, N. Y._

I think you are on the right track exactly, and will do all I can to get
you some new subscribers. I live in a land of Gold-bugs, and if there is
a place on earth that needs a missionary it is Yates County, N. Y. We
have lost our interest in Mr. Bryan. How could he stultify himself to
vote for Parker, we can’t see. Think he will have a hard time to make
Democrats out of old Greenbackers. He knows the greenbacks are the best
money in the world. Why does he try to break up the Populist Party?

       *       *       *       *       *

    _R. N. Crowell, Rob Roy, Ind._

I am on the down-hill of life; nearly sixty-four years old. Have been a
student of history for twenty-five years and would love to do something
to free us from the slavery and tyranny of boss rule. When I go hence I
will leave a posterity behind me and would love to know that I have done
a little something to make our country a free and independent and a
Christian people in deed and in truth. Have traveled in fourteen states,
been through the Indian Territory and have had some opportunity of
learning something of the situation that we now are in both religiously
and politically.

I glory in the principles of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln and
the People’s Party. I admire Thomas E. Watson because he stands square
to the front for right and justice for the common people against money,
greed and selfishness for place and power. Brother American, wake up and
help shake off the shackles that our money lords are binding us with
before it is too late!

Yours for liberty, peace and righteousness, for God and a common
brotherhood of man. Let us unite and tear down the walls of sin and
selfishness and bring in the millennial age of peace and righteousness
that we may be called the children of God in deed and in truth.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _T. M. Barton, Butler, Ky._

You evidently have mistaken me for my deceased brother, William, who was
an ardent Populist, while I am a good Republican “from away back.” I am
not with you in public ownership, free silver, etc., but with you heart
and soul in downing the great trusts, monopolies, etc. Now it seems to
me this can be done in no better way than by standing right at President
Roosevelt’s back. We can hardly hope to find an abler, more courageous
and more earnest champion of the people than he. Personally, Mr. Watson,
as I have measured you, mentally and morally, by your speeches and
writings, I like you, just as I do many a good Democrat and Populist,
without agreeing with them politically. The fact is that the late
elections have given us a great lesson in free thought and free action—in
placing principle and patriotism above party allegiance. As we witness
the aggressive greed, the intolerable impudence, the great power of the
great corporations, we may well remember “Eternal vigilance is the price
of liberty.”

       *       *       *       *       *

    _Peter E. Cooper, Dover. N. J._

Like very much your arrangement of having only four numbers to a volume,
as four will make a convenient size to handle when bound. Hope you will
continue that feature.

In making changes, spoken of in January issue, I hope you will not change
the size (you can add as many pages as you like) as present size is very
convenient and, when bound, will look much nicer if of uniform size.

I am going to have mine bound in full law sheep, as I consider them a
valuable addition to any library.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _William Hamilton, Cleveland, O._

I am interested in the success both of your Magazine and its ideas and
would be pleased to know how you are coming on and what the prospects
are.




[Illustration: _Educational Department_]


A STORY CONCERNING GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON

A correspondent, in the course of a private letter, reports a very
interesting tradition which illustrates the character and bearing of The
Father of his Country.

I give it in the language of the writer:

    “To return to General Washington. Your picture of him makes me
    want to repeat to you a piece of tradition that was handed down
    to me by my father.

    “My father’s uncle, Governor George R. Gilmer, of Georgia, told
    my father that _his_ father, Thomas M. Gilmer, of Virginia,
    _told him_ that General Washington was the most extreme type
    of the aristocrat that this country had ever produced. That he
    had seen him drive up in his coach and four to a country court
    house at election time to vote that he would alight, and with
    head erect and neither looking to the right nor the left, as
    the crowd uncovered, parted and almost prostrated themselves
    to the ground, would march up, deposit his ballot, and without
    the slightest acknowledgment to the crowd or to any individual,
    without even so much as a nod or turn of the head, he would
    march in state through the path made by obsequiousness and
    reverence and love back to his coach, where he would sit the
    picture of rigidity and indifference as he rode away.”

       *       *       *       *       *

                                    GEORGETOWN, PA., Jan. 17, 1906.

    _Hon. Thomas E. Watson, Thomson, Ga._

    DEAR SIR: Can you direct me where I can get Alexander Stevens’
    “War Between the States”? I would like to purchase this book.

                           Yours truly,

                                                               ⸺ ⸺.

ANSWER

The book is out of print, but is easily obtained through the old book
dealers.

The price ranges from $5 to $10.

Try Joseph McDonough, Albany, New York, or The Americus Book Company,
Americus, Ga.

       *       *       *       *       *

                                      SAN SABA, TEX., Feb. 5, 1906.

    _Hon. Thomas E. Watson, Thomson, Ga._

    DEAR SIR: I see in the newspapers that Mr. So and So’s seat in
    the New York exchange is worth nearly $100,000. What is meant
    by that? Why is it worth so much and what do they do? Thanking
    you in advance for the information, I am.

                         Very truly yours,

                                                               ⸺ ⸺.

ANSWER

The New York Stock Exchange is simply an exclusive gambling hell where
very rich gamblers bet on the rise and fall of the stock of the big
corporations.

The “nearly $100,000” is the entrance fee.

The reason why the price is so great is because the operations and the
opportunities are so vast.

Compared to the colossal stakes and winnings of the Stock Exchange, the
gambling which goes on at Monaco, or at Tom Taggart’s place at French
Lick Springs is puerile. Since the world was created, no such gigantic
gaming has been known as the mad speculations in the New York Stock
Exchange.

Of course, the losses are as large as the gains, but those on the inside
of the Exchange have an enormous advantage over those on the outside.
Those on the inside are generally the masterful fellows who shear the
lambs outside.

The organized, experienced and expert players within the Exchange have
the same point of advantage over the gullible, unorganized public that
the cool dealers at the gaming tables have over the men and women who
buck against the bank.

For the privilege of _getting on the inside of the game_, Mr. So and So
pays nearly $100,000.

       *       *       *       *       *

                                            NEW YORK, Jan. 7, 1906.

    _Hon. Thomas E. Watson, Thomson, Ga._

    DEAR SIR: Will you kindly answer the following questions in
    your _Educational Department_?

    (1) What is the difference between Single Tax and Populism?

    (2) Is it true that Grover Cleveland is to receive $12,000 per
    year from the “Big Three,” and, if so, why?

    (3) Why was not the Prudential Company investigated? Their
    premiums are about the same as the others. In talking with
    their agents I find them the same as agents of the “Big Three.”

    (4) Is Paul Morton treating the policy holders justly when he
    _takes_ $80,000 per year as his salary?

    Your Magazine is a God-send to the people at large and I trust
    it will be read by men and women throughout the country.
    Thanking you in advance, I am.

                            Very truly,

                                                               ⸺ ⸺.

ANSWER

(1) Single Tax puts all the burden of supporting the Government on one
form of wealth, viz.: the value of land.

Populism equalizes taxation, and would compel each owner of property to
pay in proportion to his wealth.

The Single Taxer would put all the load on land, leaving money, stocks,
bonds and personal property of every sort untaxed.

Populists cannot see any justice in taking the value out of the land of
the farmer, while twelve billion dollars of railroad stocks and bonds go
untaxed.

Carnegie holds about three hundred million dollars in the bonds of the
Steel Trust. Those bonds are as good as gold. They pay Mr. Carnegie a
regal income. Why should my land have the value taxed out of it and
Carnegie’s bonds go free? There is no justice in this scheme. It does not
measure up to the Populist dogma of “Equal rights to all.”

(2) Yes. To cloak insurance rascality with his respected name. The
robbers who run those insurance companies simply bought the use of Mr.
Cleveland’s name. He consents to play the humble but useful part of decoy
duck for $1,000 per month.

Gen. Robert E. Lee, just after the Civil War, was offered $50,000 per
year by one of these very companies. He refused to sell the use of his
name. He was a poor man, and went to teaching school for a living.
In this quiet, modest, but noble way “the greatest soldier that the
Anglo-Saxon race ever produced” (see Theodore Roosevelt’s “Life of
Thomas H. Benton”) was supporting his family at the time of his death.
Mr. Cleveland is not a poor man. His income is $5,000 per year, over and
above what silly magazines pay him for occasional articles which are
valueless. Therefore Mr. Cleveland need not have sold his name to the
life insurance rascals. But the $12,000 tempted him, and he sold out.

(3) Dryden’s Prudential was investigated and very rotten it was shown to
be.

(4) No. He is simply stealing the money. Calling it “salary” does not
keep it from being loot.

       *       *       *       *       *

                                             CHICAGO, Feb. 7, 1906.

    _Hon. Thomas E. Watson, Thomson, Ga._

    DEAR SIR: Will you please give me the information as set forth
    in the following questions?

    (1) How many years must an alien live in this country before he
    can take out his final papers?

    (2) Can an alien, on declaring his intentions to become an
    American citizen, exercise the voting franchise before getting
    final papers?

    (3) I have been nine years in this country and never bothered
    about taking out my papers as a citizen. If I were to declare
    my intentions of becoming a citizen now, how long would it be
    before I could exercise the vote franchise?

    Thanking you in anticipation of an early answer, I remain,

                        Yours respectfully,

                                                               ⸺ ⸺.

ANSWER

(1) The conditions under and the manner in which an alien may be admitted
to become a citizen of the United States are prescribed by sections 2
and 165 to 174 of the revised Statutes of the United States. The alien
may, immediately upon landing in this country, declare upon oath before
a Circuit or District Court of the United States, or a District or a
Supreme Court of the Territories, or a Court of Record of any of the
states having common law jurisdiction and a seal and clerk, that it his
bona fide intention to become a citizen of the United States. He cannot
take out his final papers until after he has resided at least five years
continuously within the United States, and within the State or Territory
where such Court is at the time held, one year at least. He cannot take
out his final papers until the lapse of two years after declaring his
intention. Accordingly, if the alien should immediately declare his
intention upon landing, it would be necessary for him to wait until the
expiration of five years before taking out his final papers. However,
if he had resided three years in the United States before declaring his
intention, then he could secure his final papers at the end of two years.

(2) The right to vote comes from the state. Naturalization is a Federal
right. In nearly one half of the states of the Union an alien who
has declared his intention has the right to vote equally with fully
naturalized or native born citizens. In the other half, only citizens
vote.

(3) In your case, living in the State of Illinois, it would be necessary
for you to declare your intentions and take out your final papers
inasmuch as only citizens of the United States can vote in that state.

In Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri,
Nebraska, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin, an alien who
has declared intention is permitted to vote. In some of these states
additional qualifications are added. For example, in Indiana he must
have resided one year in the United States, not necessarily in Indiana.
In Michigan he must have declared his intention two years and six months
prior to November 8, 1904; otherwise he is barred from voting. In
Missouri, if he has declared intention not less than one year, or more
than five, before election. And so on. In Nebraska, if he has declared
his intention thirty days before election, provided he has resided within
the state six months. And so on, several of the other states having
similar qualifications. In the states not mentioned the requirements
are that voter must be a citizen by nativity or naturalization. In some
of the states there is a provision that the citizen shall have paid a
registration fee of $1, as in Delaware. That he shall have paid taxes
within two years, if twenty-two years old, or more, as in Pennsylvania.
If he can read and write, as in Massachusetts. If he can read or
understand the Constitution, as in Mississippi. If he has paid all his
taxes since 1877, as in Georgia. If he is an Indian, with several tribe
relations, as in South Dakota.

As was said before, naturalization is a Federal right. The laws relating
to it apply to the whole Union alike, and provide that no alien may be
naturalized until after five years’ residence. Even this doesn’t give him
the right to vote unless the state confers the privilege upon him. On the
other hand, the right to vote comes from the state, but the state could
not confer this right upon an alien who had not declared intention.




[Illustration: _HOME_

_BY Mrs. Louise H. Miller._]


HOME DEPARTMENT

The Home Department welcomes suggestions, recipes, useful hints, brief
articles, short accounts of what women have done in their homes and home
towns, and brief, _true_ stories of “Heroism at Home.” We are all working
together and we want to put into our Department anything that will make
the housewife’s life brighter and more useful. We, all of us, are the
editors of “Home”; let us make it as good as we can.

       *       *       *       *       *

Every month there will be a _prize of a year’s free subscription
to WATSON’S MAGAZINE_, sent to any address desired, _for the best
contribution_. There will also be, every month, a _prize of another such
free subscription for the best true story of “Heroism at Home.”_ These
two prizes will not be given to the same person.

The names of those contributing recipes and suggestions will be printed
with what they send in, unless they request to have their names omitted.
The names of those contributing stories of “Heroism at Home” will _not_
be printed unless in exceptional cases. The reason for not printing
the names in this case is that the stories are true and the characters
in them are real people who might be sensitive about having their most
private affairs set forth in type with their right names appearing in
it. If we published the names and addresses of the person who sends in
the story about them it would be almost the same as publishing their own
names. In each number there will be a note saying that such and such a
story receives the prize, but no names will be given. The names in the
story will be left blank or fictitious names will be supplied. Under the
head of “Heroism at Home” are further particulars.

There is no need to worry about “not knowing how to write.” What our
Department wants is the _facts_. If any corrections are really needed,
they can easily be made. We aren’t trying to be “authors”—we’re just
women trying to help one another.

The Editors of the Magazine tell me that it will simplify matters very
much if we make a few simple rules for sending in contributions. Let us
see how the following will work out:

1. _Make all contributions short and to the point._

We have only a few pages altogether; there are a lot of us to contribute
and there are many things to talk about.

2. _Address everything carefully and in full to Mrs. Louise H. Miller,
WATSON’S MAGAZINE, 121 West 42d Street, New York City._

3. _Write on one side of the paper only._

4. _No letters or manuscripts will be returned._

Make a copy of everything you send if you want to keep it.

       *       *       *       *       *

=May Number.=—A continuation of this month’s subject for discussion.

=June Number.=—Our common ornamental flowers, wild and cultivated.

=July Number.=—What women can do toward improving and beautifying their
home cities, towns, or country districts.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Department this month is something like! The Other Editors have taken
hold! I knew that I should have to write most of it for the first two
months, until time enough had passed for contributions to come in from
the rest of you. Now the suggestions, recipes, articles, and stories of
“Heroism at Home” have begun to come from all over the country and our
Department begins to take on its permanent form. Every month from now on
ought to be a big improvement over all that went before.

The letters received have made me very happy, for they contain many
words of praise and good wishes for the Department and prove that the
writers are ready and willing to help edit it and that they _can_. Don’t
misunderstand me. The words of praise are not for _my_ work in the
Department, but for the Department itself—for the plan of having us all
work together for our common good. It is a good plan and, now that you
are actually at work with me, I know we are going to work that good plan
out and work it out _well_!

Unfortunately, some of the letters did not reach me in time for
publication in this number. They will not be lost to the Department on
that account, however. Also, the final date set for letters on Why Women
Should be Interested in Politics came so soon after the day when the
March issue was mailed out that there was hardly time for many to reach
us. The Magazine was very late last month. The Editors couldn’t help it,
and they are trying hard to get this April number out promptly on time.
After this we will not set any particular date for letters to be in, but
if, for instance, you want to say something in the May number, send it to
me as soon as you can after getting this issue.

After talking with the Editors and thinking it over by myself I can
see that it will not always be best to publish every letter as soon as
it comes in. For example, an excellent letter has been sent to us from
Nebraska telling how the women of a certain town have organized and done
a great deal for the beauty, comfort and usefulness of their little city.
It came in response to something I had said in the Department. Now this
letter is just the kind of thing we want, but it seems to me better not
to use it in this issue which is devoted chiefly to woman’s interest in
politics.


MAKING YOUR COMMUNITY BETTER

Don’t you think it would be better to devote a whole number later on to
the subject of what women can do for their native towns or districts?
They have organized in a great many places and there are several national
societies devoted to civic improvement. The members either do things
themselves, or use their influence to secure good local laws to bring
these things about. It is surprising how much they accomplish.

The field is a large one and covers many things—beautifying public
squares and streets, making front and back yards attractive, improving
the schools and school-yards, securing parks for the people, making
better the towns’ sanitary conditions, establishing dinner-clubs for
factory girls, pushing the right kind of legislation for the community,
planting trees, flowers and grass, establishing traveling or stationary
libraries, starting church or public lecture courses, public baths,
hospitals, suppression of smoke and other nuisances such as overhead
telephone wires and ugly advertising boards—oh, there is no end to
what can be done! Of course, no two communities need just the same
improvements and town and country have different problems, but wherever
you live you will find something that can be made better. And we women
can do it! “A revolutionizing power as to all that changes the ‘order of
one day’ lies in feminine hands, through the use of what is distinctly
hers,” says that wise woman who, under the name of “C,” writes those
splendid articles called “Home Thoughts” for the New York _Post_.

All this isn’t a matter of theory. These things _have been done_ in
many places. And why shouldn’t woman be able to bring about public
improvements? More than half the population of the United States are
women. In many places we can vote. Everywhere we wield a great influence
over those that do vote. And surely we have brains enough.

To my mind, local women’s clubs organized for some such purpose as this
are a good deal more worth while than women’s clubs organized merely for
self-improvement. Work for the improvement of others—that is the best
way to improve yourself. Be a citizen as well as an individual. Women’s
literary and current events clubs are good institutions when they don’t
try to do foolish things or make us neglect our home duties, but these
same clubs might do the world, and the members, too, greater good if they
would also turn their attention to helping the whole community to better
things.

But to return to that Nebraska letter. I suggest that we keep it till
our July number and devote that whole issue to the question of women and
civic improvement. I hope that every one of you who has done any work
of that kind, or seen it done, will write to the Department and tell us
about it. Remember that the July number comes out June 25 and that the
letters should reach me about three weeks before that time. Write now.


_FLOWERS FOR JUNE NUMBER_

June is a month of flowers, how will it do to devote the June number to
them? That is a very big subject, so we’d better narrow it down a little.
Suppose we consider only the ornamental flowers common to our gardens,
woods and fields. Let us all contribute something as to the care and
raising and nature of them.

We will not “study botany,” as they do in school and college, but,
besides collecting information on planting, watering, repotting etc., we
can get a very good bird’s eye view if what flowers _are_. Nearly all of
us have probably raised flowers or seen them raised, but there are enough
interesting facts about them to fill a hundred numbers of our Department.
Let us try to collect as many interesting facts as possible so that we
can have a broader knowledge when we see them or work with them in the
future.

We will not include the plants or trees that bear our common fruits and
vegetables. This is a subject by itself and perhaps we can take it up in
some later number.

Though we are going to confine ourselves to our common flowers and
plants let us get a general idea of where they belong in the vegetable
kingdom—in regard to ferns, mosses, mushrooms, sea-weeds, lichens, etc.

For instance, which of these is the nearest relative to the asparagus—the
oak, the fern, the lily, the mushroom or the rose? The question isn’t
important to us in itself, but a very little effort will enable us to
understand the general arrangements of the plants so that it will be an
added pleasure all our lives.

What _is_ a plant? What is it composed of? What does it eat? Drink?
Breathe? What are the leaves for? The roots? The flowers? Why do plants
differ so among themselves? Why does one grow from a bulb, another from
fine roots? Why is the seed of a maple put in that peculiar little case
you crunch under foot on the pavement?

Oh, there are lots of “whys”! The nice part of it is that it is all very
simple, after all. We can find out a great deal with very little trouble.
There are plenty of easy books on the subject, nowadays, and a good many
people who know about plants. Many of you know all these things, and
more, without asking.

The things suggested in the last paragraph _are_ important to us if we
are raising flowers. If you raise flowers you are a flower-nurse and a
flower-doctor. How can a nurse or doctor do much for a patient unless she
knows what the patient eats, drinks and breathes, and what the various
members and organs of the patient are for?

Where did our flowers originally come from? Are they all native to
America? If not, how did they get here? Were they always as they are now?

How do plants reproduce their kind? Do all plants have seeds? Do seeds
always grow into plants just like the one on which they grew? If so,
have all the many varieties existed from the first? If not, how can you
get another plant like the parent? Do you know what Luther Burbank, the
“California Wizard,” is doing? Has a seed one parent or two? Where is it,
or where are they? It’s easy to ask questions, isn’t it?

Yes, and it’s surprisingly easy to answer them, if you try. An
encyclopedia will help you, if you consult it. So will an unabridged
dictionary, though it doesn’t say much and is often very technical. Of
course a botany will and there are many “popular” books now that give
you much interesting information. Don’t make a lesson out of it. You may
be able to answer some or all of the above questions without help of any
kind. If not, take a few minutes some time soon and browse around among
some of those books and pick up anything that strikes your fancy. If
there are no books handy, ask your friends. It is as good as a game of
“Authors” any day! If your friends don’t know, you are very lucky. Then
you can do a little observing and thinking on your own hook. That is a
hundred times better than being told or taught.

There is nothing that can be made more deadly dry and tedious than
“botany”: there are few things that can be made more delightful and
interesting than a commonsense study of flowers!

Have flowers played a part in history? What was the “War of the Roses?”
What is the fleur-de-lis, the emblem of France and used so much in
decoration and jewelry? Do you remember the story of Narcissus in Greek
mythology? What other flowers have figured in history? Do you remember,
in our February number, what royal family had the broom flower as their
badge? What is the national flower of Scotland? Of Ireland? Of our
country?

Do we Americans use much taste in making bouquets? What is your idea of a
really beautiful and artistic bouquet? Do you know the Japanese idea of a
bouquet?

Is it healthful to have many plants around you? How do plants keep the
water fresh in an aquarium?

Tell us your best remedies for insects that injure plants? What plants
are best for the house in winter? In summer? Do you know how to make good
window-boxes? Tell us anything you know about plants and their care.

Would your town or district be pleasanter and better to live in if more
flowers and trees were growing in it? What are parks worth to a large
city? But there. I am running into our subject for July!

Are you supposed to answer all those questions? Bless you, no! No one
_has_ to do anything in our Department. We get work enough in our daily
lives—our Department is to afford us a change and relief from everyday
work. It isn’t any the less play because we can profit by it and learn
things from it. And perhaps it will teach us how to turn some of our
daily work into an interesting kind of game (if we haven’t learned how to
do that already) and yet do it better than we did before. The questions
are merely to suggest things for our June number. Pick out a few that
interest you and find out something about them or tell us what you know
already. Mercy, no! You don’t _have_ to! But you’re likely to find a
little of it amusing and pleasant and to add a bit more interest to your
life.

If we only know how, and try, we can make our lives _so_ much more
pleasant for ourselves and those about us! It is very easy. And it
doesn’t take much time or brains or money or anything else, except
“gumption” enough to try.


_For May, June and July_

So for May we will continue our discussion of woman’s interest in
politics; in June, our common, ornamental flowers, wild and cultivated;
in July, what women can do toward improving and beautifying their native
town or district.


_Suggest Future Subjects_

I have asked the printer to put the above announcement at the beginning
of our Department for the sake of convenience. I believe it will be a
good plan to announce our monthly subjects three numbers ahead all the
time, so that we can have plenty of time to think them over in advance,
make suggestions and send in information.

Now, what shall we have for the August number? If there is something you
are interested in or want to talk about or hear others talk about, send
it in to the Department. Do this not only for August but for all the
following numbers. I chose the subject for the first few months in order
to get our plan started. Now I have had more than my share of “chooses”
and all the others are for you to select. It may be that I can arrange
to have a special prize offered each month for the best monthly topic
suggested. I’ll try.


_WHY SHOULD WOMEN BE INTERESTED IN POLITICS?_

There is one answer that is sufficient in itself—Because her daily bread
depends upon politics!

Is there any particular reason why she should go about her daily work
like a mole and pay no attention to the things that make her life hard or
make it easy? Doesn’t she suffer from unjust laws and bad conditions and
profit by just laws and good conditions as much as her husband does, or
her father, son, or brother?

Someone objects that politics is for the man to take care of; housework
is woman’s sphere. That isn’t quite a fair statement of the case. The
man’s part in the care of the family is his business: the woman’s is her
housework. Politics is a third question. Why should the man alone have
this to see to? A good many objections will be offered to this, too, _but
all these objections will boil down to just one thing_—because he _does_!
And that isn’t any reason at all. If you were asked why little children
should work in factories and kill their health and youth, would you
consider “Because they do!” a sufficient or sensible reason?

The men say that when women discuss anything they never get anywhere
because they fail to _define_ the terms they use, and may all be talking
about different things under the same name. I think men make this mistake
about as much as we do, but let’s be on the safe side this time and
define just what we mean by “politics.”

Politics in our country have become so disreputable that we are likely to
feel that having anything to do with them is bad taste or even degrading.
It is natural to feel that way, but is it silly, nevertheless. It is
bad taste, or even degrading, to have anything to do with a notorious
criminal, but _not if you are making him better_ instead of letting him
make you worse! This is particularly true when it is partly _your fault
that he became a criminal_!

Now as to the definition of politics. The Standard Dictionary gives this:

    1. The branch of civics that treats of the principles of civil
    government and the conduct of state affairs; the administration
    of public affairs in the interest of the peace, prosperity,
    and safety of the state; statecraft; political science: in a
    wide sense embracing the _science_ of _government_ and _civil
    polity_.

    2. Political affairs in a party sense; the administration of
    public affairs or the conduct of political matters so as to
    carry elections and secure public offices; party intrigues;
    political wire-pulling; trickery.

    3. A man’s political sentiments, party preference, or
    connection.

The word, then, has three shades of meaning. The third one we need not
bother with, since it merely means any man’s opinion on the things given
under Number 1 and Number 2.

Now let’s contrast Number 1 and Number 2. There are some large words
there, but if we take it a piece at a time we shall at least see that
there is a tremendous difference between the two shades of meaning.

In Number 1 politics means the fair and unprejudiced study of how a
nation should be governed, but in Number 2 politics means _How much can
you get out of it regardless of the general welfare_!

In Number 1 the object is the “peace, prosperity and safety of the
state,” but in Number 2 the object is to “carry elections and secure
public offices”—“party intrigues; political wire-pulling; trickery.”

It is Number 1 we are considering primarily. True, if our daily bread
depends on politics, we are also interested in “how much we can get out
of it,” but we mean by this how much we can get justly and honestly—our
equal share _along with everyone else_. “Equal rights to all, special
privileges to none.”

No, no! I’m not advocating the People’s Party principles just because
I quote one of their watchwords. That motto is not theirs alone, but
that of every honest citizen, no matter to what party he belongs. It is
merely an expression of the principles set forth in the Declaration of
Independence. Whatever I may believe personally, it is no part of my
business to plead the cause of any political party in our Department. We
have nothing to do with parties. Our object is to consider how our nation
is governed and how it _should_ be governed—national, state, county,
township and city governments, under whatever names these divisions may
be called in different places.

We are primarily concerned with definition Number 1. We want to know how
our nation should be governed. After that we will consider Number 2, and
see how it _is_ governed.

Now, considering the awful amount of writing and talking there is about
politics, the infinite number of questions there are to decide, and the
unending difference of opinion on these questions, we can see at the
outset that we can’t decide it all in two numbers of our Department. Nor
in a hundred. We are not going to try to. All we want is an intelligent
idea of the general situation and of our duty in the matter.

What is government at bottom? In the beginning there was no government
or organization of any kind, not even the family organization. Each man
or woman lived his or her own life separate from all others. The first
organization came about when a man and woman decided to live together
and raise children. They soon found that when they had a child to take
care of they could not go on independently of each other as they had
before. They had two things to do—to care for the baby and keep it safe
every minute from wild beasts and other people, and to secure food for
themselves and their child. If they both went hunting for food there was
no one to watch the baby; if they both watched the baby, there was no
way of getting food. They saw that they had to have some _arrangement_.
They had to _divide_ the labor. So the woman tended the baby and the man
went hunting for all three. Each of them gave up a little of the former
independence and received a new thing in _return_—help from another
person. Thus the “family” began. It was the first step towards _society_
and government. They gave up part of their freedom _in return for help_
from others.

People lived by hunting animals and gathering fruits and berries at
first. If a man laid by any food for his family, another man was likely
to take it away while he was away hunting. He found it pretty hard to
have to do anything himself and he at odds with other men. Pretty soon
it dawned on him that it would pay to make some “arrangement” with
those other men. He wouldn’t rob them, if they didn’t rob him. Later he
arranged with a few of them to keep their families close together so that
some of the men could protect them while the other men hunted for all.
In some such way began the “town.” Each of them gave up a part of his
freedom _in return_ for help from others.

When many towns had sprung up these towns began to see they could to
advantage make “arrangements” among themselves (just as individual men
had done) for protection and other purposes. Thus the “state” or country
came into existence. Each town gave up part of its “independence” _in
return_ for help from other towns.

Thus “society” was formed and grew more and more complex. Of course,
I have only sketched the process in a very general way, but the idea
is there. The one point we have to consider is that no one of these
arrangements or institutions—the family, town and state—would be possible
_unless_ every member gave up part of his original freedom _in return_
for help from others. A _bargain_ has to be made. For instance, the
different men and their families each made a bargain with the whole
number to give up part of their freedom, time and energy to the band. _In
return_ each was to receive his share of the freedom, time and energy the
others had given to the band or town. Each man made a _bargain_ with the
town. He owed the town something: the town owed him something.

That was the beginning of government, and that is the arrangement at the
bottom of any government to this day. Every government (town, county,
state or national) is just a bargain between the various individuals and
all of them taken together. Each owes something to all: all owe something
to each.

The point is, in each case, is this bargain a _fair_ one? Does the
individual give up more than he receives in _return_?

In olden times the average individual did give up far more than he got
in return. Often he didn’t get much besides protection against some
other government. Yet for this he frequently had to give up _nearly all_
his freedom, time and energy. A few individuals gained control of the
government and, though they might not contribute as much as the others,
took most of what the others gave for the use of the whole number,
calling themselves kings, or dukes or emperors. The mass of the people
forgot that originally the “government” meant _all_ the people. They came
to consider the few who had gained control of the government as _the
government itself_. That is, they let themselves be cheated out of their
share in it.

Our Declaration of Independence was one of the things that resulted when,
after centuries of misrule and suffering, the mass of the people began
to wake up to the fact that they had been cheated all that time under a
bargain which had originally been fair. They had been giving more than
they got in return.

In an absolutely fair government every individual would receive just as
much as he gave and give just as much as he received. A modern government
is so vast and so complex that it would be hard to measure each man’s
share exactly, but the nearer any government comes to that, the better
and fairer it is. England, for example, comes nearer to that ideal than
does Russia; Russia nearer than Afghanistan.

The chief trouble in Russia is that the mass of the people have to give
more than they receive. A comparative few have gained possession of
the government and each takes a very, very large share of what _all_
contribute, leaving almost no share at all for the majority.

Of course it is almost impossible to trace out just what each Russian
peasant gives up to the government, and what he receives in return.
Without a government of some kind he could not produce or hold anything
except by force against his fellows—land, goods, money, family, all would
be _totally_ insecure. As it is, he does get _some_ security in these
respects. In return he gives practically _all_ his freedom, time and
energy. On the other hand, a Grand Duke may give up to his country hardly
any freedom, time and energy, and yet be rolling in wealth. Something is
wrong. It is not a fair bargain. It is not a good government.

How about _our_ government? Is it a fair bargain?

Modern civilization is very complex. No two men can really give just the
same amount to the common country, since all men differ in ability. But
the country asks only certain things from its individuals. To be fair
the point is to _ask the same from all_. The country gives only certain
things to its individuals: the point is to _give the same to all_. Our
country doesn’t demand military service in time of peace, as do many
other countries. And, in _return_, it doesn’t give us a tremendous
standing army. If it _did_ demand military service, to be fair it would
have to make the demand equally of _all_ able to bear arms. If it _did_
give us a big standing army, to be fair it would have to use this army to
protect us _all_ equally.

If our country taxes certain goods, it must tax them everywhere—not for
one man and not for the next. If there is a tax of one cent on every bale
of a certain commodity, each man should pay one cent for every bale he
owns. If there is a tax of one cent on every dollar, each man should pay
one cent for every dollar he owns.

Is this the case in the United States?

If the Government gives certain privileges to a few men, it should give
the same to all. Is this always done in our country?

Of course all may not always want a certain privilege. It is open to all,
but only a few use it. Is this all that is required of the Government?
Or, since the Government has nevertheless given some of the general fund
to only a few, should these few make some adequate _return_ for what
they have used from the common property? Is this always done in our
country?

Ask yourself similar questions about every case that comes up. What I
have said doesn’t pretend to “explain politics,” but it ought to give
everyone a test or basis to refer everything back to. Ask yourself
whether any law or custom is a _fair bargain_. You can tell well enough
when you deal with the grocer or the milkman whether you are getting a
fair bargain. Try to in these other matters.

But to come back to why women should take an interest in politics. One
reason has been suggested—that her daily bread is affected by them.
Another has been hinted at—that it is partly your fault that politics as
practiced in this country are corrupt (definition No. 2). Since we are to
devote the next number of our Department to this same question, we will
do little now in this issue except suggest reasons and ask questions. I’m
not going to do all the expressing of opinion just because I happen to
have the chance all to myself this month. By next month I hope there will
be letters and opinions from a great many of you.

In some parts of our country women can vote and it is likely that some
day they will do so everywhere. When the country or state gives her
the right to vote does that put her under any obligation to do or give
anything in return for this privilege?

Who gives women (or men) the right to vote—the city, state or country?

Is it fair to give it to some women and not to all? Is it fair to give it
to men and not to women?

Would politics be purer if women took more interest in them? If women
voted?

In those places where women cannot vote what can they do towards securing
good government? Can they do anything through their husbands, brothers
and fathers? Through their neighbors? Through their own children? Can
they do anything through the church? The schools? Last year, when
Philadelphia threw off boss-rule, what was the method that succeeded in
making the corrupt politicians surrender after all other methods had
failed?

Can you tell the Department of any instance where the women have brought
about, or helped to bring about, reforms in town, country, state or
national government even when they were not allowed to vote?

Do you remember the saying that “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the
world”? How much truth is there in it?

If you had a really intelligent idea of politics as they should be and as
they are, would it bring you into closer touch with the men-folks of your
family? Would it broaden your horizon? Would it interfere with household
duties? Would it make you a better citizen? Could you accomplish real
good by having this knowledge?

What is the best way of acquiring an intelligent idea of the subject,
it you haven’t one already? Take the opinion of those around you? Read
weighty and technical books and articles? Read first a very simple book
on civics—on the organization of our Government? Would it be a good plan
to read your boy’s school text-book on this subject?

Can some one point out a few articles in the numbers of this Magazine
which make their point very clear and are easy enough for anyone to
understand? Send the Department the names of a few that appealed to you,
so that some more of us can venture on them. Similar articles in other
magazines which the average woman can grasp without a previous extensive
knowledge of politics or political economy? Books?

Can you decide a question until you have heard both sides of it?

Is it safe to believe all you read, or does it pay to consider when you
read it, who wrote it, what personal or party reason he may have had for
writing it?

Consider your local newspaper. Do you know the difference between the
“set” matter and the “plate” matter and the “ready-print” matter in its
pages? Why is this difference _very_ important in deciding as to the
value of an article in that paper? Who writes set matter? Has he “any
fish to fry” when he writes? Who writes plate and ready-print matter?
Has he any fish to fry? With a little care you can tell these three
kinds of printed matter apart in your local paper. (Ready-print matter
is used only in some country weeklies and dailies and some other small
local papers. It can be “spotted” by noticing what pages of the paper
always have it. Unfold the paper and lay it flat on the floor. If it is
ready-print and has few pages enough to make only one sheet, all of the
pages on one side will be ready-print. There won’t be any local articles
or items in the print. Both ready-print and plate are in different type
from set matter.) If a corrupt man or corrupt men wrote the ready-print
and plate could they wield a vast influence? More than by writing the set
matter? It is well worth thinking about.

Are there many magazines or papers that are not controlled by political
or business interests? How much can you believe in a publication
controlled in that way?

The voters of the country are divided into several political parties.
Would it be better or worse if there were no regular parties and every
voter voted independently?

What is a real democracy? Is the United States a real democracy now? Why?

What is meant by direct legislation—the initiative, referendum, recall
and imperative mandate? Big words, but they stand for things worth
knowing about and having an opinion on. And they are easy enough to
understand. Would these things tend toward real democracy? Have they been
tried in actual practice? If so, have they proved a success? Why? What
effect would they have on the whole party system?

There, I think that is enough questions for one person to ask. Someone is
likely to ask me a question in return—_How_ do politics affect our daily
bread? Well, there are several hundred answers to that. Let’s each of us
suggest for the May number one or more ways that politics (according to
both definition No. 1 and definition No. 2) affect our daily living.

We are not going to try to become experts in politics, but we do want to
have an intelligent general idea of them. It is our _duty_. In our May
number I hope to have many opinions from women all over the country.


[Illustration: _THE INTEREST OF EVERYDAY THINGS._]

We had a glimpse last month at some of the interesting things concerned
in 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.


_Sponges_

A sponge is the skeleton of a very, very, tiny animal, or rather of a
colony of thousands of such animals that live under water. When the
little animals die they leave behind them this network of elastic fibers
that they have built up. For a long time it was thought that sponges
were plants, and even now scientists know really very little about
these little animals. You have noticed how many kinds of sponges there
are. These different varieties are caused partly by differences in
temperature and chemical composition of the water and partly by the fact
that there are more than one species or variety of the animal itself.
There is no need to enumerate all the kinds of sponges from the fine,
soft ones used in surgical operations to the big, coarse ones used for
washing carriages. Nearly all the sponges inhabit salt water and the
best ones come from the Mediterranean, particularly the Levant or that
eastern part of the Mediterranean bounded by Syria, Asia Minor and the
Holy Land and Egypt. Others are found in the waters around Florida and
in those near Australia. The sponges are secured by means of native
divers. In some places these men work all day long from sunrise to sunset
through six months of the year, resting during the winter. The work
is, of course, very hard and few of them reach old age. Often they are
treated with inhuman cruelty by their employers and many are killed by
sharks. Particularly in Florida there have been attempts made to raise
sponges artificially, but though it is easy to secure the spawn of the
tiny animals and succeed in getting them to attach their little colonies
to stones, coral or other objects under water, the sponges never reach
any considerable size and are commercially useless. They have also tried
to propagate them by cuttings or slips, but here arises the difficulty
of making the cuttings attach themselves to other objects, which is
necessary to their development. And the little animals themselves, they
go right on very quietly drinking in water and getting all they need
from it—air, food and drink—whether they are off the coast of Europe,
Asia, Africa, America or Australia or in a little glass aquarium being
looked at through a microscope by a dried-up old man with spectacles and
side-whiskers. And we use the sponges.


_Maize_

The right name of what we call corn or Indian corn is maize. The word is
derived from the Spanish word _maiz_, which comes from the native Haitian
word _mahiz_. Corn in Europe means what we call wheat. Maize, or corn,
like all our grains, belongs to the big Grass Family and is a native of
America. Most of our other grains come from Europe and Asia, just as we
ourselves did. It probably came from the table-lands of Mexico and Peru
and has always been the chief food of the Indians. It was introduced into
Asia, southern Europe and northern Africa and spread quickly and widely
for a while. However, the climate was not hot enough for it in Europe and
it is not raised there very much now. The English generally consider it
fit only for animals and rather turn up their noses at us for eating it
ourselves. The only time I ever saw any offered to an Englishman he was
very polite about it but managed to avoid eating even a single mouthful
from the nice, tender ears. Other nations are horrified at seeing
otherwise well-bred Americans pick up a roasting-ear and gnaw it off
the cob, and it must be confessed that it does look pretty bad unless a
person is careful to hold it with only one hand and bite it off daintily.
Many Americans who travel in Europe miss it terribly and one woman
confessed to me that her chief reason for coming home was just to get
some real American corn once more. I understand, though, that the English
look on our popcorn very differently. It is said that two New England
spinsters introduced it over there a number of years ago and their little
stand rapidly became so popular that they amassed a very considerable
fortune and lived happily ever afterwards. We use sweet corn not only on
the cob, for fritters, puddings and so on, as corn-meal and for stock,
but extract from it whisky, starch and glucose sugar. Besides sweet corn
and popcorn the common kinds are flint and dent. Sweet corn gets its name
from the large quantities of sugar in it. Popcorn pops because it has
a great deal of oil and this oil explodes when sufficiently hot. Corn
varies in color from white to black, but most of it is yellow or white.
Like wheat, Government experts and other scientists in this country,
Canada and elsewhere have been experimenting with corn for years and by
cross-breeding and selection (about which processes I hope the Department
will receive some interesting contributions for our June number) they
have vastly improved the old varieties and produced many new ones.

When I was a child I remember being much impressed on being told that
you never, _never_ could find an ear of corn with an odd number of
rows in it. Maybe you can, but I never have been able to, and, as that
advertisement says, “there is a reason.”

Can someone tell us for our June Department? You may have heard the story
of the Southern planter before the War who offered to give freedom to
any slave who could find an ear of corn with an uneven number of rows.
None of them could, though it is easy to believe they hunted a good deal,
until finally another white man showed one of the slaves how he could cut
a row out of an ear when it was very young so as to leave no mark when he
presented it and demanded his freedom. The master kept his word and the
slave went free.

[Illustration]


[Illustration: _VARIOUS HINTS._]

It was almost equally hard to award the prize for the best general
suggestion or recipe sent in. After some careful deliberation, it seemed
that, all things considered, the free subscription this month should go
to Alicia E. Storm, of Plessis, N. Y., though we hesitated, especially
between this and Mrs. Richardson. A little later I hope to be able to
send a little souvenir to _everyone_ who sends in a contribution and
doesn’t get a regular prize. In case this plan carries out, as I think
it will, of course all who have contributed before that time will be
remembered. And always there is the gratitude of those who benefit from
your suggestion, and my own sincere thanks and your consciousness of
having helped other women in their daily trials and perplexities.


_Home Talk._

We have no kitchen cabinet, and we keep a small table set for three in
our kitchen, which is not large. The cooking stove, sink, and cupboards
taking most of the room. I needed a small table to use for work and
mixing table. There was a space behind the stove. I bethought me of the
crate in which my sewing machine came. It is just the thing. The table
is just about the right height, and the shelf below is as convenient as
the top. I find that on baking day it helps very much to get everything
one needs before commencing work. I use an earthen mixing bowl. After the
bread and biscuits, I make pies, as the lard is then cold. Then I make
my cakes and afterward doughnuts. It is a saving of time and fuel if one
can bake a variety at once, as in cold weather victuals keep longer than
in summer. A convenience for storing pies can be made by having several
shelves sawed out large enough to hold your tins. One can use laths (four
of them) for uprights, fastening them well at the four corners of the
bottom shelf; then fasten the others about three inches apart. This gives
more space, and keeps pies from being mussed.

Did you ever experience the difference between two neighborly calls? Mrs.
A. relates the latest bit of gossip, making up in insinuations what she
lacks in fact. She talks about her dressmaker, criticizes the appearance
and dress of her friends, and gives you an uncomfortable feeling—thinking
perhaps you will be the subject of unpleasant remarks. Mrs. B. is fresh
and cheery. She asks about your plants, and tells of the growth of her
own—of every new bud. She tells of the cunning things her baby has said,
of the nest her canary is building, of the new book she is reading. She
tells, perhaps, of some ludicrous mistake she has made in her cooking,
laughing at the same. This woman may not be intellectual in the highest
sense, but she is charming. Her call will have made you happy all the
day. We leave the effect of our presence—sometimes for long. So should we
act that no sting of uneasiness be left in the hearts of those with whom
we come in contact.—_Alicia E. Storm, Plessis, N. Y._


_Valuable Pointers_

Every work is easy and pleasant if you go at it as you go to a picnic. In
house cleaning I fix one room at the time. It takes a week, but I have
the most of each day and I do my work better, as I don’t have to hurry.
No confusion in the regular routine of work; one thorough sweeping and
dusting is enough for one day. If the tablecloth is clean enough for the
home folks, it is all right for company. Don’t try to cook a variety of
dishes each day. You won’t hold out so well, and one or two will do as
well, and change them every day. Sheets, towels and some other things
can be used all right without ironing. If you smoothed all the wrinkles
out of all the rough clothes, you might have the wrinkles in your face.
I read and rest some every day. Prepare two dinners on Saturday, and go
to church and Sunday-school. I do have some trouble and everyone does,
but I am always thankful, and my life-work is a delight to me. Let us try
to do all things to the glory and honor of God. Although in the country,
we have one of the best “teachers.” Our children attend, cold or hot,
regularly. They are taught the Sunday-school lesson at school Friday
afternoon.—_Mrs. E. A. Richardson, Thomaston, Ga._


_To Make Sure of Milk Churning in Cold Weather_

Many persons who churn in winter have trouble because butter will not
come if chilled, and are obliged to throw the milk away, or feed it to
the stock. If they will steam, not boil, the milk after milking, they can
allow it to freeze solid and it will churn all right if thawed and warmed
properly. This recipe has been worth many dollars to me, and hope it will
help other women housekeepers.—_Mrs. D. L. Burrows, Gibson, Ga._


_To Polish Nickel on Stoves_

Use stove polish. It is the very best thing. Rub a light coating over it
and polish with polishing cloth or brush. The cloth or brush is generally
sufficient. Only give an occasional coat of polish.—_Mrs. D. L. Burrows,
Gibson, Ga._


_To Clean Iron Kettles_

Boil skim-milk in it and then wash with good soap-suds. Use six quarts
for an eight-quart kettle, and boil and simmer for twenty-four hours.
This will also prevent future trouble.—_Mrs. E. R. Putney, Kansas City,
Mo._


_To Remove Large Stones From Fields_

Make the stone very hot on one side only; pour water on it to make it
crack, and help it along with a heavy hammer. Another way, in the winter,
is to bore a hole pretty well into the stone, fill with water and plug it
firmly shut. The force of the water as it freezes will crack the stone.
Still another way is to make a hole in the direction of the veins or
cleavage of the stone, put in a cleft cylinder of iron, then drive an
iron wedge between the two halves of the cylinder. _L. L. Deweese, Piqua,
O._


_Shoe-Soles_

Melt together tallow and common resin, two parts of first to one of
second. Apply hot—as much as the sole will absorb. Neat’s-foot oil is
good also. These remedies keep the leather soft, prevent its cracking,
and make it waterproof.—_Mrs. N. O. Baker, Jersey City, N. J._


_To Clean Wall Paper_

Take off the dust with a soft cloth. With a little flour and water make a
lump of stiff dough and rub the wall gently downward, taking the length
of the arm each stroke, and in this way go round the whole room. As
the dough becomes dirty, cut the soiled parts off. In the second round
commence the stroke a little above where the last one ended, and be
very careful not to cross the paper or to go up again. Ordinary papers
cleaned in this way will look fresh and bright, and almost as good as
new. Some papers, however, and these the most expensive ones, will not
clean nicely. In order to ascertain whether a paper will clean nicely, it
is best to try it in some obscure corner. Fill up any broken places in
the wall with a mixture of plaster of Paris and silver sand, made into
a paste with a little water, then cover the place with a piece of paper
like the rest, if it can be had.—_Mrs. B. C. Benton, Denver, Col._


_To Clean a Chimney_

Place a piece of zinc on the live coals in the stove. The vapor thus
produced will carry off the soot.


_For a Cut_

Sift powdered resin on the wound, wrap with a soft, clean cloth, and wet
occasionally with water.—_Miss Anna Paisley, New Orleans._


_To Cleanse Sponges_

Wash in a solution of a teaspoonful of ammonia to two quarts of water,
and afterwards in a solution of one part of muriatic acid to twenty-five
of water. Sponges should be thoroughly rinsed, aired, and dried after
every using. Unless they are kept very clean it is not well to use them.
A piece of rough towel or tablecloth hemmed at the edges is much better.
Another way to clean sponges is to steep them in buttermilk for some
hours, then squeeze out and wash in cold water. Lemon juice is also good.


[Illustration: _HEROISM AT HOME._]


_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 someone _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 free subscription to WATSON’S MAGAZINE sent to
any name you choose. Tell your story simply and plainly._

_Please state whether the names and places mentioned in your story are
real or fictitious._ The Department does not print real names in these
stories. Please do not send in stories about someone rescuing another
from drowning or anything like that—we don’t want stories of single acts
of heroism but of lives bravely and unselfishly lived out.

       *       *       *       *       *

The stories of “Heroism at Home” have begun to come in. We can not
print all of them in this number, but there will be a place for the
others later on. Only one told of a single heroic incident. It was a
brave, unselfish act, but that isn’t what we are going to use under this
head—not things done suddenly, perhaps on impulse or by instinct, but the
kind of heroism that lasts day after day. This one story, too, was told
in verse and though it was good I fear we had better confine ourselves to
simple prose. I hope the writer will send us another good true story in
prose and of heroic _living_.

The prize this month is awarded to “Her Career.” It was very hard to
decide among several stories that told of some very beautiful and useful
lives, so I got others to help me. I imagine it is never going to be
easy to decide which is the very best of the stories each month. How the
stories are told is not considered at all, but the heroic lives described
are very hard to weigh against one another. But I will do the best I can.


_HER CAREER_

No, she never wrote a book, nor went as a missionary to Japan, nor won
a degree in college. She never even taught school, nor belonged to a
woman’s club.

But she has been the inspiration of her family and has radiated blessings
on all she knew.

Thirty years ago she was a dark-haired, dark-eyed bride of eighteen.
They were poor, but they had health and strength and bright dreams of
the future. They built a small log house on the land they had bought on
credit and began to improve it. Their days were filled with hopeful work
and their nights brought rest and refreshing sleep.

But soon a shadow fell across the sunlight that streamed on her pathway.
Her husband began to drink. He was soon a helpless victim of the fiery
appetite and could not go where liquor was without getting drunk.

She was refined and regretted to the very depths of her soul her
husband’s weakness. Sometimes she was righteously indignant, but
she never upbraided him with moral lectures in which she posed as a
mistreated angel, though she often talked it over with him after the
“spree” was over.

Children came. The “sprees” became more frequent and things looked more
gloomy, but she worked tirelessly and trusted everlastingly.

At last the county voted liquor out. This did some good; the temptation
was farther away. But even then he would make several trips a year to
the nearest liquor town and always with the same result. If a neighbor
were going to town at the same time she would ask him to look after her
husband. And when the erring man staggered home she would put him to bed
and cook him something to eat—not always ham and eggs and delicacies, but
the best she had. She never slipped anything in his coffee to cure him
secretly.

And she has almost won. He is not proof against them yet, but the
“sprees” are few and far between.

Six children call her mother—two womanly daughters well married, another
a lovable and accomplished young woman, a handsome son, with his mother’s
wonderfully calm eyes, who detests liquor, and two young girls at school.

A neat white house with green blinds has taken the place of the log
structure. She is a model housekeeper and has always done all her
work—cooking, sewing, washing, ironing, scrubbing, milking, churning,
sweeping, poultry-raising and one thousand and one other things. Besides
this she has tied up sore toes and cut fingers, poulticed boils, applied
hot salt to all manner of aches and pains; doctored mumps, whooping-cough
and la grippe; and successfully nursed measles, pneumonia and fever.

Her face has lost some of its freshness and her hair is turning gray, but
she is still the blessed counselor of her family and she still finds
time to visit and make herself a true, cheerful friend and neighbor.


_HER SACRIFICE_

Miss ⸺ lives in ⸺, Ohio. She was born on a farm where she lived with her
father and mother and two brothers and one sister. The father became
surety for a friend who failed, and it took the father’s farm to pay the
debt. The family therefore left the farm, and moved to the county-seat,
in the suburbs, and in a small house and two lots began life anew. He
rode the country buying stock for other men, kept cows and peddled milk
in the town, kept forty hens and sold eggs, cultivated the lots in garden
produce, and kept the family together. One fortunate result of leaving
the farm, the children were put into the city schools. Miss ⸺ graduated
in the high school, and obtained a certificate to teach. The two brothers
married and left the city. Then finally the sister married and left. Miss
⸺, at the age of 26, was left to care for her parents in their declining
years.

She obtained a position as teacher in the city schools and devoted her
wages to the care of the home, and looked after her parents when out
of school hours. There came offers of honorable marriage, for she was
strong, healthy, comely and attractive. She could not consider them.
Her parents could not do without her. They were declining in strength
and looked to her for the care of the household. She taught on, and
with her wages kept them in comfort. Two years ago the good old mother,
weary of life, departed for the better land. Two years longer the old
father lived, kept the house during the day while the daughter was in
the schoolroom and awaited the sound of her footsteps in the evening
returning from the school. In January he lay on the bed stricken with
a fatal sickness, though unknown to him or her, and while they talked
together as she bent over him he ceased to breathe, and she was left
alone in the world, unmarried, without a home, and the prime of her good
life spent in assiduous care of her parents—at the age of forty years!
All hope of a home and family of her own sacrificed to her sense of duty
to her father and mother! What is to be her reward? Many another has made
a like sacrifice, but how is she to recoup the loss of the fourteen years
spent in their service—the loss of her own home and family and children
and all the sweet consolations of the state of motherhood? Was it not
a heroic life? How few would have met it! Only those who know of her
self-sacrifice will know how to honor her. Her fidelity, so unobtrusive,
will be little noted by the world. But how grand and noble the sacrifice
she has made!


_QUIET COURAGE_

Elizabeth Stanton was born about sixty-five years ago in a beautiful
Southern town. She was the youngest daughter of Judge James Stanton, one
of the ablest jurists of the state.

Few young ladies had superior advantages to Elizabeth, and fewer still
possessed her amiable disposition and strong character. Being beautiful,
accomplished and wealthy, it is no wonder she married the only son of a
millionaire. A few years after their marriage her husband erected the
finest residence in the state. Although built forty years ago it stands
proudly today without an equal in the state.

Elizabeth had everything that heart could wish save one—her husband
was dissipated and grew more so as years came on. But no ear save the
Master’s ever heard her complain and she was always cheerful.

A few years after the Civil War her husband died, leaving his palatial
home mortgaged and his vast estate squandered. Elizabeth was left with
three children and a small amount of money. She gave up her magnificent
home and wealth without a murmur and returned to her old home. In a
few years she married again, a man of fine personality, a scholar and
typical Southern gentleman, one born to wealth and knowing little how to
acquire it. His fortune was like that of most Southern people after the
Civil War. They remained in their native home till their small fortune
was nearly gone. Then they removed to Florida and lived on a homestead,
in a tent with a dirt floor for two years. Elizabeth had never before
lived without servants, never cooked a meal or laundered a handkerchief.
Now she did all her own work, even to the washing, and taught a country
school several months of each year. She found time to visit and elevate
the poor, rough people around her, and never by word did she let them
know she was not of their class. She was greatly admired and beloved by
all who knew her. During these years of hardship she was just as bright
and cheerful and apparently as content as when she trod the marble floors
of her former mansion. She smilingly remarked to me once that she was
glad they had been chastened. It had made her a better woman and was the
means of her husband’s conversion. As fortune always favors the brave,
she did not always live in poverty. In a few years they had a fine orange
grove bearing, and her husband was elected to a high office.

I have never known a more heroic life of any woman. When clouds have
hovered over me I have thought of this brave, beautiful character and it
has been my inspiration.


[Illustration: _RECIPES, OLD AND NEW._]

From a collection of recipes that dates back almost to “War-Time” we
shall give a few every month. Along with them will be given new recipes
of the present day.


_Bread Pudding_

One pint bread crumbs, fine, one quart milk, three or four eggs. Season
and sweeten to taste, then bake. Spread a layer of jelly or jam quite
thick or white of eggs a little sweetened, and brown a little.


_Ginger Snaps_

Three cups of molasses, one cup of brown sugar, two small cups of lard,
four tablespoons of ginger and one of cloves, and enough flour to roll
them out.


_Corn Batter Cakes_

One and a half pints of corn-meal, the same of milk, one half teaspoon of
salt, five eggs beaten together and put in with the corn-meal and milk,
one and a half teaspoons of baking-powder.


_Sponge Cake_

Six eggs, one pint of flour, one pint of sugar, three-fourths of a cup of
water, two tablespoons of baking-powder.


_Pea Soup_

One half peck peas. Take the shells and put on with two quarts of water.
When well boiled take off and put through the colander. Take the water
and pour into it the peas. Let boil until very soft and tender. Take off
and put through the colander again. Take a quart of cream, or cream and
milk, two even tablespoons of flour and less than one ounce of butter.
Put in and let come to a boil. Pepper and salt to taste.

[Illustration: _CHANGING THE DIRECTION_

    _Warren, in Boston Herald_]

[Illustration: _Before_ _After_

    _DeMar, in Philadelphia Record_]

[Illustration: “_Sh— Sh— You Blamed Ass!_”

    _Rogers, in N. Y. Herald_

    April, 1906]




[Illustration: _BOOKS_

_BY Thomas E. Watson._]

Note: _Reviews are by Mr. Watson unless otherwise signed._


    =On the Field of Glory.= By Henryk Sienkiewicz. Little, Brown &
    Co., Boston.

After the reader has finished reading this book he disapproves of the
title. He has been taken into ancient Poland, where the winter snows
lie deep, where the wolves of the forest come with the night to make
danger for the traveler. He has been shown how the upper class lived in
the time of the Soldier-King, John Sobieski. He follows the thread of
a passionate and tender and happily ended love-story. He laughs with
and at the four brothers, the huge, rude, boisterous, but brave and
good-hearted foresters. He feels impressed by the genius of the author
during the whole time, for he knows that this strange Polish world, with
its unfamiliar men and women, is a creation born of the mental processes
of a great literary artist.

It is not an historical novel in the sense that “Quo Vadis” was. There is
no field of glory at all. John Sobieski does not appear before us as Nero
was made to do in the book just named.

The John Sobieski of this novel might be any other King. So far as we are
told about his appearance, manners, dress, personal peculiarities, he
might have been Rudolph of Hapsburg or Henry of Valois.

There are no battles, no sieges, no heroic advance or retreat. As the
book closes, the Polish army has set out from Cracow to Vienna; and
that’s as near as we approach the field of glory.

With the heroine the reader never gets in full sympathy. She drives away
the man who has always loved her and whom she loves _without knowing it_.

She then consents to wed her hideous, lecherous, old guardian. More
indignant than the bride, the spirits of the Unseen World resent this
unnatural union, and they prevent it by claiming the groom while the
marriage feast is being eaten.

With the hero the reader is on good terms from first to last, for his is
a fine character finely drawn.

When the guardian and intended husband is dead, and the rejected lover
is far away, the hero is subjected to trial and temptation, beset by
dangers, marked for destruction by a lustful brute, neglected and hated
by family connections. It is then that human interest of the deepest kind
centres in the poor orphan girl _Panna Anulka_, whom we had condemned
on account of her readiness to marry old _Pan Gideon_. We follow her
fortunes then with painful attention and we rejoice when she is saved.

While “On the Field of Glory” is not, perhaps, so great a book as “Quo
Vadis,” its atmosphere is purer, its store of love more tender and its
portrayal of ancient manners and character apparently quite as faithful.


    =The Strange Story of the Quillmores.= By A. L. Chatterton.
    Stitt Publishing Company, New York.

To write a novel which shall hold the reader with a strong and constant
grip, and yet give him no love-story, is a feat not done by everyone that
tries it. Mr. Chatterton tells no story of love, but I have not read many
books that interested me more than “The Strange Story of the Quillmores.”
Mr. Chatterton’s pictures of life are true to life: his men are the men
who wear breeches—not impossible abstractions who say or do things which
no human beings ever said or did. And his women are as real as his men.

_Uncle I’_ and his store, where the neighbors buy all sorts of things,
from ham to coffins, and where a group of loafers and tattlers is
generally on hand, are as well known to the reader as if he had been
there. _Uncle I’_ must be a character taken from life. He is full of
quiet humor, homely wisdom, sound common sense, manly courage and loyalty.

Old-fashioned _Uncle I’_, keeping his old-fashioned carry-all store,
swapping stories and repartee with his old-fashioned neighbors,
struggling heroically with his old-fashioned telephone, and with it all,
living up to the best standards of honesty and usefulness—yes, _Uncle I’_
is a complete artistic success.

So is _Doctor Gus_. True, he reminds the reader, in a general way, of Ian
Maclaren’s Scotch country doctor, but _Doctor Gus_ is American, and he is
stamped with sufficient individuality to make him a very live man to the
reader.

What could be better than the old German woman, _Mother Treegood_? The
chapter in which _Mother Treegood_ comes to visit Uncle I’s wife, who is
broken with grief on account of her dying daughter, is one that is worthy
of Dickens. It has the heart-throb of human sorrow, human sympathy, human
love.

I don’t know of anything more touching, in its simple unpretentious way,
than the story of how _Mother Treegood’s_ boys, the twins, ran away from
home, and how one of them was drowned in the Ohio River, and was sent
home for burial.

“My pretty boy was to our house brought, aber no one could him know—he
was in the wasser—de water—so long—_oh das Kalte, Kalte Wasser!_ so many,
many days. I took more of the fever—und go out of my head—und so I never
my Liebling seen again.”

The cry that was heard in Ramah, “_Oh, that cold, cold water!_”

Then, later on, there came a little box of tin-iron, “mit a hole cut in
the on-top side.” But let _Mother Treegood_ tell it in her own way:

“One day there came by the express company a little bundle. When it
was opened—it was an oyster can—a box of tin-iron, mit a hole cut in
the on-top side. The letter was from de other boy—und it say—that his
brudder, who vas ver-drownded, did begin his business life in a hotel
in Cincinnetty, as a bellboy, und he safe his money und put it in the
oyster can. Und in dat oyster box was the shin-plasters, the five
centses, und de ten centses—yoost as he take them in for noospapers and
shoe-blacking—und it was yoost enough, ach mein lieber Gott!—yoost enough
to pay for his grave at Brookfill.”

Surely this is very effective. It probably happened just that way. To
know that it could, and perhaps _did_, is just the right impression for
the author of a novel to make on the reader.

Another splendid episode is that wherein a “run on the bank” begins,
as the funeral of Colonel Quillmore is in progress. The chapters which
relate the tragedy, the fire in the Colonel’s laboratory, the wild ride
of _Father Lessing_ and _Uncle I’_; the dramatic climax where _Mrs.
Quillmore_ lashes herself into raving madness; the funeral procession
whose mourners get caught up in the growing excitement of the “run on the
bank,” and leave the hearse to fly to the bank for their money; the nerve
and resource of _Doc. Gus_ in saving the bank, and in saving the cashier
from the would-be lynchers—are chapters which bear convincing testimony
to the power and creativeness of the author.

The book is so finely conceived and written that one is tempted to scold
the author for a few glaring faults which are well-nigh inexcusable.

Why paint _L’Oiseau_ so black when he was to be white-washed at the end?
There was no need to have him behave so brutally to the boy, _Lanny
Quillmore_. It was a blunder to make him insult the boy, incur the
hatred of the boy, assault the boy, and drive the boy from his own home.
The lad is allowed to think and believe that _L’Oiseau_ is on terms of
criminal intimacy with _Mrs. Quillmore, Lanny’s_ mother. There was no
necessity for this. If _L’Oiseau_ was brother-in-law to _Mrs. Quillmore_,
and was prompted by paternal interest in paying her such suspicious
attention, and in being out in the woods with her at unseasonable hours
in the night, why permit the lady’s son to torture himself under a
misapprehension?

What earthly reason was there for keeping from her only son a knowledge
of the fact that _L’Oiseau_ was her brother-in-law, and that her abnormal
physical and mental condition required these unusual and suspicious
attentions from him?

Again, _L’Oiseau_ was rambling about at night with _Mrs. Quillmore_ when
she lost consciousness, fell by the wayside, was found by the priest, and
succored by _Doc. Gus_.

What had become of her escort, _L’Oiseau_?

He had mysteriously disappeared, and _Doc. Gus_ had a right to put the
worst construction upon his conduct. _Father Lessing_ knew the truth; why
did _Father Lessing_ allow _Doc. Gus_ to remain in ignorance?

But the most serious blunder in the plot relates to the climax—the fire
in _Colonel Quillmore’s_ laboratory.

_Doc. Gus_ sees the shadow of two men thrown upon the window shade. Only
one of these men is accounted for, and the reader is left not only in
doubt as to what happened, but in hopeless confusion. He cannot adopt any
theory which will explain _all the facts_.

Now, _that_ is against the rules. Let the plot be ever so complicated,
the mystery ever so deep, the author _must_ either clear it up himself,
or furnish the reader with the clue. Wilkie Collins, in spite of his
bewildering tangles, unravels everything before he quits. In “Edwin
Drood,” the book which Dickens was writing when death interrupted the
story, the author had constructed one of his most involved and difficult
plots. Before he had furnished the key to the riddle, he died. Yet
Edgar Allan Poe was able to tell, with unerring certainty, just how the
story was meant to end. By a keen analysis of the facts which Dickens
had already related, and by a course of reasoning that left no room for
doubt, Poe demonstrated that _Jasper_, the guardian and devoted friend
of _Edwin Drood_, had murdered him; that jealousy was the motive; that
the body of the victim was hidden in the new tomb which the inflated ass,
_Sapsea_, had recently built for the deceased _Mrs. Sapsea_; and that the
corpse was located by old _Durdles_, the drunken workman whose skill with
his hammer was so great that he could, by tapping, tapping, tapping on
the outside or a wall, tell whether a foreign substance, such as a human
body, was inclosed within.

Poe’s own matchless story, “The Gold Bug,” illustrates the rule which
Mr. Chatterton broke. There are all sorts of mystifications to start
with, but they are cleared up at the end.

Even in Frank Stockton’s famous “The Lady or the Tiger,” the rule is
kept. The reader is left in a dilemma, but he can clear up everything by
choosing one horn or the other. If he says that it is the lady who is
behind the door which is about to be opened, no mystery remains. If he
says that it is the tiger which is behind the door, nothing is left of
the puzzle.

But in the Quillmore story there is no possible explanation _which will
dispose of the facts_. If _Colonel Quillmore_ died in the laboratory,
and _L’Oiseau_ did _not_ kill him, who did? What about the _two_ men
quarreling in there at the time of the tragedy? What becomes of that
other man? And how could _Quillmore’s_ son meet him again in Paris? With
the exception of _L’Oiseau_, no one had _the motive_ to kill _Colonel
Quillmore_; and the author made a point of showing that other people were
afraid to go near the laboratory.

But if the _Colonel_ did _not_ die in the laboratory, how did his false
teeth get into the mouth of the dead man when _Doc. Gus_ dragged him out
of the flames? How did the _Colonel’s Masonic ring_ get on the dead man’s
finger? How did the _Colonel_ make his escape without being seen, and,
_who was it that he quarreled with and killed before he fled_? Nobody
appears to have been missing from the neighborhood. Usually when somebody
is killed, somebody is missed.

Had Mr. Chatterton refrained from putting another man in the laboratory,
had he left the _Colonel_ dead in the flames, identified by his Masonic
ring, had he left the reader to suppose that the sudden death of the
_Colonel_ and the sudden blaze which broke out in the building resulted
from some dangerous chemical experiment, such as the _Colonel_ delighted
in—the story would have lost not a grain of interest and would have
escaped a flagrant violation of the rules of literary construction.


    =The Game and the Candle.= By Frances Davidge. D. Appleton &
    Co., New York.

Frances Davidge set herself too difficult a task when she attempted to
make the characters in her novel. “The Game and the Candle,” speak in
epigrams on every other page. The consequence is that the story, with
its really brilliant beginning, develops into a commonplace love-story,
and is only saved from absolute banality by its unforeseen and dramatic
ending. In the field of literature which attempts to picture New York
society the story will not find an enduring place, but it serves its
purpose very well. The novelists are numberless who have sought to
satirize our men and women of wealth and leisure; but few have given us
any books that have lived longer than their allotted span of one brief
season. The big society novel has not yet been written. Miss Davidge
evidently knows a great deal of the foibles, the follies and the manners
of the people of whom she writes, and her career is worth watching. At
present she seems a bit immature and prolix, but there is no doubt as
to her ability to write amazingly clever dialogue and to tell a story
logically and well. Some of her characters are greatly overdrawn. One
wishes that there were less of _Gussie Regan_, the hair-dresser; and
_Emily Blair_, lovable as she is, could never have existed. Altogether,
however, the story is pleasing and will find, doubtless, a large and
appreciative audience.

                                                               H. C. T.


    =The Carlyles.= By Mrs. Burton Harrison. D. Appleton & Co., New
    York.

In “The Carlyles” Mrs. Burton Harrison relinquishes the modern field
which she has occupied for so long and with such marked success, and goes
back to Civil War times for the scenes of her story. The Reconstruction
period has been covered by innumerable writers. Indeed, it has been so
frequently used by novelists and proven so fruitful a field, that one is
apt to be overcome at the courage of an author who selects it now as the
background for a tale; but Mrs. Harrison brings a certain freshness and
charm to a subject that, it would seem, could inspire none. The opening
chapter, which describes the impoverished condition of the _Carlyles_,
brought on by the ravages of war, reveals the author at her best, and
shows her intimate knowledge of life in Richmond in the ’60’s. The
splendid fortitude of old _Mr. Carlyle_ in the face of his calamity and
financial ruin, and the pride of the aristocratic Southerner are depicted
with faultless art.

The story itself is the old one of a girl who is unable to choose between
two lovers, one of whom, of course, is a Yankee soldier and the other
a Southerner fighting as a lieutenant-colonel under Lee. The usual
complications occur. _Lancelot Carlyle_, a cousin and lover of _Mona_,
the heroine, is imprisoned at Fort Delaware, and of the long period of
his confinement Mrs. Harrison writes graphically, describing minutely the
terrible ordeal of prison life. Fine as this portion of the novel is,
however, it is in the chapters dealing with quiet domestic scenes that
Mrs. Harrison writes with most force and distinction. The incident of the
Christmas dinner-party, with the unheralded return of _Lancelot_ and the
sudden death of old _Alexius Carlyle_, is handled with consummate skill.
The author has written no finer passage in any of her previous novels,
nor one more certain to move her readers to tears.

                                                                 H. C. T.


    =The House of Mirth.= By Edith Wharton. Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Undoubtedly no novel during the past season has elicited more favorable
criticism and more numerous letters from constant readers than “The
House of Mirth.” The book had a certain artificial success from the
start, because the impression went abroad that here at last was a book
about Society, meaning the smallest number of the narrowest brains in
any community from Kankakee to New York. On this very account there are
a few millions of people in the United States who would not care to read
it; but in view of the fact that some of the most serious critics have
hailed “The House of Mirth” as a great American novel—only the bookseller
now speaks of _the_ American novel—a good many of the few millions, being
persons of means and intelligence, would be tempted to indulge themselves
in the rare luxury of such a boon. We cannot profess to treat the book as
a true picture of American Society; because while we know how to wear the
clothes and order the things to eat and drink, when we have the money,
we have never, in our best-dressed and best-fed moments, been able to
convince ourselves that we are anything but hopelessly middle class. Yet
we are happy—sometimes; and we are bound to marvel at some of the things
the society people in “The House of Mirth” do. For the most part they act
like those people in New York who are loosely described as Fifth-avenue
bohemians, which means they are people of much money, thoroughly informed
about the decorative issues of life, with nothing to do but bore
themselves and with a taste and intelligence that, in literature or the
theatre, never craves anything more exciting than a musical show or a
third-class novel, written by a man in Chicago, about lords and ladies
of some corner lost and forgotten in Continental Europe. Our marvel that
these society people should seem so underbred is only an exhibition of
our unfamiliarity with a certain social stratum. We would have no right
to make record of it, if it were not for the fact that so many people, of
the better class themselves, have written letters of protest to divers
publications, protesting against the impression that “The House of Mirth”
is a story accurately representing New York society. We quote one letter
from the _New York Times Saturday Review_:

    “I am not a literary man, much less a literary critic, but
    I look forward each week to the appearance of _The New York
    Times Book Review_ with renewed interest and read the various
    criticisms of your readers as to the merits of “The House of
    Mirth,” which in almost every instance meets their approval as
    a literary production of unusual merit. The writer, however, an
    octogenarian, born and bred in New York City, member of one of
    its oldest families and presumably familiar with its society,
    can but look upon “The House of Mirth” as a gross libel upon
    that society, and as an insult to a class as pure, as refined,
    and as intellectual as may be found the world over....

    “That such a condition as is therein described does exist in
    the lower strata of New York society, which may be termed
    swelldom, composed largely of “newrich” who swarm from other
    parts of the country to exploit their newly acquired wealth in
    showy equipages, wondrous wardrobes, and loud manners to the
    disgust of refined people, cannot be denied; but why a lady
    who has the entrée into the best society should elect to open
    the sewers of its lowest strata and allow its fœtid airs to
    escape through the medium of her pen is beyond the ken of your
    contributor.”

                                                           T. R. W.

For our part, we prefer to depend upon the octogenarian who has just
spoken, and who asserts his membership in one of the oldest families in
New York, for an opinion upon the accuracy of “The House of Mirth” as a
Society novel. As a novel pure and simple it seems to us to be radically
defective in imaginative power, slow and cumbrous in construction, and
wholly ineffective to impose an illusion. We say this with regret because
we have read a good many of the author’s short stories from the time
the first volume of them was issued; and the impression conveyed by her
work in the short story field, as contrasted by the impression of this
novel, makes clearer to us than ever the conviction that to write a short
story a short-story writer is required, and to write a novel a novelist,
and they have always been two persons from Mr. Kipling down and across.
The author’s style is clear, sharp, refined, as before; but the gross
defect of “The House of Mirth” is that the characters are pushed here and
there by the author like so many wooden soldiers on a cardboard field
of battle. They have no more volition than marionettes. In fact they
are merely described names except in the instances of the three chief
characters. One could have borne with the waxlike fibre of the attendant
persons if the figure of _Lily Bart_, the heroine, would stand the gaze
of the naked eye during even half the book. _Lily_ is described by the
author as possessing a fine sense of diplomacy in intercourse with the
people of her set, yet her whole register of action from the first page
reveals her as moving through the comedy without prudence, yet without
conscience, with maneuver, yet without skill; with an under-appeal to
the reader’s sympathy, yet exasperating the reader until in the moment
of tragedy he feels that the heroine deserved all she got and ought to
have got it sooner. But, when one gets away from the book, one feels that
the fault is not the fault of the character, but of the author who has
paltered by trying to make literary academics and psychology square with
life itself and a good story.

The minor irritations of the book are the absolutely fictional flavor of
the names of most of the characters, the use of English or Continental
idiom, and the mummery of the illustrations. Among the English
phrases which the author so much affects is the word _charwoman_ for
_scrubwoman_. It may be that Society calls a scrubwoman a charwoman, but
we would like to see any society man or woman do it to the lady’s face.

It is announced that Clyde Fitch is to dramatize “The House of Mirth” for
production next fall and that he will adhere to the construction of the
story as much as possible. The book is worthy of Mr. Fitch’s lofty talent.

                                                                    R. D.


    =Letters and Addresses.= By Abraham Lincoln. Unit Book
    Publishing Company.

Even if there were a man, at this day of awakening in the United States,
who could honestly say he had no interest in politics, providing he had
any intelligence at all and ambition to think, he could not pass over
such a book as “Lincoln’s Letters and Addresses” for the simple reason
that on account of the style alone, the reading of them is a solace and
a refreshment that endures. Of course, most of us are familiar with the
addresses and the letters that have been so widely quoted, repeated, and
learned by heart in school, that they are become as household words;
but in such a book as this, containing infinite riches in little room,
one secures not only the loftiest kind of pleasure but also a strangely
intimate and attractive vision and understanding of the gaunt, unshapely
figure whose genius towers higher as the years are added to the history
of our country.

                                                                    R. D.


    =Contrite Hearts.= By Herman Bernstein. A. Wessels Company, New
    York.

Some books are interesting because of their content alone; some only on
account of the personality of their author: some for the reason that both
the author and the content of his book are humanly valuable. Of the third
distinction is “Contrite Hearts,” a story of Jewish life in Russia and
the United States, by a writer who on occasion before has shown that he
can use an alien language with simplicity and force. He has shown before
also that he can present a picture of the people of his race without bias
and with a due understanding of their defects and qualities. The Jew in
America as presented in melodrama is a creation almost wholly of the
romance spirit of the theatre. It is not to be denied that the prevalence
of the very poor Jews in the lowest ranks of traffickers among men has
provided an obvious type. In sharp contrast to this is the growing
dominance of the Jew in the very highest ranks of commerce. Between the
two must of necessity exist the Jew of the middle class; and all these
varieties of the race have expanded to their utmost in the United States
rather than in any other country. From a purely artistic standpoint,
therefore, there is nothing more evident than that the field of Jewish
manners and customs is wide and rich ground for the novelist. The
transmutation in one generation of a peasant in Russia, with no rights
beyond those of a street mongrel, to a man in the most advanced as well
as the most vigorous civilization of the day, is material too obvious to
be overlooked by the most casual scribe.

Mr. Bernstein, while not a writer of dramatic quality has that quieter
and more sincere gift native to Russians, whether Jew or Gentile, of
presenting life as an actuality against the artificial background of the
printed page. Many who are called novelists among ourselves, and who have
never talked or written any language but English, could learn a good deal
of simplicity from this foreign-born author. Of course, one runs across
the traces of his birth in certain peculiarities that even constant
practice cannot wear out. These blemishes, however, are never vulgar as
are the strainful phases of an indigenous author who uses his language as
a race-track tout spreads himself with the flashy colors and fabrics that
the clothier and the haberdasher of his station provide. It is rather
interesting to hear what one of the characters in “Contrite Hearts” has
to say of this country.

“Here in America it is different. All are equal. Everyone is free.
And all roads to success are open to the able, the enterprising, the
persevering. There is no difference here between Jew and Gentile.
People flock hither from all lands, and within a few years the Jew, the
Frenchman, the German, the Irishman, the Italian—all are proud that they
have become American. You ask me about the Jews, about Jewish affairs,
about Jewish institutions—well, we have various kinds of Jews here.
Orthodox Jews—these are the plain Jews like ourselves. Reform Jews—Jews
who imitate the ways of the Christian. There are also Jews here who try
to be both Orthodox and reform at the same time—that is, neither this nor
that.”

Is this all true?

                                                                    R. D.


    =Politics in New Zealand.= By Prof. Frank Parsons. Edited by
    Dr. C. F. Taylor. Dr. C. F. Taylor, Publisher, Philadelphia, Pa.

This is one of the Equity Series published quarterly by Dr. Taylor, and
contains the chief portions of the political parts of a book entitled,
“The Story of New Zealand,” by Prof. Frank Parsons and Dr. Taylor. The
latter is a large, heavy book selling at $3.00, and is doubtless the most
complete history of New Zealand and exposition of present conditions
there ever published. It is a beautifully illustrated volume containing
860 pages, and includes history, description, the native people (the
Maoris) and their treatment by the whites, the splendid resources of the
country, and, more than all, a full and interesting account of the rise
and development of the remarkable institutions and government of New
Zealand which are attracting the attention of all the rest of the world.

As Dr. Taylor well says in his explanatory note in “Politics in New
Zealand,” the size and cost of the “Story of New Zealand” prevent it from
reaching the masses of our people, and the political facts, particularly
of that progressive country should reach the mind and thought of our
voters. “It is,” he says, “with a view of placing these political facts
within the easy reach of the masses of our people, that I have selected
the most important of these facts from the large book and arranged
them as you see them in this unpretentious pamphlet.” “Politics in New
Zealand” is now being used in combination with subscriptions to WATSON’S
MAGAZINE. (See advertising pages.)

The great value of “Politics in New Zealand” lies in the fact that it
gives the workings of many Populistic ideas put into actual practice. In
this country the People’s Party has been obliged to theorize and resort
to an appeal to the reasoning faculties of the people. It has been unable
to point out many illustrations of the actual working of its theories,
except by reference to foreign countries. For example, to sustain its
contention for public ownership of railroads, it has been obliged to use
the lines in Germany and other monarchies as illustrations. The United
States is such a vast domain as compared with countries in Continental
Europe, that considerable discrimination is necessary in order to draw
a fair conclusion. Besides, the European countries are so old that the
habits of the people are a great factor not to be lightly dismissed. In
using New Zealand, however, as our object lesson, the conditions are
more, nearly parallel. It is true that country is much smaller than
the United States, but in point of age and habits of the people, there
is much similarity. Accordingly, New Zealand is without doubt the best
object lesson in the world for proving the soundness of Populistic
theories.

Those who have either bought or sold real estate in the older portions
of the United States, understand the difficulties and uncertainties
surrounding land titles under the system which is in vogue generally. As
Prof. Parsons points out, it is often necessary to search through many
big volumes of deeds and mortgages, and carefully construe the provisions
of various wills and conveyances in order to follow the title to its
source, and form an opinion as to its validity. And even then the opinion
of the most accomplished expert may prove fallacious, and the purchaser
may lose his land through some defect of title. As early as 1860 the
New Zealanders passed an act to remedy this condition of things by
establishing what is known as the Torrens system of title registration.
The owner of land may give the registrar his deeds and the claims of all
persons interested, and the registrar investigates the title once for
all. He accepts it if he finds it valid, and registers the applicant as
proprietor, giving him a certificate to that effect. The certificate
gives an indefeasible title in fee, subject only to such incumbrances and
charges as may be entered on the register. An independent purchaser has
only to consult the register to learn at once who is the owner of the
land, and what burdens, if any, rest upon it. He is not obliged to trace
the title back to the Government Patent. This system is now in force in
some places in the United States, but its adoption is generally opposed
by those who profit by examining titles—that is to say, the lawyers.

There were some telegraph lines constructed under the provincial
governments of New Zealand prior to 1865, but nothing was done in a
national way until that year. Then the General Assembly authorized the
Governor to establish electric telegraphs and appoint a commissioner
to manage them. Existing lines and offices were to be purchased, new
lines built, and a national system developed. The commissioner made
the regulations, fixed the rates, and employed operators to transmit
all messages presented. Afterward the telegraphs became a part of the
postal system. This naturally led to government ownership and operation
of the telephone when the latter means of transmitting intelligence was
introduced. It is also a part of the postal system, and as Prof. Parsons
points out, “The Government is ‘hello-girl’ as well as postmaster,
telegraph operator and banker.”

Mr. Gladstone secured the establishment of postal savings banks in
England in 1861. New Zealand adopted the idea in 1865, and since that
time nearly every country in the civilized world, except the United
States, has followed England’s example. The object of the New Zealand
Post Office Savings Bank Act (1865) was stated to be: “To give additional
facilities for the deposits of small savings at interest, and with the
security of the Government behind it.” Practically all the money order
offices in New Zealand (470 a few years ago) were open under the Postal
Banking Law for the transaction of savings bank business, while there
were but five private savings banks in the Islands. In New Zealand there
is a place of bank deposit for each 1,800 people. In the United States
there is one for each 7,650 people. The total deposits in all sorts
of banks is $110 per head of population in the United States, $125 in
Great Britain, and $140 in New Zealand. Comment seems to be unnecessary.
The postal banks will not receive less than a shilling at a time, but
printed forms are furnished on which stamps may be pasted, one or more
at a time, until the total amounts to a shilling or more, when the slip
can be deposited as cash to the amount of the stamps pasted on it. The
great advantage of postal banking, and in fact all government banking, is
its safety. No postal bank in any country has ever closed its door for
liquidation, or experienced a run on its funds.

In view of our insurance scandals and the recent investigation, the
chapter on Government Insurance is especially interesting at this time.
In 1870 New Zealand adopted the Australian ballot and a public works
policy, together with a Government Life Insurance Department. As the
author points out, “The philosophy of this new departure was very simple.
The purpose of insurance is the diffusion of loss. Instead of allowing
a loss to fall with crushing weight on one individual, or family, it is
spread out over a large number of stockholders or premium payers. If
it is a good thing to distribute loss over a few thousand people who
hold stock in a given company or pay premiums to it, it is still better
to distribute the loss over the whole community. It is also wise to
eliminate the expenses and profits of insurance so far as may be, and put
the guarantee of the Government behind it, so that it may reach as many
people and afford as much security as possible.”

The insurance department was popular from the very start. The latest
report when this book was written (1901) showed in force 42,570 policies
covering $51,000,000 of insurance, or practically half the total business
of the Colony. The Government office had beaten the private companies in
fair competition, for there was no attempt to exclude private insurance
companies. It had, in 1901, a much larger business than any of the
companies, and almost as much as all the companies put together. This
refers, of course, to the ordinary life insurance business, for there
were 21,000 policies in industrial societies, which were not included
in the regular life insurance statement. Two of our companies mixed up
in the recent scandal, the Equitable Life and the New York Life, had,
in 1901, been in the Colony 15 and 13 years respectively. The Equitable
had 717 policies in force and the New York Life 139, as against 42,570
Government policies.

The people of New Zealand prefer the Government insurance because of
its safety—it has the guarantee of the Government behind it. It is in
no danger of vanishing through insolvency, as ordinary insurance does
now and then. Because of its cheapness, the rates being lower than
any ordinary private companies; and because of its freedom from all
oppressive conditions. The only conditions are that the premiums must be
paid, and the assured must not commit suicide within six months after
the insurance is taken out. As Professor Parsons says, “The policy is
world-wide. The assured may go where he will, do what he likes—get
himself shot in battle, smoke cigarettes, drink ice-water and eat plum
pudding, or commit suicide under the ordinary forms after six months,
and the money will still be paid to his relatives.” Instead of wasting
valuable time and gray matter on devising schemes to prevent scoundrels
from looting private insurance companies, why not devote a little
thought to inaugurating a system of government insurance?

An unique institution in New Zealand is the Public Trust office,
established in 1872. Its purpose is to serve as executor, administrator,
trustee, agent, or attorney, in the settlement and management of the
property of decedents, or others, who for any reason are unable or
unwilling to care for it themselves; to insure honest administration and
safe investment; to provide for a wise discretion that may avoid the
difficulties and losses incident to a strict fulfilment of wills and
trusts imperfectly drawn; and to give advice and draw up papers, wills,
deeds, and other instruments for the people in all parts of the Colony.

“In the earlier years,” says the author, “nominations for representatives
were made and seconded vocally at an assembly of the voters of the
district. But since the Act of September (1890) representatives are
nominated by petition in writing, signed by two or more voters of the
district, transmitted with the candidates’ assent and a $50 deposit
to the returning officer, who immediately publishes the names of the
candidates. Each candidate must be nominated on a separate paper which
must be transmitted to the returning officer at least seven days before
the polling day. If the nominee doesn’t get one tenth as many votes as
the lowest successful candidate, the $50 deposit is forfeited to the
public treasury. This shuts out frivolous nominations. The nominations
are usually made some time before the voting day, and the candidates go
about the district and meet and address the electors in all parts of it.
No candidate would stand any chance of election who failed to give the
people he wished to represent an opportunity to get acquainted with him
and ask him questions about his attitude on issues likely to come before
the next Parliament. Seamen, sheep-shearers and commercial travelers are
permitted to vote by mail. Such person gets a ballot paper filled up
by the Postmaster with the names of the candidates in the applicant’s
district, and the postal voter then marks the ballot and mails it.”

Another Populistic economic theory put in practice in New Zealand is the
Land and Income Assessment Act which abolishes the personal property tax
and establishes graduated taxation on land values and incomes. The avowed
objects of the law are to tax “according to ability to pay,” “to free
the small man,” and, “to burst up monopolies”; and its cardinal features
are the exemption of improvements and of small people and the special
pressure put on the big monopolies and corporations and on absentees.

All improvements are exempt. All buildings, fencings, draining, crops,
etc.—all value that has been added by labor, all live stock also and
personal property; only the unimproved value of the land is taxed.
Mortgages are deducted also in estimating the land taxes as they are
taxed to the lender. There is a small-estate exemption of $2,500, where
the net value of the estate doesn’t exceed $7,500. So that if a farmer
has no more than $2,500 of land value left after deducting improvements
and mortgage liabilities from the value of his real property, he pays no
land tax.

Besides the three exemptions mentioned, there is another conditional
exemption. If an old or infirm person owns land or mortgages returning
less than $1,000 a year, and can show that he is not able to supplement
his income, and that the payment of the tax would be a hardship, the
commissioner may remit the tax. Here the custom is quite the other way.
The millionaire swears off his tax. Out of 110,000 land owners, in New
Zealand, only 16,000 pay tax.

The graded tax begins when the unimproved value reaches $25,000. It rises
from ¼ of a cent on the pound of $25,000 to 16⁄4ths, or 4 cents, a pound
on a million dollars, or more, of unimproved value. This graduated tax is
in addition to the ordinary level-rate land tax levied each year, which
is 2 cents on the pound. Absentee owners of large estates have still
another tax to pay. If the owner of an estate large enough to come under
the graded tax has been out of the country a year, this graded tax is
increased 20%.

The income tax applies to net income from employment, and net profits
from business. There is an absolute exemption of $1,500, except in the
case of absentees, and companies whether absentees or not, and a further
additional exemption up to $250 a year for life insurance premiums, if
the citizen wishes to spend his money that way. All income derived from
land or from mortgages, so far as they represent realty, is outside this
tax, which affects only income from employment or business. The farmer,
who derives all his income from land, pays no income tax. The same may be
said of a lawyer, doctor, teacher, artisan, or any other person who makes
no more than $1,500 a year. The total number of income-tax payers is only
about 5,600.

United States Consul Connolly, reporting to our Government in 1894 and
1897, has considerable to say regarding taxation in New Zealand. He says
that country excels in the matter of taxation. That in a very short time
the system of taxation had been revolutionized and the incidence almost
entirely changed, not only without disturbing to any appreciable extent
existing interests, but with the most beneficial results. He says the
income tax was most fiercely denounced as inquisitorial, destructive of
the first principles of frugality and thrift—in fact all the forms of
evil lurked in the shadows of the words “income tax,” and a united effort
was made to resist this “iniquitous tax,” but all to no purpose. And that
in 1897, after six years of experience, the more liberal and fair-minded
of those who opposed the income tax frankly admitted that it is a fair
and unembarrassing tax. “In New Zealand the land and income tax is now
popular; it is accepted in lieu of the property tax; it is a success.”

In the United States the Government is paternalistic toward banks,
railroads and manufacturing interests. It loans its credit to the
national bankers at most advantageous terms, but has persistently refused
to favor other classes in a similar way. In New Zealand, however, in
1894, there was established a Government loan office which lends public
funds to farmers, laborers, business men, etc. at low interest, and on
easy terms. The security taken is on freehold, or leasehold, interest
clear of incumbrances and free of any breach of conditions. The loans are
on first mortgage of land and improvements. No loan is to be less than
$125, or more than $15,000, and the sum of the advances to any one person
must not exceed $15,000. There are two kinds of advances, fixed loans
and installment loans. The first may be for any period not exceeding ten
years, and the principal is due at the end of that term. The second is
for 36½ years, and part of the principal is to be paid each half year.
Interest in both cases is at 4½%, if paid within fourteen days of the
time it is due (5% if payment is not prompt); and in the case of an
instalment loan, 1% more is to be paid for the reduction of the principal.

Passing over the chapters devoted to the labor department, the state
farm, the factory laws, the shop acts, the 8-hour day, industrial
arbitration and co-operation, all of which are of intense interest,
but of such a nature as to preclude brief statement, we come to the
Government ownership and operation of the railways. The year 1894 Prof.
Parsons calls “the glory year of land resumption. Government loans to
farmers, nationalization of credit, labor legislation and judicialization
of strikes and lock-outs.” It was in this year that another important
move was made through a vital change in the national railway policy. In
1887 a commission system was inaugurated, under which the roads were
put in the hands of commissioners appointed by the Governor, with the
assent of Parliament. This did not prove satisfactory to New Zealand. The
commissioners managed the roads with a view to making a good financial
report. They were looking for profit. In the Parliamentary debates it
was charged that rates were so high that firewood went to waste in the
forest, and potatoes rotted in the fields, while the people in the
cities were cold and hungry in the years of depression; that goods were
frequently hauled more cheaply by wagon than by rail; that while rates
were reduced somewhat now and then, it was done by reducing wages; that
the pay of the men was cut while the salaries of high-priced officials
were increased, and so on. This is a striking parallel to conditions in
the United States today.

Prof. Parsons admits that the commissioners were honest, but they
were simply railroad men, running the roads to make money for the
treasury. Finally public indignation became intense. The air was full
of complaints, and in 1893 the abolition of the commission was made an
issue in the campaign, and the people, by an overwhelming majority,
elected representatives pledged to put the roads under direct control of
the Minister of Railways and the Parliament, and to bring the railroads
within speaking distance of the people.

The result of this change is that the roads are no longer run primarily
for profit, but for service; and the men are treated with the
consideration due to partners in the business. It is announced that the
definite policy of the Government shall be that all profits above the 3%
needed for interest on the railway debt shall be returned to the people
in lower rates and better accommodations. This is in striking contrast to
the facts brought out in the letter of Engineer William D. Marks to Hon.
Wharton Barker, recently printed as a public document at the instance of
Senator Tillman of South Carolina, in which it is shown that the people
of the United States are today paying interest on a fictitious railway
capitalization of something like $7,000,000,000.

In 1899 the Minister of Railways announced a reduction of 20% on ordinary
farm products and 40% on butter and cheese, etc. These concessions, Prof.
Parsons declares, amount to one seventh of the receipts—equivalent to
a reduction of $150,000,000 on the yearly freight rates in the United
States. That alone would be a yearly saving of almost $2 a head for
the people of the United States. In 1900 Mr. Ward, the new Minister of
Railways, announced a general lowering of passenger fares as the first
fruits of his administration. “The announcement was received with cheers
by the audience—stockholders in the road.” Care is taken in New Zealand
that small men shall not be put at a disadvantage. The State roads carry
400 pounds at the same rate as the ton rate, or the train-load rate, and
one bale of wool goes the same rate as a thousand. No such thing is known
in New Zealand as the lowering of rates to a shipper because of the great
size of his shipments. All the rates are made by the management openly.
There are no secret modifications of the tariff. There may be a variation
on scheduled rates to equalize a long haul, or enable a distant mine or
factory to reach the market in condition to compete with nearer rivals,
but the total charge is never lower than the rate that is given to others
for the same service.

The State roads are used to advance the cause of education. Children in
the primary grades are carried free to school. Other children pay $2.50
to $5, according to age, for a three-months season ticket up to sixty
miles. This gives them a possible 120 miles a day for 3 to 6 cents in
round numbers, or 20 to 40 miles for a cent. A child who goes in and out
six miles each day rides 12 miles for 3 cents.

It is impossible in the limits of this article to more than touch upon
many of the other advances made in New Zealand. The Referendum is now
used to a considerable extent in local affairs, and its use is being
extended. Old age pensions are in force, being a much better method than
maintaining poor houses. Immigration is carefully guarded. The State is
now opening coal mines and engaging in the business of furnishing fuel to
the people. Many other innovations of this character are being considered
and put in operation from time to time.

Prof. Parsons summarizes his study of New Zealand in some sharp contrasts
and conclusions, from which we quote in part:

“The United States is in form a Republic, but ... an aristocracy of
industrial power. New Zealand is in form an Imperial Province, but in
fact it is substantially a Republic. The will of the great body of the
common people is in actual control of the Government.

“In America, farmers organize for agricultural needs, and the working-men
organize for labor purposes, but they do not join forces to take control
of the Government in their common interest, as is the case in New
Zealand. Not only have our farmers and workers failed to get together,
but neither group has learned to use the ballot for its interest in any
systematic way. The farmers divide at the polls and organized labor
divides at the polls. In New Zealand the small farmers are practically
solid at the ballot box, and organized labor is solid at the ballot, and
the two solids are welded together into one irresistible solid.”

                                                                 C. Q. D.


    =BACK HOME. By Eugene Wood. S. S. McClure Co., New York.=

It isn’t often that an author writes a real review of his own book. Well,
maybe he does, too, but it seldom happens that he writes it as a preface
to the book itself, very seldom that it is an interesting one, very, very
seldom that it tells you what to expect to find in the book, and very,
very, _very_ seldom that he isn’t too much wrapped up in his own private
idea of his story to write a fair one from our point of view. However,
Eugene Wood, being unconventional and other pleasing things, has done all
this in the preface to his “Back Home.” When you have read the preface,
you are glad you did, instead of feeling sorry you wasted time on it and
fearful lest a book by the same author of that preface will be something
of a bore. After Mr. Wood’s preface you know Mr. Wood and about what to
expect in Mr. Wood’s book. You like one, and you know you are going to
like the other.

It would be the easiest thing in the world for the reviewer to sit down
and write reams of “copy” on “Back Home” and the good things therein, but
it is much more to the point for him who reads to listen to Mr. Wood
himself. If you are human instead of petrified, you will enjoy both the
preface and the book. Both reach for the heart-strings, and the terms—the
term is good.

Here is the larger part of the preface:

“Gentle Reader:—Let me make you acquainted with my book, ‘Back Home.’
(Your right hand, Book, your right hand, Pity’s sake: How many times have
I got to tell you that? Chest up and forward, shoulders back and down,
and turn your toes out more.)

“Here’s a book. It is long? No. Is it exciting? No. Any lost diamonds
in it? Nup. Mysterious murders? No. Whopping big fortune, now teetering
this way, and now teetering that, tipping over on the Hero at the last
and smothering him in an avalanche of fifty-dollar bills? No. Does She
get Him? Isn’t even that. No ‘heart interest’ at all. What’s the use of
putting out good money to make such a book; to have a cover-design for
it; to get a man like A. B. Frost to draw illustrations for it, when he
costs so like the mischief, when there’s nothing in the book to make a
man sit up till ‘way past bedtime’? Why print it at all?

“You may search me. I suppose it’s all right, but if it was my money,
I’ll bet I could make a better investment of it. If worst came to worst,
I could do like the fellow in the story who went to the gambling-house
and found it closed up, so he shoved the money under the door and went
away. He’d done his part.

“And yet, on the other hand, I can see how some sort of a case can be
made out for this book of mine. I suppose I am wrong—I generally am in
regard to everything—but it seems to me that quite a large part of the
population of this country must be grown-up people. If I am right in
this connection, this large part of the population is being unjustly
discriminated against. I believe in doing a reasonable amount for the aid
and comfort of the young things that are just beginning to turn their
hair up under, or who rub a stealthy forefinger over their upper lips
to feel the pleasant rasp, but I don’t believe in their monopolizing
everything. I don’t think it’s fair. All the books printed—except, of
course, those containing valuable information; we don’t buy those books,
but go to the public library for them—all the books printed are concerned
with the problem of How She got Him, and He can get Her.

“Well, now. It was either yesterday morning or the day before that you
looked in the glass and beheld there The First Gray Hair. You smiled a
smile that was not all pure pleasure, a smile that petered out into a
sigh, but nevertheless a smile, I will contend. What do you think about
it? You’re still on earth, aren’t you? You’ll last the month out, anyhow,
won’t you? Not at all ready to be laid on the shelf? What do you think
of the relative importance of Love, Courtship, and Marriage? One or two
other things in life just about as interesting, aren’t there? Take
getting a living, for instance. That’s worthy of one’s attention, to a
certain extent. When our young ones ask us: “Pop, what did you say to Mom
when you courted her?” they feel provoked at us for taking it so lightly
and so frivolously. It vexes them for us to reply: “Law, child! I don’t
remember. Why, I says to her: ‘Will you have me?’ and she says: ‘Why,
yes, and jump at the chance.’” What difference does it make what we said
or whether we said anything at all? Why should we charge our memories
with the recollections of those few foolish months of mere instinctive
sex-attraction when all that really counts came after, the years wherein
low passion bloomed into lofty Love, the dear companionship in joy and
sorrow, and in that which is more, far more than either joy or sorrow,
“the daily round, the common task?” All that is wonderful to think of in
our courtship is the marvel, for which we should never cease to thank the
Almighty God, that with so little judgment at our disposal we should have
chosen so wisely.

“If you, Gentle Reader, found your first gray hair day before yesterday
morning, if you can remember, ’way back ten or fifteen years ago—er—er—or
more, come with me. Let us go ‘Back Home.’ Here’s your transportation,
all made out to you, and in your hand. It is no use my reminding you
that no railroad goes to the old place. It isn’t there any more, even
in outward seeming. Cummins’s woods, where you had your robbers’ cave,
is all cleared off and cut up into building lots. The cool and echoing
covered bridge, plastered with notices of dead and forgotten Strawberry
Festivals and Public Vendues, has long ago been torn down, to be replaced
by a smart, red iron bridge. The Volunteer Firemen’s Engine-house, whose
brick wall used to flutter with the gay rags of circus-bills, is gone
as if it never were at all. Where the Union School-house was is all
torn up now. They are putting up a new magnificent structure, with all
the modern improvements, exposed plumbing, and spankless discipline.
The quiet, leafy streets echo to the hissing snarl of trolley cars, and
the power-house is right by the Old Swimming-hole above the dam. The
meeting-house, where we attended Sabbath-school, and marveled at the
Greek temple frescoed on the wall behind the pulpit, is now a church
with a big organ, and stained-glass windows, and folding opera-chairs on
a slanting floor. There isn’t any “Amen Corner,” any more, and in these
calm and well-ordered times nobody ever gets “shouting happy”.

“But even when “the loved spots that our infancy knew” are physically the
same, a change has come upon them more saddening than words can tell.
They have shrunken and grown shabbier. They are not nearly so spacious
and so splendid as once they were.

“Some one comes up to you and calls you by your name. His voice echoes in
the chambers of your memory. You hold his hand in yours and try to peer
through the false-face he has on, the mask of a beard or spectacles, or a
changed expression of the countenance. He says he is So-and-so. Why, he
used to sit with you in Miss Crutcher’s room, don’t you remember? There
was a time when you and he walked together, your arms upon each other’s
shoulders. But this is some other than he. The boy you knew had freckles,
and could spit between his teeth, ever and ever so far.

“They don’t have the same things to eat they used to have, or, if they
do, it all tastes different. Do you remember the old well, with the
windlass and chain fastened to the rope just above the bucket, the chain
that used to cluck-cluck when the dripping bucket came within reach to be
swung upon the well-curb? How cold the water used to be, right out of the
north-west corner of the well! It made the roof of your mouth ache when
you drank. Everybody said it was such splendid water. It isn’t so very
cold these days, and I think it has a sort of funny taste to it.

“Ah, Gentle Reader, this is not really ‘Back Home’ we gaze upon when we
go there by train. It is a last year’s birds’ nest The nest is there;
the birds are flown, the birds of youth, and noisy health, and ravenous
appetite, and inexperience. You cannot go ‘Back Home’ by train, but here
is the magic wishing-carpet, and here is your transportation in your hand
all made out to you. You and I will make the journey together. Let us in
heart and mind thither ascend.

“I went to the Old Red School-house with you. Don’t you remember me? I
was learning to swim when you could go clear across the river without
once ‘letting down.’ I saw you at the County Fair, and bought a slab of
ice-cream candy just before you did, I was in the infant-class in Sabbath
School when you spoke in the dialogue at the monthly concert. Look again.
Don’t you remember me? I used to stub my toe so; you ought to recollect
me by that. I know plenty of people that you know. I may not always get
their names just right, but then it’s been a good while ago. You’ll
recognize them, though; you’ll know them in a minute.”

                                                                 A. S. H.




_The Easter Hope_

BY CORA A. MATSON DOLSON


    We look across the days of March,
      Of knife-keen winds, and barren hills,
    To where the skies of April arch
      Above the beds of daffodils.

    Oh, hearts of Hope! The hours are long,
      While melting drifts o’erflood the rills;
    Yet do these winds blow, keen and strong,
      Toward those beds of daffodils.

    The Easter promise cannot fail!
      The stone will move when God’s hand wills,
    And we again our loved ones hail,
      Who sleep, as sleep the daffodils!


_Explained_

MRS. GIVEM—Why are you out of work?

WEARY WILLY—I was a life-insurance president and made so much money I had
to resign.




[Illustration: _The Say of Other Editors_]


Clark Howell’s politicians and newspaper supporters over the state are
sending up a unanimous wail because TOM WATSON, a Populist, manifests
some interest in Georgia politics. They swear he is trying to break up
the Democratic party and gain control of the state. Well, what about
Major J. F. Hanson, the Republican president of the Central Railway?
He has been active in state politics for a long time, and wields more
influence than a thousand ringsters who are “cussing” TOM WATSON. If it
is a high crime for Populist Watson to take a hand in Georgia politics,
what kind of crime is Republican Hanson guilty of when he joins Hamp
McWhorter and Sam Spencer in a prolonged struggle to dominate the public
policies and politics of Georgia? Will some of the political time-servers
please answer?—_Newnan (Ga.) News._

       *       *       *       *       *

The fact that Mr. Howell has never replied to the question why he was so
anxious for Watson to call and see him, leads us to believe that he was
after the same thing he accuses Smith of—attempting to get what honey he
could out of the Populist beegum.—_Washington (Ga.) Reporter._

       *       *       *       *       *

The latest proposition is to put the Quay statue at Harrisburg in
a niche. That would be a good plan provided they wall up the niche
afterward.—_Broken Bow (Neb.) Beacon._

       *       *       *       *       *

The railroad rate bill was passed by the House by a vote of 346 to 7,
last week Thursday.

The bill is now up to the Senate. It may stay there for some time before
it passes, if it is passed at all.

The corporation-ridden Senate is a disgrace to a people who are said to
elect their public servants. The men who made the Senate so far from the
touch of the common people either were short-sighted, or defrauded the
real American citizen out of one of the most necessary needs in this age
of graft and political corruption.

The Grange favors the direct nomination and election of our United States
Senators, and in due course of time we, the people, shall be electors
in deed and action. By direct vote of the people, making the senators
responsible and answerable to the masses, alone can we inject purity into
our elections and accomplish reform in public affairs.—_Sandusky (Mich.)
Salinac Farmer._

       *       *       *       *       *

Up to January 16 the _Congressional Record_ contained 2,300 columns
of speeches made so far by congressmen, but it has to record only one
important bill passed.

       *       *       *       *       *

William Jennings Bryan’s costume in the honorable position of a “Datto”
of Mindanao consists of a high hat and a black silk apron. In cold
weather he is permitted to varnish his legs.—_McEwen (Tenn.) New Era._

       *       *       *       *       *

The members of the lower house of Congress are debating the railroad rate
bill this week. At the end of that time the public will know which ones
are entitled to railroad passes under the new regulation of the companies
that only employees are to receive them.—_Matthews (I. T.) News._

       *       *       *       *       *

We admire patriotism but we don’t like toadyism. It makes us tired to see
how quick some editors sneeze when a high official takes snuff. And when
the snuff is taken purely and solely for political effect it makes it all
the more disgusting.—_Marshville (N. C.) Our Home._

       *       *       *       *       *

“This is the time,” says Senator Platt, “when little bosses will find
their level.” And it is also the time when some great bosses are finding
rock bottoms.—_Stanberry (Mo.) Owl._

       *       *       *       *       *

What’s the difference between a street curb boodler and one that
sells out for a promise of an appointment? Ans.—One gets his money
before voting while the other gets it afterwards, if he does not get
left—principle same.—_Batavia (O.) Democrat._

       *       *       *       *       *

Why are all the candidates opposing Hoke Smith? There must be some
reason for it. Everyone had faith in him, believed him far superior to a
majority of other people, until he got into the race. Why this change?
Why so many attacks upon him? Is it because he is advocating reforms
which have already been adopted by several of the other Southern states?
It must be because he stands for something, and is not ashamed or afraid
to tell what it is.—_Marietta (Ga.) Courier._

       *       *       *       *       *

With Clark Howell devoting most of his time to “cussing” out TOM WATSON,
Hoke Smith is sailing smoothly on to the gubernatorial chair.—_Dalton
(Ga.) Citizen._

       *       *       *       *       *

The New York Sun puts it this way: “If John Mitchell’s statement at the
miners’ convention is not a bluff, there will be either an enormous
increase in the coal bills of the American people or the most costly and
disastrous strike the country has ever seen.” But what do the mine owners
and the striking mine workers care about that, so long as the people
who buy the coal are willing to bear their suffering in silence—paying
without a murmur any price the coal barons put on their product; and
feeling well assured that nothing will be done by the suffering people
to change the laws by which these barons are enabled to inflict this
suffering.—_Waterbury (Conn.) Examiner._

       *       *       *       *       *

During the last ten years stocks and bonds amounting to $12,500,000,000
have been floated in this country. This additional capitalization of
the industries and railroads of the country is about equal to the total
value of all grain crops raised by the farmers during the same period.
It is one-third more than the total value of the products of all mines
in the country for the same period. It is equal to one-eighth of the
total wealth of the United States in 1900. That is the way the “great”
financiers absorb the wealth produced by the toilers of the nation. After
studying the above statistics you may realize the force of Gov. Johnson’s
statement that fictitious valuation and the consequent tax on the
producers is the great curse of this country. Ignatius Donnelly used to
tell a story about a hen that laid an egg in a nest fitted with a false
bottom. The egg disappeared, and the hen laid another, continuing in her
vain effort to have an egg show up in the nest until there was nothing
left of her but the feathers. The fictitious capitalization is the false
bottom that takes the products of the laborer, leaving him nothing to
show for his efforts.—_Willmar (Minn.) Tribune._

       *       *       *       *       *

The Hepburn rate bill now pending in Congress is nothing more nor less
than the Hearst bill with a few loopholes in it for the convenience
of those railroad companies that may desire to side-step its
provisions.—_Globe (Ariz.) Register._

       *       *       *       *       *

The fact that the congressmen of both old parties are almost a unit for
the railroad rate bill now pending in Congress, should be enough to
satisfy any reasonable man that the people can get their rights only
through a new party. The bill is a miserable pretense engineered by
railroad tools in Congress, and its object is to make the people believe
they are going to get relief through the old parties.—_Chillicothe (Mo.)
World._

       *       *       *       *       *

Gov. Magoon testifies that men may be put to death in the Panama Canal
zone without trial. It seems to be easier to put them to death than to
put them to work.—_Athens (Ill.) Free Press._

       *       *       *       *       *

The time has come when we need men that stand for something. The day is
past when our forefathers stood for truth, honor, principle; and all that
was right must be called into play again or this republic will be but an
iridescent dream.—_Marion (Ala.) Democrat._

       *       *       *       *       *

A writer in a recent issue of a so-called farm paper says the reason
boys go to towns and cities to live is because they long for a life in
which they will be independent of every one else on earth. Then why in
thunder do they go to the cities to find it? A man might as well dig out
gopher holes expecting to find wolves as to go to the cities to find an
independent life. The place to find that is on the farm. Here we are our
own boss, and if any one else does not like the way we do, we are in a
position to tell him to go to—with no danger of losing our job.—_Irrigon
(Ore.) Irrigator._

       *       *       *       *       *

It now looks like Marion Butler is arranging to take charge of the
Republican Party in North Carolina. We make no prediction about what will
be or what will not be done. Those who know his past record will hesitate
before surrendering entirely to a man who is so thoroughly repudiated by
all classes in this state.—_Asheboro (N. C.) Courier._

       *       *       *       *       *

The Chicago Tribune asks: “Granting that it will take seven years to
construct the Panama canal, have the seven years begun yet?” That is
rather a hard question, not knowing the personality of the timekeeper.
However, there is one thing in connection with the scheme that we are all
well aware of—the big salaries of the political constructors have begun,
all right.—_Farmington Valley Herald, Hartford, Conn._

       *       *       *       *       *

According to the _Pantagraph_, Senator Cullom should be re-elected
because he stayed in Washington after the session of Congress of last
winter and did work that he was drawing a salary of $5,000 a year to do.
The statement that his present illness was brought on by overwork seems
preposterous. Who ever heard of a United States Senator overworking,
unless it was to keep himself in office? From present indications, it
seems that the people of the state are willing to give Mr. Cullom a rest
from his overwork.—_Colfax (Ill.) Press._

       *       *       *       *       *

John A. McCall, late head of a giant life insurance company, is dead,
and, as far as mortal knows, is at rest for the first time for months.
This erstwhile gentleman and master of high finance was “weighed in the
balance and found wanting.” The weighing was done by fellow citizens,
which made remorse all the more keen. Rapid decline followed and
McCall, broken-hearted, deserted and despised, is gone. His fate should
be an example to others who are tempted to do wrong. A half dozen other
luminaries of New York, who were caught dead to rights in the insurance
frauds, are fast following in McCall’s wake, and are even now all but
ostracized by social and business associates. The weight of the common
verdict against them is bearing heavily upon their shoulders, streaking
their hair and furrowing their faces. Their sins are finding them
out.—_Washington (Ill.) Register._

       *       *       *       *       *

Old political systems are being broken up by the heat of public common
sense and non-partisan movements. The independent American citizen
and voter is going to make himself felt, by gosh!—_Mt. Vernon (Ind.)
Unafraid._

       *       *       *       *       *

John A. McCall has departed to the great bar of all time. There is no
doubt but that shame and humiliation killed this proud, self-made man.

Wrong-doing is bound to bring its death sentence to all lives, rich or
poor.—_Milford Centre (O.) Ohioan._

       *       *       *       *       *

“Some day, we pray to God, there will come a House which will hold tight
the purse-strings, and, on some measure of right, say to our lords: ‘Pass
the bill or get no money. We will go to the country on this issue.’ And
then we will have achieved what the English House of Commons won in 1832,
and our Senate will become the perfunctory body the House of Lords ever
since has been.”—_St. Louis Dispatch._

That sounds like it came from way up in the amen corner, and is likely to
have many hearty responses.—_Salem (Va.) Times-Register._

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Rogers, of the Standard Oil Trust, is the last man in the world who
should show contempt for the law. The law which is brought about through
class legislation has enabled him to become a millionaire by robbing the
public, and it is through respect for the law that an enraged public
permits him to hold his ill-gotten gains.—_Rolla (Mo.) Sharp Shooter._

       *       *       *       *       *

Well, the railroad rate bill has passed the House, with only seven
negative votes—all Republicans. But in the Senate is where the tug-of-war
comes.—_Malad (Ida.) People’s Advocate._

       *       *       *       *       *

Pure food is once more an issue in both houses of Congress, and the bill
bids fair to be defeated in the Senate, which numbers among its members
not a few who have interests in groceries, fisheries, packing and canning
houses that will be unfavorably affected by pure food legislation.
The clause most necessary to the effectiveness of the bill, the one
providing that all packages shall be labeled to show exactly the contents
of the package whether medicine, food or beverage, and which enables the
purchaser at least to know with what and when he is poisoning himself, is
the very clause that seems in greatest danger of defeat.—_Adams (N. Dak.)
Budget._

       *       *       *       *       *

And now the assertion comes forth that a large white goat in a New York
town by the name of Rockefeller, while the family heads were bowed
in sorrow, climbed upon the porch and devoured the wreath of flowers
which hung on the door. But, pshaw! that is only characteristic of the
name—swiping all in sight.—_Wrens (Ga.) Reporter._

       *       *       *       *       *

It is probable that when the Hepburn railway rate bill gets back to the
lower house of Congress that it and its author will scarcely have a
bowing acquaintance.—_Glenwood (Mo.) Phonograph._

       *       *       *       *       *

The fight in Congress over the railway rate bill seems to center on court
review of the orders of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Now the
courts have the right under the Constitution to review all orders of the
commission or they have not. Therefore why should the fight be over this
feature of the bill unless the railroads believe that the courts have had
this authority if denied in the measure, we are unable to comprehend. On
the first blush we should say that the courts, if asked, would have this
right, for they have claimed the right to review almost any and every
thing till the Democratic Party was forced to denounce “government by
injunction.” Still, the railroads occupy a peculiar position toward the
people of the country.

The stockholders in a railroad corporation have not the same rights the
stockholders have in nearly every other corporate body.

The railroads have been permitted to condemn our land for their use, but
in so doing they incurred certain responsibilities to the public that are
imposed on no other corporation.

It would therefore seem but just that if railroads can force us to
part with our real estate, surely we, the people, have a right to say
that these roads shall be managed just as the people through their
representatives in Congress desire, and unless such regulations are
confiscatory the courts shall have no say.—_Tarboro (N. C.) Southern._

       *       *       *       *       *

Having resigned from seventy corporations, Senator Depew must be awful
lonesome when the directors meet and make a noise like declaring a
dividend.—_Schaghticoke (N. Y.) Sun._

       *       *       *       *       *

Here is what we found in Sunday’s _Constitution_ about the Governor’s
race.

One article about Hoke Smith and Tom Watson brands them as assassins of
Democracy. In another place is the following complimentary clipping
about Estill: “The weekly papers are giving Colonel John H. Estill the
squarest kind of a deal. The Savannahian is the man to watch and his
following seems to be growing rapidly in all quarters of the state.”

And on the same page is another clipping from the _Tifton Gazette_, in
which Estill, Judge Russell and Mr. Howell are spoken of as men of the
most sterling integrity, distinguished ability and unflinching honor, and
either of them would do Georgia credit in the gubernatorial chair.

Is it a wonder that the common people believe that Clark Howell, Estill
and Judge Russell are in a combination to beat Hoke Smith?—_Lawrenceville
(Ga.) Gwinnett Journal._

       *       *       *       *       *

The old adage “competition is the life of trade” has been transformed
to “combination is the life of trade” to suit the condition of the
times.—_Oakland (Md.) Journal._

“Wall Street Is Playing with Fire” is the startling head line in a local
paper. There is no need for alarm, though. Wall Street has plenty of
water to put out any fire.—_Almond (N. Y.) Gleaner._

       *       *       *       *       *

The great copper war which for years has been waged between Heinze and
the Amalgamated has been ended by what is practically a merger of the
opposing interests. This fight between stock gamblers for the control
of immense properties has for years divided the people of Montana
into bitter factions, has disorganized politics, corrupted judges and
legislatures and had a baneful effect upon all the people of the state.
Now that the contending forces have made peace the public will probably
be the more thoroughly fleeced.—_Warren (Minn.) Sheaf._

       *       *       *       *       *

Precedent has been found which shows that Henry H. Rogers could have been
legally made to testify. We have been of that opinion all the time, but
it is only another instance where the sword of Justice and the law has
proved insufficient when met by the shield and armor of gold.—_Santa Anna
(Tex.) News._

       *       *       *       *       *

Congress has decided to investigate the coal and oil trusts. A nice
summer’s job is here cut out for somebody. It is hoped there will be
no Garfield business about the investigation. The miserable failure
Commissioner Garfield made of that Beef Trust investigation should be
enough to disgust even a Roosevelt.—_Seaford (Del.) News._

       *       *       *       *       *

According to a statement issued by the Bureau of Statistics last
Saturday with reference to the number and value of farm animals in the
United States, there are more cows than any other one domestic animal.
But the horse, while next to the lowest in number, is more valuable.
The mules rank lowest in number and the sheep lowest in value. The
report shows that the total value of all the farm animals to be nearly
$4,000,000,000.—_Hamilton (Tex.) Herald._

       *       *       *       *       *

The United States Senate, by a vote of 38 to 27, has passed the shipping
subsidy bill. The bill appropriates $200,000,000 of the taxpayers’
money for the American merchant marine. What a lovely gift! Voting the
people’s money to boost a class of wealthy business men. What a lovely
principle!—_Veblen (S. Dak.) Advance._

       *       *       *       *       *

While a lot of fellows have been sent to jail for stealing loaves of
bread, hams, shoes and such, none of the big insurance thieves have even
been indicted. Justice is not only blind, but she is deaf as a post,
dumb as an oyster, and she couldn’t smell a fertilizer factory at ten
feet.—_Pennsboro (W. Va.) News._

       *       *       *       *       *

To judge from the Standard Oil witnesses in the New York investigation,
we shall no doubt hear a demand for the Government to be ruled for
contempt in wanting to know too much.—_Parco City (Okla.) Democrat._

       *       *       *       *       *

John A. McCall, ex-president of the New York Life Insurance Company,
who confessed that he stole hundreds of thousands of dollars belonging
to widows and orphans and used the money as a corruption fund to help
elect McKinley and Roosevelt presidents of the United States, is dead and
gone,—we don’t know where, but if we were dead too, we wouldn’t hunt him
up.—_Granville (Ia.) Gazette._

       *       *       *       *       *

Members of the lower house are chuckling over the predicament one of
their colleagues finds himself in. It seems the unsophisticated private
secretary of this especial representative forwarded to Washington by
mail three parts of a sectional bookcase, using his employer’s postal
frank. The bookcases contained private books, and one of them is said to
have concealed a miscellaneous collection of kitchen utensils intended
for the owner’s home there. The entire collection was “unfrankable” and
the local postmaster has called on the representative to pay postage on
his property to the amount of $72. The name of the representative is
being kept secret, but that doesn’t soothe his feelings to any great
extent.—_Bowlder (S. Dak.) Pioneer._

       *       *       *       *       *

President Roosevelt and Secretary Taft are said to favor a lock canal.
If reports are true, that’s the matter with the project now. It’s locked
with red tape and departmental interferences.—_Clifton (Tenn.) Mirror._

       *       *       *       *       *

Governor Pattison of Ohio signed the Freiner two-cent fare bill which
was accepted by the Senate and it is now a law. It will not go into
effect, however, until thirty days have elapsed. The law provides that
two cents shall be the maximum rate charged in Ohio for transporting
passengers on the railroads of Ohio for all distances in excess of five
miles.—_Winfield (La.) Comrade._

       *       *       *       *       *

The Senate has passed the corrupt subsidy bill granting $20,000,000 a
year to the steel trust infant industry so that our merchant marine can
compete with that of other nations. Isn’t that satisfactory evidence that
U. S. senators should be elected by direct vote of the people? Remove
the tariff and our ship builders can “compete” without a subsidy.—_Alva
(Okla.) Renfrew’s Record._

       *       *       *       *       *

There’s one consolation to the poor man when he thinks of John D.
Rockefeller being the richest man in the world; he knows that the devil
won’t let him bring a cent of it to hell with him.—_St Louis (Mo.)
National Rip Saw._

       *       *       *       *       *

It is just as true today as it ever was that the safest and most
honorable way for a man to secure a competence is to do it little by
little, taking a lifetime for the work. The haste to be rich and make
money fast is the economic curse of America today. Every man wants to
draw a prize in the business lottery and it is seldom indeed that he is
content with small savings and safe investments.—_Headland (Ala.) Post._

       *       *       *       *       *

Managers of the Hepburn Rate Bill contemplate providing it with a set of
puncture-proof tires when it starts its round of the Senate.—_Alma (Neb.)
Record._

       *       *       *       *       *

The United States Senate passed a “Ship Subsidy Bill” the other day in
just three minutes. Anything that has “Subsidy” (the proper word is
graft) to it gets through just as soon as some member makes plain the
amount of graft in the measure.—_Smith Crater (Kan.) Messenger._

       *       *       *       *       *

It is being told that a Kansas man, accompanied by his little son,
visited the Senate while in Washington last week and the boy was
particularly interested in Edward Everett Hale, a magnificent looking old
man. His father told him that he was the chaplain. “Oh, he prays for the
Senate, doesn’t he?” asked the boy. “No,” replied the father, “he gets up
and takes a look at the Senate and prays for the country.”—_Enid (Okla.)
Echo._

       *       *       *       *       *

The Ohio legislature has passed a law making a uniform rate of two
cents a mile on all railroads in that state. The railroads on the other
hand have decided to cut off all forms of transportation except the
two cent fare. This includes reduced transportation for conventions,
1,000-mile books, all charity business, round trip rates, and clergymen’s
rates.—_Stewartville (Minn.) Times._

       *       *       *       *       *

Leslie Shaw, Secretary of the Treasury, says that we have the best
banking system on earth. Still in the past few months failures in five
national banks have footed up to almost $7,000,000. Now if these banks
had had out a flood of asset currency, backed only by the assets of the
banks, and no doubt they would have had, the Government would probably
have lost as large a sum, and all of this would have had to come out of
the people for the benefit of the speculators.—_Lansing (Mich.) Capital
City Democrat._

       *       *       *       *       *

The end of old Steve Elkins, the blocks-of-five-election buyer, he,
who, with the aid of his father-in-law, Gassaway Davis, got control of
most of the coal mines and railroads of West Virginia, is in sight. The
extortions of the coal trust and railroad combine that Elkins organized
have become so unbearable that the Republican governor of that state has
appealed to Senator Tillman to secure an investigation. The Republicans
of the Senate dare not deny it. When the truth comes out that will be the
end of Elkins, for which all the people will give thanks unto God.—_Omaha
(Neb.) Investigator._

       *       *       *       *       *

They don’t seem to be doing much digging on that great canal, but they
manage to bury a considerable amount of money there.—_Cresson (Tex.)
Courier._


_The Best_

She (_indignantly_)—Stop, sir! You shall not kiss me again! How rude you
are! Don’t you know any better?

He (_cheerily_)—I haven’t kissed every girl in town, it is true, but as
far as I have gone I certainly don’t know any better.




[Illustration: _News Record_]

FROM FEBRUARY 8 TO MARCH 8, 1906


_Home News_

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 an offense 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.

February 9.—The Illinois coal operators decide to refuse the demands of
the United Mine Workers for an increase in wages.

    The Pennsylvania House of Representatives passes a resolution
    directing the attorney general of that state to ascertain
    whether any railroad companies in Pennsylvania are engaged in
    the mining of coal, and if so, to proceed against them.

    By reducing the rate of railroad fares to two cents a mile, it
    is estimated that the people of Ohio will be saved $4,000,000
    a year, or a sum equal to almost all the taxes paid for the
    support of the state government.

    The Senate Committee takes under consideration the Hepburn
    railroad rate bill.

    The taking of testimony against Senator Reed Smoot, the Mormon,
    ends. Senator Smoot’s counsel will introduce testimony in his
    defense.

    The House of Representatives passes 429 pension bills. The
    Judiciary Committee of the House begins an investigation to
    ascertain whether or not Congress has the power for Federal
    control of insurance.

    Secretary Taft appears before the Senate Committee on the
    Philippines and says the United States will probably suffer no
    reduction in tariff income under the Philippine tariff bill
    passed by the House of Representatives.

    Secretary Root proposes to reorganize the State Department and
    put it on a business basis.

    Charles E. Magoon, governor of the Panama Canal Zone, appears
    before the Senate Committee on Interoceanic Canals. He declares
    the sanitary conditions good, the Supreme Court of Panama
    capable and impartial, and advises the coinage of silver money
    for use on the Isthmus.

    The differences between President Dolan, of the United Mine
    Workers of the Pittsburg district, and the delegates to the
    convention are taken to the courts.

February 11.—Samuel Glasgow, manager of a milling company of
Spokane, Washington, claims to have received Chinese papers from his
representative in China, claiming that a recent speech of William J.
Bryan to Chinese merchants had been used to stir up renewed antipathy to
American goods.

    John Mitchell, President of the United Mine Workers, reaches
    New York City to confer with the mine operators on the new
    scale of wages demanded by the miners.

    President Baer, of the Reading Railroad, states that the
    Pennsylvania Legislature has not the power to interfere with
    the vested rights of coal-carrying railroads.

February 12.—The Senate passes the resolution introduced by Senator
Tillman which directs the Interstate Commission to investigate the
alleged discrimination by railroad companies in the matter of the
transportation of coal and other commodities; as to whether the railroad
companies own stock in coal companies or in other commodities carried
by them; whether any of the railroad officers are interested in such
commodities; whether there is any monopolizing combination or trust in
which the railroads are interested, and whether any of the railroad
companies control the output of coal or fix its price. The Commission
also is directed to investigate the system of car distribution, and
whether there is discrimination against shippers either in the matter of
the distribution of cars or otherwise.

    Senator Lodge, of Massachusetts, makes a speech in the Senate
    favoring a revision by the courts of all rates made by the
    Commission. This would practically kill the effectiveness of
    the Hepburn bill.

    The Pennsylvania House of Representatives adopt a resolution
    that the Attorney General be instructed to inquire into the
    allegations that the Pennsylvania Railroad, the New York
    Central and the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburg Railroad
    companies, and their leased lines, are directly or indirectly
    engaged in the mining of bituminous coal, and if it be found
    that they are engaged in this business that he proceed against
    them.

    Leaders of the United Mine Workers reach New York to hold a
    conference with their President, John Mitchell.

February 13.—F. Augustus Heinze, defeated in the courts, sells his
Montana copper mines to the trust, ending the great Montana copper war.

    John Mitchell and the wage-scale committee of the Mine Workers
    are working on the schedule of demands which will be presented
    to the mine operators.

    The committee to which Thomas W. Lawson has turned over all his
    proxies of the Mutual and New York Life Insurance Companies
    agree to employ counsel to aid them in their efforts to oust
    the new managements of the two companies. Five members of
    Lawson’s committee are governors of various states.

    Attorney General Hadley, of Missouri, who is conducting the
    State’s case against the Standard Oil Co., goes to Iowa
    and gets testimony from former officers of the Standard’s
    subsidiary companies. He states that he has made out his case
    against the Standard.

    George W. Beavers, of New York, former Chief of the Division of
    Salaries and Allowances of the Post Office Department, pleads
    guilty to a charge of conspiracy, and is sentenced to two years
    imprisonment. Machen and others have already been convicted and
    are serving sentences.

    The Bituminous Coal Trade League, of Pennsylvania, sends
    Congressman Gillespie, of Texas, a petition stating that
    Senators Elkins, of West Virginia, and Gorman, of Maryland
    have caused violations of the anti-trust laws. Former Senator
    H. G. Davis, of West Virginia, father-in-law to Senator
    Elkins, cousin to Gorman, and Vice Presidential nominee of the
    Democratic party in 1904, is also accused of being a party to
    these violations.

February 14.—The “housecleaning” committee of the New York Life Insurance
Co. submits a report to the trustees of the company, showing that
$148,702.50 has been illegally contributed to campaign funds in the last
three elections. The committee recommends that suits for the recovery of
the same be brought against John A. McCall and all other officers who had
anything to do with making the contributions.

    John G. Brady, Governor of Alaska, resigns.

    The House of Representatives passes the appropriation bill for
    fortifications. The total amount appropriated is $4,383,993,
    $600,000 of this to be spent in fortifying the Philippines and
    Hawaii.

    The Senate passes the ship subsidy bill. If the bill becomes
    a law it is estimated that $26,000,000, will be taken from
    the United States Treasury and paid out in bounties to vessel
    owners during the next ten years.

    The resolution of Representative Sulzer, of New York, calling
    for an inquiry regarding the sale of the old New York Custom
    House to the National City Bank, of New York, passes the House
    by a unanimous vote.

February 15.—John Mitchell presents the demands of the miners to the mine
owners. Committees are appointed to represent both sides.

    Congressman Longworth procures a license to marry Miss Alice
    Roosevelt. The President attends Mr. Longworth’s bachelor
    dinner.

    James W. Alexander is again stricken with paralysis and is in a
    sanitarium at Deerfield, Mass.

    Officers of the beef packers again testify that Commissioner
    Garfield promised that no evidence they gave would be used
    against them. The testimony brought out these facts: First,
    Commissioner Garfield apparently took the word of Armour &
    Co.’s general superintendent that the Armour Car Company,
    which has been declared the tap root of the Beef Trust, was
    not owned by Armour & Co., and had nothing to do with the
    fresh meat industry, and made no further attempt to get
    information concerning the private car line monopoly. Second,
    Swift & Co. gave information reluctantly to the Commissioner
    of Corporations, and only after consulting counsel. At this
    conference attorneys for the other packers in the trust
    were present. The secretary of Swift & Co. contributed the
    information that he sought this advice of counsel because he
    “wanted it.”

February 16.—James W. Alexander, former President of the Equitable Life
Insurance Co., is operated on. The physicians refuse to tell the nature
of the operation, but give hopes of Alexander’s recovery.

    Reports from Memphis, Tenn., state that more than fifty per
    cent of the Southern peach crop has been killed and the other
    fifty per cent is commercially worthless.

    State Senator James Minton, of New Jersey, invites Thomas W.
    Lawson, Ida Tarbell and Attorney-General Hadley, of Missouri,
    to attend a public hearing on his resolution calling on
    Attorney-General McCarter, of New Jersey, to bring proceedings
    to annul the charter of the Standard Oil Company.

    Stuyvesant Fish, a member of the “housecleaning” committee of
    the Mutual Life Insurance Co., resigns because Standard Oil
    interests obstruct a thorough investigation of the company’s
    affairs.

    On account of the illness of Senator Tillman, the Senate
    postpones the vote on the railroad rate bill until February 23.

February 17.—Miss Alice Roosevelt, the daughter of the President, is
married, in the White House, to Congressman Nicholas Longworth, of
Cincinnati.

    Justice Rufus W. Peckham, of the United States Supreme Court,
    advises the “housecleaning” committee of the Mutual Life
    Insurance Co. to bring action against Richard A. McCurdy,
    ex-president of the company, before he leaves this country.

    Fire destroys $1,000,000 worth of wheat at Duluth, Minnesota.

    President Peabody, of the Mutual Life Insurance Co., refuses to
    give his consent for an investigation of the company’s board of
    trustees by the “housecleaning” committee.

February 18.—John A. McCall, late president of the New York Life
Insurance Co., dies at Lakewood, N. J. His death was hastened by the
recent insurance scandals. The New York _World_ sums up the result of the
insurance investigation as follows:

    John A. McCall, dead, fortune shattered; J. W. Alexander,
    mental and physical wreck; James H. Hyde, self-expatriated in
    Paris; Robert A. McCurdy, preparing to follow Hyde; Robert H.
    McCurdy, preparing to follow his father; Judge Andy Hamilton,
    on the Riviera; Thomas D. Jordan, in seclusion; Andrew Fields,
    in seclusion; Louis Thebaud, going to Paris; W. H. McIntyre, in
    seclusion; George W. Perkins, reputation smirched; Chauncey M.
    Depew, damaged in reputation.

    John B. Stetson, the millionaire hat manufacturer of
    Philadelphia, dies at Gillen, Florida.

    John Mitchell and his associates, representing the anthracite
    miners, complete their demands to the coal operators. They will
    be presented in a day or two.

    President Roosevelt prepares to have the frauds in connection
    with the Indian affairs in Indian Territory investigated.

February 19.—Eight suits are begun by the Mutual Life Insurance Co.
against the McCurdys, Louis A. Thebaud, son-in-law of Richard A. McCurdy,
and C. H. Raymond & Co., for restitution of moneys of the company
illegally spent. This includes campaign contributions, illegal salaries,
rebates and illegal commissions.

    President Roosevelt recommends to Congress a lock canal of
    eighty-five foot level across the Isthmus of Panama. The lock
    canal was also favored by the Canal Commission and Secretary
    Taft. A majority of the Board of Consulting Engineers favored a
    sea level canal.

    The United States Supreme Court decides that it is illegal for
    railroads to sell commodities which they transport as common
    carriers. The decision of the Court bears directly on railroads
    that own or operate coal mines.

    Congressman E. Spencer Blackburn, of North Carolina, is accused
    of accepting a fee for using his influence to obtain action
    by an executive department. The offense is similar to the one
    committed by Senator Burton.

    The trial of the beef packers continues at Chicago. E. Dana
    Durand, chief assistant to Commissioner Garfield, testifies
    that the Department of Commerce turned over certain data
    obtained from the packers to the Department of Justice.

    Sixteen miners are killed by an explosion at Maitland, Colorado.

    A sub-committee of the House Committee on Interstate and
    Foreign Commerce takes action on the Tillman, Gillespie and
    Campbell resolution to authorize the Interstate Commerce
    Committee to investigate the connection between railroads and
    coal and oil companies. All three of the resolutions will be
    embodied in one and sent back to the House for passage.

    The Interstate Commerce Commission orders an investigation
    of the rates and practices of the railroad carriers engaged
    in transporting oil from Kansas and Indian Territory to
    interstate destinations.

    Representative Campbell introduces a joint resolution to
    authorize the Interstate Commerce Commission to immediately
    investigate and report to Congress from time to time whether
    any interstate commerce carriers own or control any oil or
    other products which they ship as common carriers; whether the
    officers of such carriers charged with the distribution of
    cars and furnishing facilities for transportation are directly
    or indirectly owners of companies interested in oil products;
    whether a combination in restraint of trade exists between the
    carriers and the shippers of oil products, and whether the
    officers of oil companies are officers, agents or members of
    the directory of any common carrier.

    Congressman Mann, of Illinois, introduces a bill to make
    insurance business interstate commerce.

    Senator Tillman introduces a bill in the Senate to prohibit
    corporations from making money contributions in connection with
    political elections.

February 20.—The McCurdys prepare to fight the suits brought against them
by the Mutual Life Insurance Co. for the restitution of money illegally
taken from the company. The McCurdys and Raymond & Co. also charge that
other officials and trustees of the Mutual received rebates on their own
policies.

    Opinions of prominent lawyers show that the Supreme Court’s
    decision against railroads owning commodities which they haul
    as common carriers will prevent railroads from operating if
    not from owning coal mines. Most of the big coal mines in
    the country are either owned, controlled or operated by the
    railroads.

    Commissioner of Corporations James R. Garfield testifies in the
    case of the Government against the beef packers now being tried
    at Chicago. He denies that he promised the packers immunity
    from prosecution or that all information given him would be
    regarded as confidential.

    Pittsburg, Pa., follows the example of other cities and throws
    off the yoke of boss rule. George W. Guthrie, a Democrat
    supported by the independent factions, defeats Alexander M.
    Jenkinson, the Republican candidate of the Frick-Mellon-Cassatt
    combination.

    The House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce
    recommends a favorable report to the House on the bill for an
    investigation by the Interstate Commerce Commission of the
    relations between railroads and coal and oil companies. This is
    the resolution introduced in the Senate by Senator Tillman,
    with a few modifications of the Gillespie and Campbell
    resolutions substituted.

February 21.—President Roosevelt announces that he will not try to
influence the Senate Committee’s action on the Hepburn railroad rate
bill, but intimates that he will veto any bill that does not meet his
approval.

    John Mitchell declares there will be a coal strike in the
    bituminous coal fields.

    The Senate passes a pure food bill by a vote of 63 to 4.
    The bill makes it a crime to ship from one state to another
    any article of food, drugs, medicines or liquors which is
    adulterated or misbranded, or which contains any poisonous or
    deleterious substances.

    General Grosvenor, of Ohio, is defeated for re-nomination to
    Congress. Gen. Grosvenor has been in Congress twenty years.

    The House of Representatives takes up the army appropriation
    bill. Chairman Hull, of Iowa, urges the need of preparing for
    an emergency, as there is fear of trouble with China.

    John A. McCall is buried in New York City. McCall left no money
    and the suits for recovery of money illegally paid Hamilton
    will be dropped.

    Because of his stand for an honest investigation of the Mutual
    Life Insurance Co., the trustees who fear exposure plan to oust
    Stuyvesant Fish from the presidency of the Illinois Central
    Railroad.

February 22.—John Mitchell, president of the United Mine Workers, has
another conference with several mine operators on a new scale of wages to
be paid after April 1.

    Mrs. Minor Morris, who was forcibly ejected from the White
    House some time ago, issues a statement in which she denounces
    the President for her treatment.

    Senator Knox, of Pennsylvania, introduces a railroad rate
    regulation bill giving the courts the right to review any
    order or action of the Interstate Commerce Commission. It is
    the intention of the railroad senators to add the court review
    clause of the Knox bill to the Hepburn bill.

    In the report to the New York Legislature the Armstrong,
    or Insurance Investigating, Committee, makes the following
    recommendations.

    Not only should stock corporations be permitted to give
    policy-holders the right to vote, but an opportunity should be
    afforded for conversion into purely mutual companies.

    The law as to investments in securities should be amended so as
    to provide: That no investment in the stock of any corporation
    shall be permitted, except in public stocks of municipal
    corporations.

    The statute should forbid all syndical participations,
    transactions for purchase and sale on joint account, and the
    making of any agreement providing that the company shall
    withhold from sale for any time or subject to the discretion of
    others any securities which it may own or acquire.

    No officer or director should be pecuniarily interested in any
    purchase, sale or loan made by the corporation.

    Contributions by insurance corporations for political purposes
    should be strictly forbidden.... Any officer, director
    or agent, making, authorizing or consenting to any such
    contribution should be guilty of a misdemeanor.

    The company should be compelled to set forth in its annual
    statement to the Superintendent of Insurance all sums so
    disbursed (for lobbying), giving the names of the payees, the
    amounts paid and the specific purpose of the payment.

    Limit the amount of new business; prohibit bonuses, prizes
    and awards; limit renewal commissions to four years and to,
    say, 10 per cent. of the first year’s premiums; prohibit loans
    and advances to agents; limit total expenses to the total
    “loadings” upon the premiums.

    The companies should be required annually to file with the
    Superintendent of Insurance a gain and loss exhibit for the
    year in a prescribed form, showing the amount available for
    distribution, the amount of dividends declared and the method
    of calculation by which they have been determined.

    Section 56 should be repealed and the matter should be left
    subject to the general provisions of the Code of Civil
    Procedure relating to actions against corporations.

    In addition to requiring approval of the Superintendent of
    other than certain standard forms, provision should be made
    for the standardization of the new types of policies.... The
    issue of other policies than those thus provided for should be
    prohibited.

    The committee recommends publicity of names and addresses
    of policy-holders and the giving them the right to verify
    statements and prosecute for falsity. The committee recommends
    requiring statements in elaborate detail covering all
    transactions, and favors giving the Superintendent of Insurance
    power to examine under oath.

February 23.—Stuyvesant Fish resigns as a trustee from the Mutual Life
Insurance Co. and will head a committee of policy-holders to fight the
present management.

    Insurance men plan to fight the new laws recommended by the
    Armstrong Committee before the New York Legislature, and, if
    unsuccessful there, to carry the matter before the courts.

    The Hepburn railroad rate regulation bill is reported by the
    Senate committee without any amendments. Through trickery of
    Senator Aldrich, the bill will be presented to the Senate by
    Senator Tillman as a Democratic measure.

    The House of Representatives passes a resolution ordering an
    investigation of the relations between coal and oil carrying
    railroads and coal and oil companies.

    Commissioner Garfield again testifies in the trial of the beef
    packers at Chicago. He admits that the Department of Commerce
    and Labor furnished the Department of Justice with evidence.

    Johann Hoch, the noted bigamist, is hanged at Chicago.

February 24.—The House Committee on Immigration unanimously agrees on a
bill to amend the immigration laws. The new bill will make naturalization
uniform throughout the United States, and confines the issuance of
citizenship papers to United States Circuit and District Courts, and
to the highest court of original jurisdiction of each state. The bill
further provides that an alien must be able to read, write and speak
English before he can become a citizen.

    Since Senator Aldrich’s trick of having Senator Tillman, of
    South Carolina, report the Hepburn railroad rate bill, which
    makes it a Democratic measure, Washington despatches state
    that the long standing feud between the President and Senator
    Tillman will end.

February 25.—C. Augustus Seton, who is under arrest in New York City,
confesses to forging $4,300,000 worth of Norfolk and Western Railroad
stock certificates.

    Coal mine operators give out statements saying there will be a
    strike, as they will refuse to grant the miners’ requests. T.
    L. Lewis, vice-president of the United Mine Workers, declares
    there will be no strike and that the operators will grant the
    requests of the miners.

    Harry Orchard, who assassinated the late Governor Steunenberg,
    of Idaho, confesses to taking part in 26 murders.

    Ex-Speaker David B. Henderson dies at Dubuque, Iowa. Mr.
    Henderson served two terms as speaker, succeeding the late
    Thomas B. Reed. He was elected in 1883 and served continuously
    until the end of the Fifty-seventh Congress.

February 26.—The Missouri Supreme Court hands down a decision which
it is believed will influence the Supreme Court of New York to order
H. H. Rogers to answer the questions asked him in the Standard Oil
investigation. At the time Attorney-General Hadley, of Missouri, was
taking depositions in the case in New York City, Rogers was put on the
witness stand. He refused to answer certain questions and expressed
his contempt for Missouri Courts. Mr. Hadley went before Justice
Gildersleeve, of the New York Supreme Court, and asked for an order
forcing Rogers to answer or be held in contempt of court. The order was
refused on the grounds that the questions involved had never been passed
upon by the Missouri courts. Now comes the Missouri court with a strong
decision which covers every point at issue.

    President Roosevelt intervenes to prevent the threatened coal
    strike.

    In accordance with a decision handed down by the Supreme Court
    of Texas, the Pacific, the United States, the American and
    Wells-Fargo Express Companies, and fifty of the principal
    railroads of the state, will have to pay $5,225,000 in
    penalties for violating the anti-trust law. The court holds
    that when a railroad company enters into an agreement with
    an express company which excludes other companies from doing
    a business on its lines, it restrains trade and stifles
    competition, which is prohibited by the anti-trust law.

    The supposed shrewd trick of Senator Aldrich in having Senator
    Tillman report the Hepburn railroad rate bill now has the
    Republican Senators embarrassed. The Senate seems to be in
    favor of the bill and the Republicans dare not let it pass as a
    Democratic measure. Realizing that something must be done, they
    appeal to Senator Spooner to draft a rate bill that will suit
    all factions of the Republicans and be put through the Senate
    as a party measure.

    William Nelson Cromwell, the New York lawyer who unloaded the
    Panama Canal property on the United States, and who has since
    acted as counsel to the President and Secretary Taft on Panama
    matters, appears before the Senate committee. He denies that he
    was the cause of ex-Chief Engineer Wallace’s resigning. When
    questioned as to his dealings with Secretary Taft he refused to
    answer.

February 27.—Steel Trust officials and George Gould order the bituminous
coal mine operators to make peace with the miners and prevent a strike.

    The Insurance Commissioners of Kentucky, Minnesota, Wisconsin,
    Tennessee and Nebraska ask the New York Insurance Department to
    co-operate with them in making an investigation of the Mutual
    Life Insurance Co.

    William Nelson Cromwell again appears before the Senate
    Committee on Interoceanic Canals. He continues to refuse to
    answer questions as to his dealings with Secretary Taft and the
    amount of his fees. Senator Morgan, of Alabama, produced a
    copy of Cromwell’s contract with the French company, or Panama
    Canal Co., which gave Cromwell the power to organize companies,
    issue stock, bonds, etc., and finance any and all sorts of
    organizations to further the idea of selling the canal to the
    United States.

February 28.—It is reported from Pittsburg that the United States Steel
Corporation, through President W. Ellis Corey, has demanded of the
Pittsburg Coal Company, with which it has a twenty-five-year contract
for coal, the minimum for each year being set at 8,000,000 tons, that
there be no strike in the Pittsburg district. At the same time the Gould
interests, so heavy in the West and Southwest, have ordered peace. As a
result there will be no strike of the bituminous miners, who will receive
a satisfactory advance.

    It is reported from Springfield, Ohio, that local militia,
    called out to check a race riot caused by the shooting of M.
    M. Davis, a brakeman, by a negro, has been unable to stop the
    riot. An appeal has been made to the Governor to send more
    troops. Early this morning houses were burning in the negro
    quarter, and the authorities are powerless.

    Yesterday the President signed the Urgent Deficiency Bill,
    which contains an appropriation of $118,000 for New York State
    to pay its claim for money to equip Government troops during
    the War of 1812.

    Five hundred delegates of the Independence League, guests of
    William R. Hearst, appeared yesterday at Albany to plead before
    the Governor and the Legislature for the passage of measures in
    which the league is interested.

    The Commissioners of Insurance in the states of Kentucky,
    Minnesota, Wisconsin, Tennessee and Nebraska have requested the
    Insurance Department of New York State to co-operate with them
    in an investigation of the Mutual Life Insurance Company.

    It is reported from Little Rock, Ark., that Thomas E. Jordan,
    former Controller of the Equitable Life Insurance Company, and
    who could not be located during the Armstrong Investigation, is
    stopping with his wife at Hot Springs, Ark.

    The debate in the Senate on the railroad rate question opens
    today with a speech by Senator Foraker, of Ohio.

    Yesterday, before the Senate Committee on Interoceanic Canals,
    Senator Morgan, of Alabama, in his examination of William
    Nelson Cromwell, produced an agreement between the Panama Canal
    Commission and William Nelson Cromwell, showing that for a
    large compensation the Panama Canal Company contracted to pay
    William Nelson Cromwell a large compensation to Americanize
    the Panama project. Mr. Cromwell said the enterprise proposed
    in the document was abortive and died long ago. Senator Morgan
    tried to learn from Mr. Cromwell how much he had received in
    fees from the old or new Panama Company and by persistent
    questioning deduced the fact that the total payments to Mr.
    Cromwell did not exceed $200,000, extending over a term of
    years, and giving to him from $10,000 to $15,000 a year. Mr.
    Cromwell declined to say what service he had performed for
    these sums, admitting only that his clients were satisfied. The
    inquiry will be continued.

    At a dinner yesterday at Washington the Republican members
    of Congress from New York proposed as the next nominee of
    the Republican Party for Governor of New York State, Charles
    E. Hughes, the inquisitor of the Armstrong Investigation
    Committee. The platform indicated was based on general reform
    and municipal ownership.

    The Inter-State Commerce Commission at Washington yesterday
    announced its decision in the cases of the Fred G. Clark
    Company against the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway
    Company and the Waverley Oil Works against the Pennsylvania
    Company and others. In these cases the New York, New Haven and
    Hartford Railroad Company was the principal defendant. The
    commission holds that the combination rates on petroleum and
    its product from Cleveland and Pittsburg to points reached
    by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad result in
    unreasonable and unjust rates, and that the refusal of the
    railroad company to consent to participate in through rates
    is unjust and the situation is such as to favor greatly the
    Standard Oil. In its final conclusion the commission holds
    that the act to regulate commerce does not authorize it to
    compel the establishment of joint rates or the conditions
    of interchange in case the connecting carriers fail to
    agree in respect thereto; and it therefore concludes that
    notwithstanding that the combination rates are unjust and the
    general shipping situation is such as to work a practical
    monopoly in favor of the Standard Oil Company, the Commission
    is without authority to grant relief in these cases and the
    petitions are therefore dismissed.

    Yesterday at Washington the House Committee of Agriculture
    decided by a vote of 8 to 7 not to recommend any appropriation
    to buy seeds for free distribution by the Department of
    Agriculture.

    Special counsel for the State of Missouri will make application
    before the New York courts to compel Henry H. Rogers to answer
    questions in the inquiry the State of Missouri has been making
    into Standard Oil methods.

    In the United States Circuit Court at Chicago yesterday, Judge
    Landis gave a decision that the Interstate Commerce Committee
    has the power to compel witnesses to answer questions in
    the hearing of Street’s Western Stable Car Line before the
    commission.

    At Oklahoma City, Okla., yesterday, the assistant
    attorney-general began to take testimony in the ouster case
    against the Standard and other oil companies. A wholesale oil
    dealer testified that he had been instructed to get samples of
    oil shipped if he had to steal them; and also that there had
    never been any competition between the Standard Oil and the
    Waters-Pierce Company in Oklahoma.

    At Albany yesterday, Senator Saxe’s bill to impose a tax on
    personal property wherever found, a measure designed to wipe
    out tax dodging by rich New Yorkers who establish their legal
    residence elsewhere, was passed in the Senate and goes to the
    Governor.

    At Aiken, S. C., yesterday, Professor S. P. Langley, Secretary
    of the Smithsonian Institution, died of paralysis.

March 1.—Senator Foraker in the Senate yesterday made a speech, lasting
three hours, in which he attacked the Hepburn railroad rate bill.

    For several hours last evening the city of Springfield, Ohio,
    was in the hands of a mob which burned two houses and partly
    destroyed a dozen others. All of these houses were inhabited by
    negroes. Hundreds of negroes have fled from the city.

    The annual report of the Pennsylvania Railroad shows a net
    income for the year 1905 of more than $38,000,000, an increase
    of about $10,000,000 as compared with 1904. The operating
    expenses were reduced and traffic increased.

    At the annual meeting of the Equitable Life Assurance Society
    yesterday the directors were informed that counsel of the
    society were definitely engaged in working out a plan of
    mutualization.

    Richard A. McCurdy, former president of the Mutual Life
    Insurance Company sails for Europe today for an indefinite stay
    abroad.

    William Nelson Cromwell reappeared yesterday before the Senate
    Committee of Interoceanic Canals and admitted that he drew the
    monetary agreement entered into between the Republic of Panama
    and Secretary of War Taft. This agreement caused criticism
    in the Senate recently because in fact it was a treaty made
    without consulting that body.

    At Washington the Foreign Relations Committee finished its
    work on the Santo Domingo treaty and reported it to the Senate.
    The Republicans voted solidly for the report and the Democrats
    against it.

    The Independence League of New York State has decided to
    perfect an organization in every assembly district in the
    State of New York. In William R. Hearst’s address at Albany
    he said: “The fundamental idea of the Independence League is
    independence of boss control, of corporate control and of any
    party subject to boss rule and corporation control.”

    Yesterday the Senate in executive session ratified the treaty
    between the United States and Japan relating to copyrights of
    works of literature and art.

March 2.—It is reported from Washington that the President has been
conferring with Senators, Representatives, members of the Interstate
Commerce Commission and members of his Cabinet on the question of the
Hepburn railroad rate bill, and he is willing to accept three or four
amendments of the bill if they will strengthen it for trial before the
courts.

    At Springfield, Ohio, the state militia charged the mob and
    dispersed it. The members of the Commercial Club of that city
    met to take action for the enforcement of the law, and said in
    speeches that the present conditions were due to politicians
    catering to negroes and low whites, and lax police and court
    methods.

    John F. Wallace, formerly chief engineer of the Panama Canal
    Commission, becomes an employee of the George Westinghouse
    Company at a salary of $50,000 per year. Mr. Wallace is to
    assist in building electric railways paralleling steam railways
    in many parts of the country.

    It is reported from Washington that our Government takes a very
    serious and gloomy view of the situation at Algeciras, and
    would not be surprised to see the Moroccan conference end in a
    rupture.

    The existence of a Mutual Life policy-holders’ movement of
    world-wide scope, at the head of which will undoubtedly be
    Stuyvesant Fish, became known yesterday through the exchange
    of telegrams between Lord Northcliffe, formerly Sir Alfred
    Harmsworth, and Mr. Fish. Lord Northcliffe is chairman of the
    British protection committee of the Mutual Life policy holders.

March 3.—John R. Walsh, president of the Chicago National Bank, which
failed December 18, 1905, was arrested yesterday on a Federal warrant
charging him with violation of the national banking laws in making false
reports to the Controller of Currency and with conversion to his own use
of bank funds amounting to $3,000,000. He was released after giving a
bond of $50,000.

    At Meridian, Miss., a tornado swept through the business centre
    of the town, destroying $5,000,000 of property and about
    thirteen lives.

    Springfield, Ohio, is quiet after two nights of rioting and
    incendiary fires. The state militia is still on duty.

    At Chicago, executives of all the Eastern railways in session
    failed to settle the differential rate controversy. On account
    of the attitude of the Erie Railroad it seems impossible to
    avert a rate war. Every line except the Erie voted for the
    arbitration of the question.

    The Senate Committee of the Philippines voted to smother the
    Philippine tariff bill yesterday. It is said that efforts will
    be made to have the measure reconsidered or called before the
    Senate.

    Commissioner of Public Works, J. M. Patterson, of Chicago,
    yesterday gave his resignation to Mayor Dunne. Mr. Patterson
    says he has become a convert to Socialism.

March 4.—A delegation representing practically all life insurance
companies doing business in the United States will go to Albany on
March 9, the day set for the hearing of the bills that the insurance
investigation has presented, to state the case of the companies before
the Legislature.

    Ex-Governor James Stephen Hogg died yesterday at Houston, Tex.
    at the age of 55.

March 5.—It is reported that on the evening before his death the late
Ex-Governor Hogg said: “I want no monument of stone, but let my children
plant at the head of my grave a pecan tree, and at the foot a walnut
tree, and when these trees shall bear, let the pecans and walnuts be
given out among the plain people of Texas that they may plant them and
make Texas a land of trees.”

    At St. Augustine, Fla., yesterday, Lieutenant-General John M.
    Schofield, retired, died of cerebral hemorrhage at the age of
    75.

March 6.—In the House of Representatives at Washington, John Sharp
Williams attacked the President and the Attorney-General and introduced
a resolution, which was passed by the House, inquiring whether the
Department of Justice had instituted criminal prosecutions against any
of the individuals or corporations adjudged by the Supreme Court of
the United States in the Northern Securities case to have violated the
anti-trust laws.

    The Enterprise Transportation Company, carrying freight between
    New York and Fall River, Mass., appeared before the Interstate
    Commerce Commission in New York City, complaining that the
    trunk lines out of New York refused to make through freight
    rate arrangements with the Enterprise Transportation Company.
    Lawyers representing nearly all the big railroads were present.

March 7.—Andrew Hamilton, who was legislative agent for the New York
Life Insurance Company at Albany, returned yesterday to New York. On the
steamship he was registered as “H. A. Milton.”

    The suit of the State of Kansas against the Standard Oil
    Company was dismissed by the Supreme Court of Kansas on March
    5th. This ends, so far as present litigation is concerned, the
    movement begun a year ago by Kansas against the Standard Oil
    Company and re-establishes that corporation in the position it
    held previous to the effort made to exclude it from the state.

    Yesterday District-Attorney Jerome of New York City appeared
    before the grand jury and asked that indictments be found
    against the despoilers of the life insurance companies.

    In the 20th annual report of the Boston Chamber of Commerce,
    published yesterday, it is pointed out that Boston has become
    re-established as the second port of the country.

March 8.—W. H. Moore, Municipal Ownership candidate for Mayor of Seattle,
was elected on a platform pledged to municipal ownership of public
utilities.

    All over the Dominion of Canada the banks are collecting
    American silver money and shipping it to Montreal, whence it
    is shipped to Washington and changed for gold. The removal of
    American silver from Canada will be a good thing for the banks
    and profitable for the government. The banks will be paid of ⅜
    of one per cent for collecting it and the government will bear
    all transportation charges. It is estimated that the government
    will clear at least one-half of a million dollars.

    It is reported that Andrew Hamilton, the legislative agent for
    the New York Life Insurance Company, who has just returned
    from Paris, consulted with District-Attorney Jerome before his
    return to find out just what his chances were with the law.

    It has been learned that the National City Bank and the Hanover
    Bank were the only two New York Banks who received yesterday
    their allotment of a special deposit of $10,000,000 of
    government funds which Secretary Shaw last week announced. The
    news has caused much talk and criticism in banking circles.

    In a special message to the Senate and the House the President
    said that the action of both houses in passing the resolution
    directing the Interstate Commerce Commission to investigate the
    subject of railroad rate discriminations and monopolies in
    coal and oil was hasty, ill-considered and ineffective.


_Foreign News_

February 9.—Mutiny is said to continue in the Russian Black Sea fleet.
Admiral Chouknin is wounded by a woman at Sevastopol. Siberian plague has
broken out among the Russian troops in Manchuria.

    Professor Cattier, a prominent Belgian, publishes a book
    stating that King Leopold has received $15,000,000 graft from
    the rubber trade of the Congo Free State.

    Passengers from Venezuela say President Castro is actively
    preparing for war with France. The people do not agree with the
    President’s views and a revolution may follow.

    The negro inhabitants of the Transvaal and Orange River
    Colonies, South Africa, are demanding of England all the
    political rights enjoyed by the whites.

    The Colonial Minister of France presents to the Council of
    Ministers, a plan for the political, administrative and
    economic reorganization of the French Congo.

    Because of recent disorders, King Charles dissolves the
    Portuguese Parliament.

    Fifty-five miners are drowned in a gold mine at Johannesburg,
    Transvaal.

    The foreign representatives unite in demanding that the Shah
    investigate conditions in the Province of Shiraz, Southern
    Persia. Reports from other parts of Persia also show strong
    feeling against the Shah.

February 10.—A bomb kills four gendarmes at Warsaw. Assaults on police
continue throughout Russian Poland.

    The English garrison at Tibet is reported surrounded by hostile
    tribes.

    The Irish members of Parliament again elect John Redmond
    chairman of the Irish Parliamentary party.

    An armed expedition is sent against the religious fanatics of
    Natal.

February 12.—The general opinion at Algeciras is that France and Germany
will reach an agreement on the Moroccan question.

    General fear of another uprising and massacre in China is
    expressed by despatches from different parts of that country.

    A proclamation is issued by the Governor-General at Odessa
    declaring the Russian Government will put to death any one
    found with deadly implements.

    Ex-Premier Balfour, of England, declares his policy to be one
    to build up British industries by maintaining a larger foreign
    market for manufacturers.

    The Imperial Protestant Federation sends a petition to King
    Edward, of England, asking him to refuse consent to the
    marriage of Princess Ena to King Alfonso of Spain.

    The new railroad over the Andes Mountains between Santiago,
    Chili, and Buenos Ayres, Argentine Republic, begins operations.

February 13.—Another revolution is started in Santo Domingo.

    St. Petersburg police save one of the Government banks from a
    mob of revolutionists. Another armed revolt is frustrated at
    Kharkoff, Russia. Many political prisoners are being sent to
    Siberia.

    Reforms are being agitated in Persia which may result in that
    country’s being given a constitution.

    Despatches from Algeciras state that the United States will
    finally settle the dispute between France and Germany over the
    Moroccan question.

    Venezuela offers to arbitrate her differences with France.

    The British Parliament meets preliminary to the formal opening
    on Feb. 19.

February 14.—Balfour and Chamberlain agree on a protective policy for
England. This will have no effect at this time, as a new Parliament
overwhelmingly in favor of free trade has just been elected.

    Despatches from Algeciras indicate that the American delegates
    to the Moroccan conference are gradually bringing France and
    Germany to a settlement of their dispute.

    The secret has leaked out that America, England and Japan have
    had a secret agreement concerning China since the close of the
    Russo-Japanese war.

    A monument at El Caney in honor of the Americans who lost their
    lives during the siege of Santiago is unveiled.

February 15.—Fearing an outbreak in China, two of Admiral Sigsbee’s
cruisers are sent to reinforce the American Far Eastern fleet.

    St. Petersburg reports show that the Russian Terrorists hire
    boys to throw bombs.

    The situation at Algeciras is unchanged.

February 17.—The Czar of Russia prevents a disruption of his Cabinet by
bringing about peace between Premier Witte and Interior Minister Durnovo.
General Linevitch turns over his command of the Russian troops in the far
East to Gen. Grodekoff. St. Petersburg police arrest a band of Terrorists
and discover enough poisons to kill half the population of St. Petersburg.

    It is discovered that China has placed orders with German
    manufacturers for 1,000,000 small arms and 100 cannon.

    Venezuela completes all preparations for war. The Venezuelan
    Government appoints Guzman Garbiras to succeed M.
    Veloz-Goiticoa as Minister to the United States.

February 18.—Clement Armand Fallières, recently elected President of the
French Republic, assumes his duties.

    The Russian Government orders the Governor General of East
    Siberia to prevent Capt. Einar Mikkelson from hoisting the
    American flag on any island which he may discover in the Arctic
    Ocean north of East Siberia and between Wrangel Land and the
    Parry Islands.

    The body of the late King Christian IX of Denmark is entombed
    in Roskelde’s cathedral, Copenhagen.

    A despatch from Shanghai, China, states that nothing is known
    there of conditions requiring the sending of United States
    troops to that Country. The Methodist Foreign Missionary
    Society receives reports from its head missionaries at
    different Chinese cities stating that there is no danger of
    disturbances. The Southern Baptist Missionary Board, through
    its secretary, cables its missionaries to take refuge in the
    nearest seaports, where they can be under the protection of
    foreign consulates.

    The King of Hungary prepares to dissolve the Diet when it
    assembles today.

February 19.—The Hungarian Diet is dissolved by armed troops and police.

    Another anti-Jewish riot occurs at Vietka, Russia. Most of the
    city is burned, but no deaths are reported.

    The “General Memorandum” issued by Admiral Nelson to his
    captains at Trafalgar is found at Merton.

    The mutineers of the Russian battleships _Kniaz Potemkin_, who
    were sentenced to death, have had their sentences commuted to
    imprisonment.

    King Edward opens the newly elected English Parliament. In his
    speech the King expresses a desire that the government of the
    country shall be carried on in a spirit regardful of the wishes
    of the Irish people.

February 20.—Germany rejects the final proposal of France for a
settlement of the Moroccan controversy. The points in dispute will now
come before the delegates of all the Powers.

    A company of British mounted infantry and three officers are
    massacred by fanatics in Sokoto, Northern Nigeria.

    A despatch from Ekaterinodar, Ciscaucasia, states that a fight
    is in progress between a detachment of Russian soldiers and 600
    mutinous Kuban Cossacks.

    Members of the Hungarian Diet decide to accept the dissolution
    of that body without protest.

    The British House of Commons records its determination to
    resist any proposals which will create any system of protection.

    The Russian Government is trying many prisoners for
    participating in a movement to overthrow the Government. The
    political dissatisfaction throughout the Empire seems to be as
    great as at the beginning of the late revolution.

February 21.—Ambassador White, head of the American delegation to the
Algeciras conference, expresses the opinion that France and Germany will
reach an agreement on the Moroccan question.

    Attacks upon Catholic missions are made by Chinese in several
    of the southeastern provinces of China.

    The British House of Commons pledges a system of intelligent
    self-government for Ireland.

February 22.—German Reichstag passes a bill to extend reciprocal tariff
rates to the United States until June 30, 1907.

    Fear that the Algeciras conference will end without France
    and Germany reaching an agreement on the Moroccan question is
    expressed by the French press.

    People returning from China declare that the situation is very
    critical and a revolution is feared. The feeling against the
    present government is strong and the boycott of American goods
    is rigidly enforced.

    Religious fanatics destroy a French post in Sokoto, Central
    Africa.

February 23.—The American Minister to China states that he sees very
little reason for apprehension over China’s affairs. Wu Ting Fang, former
Minister to the United States, says China is passing through a crisis. He
justifies the boycott of American goods. All missionaries are advised by
Assistant Secretary of State Bacon to move to places where they can be
protected.

    Despatches from Algeciras state that the fear of war over
    Germany’s rejection of France’s proposals on the Moroccan
    question is growing less.

    Bills providing for general suffrage are introduced in the
    Lower House of the Austrian Parliament.

    Reports from St. Petersburg state that Count Witte has not
    resigned.

    A revolt against the Turkish Government is reported to be
    spreading in Yemen, Turkish Arabia.

February 24.—W. K. Vanderbilt, Jr., is attacked by a mob near Pisa,
Italy, after his automobile runs down and injures a boy.

    Active preparations are being made at Manila for any trouble
    with China.

    Director General Ivanoff, of the Vistula Railroad, is
    assassinated at Warsaw, Russia.

    The Spanish Government distributes money in the famine stricken
    provinces to relieve the sufferings of the people and prevent
    disorders.

    The German Foreign Office states that there is little danger
    of war between Germany and France over the Moroccan question.
    French despatches say about the same.

February 25.—More riots occur at Warsaw and Odessa, Russia. Six persons
are killed and 15 wounded.

    The customs war between Austria and Servia ends. Servia agrees
    to Austria’s demands.

    Secretary Root says the United States has no right to interfere
    with conditions in the Congo Free State, Africa.

    President Castro, of Venezuela, declares he will clear his
    country of all foreigners, break up the Monroe Doctrine and
    humble France.

    Canada will appoint a commission to investigate life insurance
    business in Canada.

    Two packages of dynamite are found at a gate of the Forbidden
    City, Peking, China.

February 26.—Despatches from Shanghai, China, tell of the murder of
missionaries at Nan-Chang. Six Jesuits and two members of an English
family are reported murdered. The remaining foreigners escaped to
Kiu-Kiang in boats. Several missions at Nan-Chang and Kiang-se were
destroyed, among them the American.

February 27.—The Americans who escaped the Nan-Chang, China, massacre are
reported safe at Kiu-Kiang.

    Cossacks knout several prisoners to death at Odessa, Russia.

    Ex-Premier Balfour is elected to the British Parliament from
    London.

    Duchess Sophie Charlotte, of Oldenburg, and Prince Eitel
    Frederick, second son of the Emperor of Germany, are married at
    Berlin. The Emperor also celebrates his silver wedding.

    France asks the Czar of Russia to use his influence to get
    Germany to agree to France’s terms on the Moroccan question.

    Premier Witte reopens negotiations to determine the extent of a
    proposed agreement with England.

    Japanese officers assume control of the Imperial War College
    and the Trade and Commercial Schools at Canton, China. The
    United States English and French war vessels sail for different
    Chinese ports to protect foreigners.

February 28.—Duchess Sophia Charlotte Oldenburg, the daughter of the
Grand Duke of Oldenburg and Prince Eitel Frederick, the second son of the
Emperor of Germany, were married yesterday in the chapel of the palace at
Berlin.

    President Caceres, of Santo Domingo, in a message to his
    Congress, recommends the revision of the Constitution, of the
    import and export duties, the improvement of the ports and
    public roads, the enactment of laws benefiting agriculture, the
    free administration of justice and other improvements becoming
    a civilized nation. He recommends to Congress also the study
    of the treaty now before the United States Senate and declares
    that it is necessary to the welfare of his republic.

    The leading papers of St. Petersburg evince no satisfaction
    over the announcement of the date of the meeting of the Duma.
    It is said that the Duma will be prorogued almost immediately
    until autumn.

    Premier Witte has become an advocate of an Anglo-Russian
    understanding and it is reported that negotiations are about
    to be opened in London to determine the extent of a proposed
    agreement. If they are successful the new grouping of the
    Powers will check Germany’s ambition.

    It is reported from St. Petersburg that Russia is using all her
    influence at Berlin to prevent a rupture between France and
    Germany.

    The French officials at the Moroccan Conference at Algeciras
    do not look favorably upon the Berlin report that Germany will
    make concessions if France will also yield something. The
    French say that they have made concessions to which Germany has
    not responded.

    It is reported from Manila that Japanese officers have
    assumed control of the imperial war college and the trade and
    commercial schools at Canton, China.

    The battleship _Ohio_, flagship of the American fleet at the
    Asiatic station, has sailed for Hong Kong, where it will dock
    and make repairs, so as to be ready for possible emergencies.

    A telegram from Odessa states that in the village of Ivanislaw,
    in the Province of Kherson, 50 Cossacks and 70 gunners appeared
    a few days ago under orders from a police official and knouted
    13 peasants. One of these peasants went mad and others are
    dying. A schoolmaster became insane after witnessing the scene.
    The sole offense chargeable against the villagers was their
    re-election of communal representatives which was in conformity
    with the ukase of Dec. 24 last.

March 1.—The reactionary policy of Interior Minister Durnovo received a
setback yesterday when the action of the St. Petersburg police in closing
the central bureau of the Constitutional Democracy was disowned by the
Government. Permission was given for the reopening of the bureau.

    A dispatch from St. Petersburg says that the financial
    embarrassments of Russia are increased by the necessity of
    paying Japan for the maintenance of Russian prisoners.

    The new general tariff and conventional tariffs between Russia
    and Germany, France, and Austria-Hungary go into effect today.

March 2.—It is reported from Shanghai that the Chinese Government has
decided to instruct its ministers abroad to assure the Powers that there
is no cause for uneasiness in the present situation in China and that
there are no signs of an anti-foreign movement.

March 3.—As the result of a series of special councils composed of forty
high dignitaries presided over by the Czar, the main guarantees of
liberty have been granted to the Russian people and a manifesto is to be
coded and incorporated in the laws of the empire.

March 4.—A terrific cyclone swept over the Society and Cook’s Islands
in the Pacific Ocean on February 7 and 8. It is said 10,000 persons
perished. The damage to property is estimated at a million dollars.

March 5.—At Tokio a bill was introduced in the Diet providing for the
nationalization of the railways, and authorizing the government to compel
companies to sell out to it at a price based on the cost of building plus
twenty times the average profits for the last three years.

March 6.—It is reported that the Germans have refused any concessions at
the Moroccan conference at Algeciras. Russia proposed that France and
Spain control the policing of Morocco. France was willing to accept the
proposition, which was indorsed by Spain, Portugal and England. Herr von
Radowitz, chief German delegate, opposed the proposal.

    The editor of a Barcelona (Spain) daily paper was sentenced to
    eight years’ imprisonment for printing an insulting dispatch
    concerning King Alfonso.

March 7.—An imperial manifesto has been published setting forth the
decisions of the imperial council with regard to the execution of the
Czar’s manifesto of last October. The manifesto reveals the purpose of
the government to keep a firm check on the Duma. The imperial veto is
absolute. The Czar controls the upper house; and the ministers have power
to legislate when the parliament is not sitting.

    The Rouvier Ministry of France is defeated in the Chamber
    of Deputies by a combination against the Anti-Clericals and
    immediately resigns.

March 8.—Reported from Berlin, intense indignation and mortification are
shown at Russia’s action in throwing off her reserve and standing by
France in the proposition that the control of the police of Morocco shall
be entrusted to France and Spain. It is said that no more concessions can
be obtained and that Germany must now show her hand and back down; that
Von Radowitz, representing Germany at Morocco, will be sacrificed. There
is also talk of Von Buelow’s resignation.




[Illustration: _Along The Firing Line_

_BY The Circulation Manager_]


January was our best month for subscriptions at the time I wrote for the
March number, but I guessed that February would be better still—and I
guessed correctly. Although January had 27 business days, as against 22
in February (Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays cut in on the little,
short month), yet we received nearly fifty-one per cent more renewals
and new subscriptions in the latter month. And if we may judge the March
business by the first three days (I write this March 4), the stormy
month will bring more subscriptions than January and February combined.
It may possibly be a case of “coming in like a lion and going out like
a lamb”—but I do not think so. Our subscribers, agents, and clubbing
newspapers are showing a much greater interest than formerly—and as the
list grows our field of opportunity broadens.

       *       *       *       *       *

One would naturally suppose that every subscription received would
narrow our field—but it doesn’t. On the contrary. I can imagine a state
of affairs—a list so large—that every subscriber secured would make it
harder to get another, for we can’t expect every man, woman and child to
take any one publication. But no magazine ever reached that dizzy height.
Practically every subscriber we get is a missionary who brings in at
least one convert within the year, and many of them send in dozens of
new subscriptions. I need hardly use space in saying that we thoroughly
appreciate these kindnesses and endeavor to show our appreciation by
making WATSON’S MAGAZINE better and better each month. That’s a foregone
conclusion.

       *       *       *       *       *

Temporarily, however, we are embarrassed by the great influx of
subscriptions, and for a little while we ask the kind indulgence of our
friends. Everything shall be taken care of, but for a few weeks there may
be some delays. It takes time to train new subscription clerks.

       *       *       *       *       *

Our one weakness heretofore has been lack of proper organization to keep
in touch with and look after the interests of the news-dealers. This has
been remedied by placing a thoroughly competent man in charge of the
news-dealer circulation. A complete roster of the news-dealers is being
made and every effort will be put forth to increase news-stand sales.
The tens of thousands of booksellers and news-dealers throughout the
United States, supplied by the American News Company and its branches,
constitute an army of distribution which has taken many years and an
immense sum of money to raise and equip. We want to make use of that army
to the best advantage of our patrons, the dealers and ourselves. Probably
more than one-half of the reading public buys regularly of news-dealers,
and a much larger percentage buys occasionally. Wherever our friends
prefer to buy of the dealer, we earnestly wish them to do so; and if at
any time there is any difficulty in securing Watson’s at the news stands,
write us about it. We are now equipped to take care of all complaints of
this character promptly.

There is, however, an immense reading public receiving mail on R. F.
D. routes—yet it is only thirteen years ago that Mr. Watson, after a
hard fight, secured a small appropriation in Congress to be used in
experiments with rural free delivery of mail—real “rural” delivery, not
the kind Mr. Wanamaker had tried in the small towns previously. But even
after Mr. Watson got the appropriation, Cleveland’s Postmaster-General
refused to use it. “Scandalous use of the people’s money,” he doubtless
argued, “and, besides, it might develop into something which would hurt
the express companies.” To Mr. Watson is due the credit for securing
the first appropriation for rural free delivery. He is the father. But
we must give the devil his due—the Republican Party built up the system
Mr. Watson originated. Well, that party never was afraid to spend the
people’s money.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now, these R. F. D. patrons get mail at their respective doors every
weekday. They need not, and do not, go often to the nearest village or
town. Hence, they cannot so well depend upon news-dealers for WATSON’S.
They are best served by subscribing and having Uncle Sam’s mail-carrier
bring it to the door.

       *       *       *       *       *

The news-stand buyer pays thirty cents a year more for WATSON’S than does
his rural brother—but he invests a much smaller amount each time, so the
two sacrifices (but it isn’t exactly correct to call buying WATSON’S
a “sacrifice”) are about equal. This calls to mind a suggestion, that
has been made several times, to allow taxes to be paid in instalments.
Cold-blooded figures say that it is exactly the same whether one pays a
$24 tax in one payment, or in four of $6 each, or in 12 of $2 each; but
actual experience says, No; there is a difference.

       *       *       *       *       *

Funny, isn’t it, how the Republican Party denounces some proposition as
a Populistic vagary—and then turns ’round and does the very thing it
has denounced! In 1896 we were told that the people would have none
of silver—those “fifty-cent dollars”; yet between 1897 and 1903 the
Republican Party coined more silver than in any other seven years of the
country’s history. Not “free coinage,” of course, but that Sherman silver
which was stacked up in vaults, and which no one wanted.

       *       *       *       *       *

Public ownership was denounced as “confiscation,” anarchy, socialism,
paternalism, and so on. But Teddy and Uncle Sam went into the railroad
business down in Panama, and only recently that fat boy, Taft, bought
300 acres of coal lands at Batan, Philippine Islands, for $50,000,
money voted by Congress for the purpose, and it is given out flatly
that “it is the intention of the Government not to relinquish title to
the mines.” They will be leased to competitive bidders. The Secretary
of War is drawing a bill to provide for this leasing, and says, oh, ye
gods, listen: That the Government will regulate the price of coal in the
Philippines!

       *       *       *       *       *

Didn’t we hear something about the impossibility of doing such a stunt
as “regulating prices” away back in 1896 and later? Couldn’t regulate
the price of silver by letting it into the mints at $1.39 plus an ounce.
Oh, no! Seems to me we ought to have an “International agreement” on
the price of coal. Otherwise, what’s to prevent those disreputable
“furriners” from dumping their pauper-mined coal into the Philippines,
and carrying away every ounce of our gold?

       *       *       *       *       *

Who said the People’s Party is dead? Out in Coal City, Ill., the
Populists recently nominated the following village ticket:

    The People’s Party met in Borella’s Hall and made the following
    nominations: For trustees, two years, John McNamara, Peter
    Bono, and Axtel Anderson. For village clerk, Edward Fulton. For
    police magistrate, Frank Francis. For library directors, James
    Leish and Walter Palmer.

Some call it the decadence of party spirit, but others believe it a
recovery from partisan insanity—this independent attitude of men who
formerly wore a party collar with meekness, if not with actual pride. A
year or more ago Dr. Engelhard, of Rising City, Neb., expressed it in the
picturesque language of the West, thus: “I am now a political maverick.”
At a recent dinner of the Wisconsin Society of New York, Representative
Henry C. Adams, of the Badger State, pleading for the “insurgents”
who are in rebellion, not “against good government but against bad
government,” graphically described the political situation of today as
follows:

    “Party feeling has run to the lowest ebb ever known in
    American politics. It is hard work to tell a Democrat from
    a Republican. The South is swinging toward protection. New
    England is flirting with free trade. Pittsburg goes Democratic.
    New York City barely escapes the rule of a Socialist.
    Missouri sends Republicans to Congress. Folk is cheered by
    Republicans. La Follette is voted for by Democrats. The House
    of Representatives votes almost unanimously for the President’s
    rate bill, and a Republican committee gives it in charge of a
    Senator from South Carolina to report to the Senate.”

In Mr. Edgerton’s excellent article on “Farmers’ Organizations” (February
number) he failed to mention a very strong one in the grain belt—the
American Society of Equity, with headquarters at Indianapolis. It claims
a membership of over 200,000 farmers, and its president, J. A. Everitt,
asserts that its members will hold their wheat for $1.00 and other
cereals correspondingly—and that they expect to win. Let’s hope they may.

       *       *       *       *       *

But let’s think a little. That won’t cut down railroad dividends, or
make kerosene and rent any cheaper; and it _will_ make bread higher. So
suppose the Farmers’ Union, down South, pushes cotton up to 15 cents;
and the American Society of Equity pushes wheat up to a dollar; and the
“Big 6” here wins its fight for an 8-hour day at 9 hours’ pay—won’t all
these wealth-producers, after matters get readjusted, be about where they
were before? I’m not throwing cold water on the efforts of any of these
organizations, for I glory in their fighting proclivities—but I can’t see
any permanent advantage accruing to any of them so long as the railroads
and the banks are armed with letters of marque and reprisal, and legally
empowered to rob every actual producer and every consumer. Each of these
organizations carefully avoids politics. Is that wise? Possibly; but I
can’t see it that way.

       *       *       *       *       *

“How shall I remit for subscriptions?” ask a number of agents. Well, most
anything that will bring the money will do, but we have this preference:
A United States Post Office Money Order, made out to TOM WATSON’S
MAGAZINE. That will give us your name on the order, making it easy to
trace errors—and our bank charges no exchange for handling. But we never
refuse cheques, drafts, express orders, currency, or postage stamps, if
sent us in good condition.

“But,” I hear a chorus of voices saying, “we thought you’d changed the
name, and just now you said ‘Tom Watson’s Magazine.’” Just so, I did.
That is the name of the corporation which publishes WATSON’S MAGAZINE.
The corporation known as Tom Watson’s Magazine has not changed its name.
It has five offices: President, vice-president, secretary, treasurer and
cashier. These offices are held by three Populists, as follows:

_President_, Thomas E. Watson.

_Vice-President and Treasurer_, H. C. S. Stimpson.

_Secretary and Cashier_, C. Q. de France.

I need not introduce Mr. Watson. Mr. Stimpson is secretary of the
People’s Party in New York State; and I am secretary of the National
Committee.

Don’t make your remittance payable to any of the officers, but simply to
the company, Tom Watson’s Magazine, and address your communications to
the Magazine—not to individuals.

[Illustration: _C. Q. de France_]

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Of Vital Importance to Patriotic Citizens

National Documents

a collection of notable state papers chronologically arranged to form a
documentary history of this country. It opens with the first Virginia
Charter of 1606 and closes with the Panama Canal Act of 1904, and
comprises all the important diplomatic treaties, official proclamations
and legislative acts in American history.

Settle All Disputes Intelligently

You can trace from the original sources the development of this country
as an independent power. Never before have these sources been brought
together for your benefit. The volume contains 504 pages and a complete
index enabling the reader to turn readily to any subject in which he may
be interested. Bound in an artistic green crash cloth, stamped in gold.
Printed in a plain, readable type on an opaque featherweight paper.

[Illustration]

_As a Special Offer to the readers of WATSON’S MAGAZINE, we will send
this book postpaid and the Magazine for one year for $2.20._ Your order
and remittance should be sent direct to =TOM WATSON’S MAGAZINE, 121 W.
42d St. N. Y.=

[Illustration]

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_The Reliance Shoe._

$6.00

SHOES For $3.50

For MEN

In Fractional Sizes at Factory Price.

415 Patent Colt Blucher, $3.75 delivered

We fit you perfectly and save you the jobber’s and retailer’s profits.
The sole of a Reliance shoe is made of oak bark-tanned leather, tough
and durable, and costs as much as the sole of any $6.00 shoe. Every
piece of leather in every Reliance shoe is up to the same high standard.
The workmanship is the product of the most skilled shoemakers. Reliance
shoes are made on custom lasts and handsomely finished. In wear and
shape-retaining qualities, foot comfort and style, we guarantee the
Reliance at $3.50 equal to any $6.00 shoe made. The graceful curve of
the heel prevents slipping up and down, and the narrow shank properly
supports the weight and gives the foot absolute comfort. If you’ll
investigate Reliance shoes, you’ll wear no other make. Be fair to
yourself and do it now. We fully satisfy you in every way or return your
money.

Write for our free stylebook and measurement blank. Delivered, express
prepaid, =$3.75=.

Reliance Shoe Company

40 Main St., Friendship, N. Y.

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The Improved Boston Garter

WORN ALL OVER THE WORLD

REFUSE ALL SUBSTITUTES OFFERED YOU

The Name is stamped on every loop—

The _Velvet Grip_ CUSHION BUTTON CLASP

LIES FLAT TO THE LEG—NEVER SLIPS, TEARS NOR UNFASTENS

Sample pair, Silk 50c., Cotton 25c. Mailed on receipt of price.

GEO. FROST CO., Makers

Boston, Mass., U.S.A.

EVERY PAIR WARRANTED

ALWAYS EASY

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DENTACURA

_The Tooth Paste_

_The Ideal Dentifrice_

A chain of testimonials from dentists in practice attests the unequalled
excellence of Dentacura Tooth Paste. It cleans the teeth, destroys
bacteria, prevents decay. It is applied to the brush without the waste
attending the use of powder. That you may know by experience its value we
will send you free a sample tube of Dentacura and our booklet, “Taking
Care of the Teeth.” Write at once. Offer expires May 15th, ’06.

Dentacura may be had at most toilet counters. Price 25c. If your dealer
does not have it we will send it on receipt of price.

DENTACURA COMPANY, 192 ALLING ST. NEWARK, N.J.

       *       *       *       *       *

MENNEN’S BORATED TALCUM TOILET POWDER

Pure as the Lily

—healthful and refreshing; that is why MENNEN’S is always used and
recommended by physicians and nurses. Its perfect purity and absolute
uniformity have won for it universal esteem. In the nursery it is
supreme, unequalled for =chafing=, =nettle-rash=, =chapped hands=, etc.,
it is soothing, sanitary and healing. MENNEN’S face on every box—see that
you get the genuine. _For sale everywhere or by mail, 25c. Sample free._
MENNEN’S VIOLET (Borated) TALCUM has the scent of fresh cut violets.

GERHARD MENNEN CO.—NEWARK, N.J.