May 14, 1887 Vol. I, No. 19Whole No. 19

MR. GODWIN’S BENCH SHOW

The Commercial Advertiser¹, edited by Parke Godwin², who, before he got so rich, was something of a radical, proposes a bench show³ of anarchists and communists, after the manner of the dog show recently held in Madison square garden. It would have the anarchists and communists well collared and chained, arranged according to their different breeds, “for all to view,” and thinks there would be money in such a show for anybody who has no dread of Mr. Bergh⁴.

If Mr. Parke Godwin, as he saunters from his office to the elevated station, will stop in front of a picture store on the east side of Nassau street, he will see in the window a fine colored reproduction of a French painting that will surely arrest his attention if only for its grouping of figures and wealth of color. It represents a certain famous show of “anarchists and communists” given to the best society of Rome, some time before Mr. Bergh appeared, by one Nero Claudius Cæsar. The “anarchists and communists,” young men and graybeards, matrons and maids, to whom the Commercial Advertisers and Evening Posts of that day were then attributing the recent disastrous conflagration in the seven hilled city, enveloped, all but their heads, in masses of combustible material, are bound to the upper parts of high posts which extend in long rows through the garden. And in obedience to a signal from the giver of the show—whose gorgeous litter, surrounded by the elite of Rome, has been borne from his grand palace to a place of commanding view upon the portico—the lamplighters are just applying fire to these human torches. The picture is worth Mr.  Parke Godwin’s consideration, and might suggest to him that the “anarchists and communists” of the present are sometimes the “martyrs” of the future, and that if there are in our community any such bloodthirsty destructives as he fancies, they are in reality the products of a system of injustice which the respectable classes uphold.

But as for gathering in ten-cent pieces by merely putting people on exhibition without outraging Mr. Bergh, any showman will tell him that a bench show of millionaires would draw far better than a bench show of anarchists and communists.

Jay⁵ Gould has been making one of his periodical trips of inspection over his southwestern railroad system, and a correspondent of the Times interests its readers by telling how he travels like a rocket, and who accompanies him in the special train on which he eats and sleeps, of the quiet and methodical manner in which he sees how his vast property is getting on, and of the way in which people come from far and near to look even at his car. “He is quite as much of a curiosity in the eyes of the country folk as a circus,” says the correspondent, “and if he were to stand on the platform after the manner of James G. Blaine⁶ would attract quite as big a crowd.”

And why not? Is not the man who, starting with a mouse trap, has, while yet in the prime of his intellectual powers, already made himself the master of fifty millions, as natural an object of curiosity as a famous politician, or an elephant who walks on his hind legs? Who, even in our cities, would not give ten cents for a good, square look at Jay Gould if he were placed on exhibition? while as to the curiosity as to how he eats and sleeps and lodges and generally conducts himself in those affairs which link him to the rest of humanity, this very letter in the Times is itself testimony.

Nor is the curiosity entirely an ignoble one—it is largely curiosity of the same kind that holds the thoughtful before the picture of one who in his time was a controller of great affairs and a master of men. Here is a live master of men; a man of the type of the Cæsars and Napoleons, who, strong, unscrupulous and fortunate, push, with insatiable ambition, their way to power by the shortest road their times may offer.

If Cæsar or Napoleon were to come back to earth again as a citizen of the American republic in our times, the one would not run for public office nor the other seek a military career. The shortest road to the greatest power here and now is through the control of the corporations whom we have allowed to possess themselves of the highways of a continent.

Having escaped in the early part of his career the fate with which poor, unsuccessful Jacob Sharp is now threatened, Jay Gould is no longer in any danger of the penitentiary; having got him fifty millions of dollars, and the virtual ownership of some six thousand miles of road, besides newspapers, judges, state legislatures and members of congress too many to count, Jay Gould now plays for further millions with loaded dice. The only ones who can play with him on equal terms are the masters of the other railroad provinces into which the American republic is now divided. But they only fight to really hurt, where combination is impossible. Not only under present conditions must the growth of his already monstrous fortune go on with accelerating rapidity, but in the concentration of power to which everything now tends, Jay Gould would bid fair, if life were long enough, to come out from among those who are now his rivals and peers as Cæsar came out in Rome or Napoleon in France. But as it is, so boldly, so skillfully, so unscrupulously has he played the great game that he is likely⁷ to die the richest man in the country, probably the richest man in the world.

“A man can live comfortably on less than fifty millions,” says Jay Gould, according

p. 1, col. 2 to the Times reporter. So he can. On very much less than fifty millions one might have all that command over material conditions which makes wealth to the civilized man what wings are to the bird; and Jay Gould might now retire from his conquests, like Lucullus⁸, to live as superbly. But if he did, it would probably be, like Lucullus, to have his faculties decay. For good or bad, man cannot live by bread alone. And to live comfortably would no more content a Jay Gould than it would have contented a Cæsar or Napoleon. It is the insatiable ambition of power which drives on such men.

We are only now beginning to enter the era of great fortunes in the hands of the second generation. On a new continent, which we have been settling and “fencing in” with greater rapidity than any similar area on earth was ever settled and “fenced in” before, and in the earlier days of the industrial revolution caused by the utilization of steam and electricity—a revolution greater and quicker than the world has ever before known—our great fortunes have been largely in the hands of the men who laid their foundations. Our Jay Goulds, our Stanfords, our Huntingtons, Rockefellers, Carnegies and Corbins are “self-made men,” from which certain people are ever ready to argue that “in a free country like this” every workman might become a millionaire. It is still our habit, when we first hear of a rich man, to ask, “How did he make his money?” but we are rapidly passing into the times when the presumption in the case of every very rich man will be that he inherited the foundation of his fortune.

Already we are developing a large class of jeunessc dore^sic9—of young men born to fortunes sufficient to enable them to live in the most luxurious idleness, and of young women whose hands are sought by European aristocrats as the means of restoring wasted fortunes. And many of these can spend the whole of their large incomes and still grow richer without thought on their part, for their estates, consisting of land, increase in value with the growth of the community.

Some may be contented with this, and some great fortunes may be dissipated by division or by reckless extravagance, though it is to be remembered that the rich have generally the power of putting their children in the way of making money or in some way pensioning them on the men who have to work for a living, and that the social habits of our time do not favor the reckless extravagances which dissipate large fortunes.

But some of these fortunes will pass into the hands of men with all the money getting ability of their predecessors. The present Astors, and at least some of the Vanderbilts, the second Garrett, and others who will suggest themselves, are examples of millionaires of the second and third generation who go steadily along, adding to the fortunes they inherit. As for Jay Gould¹⁰ (and there are others like him), he seems to be training the son who is to inherit his mighty fortune, as Hamlicar^sic trained Hannibal to the art of war. Should present social conditions continue, how much may another Gould, starting where the first Gould leaves off, be worth before he dies? It is at least a suggestive question.

In the mean time, the papers that tell us all they know about Jay Gould, even to the fact that he has lately taken to eating snails, and carries home a quart of them every afternoon in a brown paper parcel, say that young George attends strictly to business and displays great financial ability. He has been educated as a broker, is a member of the stock exchange and a partner in the stock firm that does most of his father’s business; is one of the three vice-presidents of the Western Union telegraph company; is a director and large stockholder in the Missouri Pacific, the Missouri, Kansas and Texas, the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific, the St. Louis and Iron Mountain and the Manhattan elevated, and is shortly to be made president of the Pacific Mail Steamship company. Already, says the Times correspondent, “he probably owns as much land—railroad land grants not considered—in the southwest as his father, and is always on the lookout for bargains. These are always to be had at the close of a disastrous agricultural or cattle season.” Starting as he starts, it is not unreasonable for this bright young man to look forward to a fortune of at least a thousand million dollars, or it may even be to a fortune of two or three thousand millions, as the result of a close attention to business. For doubtless young George Gould thinks, as the daily papers tell him, that Dr. McGlynn has only lifted the cross of a Quixotic crusade, and that despite the Anti-poverty society, poverty must continue. And if poverty must continue, the great fortunes of the next generation will be to those of this as whales to minnows. The world is moving fast in our day, and at constantly accelerating speed.

Minister Denby writes home from China that his salary is not enough to enable him to hold his own with the ministers of other powers at Pekin. This is probably true. But do we really need a minister to China? One might be worth having if we always got as capable a man as Mr. Denby’s predecessor, John Russell Young. But he came to go to China through the personal influence of General Grant, and in the ordinary grind of our system our ministers are likely, at best, to be useless. But if there is any reason for keeping a minister at Pekin we certainly have no need whatever for our ministers at the European courts. About the only purpose they seem to serve that could not be better

p. 1, col. 3

“THY KINGDOM COME ON EARTH!”

[Cartoon: a hand and forearm thrust up from below hold aloft a banner on a spear-tipped staff, against dark clouds; the banner shows a radiant cross with the lettering “IN HOC S[IGNO VINCES?]” (the end of the motto is lost in the cross-hatching, and the mailing label is pasted over part of it). Signed at lower left “V.G.”]

THE CROSS OF OUR CRUSADE.

By Rev. John Anketell.

[continued from p1 c2]

served by direct communication is that of getting rich Americans presented at court. Mr. Phelps, it seems, served this purpose on Tuesday, and a waiting world on this side of the Atlantic has been informed by special Commercial company cable, copyrighted by James Gordon Bennett, that Mrs. Phelps wore “a petticoat and bodice of white and black striped velvet and a train of black velvet.” But this is nothing compared with the “holy shows” which Mr. Henry L. Horton, described in the dispatch as “the well known New York banker,” and Mrs. Henry L. Horton made of themselves. Mr. Horton, who it is to be inferred from the dispatch, was only allowed to get as far as the royal ante-room, was arrayed in velvet court dress and sword. As for Mrs. Horton, this, according to the Herald, is the way she was attired:

The material of her dress was white satin silver brocade; the front of the skirt was trimmed with pearl in the pattern of antique silver point lace; the corsage, which was cut V shaped with stomacher, was embroidered in the same way; the train, of silver brocade on poult de soie, was trimmed with white ostrich tips at bottom; the train had a blue satin lining, and was fastened at the right shoulder with a plume of feathers; in the hair were the traditional court feathers, tipped with diamond aigrettes. Mrs. Horton’s ornaments were diamonds in necklace and earrings.

If Mr. Parke Godwin were to get hold of this couple when they get back and make a ten-cent exhibition of them, it might be more remunerative than a bench show of communists.

But titles and court dresses, however, don’t amount to much, one way or the other. Boss McLaughlin of Brooklyn, who quietly whittles his stick all the afternoon in a Willoughby street auction room while his courtiers come and go, and Jay Gould, eating his snails and adding millions to his millions, are the true types of our real aristocracy, and would draw better even than American citizens in monarchical finery.

This is the way the Telegram describes what is to be seen in Central park these bright May mornings:

There is the young girl awkwardly driving a village cart, her small brother beside her and a groom behind looking wofully uncomfortable. There is the small boy who drives his mother in a handsome phaeton¹³, with a lap-robe lined with ermine, and a groom behind. A smaller boy in a sailor suit follows, driving a village cart, with a groom sitting beside him. Then there are young girls in village

p. 1, col. 4 > carts, without grooms, laughing and talking at their pleasure, and older women in the same style of vehicle. A few elderly men on horseback, or driving handsome horses attached to a T-cart^1114?16? or buggy, always with a groom, have apparently fouud^sic that for brain and nerves weakened by age, disease or dissipation there is no tonic like the fresh morning air.

Occasionally a coupe¹² will have a maid and two or three children inside, and one child sitting delightedly by the coachman and held by his arm. A quaint little donkey cart painted white is driven by a little girl in a big hat, and was stared at with big round eyes by the children on the walk who were playing with their dolls. A sick-looking man is seated in a handsome victoria with a daughter by his side, driven by a substantial looking coachman and drawn by a pair of quiet horses. A handsome phaeton with a pair of horses is driven by a stylish girl with a young man beside her looking insignificantly small on a seat so much lower than her own, and a sedate colored groom behind. A swell young man, in his spring suit of the latest English cut, drives a powerful, handsome horse attached to a stylish dog cart, and a liveried groom sits behind. A boy on a pony canters carelessly along, and two pretty girls, one wearing the regulation high hat, and the more youthful of the two wearing a low cloth cap, have a groom following them at some distance, and occasionally a solitary horseman is seen going at a brisk canter.

There are hordes of children, of course.

Little girls, charmingly dressed, are gravely pushing before them miniature baby carriages containing dolls, who recline upon their cushions in a very natural manner. Maids in neat gowns and aprons are reading while the children in their charge play about, and the smaller ones go to sleep in their carriages under embroidered parasols hugging a pet doll. Little boys in sailor suits, with those long, loose, wobbling trousers that give them such a comical look, are playing with other little boys in short trousers, short socks and bare knees, and little girls in quaint gowns and big hats are running about picking dandelions and showing violent intentions of making mud pies.

The sky is very blue, the green grass is very green and studded with brilliant yellow dandelions; the morning breeze is fresh and cool, and mingled with the children’s voices, the rumble of the many vehicles and the thud of the horses’ hoofs, are heard the songs of the little birds—singing their own songs in their own way, at the top of their voices.

It is a pretty sight, and the man who would realize what the tendencies of our civilization are ought to see it. He ought to stay in the park till afternoon, when in these early spring days, ere “everybody is out of town,” he will see no end of handsome equipages, no end of stylish liveries, and more grooms than he will care to number, sitting with folded arms. Then let him take the Second avenue elevated and ride down town through the solid blocks

p. 1, col. 5 of tenement¹⁵ houses! It is as if from earthly heaven to earthly hell. But the population of the hell is more than ten to one that of the heaven.

Dr. A. S. Daniels, writing to the Tribune in behalf of its “fresh air fund,” thus describes the conditions under which the great majority of New York children are growing up:

A house from four to six stories high, with four families on each floor, each family having only two, possibly three, rooms, with only two windows either looking out into the dusty, noisy street or into a dirty yard; in this one room all the domestic processes are carried on, a sitting and eating room by day and a sleeping room by night, no privacy, no individual rights—this is a tenement. I have yet to find a child who owns a bureau drawer, or a shelf in a closet, or even a nail to hang her clothes on which does not belong in common to all members of the family or the boarders. Below Fourteenth street, where about half the population live, nearly every house contains some kind of manufacturing, usually tailoring, so that the parlor, dining room, sitting room and kitchen is also by day and far into the night a workshop. The sound of the everlasting sewing machine is the last thing heard at night and the first thing in the morning. The children’s playground is the street or the yard. Then there are many unfortunate ones who live in rear houses, to enter which one passes through a narrow hallway or alley into a yard always dirty. The rooms are as sunless as the lives of their occupants. One is struck with the extraordinary early maturity of these little ones. I have babies of six months to two years brought to me daily by boys and girls of eight to nine years who answer my questions as well as the mothers could. We have a terrible problem before us in the tenement house question. You can never teach a child that “God is love” in a tenement house. They see only “envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness.”

To the same effect spoke Rev. Dr. Rainsford of St. George’s Episcopal church, in the Nineteenth Century club on Tuesday evening. There are tens of thousands of families in New York, he said, living in one room, under such conditions that it is impossible that religious or even moral training should be had at home. And to remedy this he advocated the reading of a chapter of the Bible each morning in the public schools!

Why not some Buddhist prayer wheels, run by steam power? They would be quite as efficacious.

The Morning Journal, which makes a specialty of “booming realty,” has also been publishing for some time past a number of noteworthy articles by Charles F. Wingate^1718?, the sanitary engineer, making a terrible showing of the squalor and mortality in the tenement districts. By way of palliation that should not interfere with the value of “realty,” it has also been advocating the buying up of some of these tenement blocks and turning them into small public parks. A bill appropriating $1,000,000 annually for the erection of small parks south of 155th street, has now passed the legislature. But the bill makes no provision, direct or indirect, for the people who are to be turned out of their hives and driven to find quarters elsewhere. They will crowd all the more closely. The passage of a bill like this is evidence of the growing revolt against the system which crowds tenement houses while one-half of the city is yet unbuilt upon. But such measures in themselves are practically useless. Here and there a noisome block may be turned into a breathing space, but the result will be that land values will advance around it, and the poorer people will be crowded back into new centers of disease and death. Mr. Wingate himself has come to the conclusion that there can be no grappling with the tenement house problem short of the radical proposition of exempting improvements from taxation and taxing land up to its full value, and so declared on Monday night, in a meeting of the Brooklyn Henry George club, of which he is president.

Representative Grennell of Detroit has introduced a bill into the Michigan legislature for the exemption from taxation of all property that is the result of human labor. This is the first move for putting all taxes on land values. The bill will not pass at this session of the legislature, but it will stimulate discussion, and before long a bill of that kind will pass. In the meantime it would be well to have a bill for the imposition of all taxes on land values introduced in the New York legislature. It would not, of course, pass at this session, but a vote on it might aid us in the next election to separate the sheep from the goats.

The Sun makes the publication of the call for a state convention of the united labor party an occasion to observe that—

They (the united labor party) contemplate, first of all, an enormous increase in the functions of government. They wish to add to its powers, to multiply its agents, to render them personages of greater importance and to authorize interference in private affairs far beyond any American experience. . . . For this reason we are opposed to this new party. We are for liberty, first, last and forever.

This is pretty cool from the Sun—a paper that is a staunch supporter of a system that will not let an American citizen bring a carpet-bag across the border without searching it, and that is maintained for the avowed purpose of dictating to American citizens what they shall buy, what they shall sell, what they shall eat, drink and wear, and how they shall employ their labor and their capital.

What the united labor party first proposes, the abolition of all taxes save on land values, would at one stroke effect an enormous simplification in the functions of government, and abolish what are now the most fruitful causes of official and political corruption. Instead of authorizing interference in private affairs the united labor party contemplates the very reverse of this. If the principles it contends for were carried out every one would be at liberty to buy or to sell, to produce or accumulate,

p. 1, col. 6 without question or interference further than was necessary for proper police and sanitary regulations. Possibly the Sun considers the curtailment of the privileges of the national banks and the assumption by the state of control of the railroads as “interference with private affairs.” If so, its notions of liberty are very much like the notions of those Englishmen who are in favor of dragooning Ireland in order to give the Irish “liberty to pay their rents.”

William Euclid Young, secretary of the committee of the Christopher Columbus Exposition of 1892, wants to get up a world’s fair in this city. What is the use of getting up a world’s fair so long as we maintain a tariff designed to repress our commerce with the rest of the world? After the united labor party carries out its programme it will be time to get up a world’s fair.

Mr. O’Brien¹⁹ and the committee who went down the bay to bring him off the Umbria complain of unseemly conduct on the part of the captain, crew and some of the passengers of that British steamship. The worst of it is—and this is something worth the committee’s thinking about—that there is no boycotting of the British steamships possible, unless, indeed, one chooses to take a French or German steamer and go to Ireland via the continent. And even in that case he will be obliged to cross the channel under the British flag. This is one of the results of what is called “protection to American industry.” We have by our taxes literally driven American commerce off the ocean.

But although, thanks to “protection to American industry,” Mr. O’Brien was subjected to much annoyance from an English captain, and even in American waters was compelled to listen to “God save the queen,” he got safely to land, and is now in Canada stirring up Canadian indignation against Lord Lansdowne²⁰’s treatment of his Irish tenants.

To be sure, Lord Lansdowne has done no more than Canadian and American landlords do every day. He has merely refused to allow other Irishmen to use that part of Ireland which the law declares to be his property except upon his terms, and has called upon the law to enforce his legal rights. There can be no logical objection to his demanding, not what rent the tenants please, but what rent he pleases, except upon the ground that God made Ireland for all Irishmen, and not for the Lord Lansdownes, and that no rent whatever is justly due him. Mr. O’Brien and his fellows do not take this logical position, but their agitation will lead the people to take it all the same.

It is to be hoped, however, that Mr. O’Brien will not confine his missionary efforts to Canada. The truth is that evictions in Ireland are nothing like as numerous and nothing like as heartless as they are in New York. In the last quarter of last year the total number of evictions in all Ireland was only 650. More than that often take place in New York city in a month. And while in Ireland the poor law officers are required to be present at every eviction, and evicted tenants are frequently put back as care-takers, here people who can’t or won’t pay their rent are thrown out on the street or on the road and left to shift for themselves. Only last week an item was printed in our papers telling how a widow and seven children were evicted in Long Island, and left with their little effects on the roadside all night during a heavy storm, and how they were subsequently taken to the poorhouse, where five of the children sickened and died.

If Patrick Ford and ex-Mayor Grace and Eugene Kelly and Chauncey Depew and Charles A. Dana and other friends of Mr. O’Brien and his mission will lay such facts as these—and they can find plenty of them—before the eloquent Irish patriot, they can doubtless get him to stay here long enough on his return from Canada to address a big meeting and give them a start in inaugurating a “plan of campaign” for New York. There is, to be sure, no final settlement of the land question in any such movement, but if the rack²¹-rented population of New York—about ninety- six per cent of the whole—were to refuse for a while to pay any more rent to their landlords, and were, instead, to put the money in the hands of such men as Patrick Ford, and ex-Mayor Grace and Chauncey Depew to fight for reductions, it would cause a great deal of thinking to be done. When such newspapers as the Sun have already got so far as to denounce Lord Lansdowne’s plea that he has a right to charge what rent he pleases for his own land as feeble and brazen, such a movement in New York could certainly count on much moral support.

HENRY GEORGE.

A SENTIMENT THAT IS ROUSING NEW YORK TO ENTHUSIASM.

The Second Public Meeting of the Anti-Poverty Society, With Double the Attendance of the First—Scenes Without Parallel at the Academy of Music—Large Collection of Money—The Third Meeting to be Held on Sunday at the Academy.

In the latter part of last week many knowing people in New York were pleasing themselves by enjoying in anticipation a failure. It had reached their ears that those fantastic theorists—the members of the Anti^23?-poverty society—intended to hold their second public meeting in the Academy^2425? of Music. Well, well! The poor, deluded enthusiasts were not aware that the success of the first meeting was largely due to public curiosity. The novelty could not last. It was folly to expect the 2,300 seats of the Academy to be filled. The great public must quickly come to its senses, and the result would be the thinning out of the attendance at the meetings of this nonsensical body. Let the audience at the Academy be a small one, and that would be the end of of this society^sic organized to take away men’s property. There was a great difference between overcrowding Chickering hall and filling the Academy. So it was thought.

The crowd that was gathered in Irving place at 7 o’clock on Suuday evening^sic last was not one to cheer those who had doubted the success of the meeting. People at that hour were ranged in front of every door leading into the building, and they continued to gather as the minutes rolled on until the great platform which runs along in front of the building, the broad flight of steps leading to the platform, and the wide sidewalk below the steps were all filled with a multitude awaiting the opening of the doors. When, at 7:20, the doors were flung open, the pressure of the people at the entrances was such as to give rise to apprehensions of danger to the weaker ones. Once inside and seated, those who had been in the van witnessed the inpouring of such an audience as the Academy has seldom contained. In almost the twinkling of an eye the parquet²⁶ was filled, and a moment after the parquet circle had every seat occupied. and men^sic and women then began to range themselves along the wall. A rumbling in the gallery next testified to the hurry and scramble for seats in that part of the house. The boxes were the last to fill, but in a quarter of an hour after the doors had been opened the house was packed, from the reporters’ tables at the footlights to the area at the rear of the top gallery. But people still pressed into the building—some of the aisles and all the doorways were choked up with men and women. The corridors and the outer entrance had their knots of people looking for a place where they might push in so as to be within earshot of the stage. Then people began to turn away; but others continued to come, and more and more. There were thousands who could not get in and who went away. They who had anticipated a failure were doomed to disappointment.

The enormous size of the auditorium of the Academy, and perhaps the traditions of the coldness of its audiences, served to have the effect for a time of preventing the people from expressing any feeling that they entertained, for the gathering was at first a quiet one. But when the lights were turned on and a moment afterward Heury George^sic entered from the wing at the right of the stage with James Redpath²⁷, still pale and weak from his recent illness, leaning on his arm, there was a burst of applause that struck the ear with the suddenness and force of a thunder clap. That warmed up the house, and thenceforward there was no lack of demonstrations of every sort known to an appreciative gathering. When Mr. George stated, as he did at once, that Dr. Curran¹¹¹ found that he could not preside at the meeting after attending to his duties at Ellenville, on account of being unable to reach the railroad trains on time, there was a prolonged “A-a-ah!” of disappointment, but when he thereupon announced James Redpath as chairman, cheers went up that shook the building. The applause that subsequently greeted Mr. George throughout his speech was such as bursts forth spontaneously from people who hear what they recognize as truth and have felt that they have been denied hearing it. Before Mr. George began his address, the Concordia chorus,¹¹² with Miss Agatha Munier²⁹ as conductor, sang the “Anthem of Liberty³⁰” and “To Thee, Oh, My Country³¹,” Mr. Will MacFarland being the organist. Miss Munier evidently was a favorite with the public, and the chorus won the hearts of the audience. “The Cross of Our Crusade³²,” a composition by Rev. John Anketell, was also sung, all present being invited to join.

Mr. George’s address was as follows:

Dr. McGlynn (great applause)—Dr. McGlynn (great applause)—Dr. McGlynn (great applause)—in Chickering hall last Sunday night said it was a historic occasion. He was right. That a priest of Christ, standing on Sunday night on a public platform and addressing a great audience—an audience embracing men and women²⁸ of all creeds and beliefs—should proclaim a crusade for the abolition of poverty, and call on men to join together and work together, to bring the kingdom of God on earth, did mark a most important event. Great social transformations, said Mazzini³⁵, never have been and never will be other than the application of great religious movements. (Applause^sic.) The day on which democracy shall elevate itself to the position of a religious party, that day will its victory begin. (Great applause.) And the deep significance of the meeting last Sunday night, the meaning of this Anti-Poverty society that we have joined together to inaugurate, is the bringing into the struggle of democracy the religious sentiment, the sentiment alone of all sentiments powerful enough to regenerate the world. (Applause.)

The comments made on that meeting and on the institution of this society are suggestive. We are told, in the first place by the newspapers, that you cannot abolish poverty because there is not wealth enough to go around. We are told that if all the wealth of the United States were divided up there would only be some eight hundred dollars apiece. Well, if that is the case, all the more monstrous then is the injustice which to-day gives single men millions and tens of millions, and even hundreds of millions. If there really is so little, then the more injustice in these great fortunes. But we do not propose to abolish poverty by dividing up what wealth there is, so much as by creating more wealth. We propose to abolish poverty by setting at work that vast army of men, estimated last year to amount in this country alone to one million, that vast army of men only anxious to create wealth, but who are now, by a system which permits dogs in the manger to monopolize God’s bounty, deprived of the opportunity to toil. (Applause.)

Then again, they tell us, you cannot abolish poverty because poverty always has existed. Well, if poverty always has existed, all the more need for our moving for its abolition. It has existed long enough. We ought to be tired of it; let us get rid of it. (Applause.) But I deny that poverty, such poverty as we see on earth to-day, always has existed. Never before in the history of the world was there such an abundance of wealth, such power of producing wealth. So marked is this that the very people who tell us that we cannot abolish poverty, attribute it in almost the next breath to over-production. They virtually tell us it is because mankind produces so p. 2, col. 2 much wealth that so many are poor; that it is because there is so much of the things that satisfy human desires already produced, that men cannot find work, and that women must stint and strain. Poverty attributed to over-production; poverty in the midst of wealth; poverty in the midst of enlightenment; poverty when steam and electricity and a thousand labor saving inventions have been called to the aid of man, never existed in the world before. There is manifestly no good reason for its existence, and it is time that we should do something to abolish it. (Applause.)

There are not charitable institutions enough to supply the demands for charity; that seems incapable of being supplied. But there are enough, at least, to show every thinking woman and every thinking man that it is utterly impossible to eradicate poverty by charity, to show everyone who will trace to its root the cause of the disease that what is needed is not charity, but justice—the conforming of human institutions to the eternal laws of right. (Applause.) But when we propose this, when we say that poverty exists because of the violation of God’s laws, we are taunted with pretending to know more than men ought to know about the designs of Omnipotence. They have set up for themselves a God who rather likes poverty, since it affords the rich a chance to show their goodness and benevolence; and they point to the existence of poverty as a proof that God wills it. Our reply is that poverty exists not because of God’s will, but because of man’s disobedience. (Applause.) We say that we do know that it is God’s will that there should be no poverty on earth, and that we know it as we may know any other natural fact. The laws of this universe are the laws of God, the social laws as well as the physical laws, and He, the Creator of all, has given us room for all, work for all, plenty for all. If to-day people are in places so crowded that it seems as though there were too many people in the world; if to-day thousands of men who would gladly be at work do not find the opportunity to go to work; if to-day the competition for employment crowds wages down to starvation rates; if to-day, amid abounding wealth, there are in the centers of our civilization human beings who are worse off than savages in any normal times, it is not because the Creator has been niggardly; it is simply because of our own injustice—simply because we have not carried the idea of doing to others as we would have them do unto us into the making of our statutes. (Great applause.)

This Anti-poverty society has no patent remedy for poverty. We propose no new thing. What we propose is simply to do justice. The principle that we propose to carry into our laws is neither more nor less than the principle of the golden rule³⁸. We propose to abolish poverty by the sovereign remedy of doing to others as we would have others do to us; by giving to all their just rights. And we propose to begin by assuring to every child of God who, in our country, comes into this world, his full and equal share of the common heritage. Crowded! Is it any wonder that men are crowded together as they are in this city, when we see men taking up far more land⁴³ than they can by any possibility use, and holding it for enormous prices? Why, what would have happened if, when these doors were opened, the first people who came in bad claimed^sic all the seats around them, and demanded a price of others who afterward came in by the same equal right? Yet that is precisely the way we are treating this continent. That is the reason why people are huddled together in tenement houses; that is the reason why work is difficult to get; the reason that there seems, even in good times, a surplus of labor, and that in those times that we call bad, the times of industrial depression, there are all over the country thousands and hundreds ot thousands^sic of men tramping from place to place, unable to find employment. (Applause.)

Not work enough! Why, what is work? Productive work is simply the application of human labor to land; it is simply the transforming into shapes adapted to gratify human desires, the raw material that the Creator has placed here. Is there not opportunity enough for work in this country? (Applause.) Supposing that, when thousands of men are unemployed and there are hard times everywhere, we could send a committee up to the high court of Heaven to represent the misery and the poverty of the people here, consequent on their not being able to find employment. What answer would we get? “Are your lands all in use? Are your mines all worked out? Are there no natural opportunities for the employment of labor?” (Applause.) What could we ask the Creator to furnish us with that is not already here in abundance? He has given us the globe, amply stocked with raw material for our needs. He has given us the power of working up this raw material. If there seems scarcity, if there is want, if there are men who cannot find employment, if there are people starving in the midst of plenty, is it not simply because what the Creator intended for all has been made the property of the few? (Great applause.)

In moving against this giant wrong, which denies to labor access to the natural opportunities for the employment of labor, we move against the cause of poverty. We propose to abolish it, to tear it up by the roots, to open free and abundant employment for every man. We propose to disturb no just right of property. As Dr. McGlynn said last Sunday night, we are defenders and upholders of the sacred right of property—that right of property which justly attaches to everything that is produced by labor; that right which gives to every one a just right of property in what he has produced—that makes it his to give, to sell, to bequeath, to do whatever he pleases with, so long as in using it he does not injure any one else. That right of property we insist upon, that we would uphold against all the world. To a house, a coat, a book—anything produced by labor—there is a clear individual title, which goes back to the man who made it. That is the foundation of the just, the sacred right of property. It rests on the right of the individual to the use of his own powers, on his right to profit by the exertion of his own labor; but who can carry the right of property in land that far? Who can claim a title of absolute ownership in land coming from the man who made it? (Applause.) And until the man who claims the exclusive ownership of a piece of this planet can show a title originating with the Maker of this planet; until he can produce a decree from the Creator declaring that this city lot or that great tract of agricultural land, or that coal mine, or that gas well, was made for him—until then we have a right to hold that land was intended for all of us. (Great applause.)

Natural religion and revealed religion alike tell us that God is no respecter of persons; that He did not make this planet for a few individuals; that He did not give it to one generation in preference to other generations, but that He made it for the use during their lives of all the people that His providence brings into the world. (Applause.) If this be true, the child that is born to-night in the humblest tenement in the most squalid quarter of New York, comes into life seized with as good a title to the land of this city as any Astor or Rhinelander. (Tumultuous applause.)

How do we know that the Almighty is against poverty? That it is not in accordance with His decree that poverty exists? We know it because we know this, that the Almighty has declared, “Thou shalt not steal^3334?37?.” (Applause.) And we know for a truth that the poverty that exists to-day in the midst of abounding wealth is the result of a system that legalizes theft. (Great applause.)

The women who by the thousands are bending over their needles or sewing machines thirteen, fourteen, sixteen hours a day; these p. 2, col. 3 widows straining and striving to bring up the little ones deprived of their natural breadwinner; the children that are growing up in squalor and wretchedness, underclothed, underfed, under-educated even, in this city without any place to play—growing up under conditions in which only a miracle can keep them pure—under conditions which condemn them in advance to the penitentiary or the brothel—they suffer, they die, because we permit them to be robbed, robbed of their birthright, robbed by a system which disinherits the vast majority of the children that come into the world. (Great applause.) There is enough and to spare for them. Had they the equal rights in the estate which their Creator has given them, there would be no young girls forced to unwomanly toil to eke out a mere existence, no widows finding it such a bitter, bitter struggle to put bread in the mouths of their little children; no such misery and squalor as we may see here in the greatest of American cities (applause), misery and squalor that are deepest in the largest and richest centers of our civilization to-day. (Great applause.)

These things are the results of legalized theft, the fruits of a denial of that commandment that says, “Thou shalt not steal.” (Applause.) How is this great commandment interpreted to-day, even by the men who pretend to preach the gospel? “Thou shalt not steal.” Well, according to them, it means: “Thou shalt not get into the penitentiary.” (Laughter.) Not much more than that with any of them. You may steal, provided you steal enough, and you do not get caught, and you may have a front seat in the churches. (Laughter and applause, and cries, “That is so!”) Do not steal a few dollars—that may be dangerous, but if you steal millions and get away with it, you become one of our first citizens. (Applause.) “Thou shalt not steal;” that is the law of God. What does it mean? Well, it does not merely mean that you shall not pick pockets! It does not merely mean that you shall not commit burglary or highway robbery! There are other forms of stealing which it prohibits as well. It certainly means (if it has any meaning) that we shall not take that to which we are not entitled, to the detriment of others. (Great applause.)

Now, here is a desert. Here is a caravan going along over the desert. Here are a gang of robbers. They say, “Look! There is a rich caravan; let us go and rob it, kill the men if necessary, take their goods from them, their camels and horses and walk off.” But one of the robbers says, “Oh, no; that is dangerous; besides, that would be stealing! Let us, instead of doing that, go ahead to where there is a spring, the only spring at which this caravan can get water in this desert. Let us put a wall around it and call it ours, and when they come up we won’t let them have any water until they have given us all the goods they have. (Applause^sic.) That would be more gentlemanly, more polite and more respectable; but would it not be theft all the same? (Great applause.) And is it not theft of the same kind when men go ahead in advance of population and get land they have no use whatever for, and then, as people come into the world and population increases, will not let this increasing population use the land until they pay an exorbitant price? That is the sort of theft on which our first families are founded. (Applause.) Do that under the false code of morality which exists here to-day and people will praise your forethought and your enterprise, and will say you have made money because you are a very superior man, and that anybody can make money if he will only work and be industrious! (Laughter and applause.) But is it not as clearly a violation of the command,”Thou shalt not steal,” as taking the money out of a man’s pocket? (Applause).

“Thou shalt not steal.” That means, of course, that we ourselves must not steal. But does it not also mean that we must not suffer anybody else to steal if we can help it? (Applause.) “Thou shalt not steal.” Does it not also mean, “Thou shalt not suffer thyself or anybody else to be stolen from?” (Applause.) If it does, then we, all of us, rich and poor alike, are responsible for this social crime that produces poverty. (Applause.) Not merely the men who monopolize land—they are not to blame above anyone else, but we who permit them to monopolize land are also parties to the theft. The Christianity that ignores this social responsibility has really forgotten the teachings of Christ. Where He in the gospels speaks of the judgment, the question which is put to men is never, “Did you praise me?” “Did you pray to me?” “Did you believe this or did you believe that?” It is only this: “What did you do to relieve distress; to abolish poverty?” To those who are condemned, the judge is represented as saying: “I was ahungered and ye gave me not meat, I was athirst and ye gave me not drink, I was sick and in prison and ye visited me not.” Then they say, “Lord, Lord, when did we fail to do these things to you?” The answer is, “Inasmuch as ye failed to do it to the least of these, so also did you fail to do it unto me; depart into the place prepared for the devil and his angels.” On the other hand, what is said to the blessed is, “I was ahungered and ye gave me meat, I was thirsty and ye gave me drink, I was naked and ye clothed me. I was sick^sic and in prison and ye visited me.” And when they say, “Lord, Lord, when did we do these things to thee?” the answer is, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these ye have done it unto me.” (Applause.)

Here is the essential spirit of Christianity. The essence of its teaching is not, “Provide for your own body and save your own soul!” but, “Do what you can to make this a better world for all!” It was a protest against the doctrine of “each for himself and devil take the hindermost!” It was the proclamation of a common fatherhood of God and a common brotherhood of men. (Applause.) This was why the rich and the powerful, the high priests and the rulers, persecuted Christianity with fire and sword. It was not what in so many of our churches to-day is called religion that pagan Rome sought to tear out—it was what in too many of the churches of to-day is called “socialism and communism,” the doctrine of the equality of human rights! (Great applause.)

Now imagine when we men and women of to-day go before that awful bar that there we should behold the spirits of those who in our time under this accursed social system were driven into crime, of those who were starved in body and mind, of those little children that in this city of New York are being sent out of the world by thousands when they have scarcely entered it—because they did not get food enough, nor air enough, nor light enough, because they are crowded together in these tenement districts under conditions in which all diseases rage and destroy. Supposing we are confronted with those souls, what will it avail us to say that we individually were not responsible for their earthly conditions? What, in the spirit of the parable of Matthew, would be the reply from the judgment seat? Would it not be, “I provided for them all. The earth that I made was broad enough to give them room. The materials that are placed in it were abundant enough for all their needs. Did you or did you not lift up your voice against the wrong that robbed them of their fair share in what I provided for all?” (Great applause.)

“Thou shalt not steal!” It is theft, it is robbery that is producing poverty and disease and vice and crime among us. It is by virtue of laws that we uphold; and he who does not raise his voice against that crime, he is an accessory. The standard has now been raised, the cross of the new crusade at last is lifted. Some of us, aye, many of us, have sworn in our hearts that we will never rest so long as we have life and strength until we expose and abolish that wrong. We have declared war upon it. Those who are not with us, let p. 2, col. 4 us count them against us. For us there will be no faltering, no compromise. no turning back^sic until the end. (Great applause and cheering.)

There is no need for poverty in this world, and in our civilization. There is a provision made by the laws of the Creator which would secure to the helpless all that they require, which would give enough and more than enough for all social purposes. These little children that are dying in our crowded district for want of room and fresh air, they are the disinherited heirs of a great estate.

Did you ever consider the full meaning of the significant fact that as progress goes on, as population increases and civilization develops, the one thing that ever increases in value is land? Speculators all over the country appreciate that. Wherever there is a chance for population coming; wherever railroads meet or a great city seems destined to grow; wherever some new evidence of the bounty of the Creator is discovered, in a rich coal or iron mine, or an oil well, or a gas deposit, there the speculator jumps in, land rises in value and a great boom takes place, and men find themselves enormously rich without ever having done a single thing to produce wealth.

Now, it is by virtue of a natural law that land steadily increases in value, that population adds to it, that invention adds to it; that the discovery of every fresh evidence of the Creator’s goodness in the stores that He has implanted in the earth for our use adds to the value of land, not to the value of anything else. This natural fact is by virtue of a natural law—a law that is as much a law of the Creator as the law of gravitation. What is the intent of this law? Is there not in it a provision for social needs? That land values grow greater and greater as the community grows and common needs increase, is there not a manifest provision for social needs—a fund belonging to society as a whole, with which we may take care of the widow and the orphan and those who fall by the wayside—with which we may provide for public education, meet public expenses, and do all the things that an advancing civilization makes more and more necessary for society to do on behalf of its members? (Great applause.)

To-day the value of the land in New York city is over a hundred millions annually. Who has created that value? Is it because a few land owners are here that that land is worth a hundred millions a year? Is it not because the whole population of New York are here? Is it not because this great city is the center of exchanges for a large portion of the continent? Does not every child that is born, every one that comes to settle in New York, does he not add to the value of this land? Ought he not, therefore, to get some portion of the benefit? And is he not wronged when, instead of being used for that purpose, certain favored individuals are allowed to appropriate it? (Applause.)

We might take this vast fund for common needs, we might with it make a city here such as the world has never seen before—a city spacious, clean, wholesome, beautiful—a city that should be full of parks; a city without tenement houses; a city that should own its own means of communication, railways that should carry people thirty or forty miles from the City hall in a half hour, and that could be run free, just as are the elevators in our large buildings; a city with great museums, and public libraries, and gymnasiums, and public halls, paid for out of this common fund, and not from the donations of rich citizens. (Applause.) We could out of this vast fund provide as a matter of right for the widow and the orphan, and assure to every citizen of this great city that if he happened to die his wife and his children should not come to want, should not be degraded with charity, but as a matter of right, as citizens of a rich community, as co-heirs to a vast estate, should have enough to live on. (Applause.) And we could do all this, not merely without imposing any tax upon production; not merely without interfering with the just rights of property, but while at the same time securing far better than they are now the rights of property and abolishing the taxes that now weigh on production. We have but to throw off our taxes upon things of human production; to cease to fine a man that puts up a house or makes anything that adds to the wealth of the community; to cease collecting taxes from people who bring goods from abroad or make goods at home, and put all our taxes upon the value of land—to collect that enormous^3940?41? revenue due to the growth of the community for the benefit of the community that produced it. (Applause.)

Dr. Nulty^4244?45?, bishop of Meath (great applause), has said in a letter addressed to the clergy and laity of his diocese that it is this provision of the Creator, the provision by which the value of land increases as the community grows, that seems to him the most beautiful of all the social adjustments; and it is to me that which most clearly shows the beneficence as well as the intelligence of the creative mind; for here is a provision by virtue of which the advance of civilization would, under the law of equal justice, be an advance toward equality, instead, as it now is, an advance toward a more and more monstrous inequality. (Applause.) The same good Catholic bishop in that same letter says: “Now, therefore, the land of every country is the common property of the people of that country, because its real owner, the Creator, who made it, hath given it as a voluntary gift unto them. ‘The earth has He given to the children of men.’ And as every human being is a creature and a child of God, and as all His creatures are equal in His sight, any settlement of the land of this or any other country that would exclude the humblest from his equal share in the common heritage is not only an injury and a wrong done to that man, but an impious violation of the benevolent intention of his Creator.” (Great applause.) And then Bishop Nulty goes on to show that the way to secure equal rights to land is not by cutting land up into equal pieces, but by taking for public use the values attaching to land. (Applause.) That is the method this society proposes. I wish we could get that through the heads of the editors of this city. We do not propose to divide up land. (Laughter.) What we propose to do is to divide up the rent that comes from land; and that is a very easy thing. (Applause^sic).

We need not disturb anybody in possession, we need not interfere with anybody’s building or anybody’s improvement. We only need to remit taxes on all improvements, on all forms of wealth, and put the tax on the value of the land, exclusive of the improvements, so that the dog in the manger who is holding a piece of vacant land will have to pay the same for it as though there were a buildiug^sic upon it. In that way we would treat the whole land of such a community as this as the common estate of the whole people of the community. And as the Sailors’ Snug Harbor, for instance, out of the revenues of comparatively a little piece of land in New York can maintain that fine establishment on Staten Island, keeping in comfort a number of old seamen, so we might make a greater Snug Harbor of the whole of New York. (Great applause.)

The people of New York could manage their estate just as well as any corporation, or any private family, for that matter. But for the people of New York to resume their estate and to treat it as their own, it is not necessary for them to go to any bother of management. It is not necessary for them to say to any land holder, this particular piece of land is ours, and no lorger yours^sic. We can leave land titles just as they are. We can leave the owners of the land to call themselves its owners; all we want is the annual value of the land. Not, mark you, that value which the owner has created, that value which has been given to it by improvements, but simply that value which is given to the bare land by the p. 2, col. 5 fact that we are all here—that has attached to the land because of the growth of this great community. (Applause.) And, when we take that, then all inducement to monopolize the land will be gone, (applause); then these very worthy gentlemen who are holding one-half of the area of this city idle and vacant will find the taxes upon them so high that they either will have to go to work and build houses or sell the land, or, if they cannot sell it, give it away to somebody who will build houses. (Great applause.)

And so all over the country. Go into Pennsylvania, and there you will see great stretches of land, containing enormous deposits of the finest coal, held by corporations and individuals who are working but little part of it. On these great estates the common American citizens who mine the coal, are not allowed even to rent a piece of land, let alone buy it. They can only live in company houses; and they are permitted to stay in them only on condition³⁶ (and they have to sign a paper to that effect) that they can be evicted at any time on five days’ notice. The companies combine, and make coal artificially dear here and make employment artificially scarce in Pennsylvania. Now, why should not those miners, who work on it half the time, why shouldn’t they dig down in the earth and get up coal for themselves? (Applause.) Who made that coal? There is only one answer—God made that coal. Whom did he make it for? Any child or any fool would say that God made it for the people that would be one day called into being on this earth. (Applause.) But the laws of Pennsylvania, like the laws of New York, say God made it for this corporation and that individual; and thus a few men are permitted to deprive miners of work and make coal artificially dear. (Applause.)

A few weeks ago, when I was traveling in Illinois, a young fellow got in the car at one of the mining towns, and I entered into conversation with him. He said he was going to another place to try and get work. He told me of the condition of the miners, that they could scarcely make a living, getting very small wages and only working about half the time. I said to him, “There is plenty of coal in the ground; why don’t you employ yourselves in digging coal.” He replied, “We did get up a co-operative company, and we went to see the owner of the land to ask what he would let us sink a shaft and get out some coal for. He wanted $7,500 a year. We could not raise that much.” Tax land up to its full value and how long can such dogs-in-the-manger afford to hold that coal land away from these men? And when any man who wants work can go and employ himself, then there will be no million or no thousand unemployed men in all the United States. (Applause.)

The relation of employer and employed is a relation of convenience. It is not one imposed by the natural order. Men are brought into the world with the power to employ themselves, and they can employ themselves wherever the natural opportunities for employment are not shut up from them. No man has a natural right to demand employment of another, but each man has a natural right, an inalienable right, a right given by his Creator, to demand opportunity to employ himself. (Great applause.) And whenever that right is acknowledged, whenever the men who want to go to work can find natural opportunities to work upon, then there will be as much competition among employers who are anxious to get men to work for them as there will be among men who are anxious to get work. Wages will rise in every vocation to the true rate of wages, the full, honest earnings of labor. That done, with this ever increasing social fund to draw upon, poverty will be abolished, and in a little while will come to be looked upon as we are now beginning to look upon slavery—as the relic of a darker and more ignorant age. (Great applause.)

I remember—this man here remembers (turning to Mr. Redpath) even better than I, for he was one of the men who brought the atrocities of human slavery home to the heart and conscience of the north—I well remember, as he well knows, and all the older men and women in this audience will remember, how property in human flesh and blood was defended just as private property in land is now defended; how the same charges were hurled upon the men who protested against human slavery as are now made against the men who are intending to abolish industrial slavery. (Applause.) We remember how the dignitaries of the churches, and the opinion of the rich members of the churches branded as a disturber, almost as a reviler of religion, any priest or any minister who dared to get up and assert God’s truth—that there never was and there never could be rightful property in human flesh and blood. (Applause.)

So it is now said that men who protest against this system, which is simply another form of slavery, are men who propose robbery. Thus the commandment, “Thou shalt not steal,” they have made, “Thou shalt not object to stealing.” When we propose to resume our own again, when we propose to secure its natural right to every child that comes into being, such people talk of us advocating confiscation—charge us with being deniers of the rights of property. The real truth is that we wish to assert the just rights of property, that we wish to prevent theft. (Applause.) Chattel slavery was incarnate theft of the worst kind. That system, which made property of human beings, which allowed one man to sell another, which allowed one man to take away the proceeds of another’s toil, which permitted the tearing of the child from the mother, and which permitted the so-called owner to hunt with bloodhounds the man who escaped from his tyranny—that form of slavery is abolished. (Applause.)

So far as that goes the command, “Thou shalt not steal,” has been vindicated, but there is another form of slavery.

We are selling land now in large quantities to certain English lords and capitalists who are coming over here and buying greater estates than the greatest in Great Britain or Ireland; we are selling them land, they are buying land. Did it ever occur to you that they do not want that land? They have no use whatever for American land; they do not propose to come over here and live on it. They cannot carry it over there to where they do live. It is not the land that they want. What they want is the income from it. They are buying it not that they themselves want to use it, but because by and by, as population increases, numbers of American citizens will want to use it, and then they can say to these American citizens, “You can use this land provided you pay us one-half of all you make upon it.” What we are selling those foreign lords and capitalists is not really land; we are selling them the labor of American citizens; we are selling them the privilege of taking, without giving any return for it, the proceeds of the toil of our children. (Applause.)

So here in New York you will read in the papers every day that the price of land is going up. John Jones or Robert Brown has made a hundred thousand dollars within a year in the increase in the value of land in New York. What does that mean? It means he has the power of getting so many more coats, so many more cigars, so much more wine, drygoods, horses and carriages, houses or food. He has gained the power of taking for his own so much more of these products of human labor. But what has he done? He has not done anything. He may have been off in Europe or out west, or he may have been sitting at home taking it easy. If he has done nothing to get this increased income, where does it come from? The things I speak of are all products of human labor—some one has to work for them. When the man who does no work can get them, necessarily the men who do work to produce them must have less than they ought to have. (Applause.) p. 2, col. 6 This is the system that the Anti-poverty society has banded together to war against, and it invites you to come and swell its ranks. It is the noblest cause in which any human being can possibly engage. What, after all, is there in life as compared with a struggle like this? One thing and only one thing is absolutely certain for every man and woman in this hall, as it is to all else of human kind—that is death. What will it profit us in a few years how much we have left? Is not the noblest and the best use we can make of life to do something to make better and happier the condition of those who come after us—by warring against injustice, by the enlightenment of public opinion, by the doing all that we possibly can do to break up the accursed system that degrades and embitters the lot of so many? (Applause.)

We have a long light and a hard fight^sic before us. Possibly, probably, for many of us, we may never see it come to success. But what of that? It is a privilege to be engaged in such a struggle. This we may know, that it is but a part of that great, world wide, long continued struggle in which the just and the good of every age have been engaged; and that we, in taking part in it, are doing something in our humble way to bring on earth the kingdom of God. to make^sic the conditions of life for those who come afterward, those which we trust will prevail in heaven. (Long continued applause.)

Mr. George then announced that the collections amounted to [$334.61?], and that the initiation fees inclosed in the envelopes amounted to $80 more. A number of people all over the hall shouted that the collectors had passed them by, and they wished to contribute and make applications for membership. From the proscenium boxes and from various parts of the hall silver dollars rained down upon the stage, and a number of new applications for membership were handed in. Mr. George thereupon asked the reporters to observe this—a significant thing in connection with this movement—that people in the audience complained that the contribution box was not passed around.

A patriarchal looking gentleman in the gallery called out: “I would like to make an application for membership from the very far west. You don’t recognize me, Mr. George.” Mr. George replied: “Mr. Spencer? Yes, that is he. Ladies and gentlemen, I have the pleasure of introducing to you one of our good friends, Mr. Richard Spencer of Burlington, Iowa, a gentlemen who was^sic one of the first to write to me on the publication of ‘Progress and Poverty,’ expressing his sympathy for our cause, and who in his sphere has done good work. (Applause^sic).

“Such men are joining us from all parts of the country; aye, and they will come from over the sea. In England, in Scotland, in Wales, in Australia and on the continent of Europe are those who rejoice in the establishment of this society. And I trust that it will spread and have its branches, and that in a little while every city in this country will have its Anti-poverty society, bringing men together to unite in one great crusade against the giant crime of our time. (Applause.) Let all who are in favor of poverty stay outside. (Laughter and applause.)

“I have to announce that we will meet again in this hall next Sunday night at the same hour, and I hope you will all be here.”

An application for membership was passed up to Mr. George, on the back of which was written: “Can I be of any use to the society? I shall be most happy to respond at once if you inform me. Faithfully yours, William J. Clark.”

Mr. George said: “Yes, we hope to have work for all members of the society. We shall soon have a membership meeting, notice of which will be given by postal card this week, when we will organize a plan for doing missionary work.”

Mr. George then announced that the extra collections amounted to $44.48, with one basket still to be heard from.

“I now propose that before we adjourn we give a hearty vote of thanks to our chairman, Mr. Redpath.” (Great applause.)

Mr. Redpath, rising, said: “I shall hand over the vote of thanks to my capable assistant chairman.”

Mr. George—“The next time he comes here I hope he will be so far recovered that we can hear his ringing voice again.”

The meeting then adjourned to next Sunday evening at the same place.

The number of members of the Anti-poverty society is now 441, and all application fees have been paid. The amount of cash in the hands of the treasurer is over $500, all bills being paid. The treasurer will acknowledge the receipt of all moneys by mail. Persons not receiving such notice will please communicate with the treasurer.

The following telegram arrived too late last Sunday evening to be read at the meeting:

WATERBURY, Ct., May 8.

The Chairman of the Anti-Poverty Meeting, Academy of Music: The Waterbury labor lyceum, by rising vote, sends greeting to the Anti-poverty crusaders in the Academy of Music, wishing Fathers McGlynn and Curran God speed in their battle against the foul slanders that true Catholics dare not unite as American citizens without regard to creed or sect against social wrong and political corruption.

WILLIAM DILLON, Chairman.

A business meeting of the members of the Anti-poverty society will be held on Wednesday evening next, May 18, at 8 o’clock p. m., in room 24, Cooper institute. It is hoped that every member of the society will find it convenient to attend. Dr. Edward McGlynn will preside.

AN ENTHUSIASTIC MEETING IN INTERNATIONAL HALL.

Archbishop Corrigan Helping on the Good Cause—The Parishioners Taking the Cross of the New Crusade—A Telling Speech From Editor Gahan.

His grace the archbishop of New York was not present at the St. Stephen’s parishioners’ meeting in International hall^4849?50? last Friday night. The greater was his loss, for had he been there he would have gained a knowledge of the growing strength of the Catholic revolt against hierarchical interference in non-doctrinal matters that might prove of use to him hereafter—when in response to the fervent prayers of thousands of Catholic Christians he shall have been translated to some other and far distant archiepiscopate. Also, he would have been surprised and doubtless pleased to observe what good missionary work he himself has been doing on behalf of the new crusade, whose cross the persecuted priest of the poor is so gallantly bearing. The parishioners of St. Stephen’s are realizing that in no way can they more speedily secure the return of the pastor whom they love than by defending and advocating the principles of justice, for announcing which he has been deposed. If indeed actions speak louder than words, the Anti-poverty society and the new crusade have few warmer friends than Archbishop Corrigan, for certainly few men have done more than he to win recruits to their ranks.

The hall was crowded before half-past 7, and by 8 o’clock it was simply jammed, the throng filling not only the hall proper, but a large portion of the ante room as well. Precisely at 8 o’clock President John R. Feeny advanced and called the meeting to order. Mr. Feeny said that notwithstanding the fears expressed by some that these meetings might in time get “talked out”—be left without fresh subjects of discussion—he himself had always had a firm faith in the archbishop’s ability to give them something new to talk about at each meeting—a confidence so far thoroughly justified by events. He then, in a few moving words, announced the expulsion of Sister Frances from the children’s home established by the doctor, an act of tyranny which had for its moving cause simply the devoted loyalty of the sister to Dr. McGlynn.

Mr. J. J. Bealin next made a stirring speech, in the course of which he urged the parishioners, in the strongest terms, to show their loyalty to their pastor by upholding and advancing the principles for which he was suffering. There was nothing in these principles discordant with the purest Catholic doctrine. He (the speaker) had authority for saying this. He had written to an eminent ecclesiastical authority in Ireland upon the subject, and read aloud the letter he received in reply, in which the doctrine of the land for the people was commended in the strongest terms. Mr. Bealin announced the meeting of the Anti-poverty society at the Academy of Music on Sunday night, and urged a full attendance; and the applause with which the announcement was received showed the hearty determination of the audience to uphold the banner of the new crusade.

Dr. J. T. Coughlin was the next speaker. Referring to Dr. McGlynn’s expression in his Chickering hall speech that he hoped some day to see a democratic pope walking down Broadway in a stovepipe hat, with an umbrella under his arm, the doctor said that it embodied a truly religious and truly American doctrine—the doctrine that it is the man that dignifies the clothes and not the clothes that lend dignity to the man. Cardinal Gibbons⁵¹ was an American citizen, who made a good cardinal and would certainly make a good pope; yet when some of his Baltimore friends offered him a carriage and horses he declined, with the remark that he had learned to use the horse cars as a parish priest. Would such a man be likely to walk down Broadway in any other costume than that of a plain American citizen?

Dr. Henry Carey next made a few remarks, congratulating the parishioners on their constancy, and urging them to redouble their efforts, in the sure confidence that they would win in the end. The doctor was greeted with applause and loud expressions of a determination to keep up the fight.

Editor Gahan of the Catholic Herald was then introduced. After an eloquent eulogy of Dr. McGlynn⁵² and an inpassioned^sic appeal to the parishioners to keep up the fight, Mr. Gahan said:

All of you have heard of, as indeed most of you were present at, the great meeting of the Anti-poverty society in Chickering hall. And on that occasion Dr. McGlynn made clear to all his unalterable allegiance to that church of whose ministry he is such a distinguished ornament; and he there again gave testimony of his zeal in the service of his Master by pleading for that even-handed justice which necessarily follows recognition of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. (Applause.) He is not the manner of man to lead the people astray. He is not the kind of man to bring his friends, his followers among the Catholic community, on any path which is not in strict consonance with Catholic theology. Where he goes they may well go, his God may well be their God, and his people may well be their people.

Referring to the absence of the priesthood from Dr. McGlynn’s recent lecture in Brooklyn, Mr. Gahan said:

The ringsters and the shysters and the whole brood of disreputable politicians in Brooklyn were dismayed at the sight of the great crusader leveling his spear against public wrong and political injustice. Every effort to frustrate and weaken his influence was resorted to. The priests of Brooklyn—or rather those of them suspected of sympathy with Dr. McGlynn—were first quietly fettered, and then the false impression was allowed to go abroad that in all Brooklyn Dr. McGlynn was left without a priestly friend or sympathizer. But there was one priest in Brooklyn who could not and would not be fettered. With hairs grown gray in the service of the church, he is at the same time a man whose reputation is a treasure in the national gallery of honor in this country—I mean Father Malone of Williamsburg^5354?. (Here a whirlwind of applause greeted the speaker’s eulogy of Father Malone.) He was [sent for?] and requested as a matter of courtesy not to attend the lecture. He made known, however, that were he commanded not to go he would go. He had no special reason to attend. He had publicly manifested his approval of Dr. McGlynn, and in courteous deference to his bishop’s request he refrained from attending, while at the same time he made it clear that the bishop would not be obeyed if the words of the request were framed or intended to be framed in the nature of a command. No! the glorious old man who, at a critical period in the nation’s life, ran up the stars and stripes, could not have been commanded not to go hear Dr. McGlynn. Had such a command been given him he would have gone there to assert his sovereign rights as an American citizen—those rights of political sovereignty which he feels, and we proclaim, are beyond the undue interference of pope, propaganda, archbishop or bishop. [Here again the audience broke out into wild cheering, again and again renewed.] I hope now, my friends, we shall hear no more croakings on this subject. You know Dr. McGlynn is right. Then follow him, though it lead to the mount of sorrow^5556? itself. He has given his all to you. Therefore, be true to him, and then the Olivet of victory will glorify the Calvary of his suspension.

Before closing his address, Mr. Gahan tore the flimsy nonsense about Dr. McGlynn’s alleged irreverence for the pope to pieces, to the intense satisfaction of his hearers, who laughed and cheered alternately. Dealing with this feature of the case he said:

“An American citizen holds the position of a sovereign, bound by law alone. He is the

p. 3, col. 2 peer of any king on the face of this planet. Some people pretend to be horrified because Dr. McGlynn spoke of the pope wearing a ‘stovepipe’ hat. Surely they would not have the man make himself a laughing stock by wearing his grandmother’s bonnet.”

Father Ballies Pitches Into the Anti-Poverty Society—The Parable of the Ten Virgins in Dutch-English.

Rev. Father Ballies of the little German^57? Catholic church in Brooklyn, in his sermon last Sunday, made a fierce attack on Dr. McGlynn and his followers. He described the latter and their actions in a manner not very flattering, especially to the ladies. He was very energetic in his denunciation of the fair sex. He classed McGlynn and Beecher as modern Luthers and infidels. The old gentleman, in his peculiar style and dialect, began thus:^58?

“Mine frents, I vas aboud to shpeak of some dings vat I dink is going to make you met, but I vant you to schmoter your metness like goot Chrischuns. I vas going to shpeak von der vurchins, dose ten vurchins. Und ven I shpeak of dose vurchins, I yust vant some dings to koompare vomans to. Now, you all oonterstant vat dose ten vurchins did; hef uv dem vas vise, und der oder hef vas fools; und dot is yust so same as dose Catlic vomans; more as hef vas yust so big fools like dose vurchins. Dose vomans! vomans!! vomans!!! [Here he got greatly excited, throwing his arms about, stamping his feet and shaking his head.] Dose vomans vat are frents mit dot ricket, bat, eenfidel mans, dot backschlider, dot pat breest! Oh-h-h!! Vat you tink? Hey! S-e-e-h! See dot now! Vat dose vomans do at dot meetin? Ven dot man’s name vas shpeakin see how dey der hankerchifs vaved! So! (waving his handkerchief) und der hents vas klepped so! (clapping his hands.) Huh! See! See!! Vat fur is dis? Hey! Dose fool Catlic vomans hef tooken dot man’s part gainst de Catlic shurch. Dey are like dose vurchins vat go to shleeb (nodding violently), and ven dey vake up dey vill go crying arount, ‘Vere is my lighd? vere is it?’ und dey vill knock at the door, but vill be tolt, ‘Who you vas? Go vay, ve don’t know you!’

“Dot mans, dot vicket mans! He hef in his lecture sait dot de Catlic shurch vill be lost ven ve don’t hef a democratic bope. Hey! See? See dot now! Vat you tink? A democratic bope! Hah! (disgustedly.) Und dot anarkeest, dot rioter und dot fool leeder, dot Hendry Chorch, vould like to see dot bope coom down Broatvay mit a shtovebipe het un his hed! Ain’d dot nice? Vat you tink uv dot mans? De bope mit a shtovebipe het, und a seegar on von hant und an oomprella shtuck unter his arm! Oh, dot is so nice, ain’d it? Vat you tink von dot now? (with a screech and violent gestures.) Dot is vat dose men vat fafer McCleen und Chorch vant, ain’d it? Und if dot eenfidel coot shpeak German I vood tink dot he hef ret Looter und vas follerin in his footshtebs. Oh-o-o, dot mans! He sait dot he vas a goot Catlic, und he het been to comoonion dot morning und vas going again dis morning. Oh-o-o, dot vas turrible! Who vas dot men’s confessor? Who vas it, enahow? Hey? Oh, dot sacraligus mans. He vas oiful vicket! Und dose fool, fool vomans; dey hef klept der hants and vaved der hankerchiffs at dot blessfeemus eenfidel mans! Oh my! Oh my! See dot now! Hey? Vat you tinks now uv dose vomans, dose vomans? Oh, dose mans, dose rioters—vicket temakoks. Dey hef shtood oop against Got like a shtone und dalk aboud Looterism, Beecherism, McCleenism and Chorchism. Heh! See dot? [He got so excited that he had to stop for breath.] Und dot men hef mate fun mit de holy fader, de bope. He hef callt him dot olt mans! Hey! See? See? De bope an olt mans, und dot he vas in his totage! Oh-o-o, dot is nice! Hey? Vat you tink? Und he hef koompare dot archpishop to dot rich mans vat is in hell! Yust look at dot! He hef sait dot ve all liff in balaces, und dot de poor Irish built dem. Oh-o-o, dot rioter! Vat fur a mans is dot? Heh? Vat you tink von dose vomans vat braise dot mans? Dey vas fools! fools! fool vomans! Und dose goot bapers (sarcastically), dot Chorch baper, DE STANDURT, und de Catlic Heralt und udders. Dey vas frightened. See? Frightened! Dey hef written to us und sait dot dey did not mean vat dey sait. Hey! See? und dot it vas tooken up wrong! Vat you tink of dot? Hey? But dey hef, like dot bat frent, dey hef cut avay de pridge pehint dem und can’t go pack. Hey? See? See dot now! Und dey sait dot de archpishop hef told all de breests to tell the congrecashuns to not go to dot men’s lecture. See? Und hef callt us boor breests numschools for peing afrait to dishopey him. Vat you tink of dot, now? Dot is all a lies! a bat lies! See? Hey? See dot now? Und dose fool mans dey hef a lot of olt fool vomans to cheer dem, und dey tink dey are all right, ain’d it? See dot, now? Dose mans are all alike. Dey vas a bat lot. Dot McCleen und dot Chorch und Looter, dey vas all bat mans, und vill coom to a bat ent.

“I vood like to shpeak more, but I cane not make a shpeech like dose vicket mans, ober I vill inshtrookt you goot Catlics some oder dime aboud dose beeple already.”

The Situation as Pictured by H. M. Hyndman—Peculiarities of the Police—The English Weekly Press.

LONDON, May 3.—It is useless to disguise the truth that the whole country is getting terribly weary of this eternal Irish question. Always Paddy is as palling on the political palate as never-ending partridge on the physical. The lobby gossipers have actually run dry. The luckless “London correspondents,” the hub of whose universe comes up just beyond the two cerberi in blue who keep watch and ward over honorable members at the gate of that inferno of mediocrity, the entrance to the house of commons, survey the land for tittle-tattle from Dan even unto Beersheba, and find it all barren of topics for “copy” for them. Their faculty of invention is dried up within them; even the tongue of scandal cleaves to the roof of the reporting mouth. M. P.’s without bills or cabinet crises show all their native boredom in its irredeemable staleness. Their ingrained stupidity is exposed to the world in all its intolerable monotony of flat and respectable ignorance. No wonder that those who have to earn their living by making out that these hopeless house of commons men now and then get off a good thing are in the depths of despair. Alas for them! Their position is pitiable. The Irish question is exhausted, and yet the talkee, talkee on coercion knows no end. If only, by way of variety, now, one tory would shoot another tory, just for fun, as it were! They are all as much alike as peas or Chinamen, and there are such a lot of unionists or coercionists that one or more would never be missed. But no, they stick at revolvers and bowie knives; bad language to their opponents is the limit of their homicide, and insult to Irishmen and democrats the acme of their wit. And so a dreary debate on a monstrous measure to save landlords and capitalists from defeat is steadily supported by capitalists and landlords against men who are striving for the good of their country, and 30,000,000 of English people, more or less, outside are powerless to stop the display which is making their country at one and the same time the contempt and the laughing stock of the civilized world. Seriously, if there be a more weariful, self-sufficient, unscrupulous and ignorant animal than the ordinary English parliament man I don’t know him. Do you? But this same atomy⁶¹ of melancholy ignorance, this animated dude or galvanized moneybag can take away the liberties of a people all the same. There are horse, foot and artillery, army, navy and royal Irish constabulary to do their bidding for them; and their big boom of 101 guns of majority sounds across St. George’s channel to notify the birth of yet another coercion bill. The mother of parliaments has surely been prolific enough of that sort of progeny. So one would think. But here she is brought to bed of yet another. Let us hope it will perish in infancy.^62?

But this weariness on the question of Ireland is very serious, no matter how it arises; very serious indeed. For the reactionary party is more firmly seated in power than it has ever been in our time, and so long as Hartington and his cold whig following, and Chamberlain with his nice little gang of traitors support the tories, they can do, to speak vulgarly, what they damned please. And they are going to do it. Let there be no mistake about that. They have seen—it was not difficult to see—that the tide of revolutionary agitation is moving steadily in England, as well as in Ireland. So they steadily work coercion, calculating upon the wearisome effect of these protracted debates in producing a feeling of utter disgust among the public at large. Then the measure will become law, it will be used during the parliamentary recess to crush the national league, which has become practically the national government of the greater part of Ireland, and similar steps to check freedom will be then taken in Great Britain, too. For the immediate future the lookout is bad. Though the agitation against coercion goes on vigorously, though I have no doubt whatever that the mass of the working classes are becoming imbued with revolutionary ideas as they never have been in this generation, the change of opinion will not come soon enough to save Ireland from another squeeze of tyranny, or England from a taste of the same awkward embrace.

In fact, they have already begun here. I won’t tire your readers with details of the woes of social democrats. Suffice it to say that the police are attacking our meetings and stirring up strife against us all over London. And curiously enough, a London police magistrate, Mr. De Rutzen, has given an excellent example of how the coercion act will be worked in Ireland in connection with the powers to be given to resident magistrates. Seven men were summarily condemned at the instance of the crown prosecutor by the magistrate to six months’ hard labor—the punishment permitted by the new act—without any chance of being tried by a jury. This was done wholly and solely on police evidence, and one man who was sentenced was not on the spot at all. If this can be done in London, with the house of commons in session, and with a considerable portion of the metropolitan press on our side, what may not be expected in Ireland when the tories are acting almost without restraint? The lookout, I say again, is, in my judgment, very bad.

What, however, makes this attempt to suppress any thorough democratic propaganda the more disgraceful is the accumulated evidence which is constantly brought forward to the effect that the condition of the workers in the metropolis and in all the great centers of industry is even worse than it has been represented to be. This is now being shown, not by extreme men, but by cool statisticians, who regard the ills that human flesh is heir to with much the same eye of practical indifference as the ills of cattle, pigs or sheep on the other side of the world. Thus Mr. Noel A. Humphreys, in a paper read the other day before the statistical society, fully confirmed all the statements that have been made to the effect that the workers in our great cities live but half the number of years that the upper and middle classes live; that their children in many districts die five or six times as fast as the children of the well-to-do in the same districts, and that they are far more susceptible to disease than their comfortable neighbors. All this we have had, but upon the authority of one who has no sympathy whatever with advanced opinions. Yet nothing is done. These are the facts which will condemn our governing classes utterly in the judgment of posterity. The facts are there—analyzed, tabulated, admitted, reported upon—and are neglected, deliberately neglected. Agitate about them, point at their meaning, urge the workers to recognize that this is a relentless class war waged by the land-owning and commercial classes against them, all the killed and wounded being on their side. Do this, I say, and straightway the police make their appearance, run them in, take them before a compliant magistrate, and six months’ hard labor with starvation and a plank bed is their reward for taking the side of their oppressed fellow workers. So it ever was, and so, I suppose, it ever will be, until the toilers combine for their last final effort and conquer for themselves the control of the future.

Nor should Americans forget that the London police and the Royal Irish constabulary are alike in this, that they are both under the direct control, not of the ratepayers or of the people at large, but of the central government, which can use them to support the policy of the moment in any way which they please. And here comes in the bad effect of

p. 3, col. 4 discipline and esprit de corps. Men who have sprung from the working classes, who have been forced by circumstances to sell themselves, as in the case of the Royal Irish constabulary, to act against their fellow countrymen, but who, when discharged, return to the ranks of the working classes, do act during their term of service as if enemies of their own kith and kin. Nay, not content with doing their ordinary duty, they will trump up charges and perjure themselves to support the charges when trumped up. This, too, although they will admit in private that the cause against which they are officially striving is a just one, and that if they were free from the trammels of discipline they themselves would be acting vigorously against the very principles which they champion as paid men. That is the reason why so often in periods of revolution the forces of the governing classes have melted suddenly away. Up to the very moment when the success of the agitators seemed certain, discipline and camaraderie have kept the forces of repression together. That the moment that it seemed^sic at all safe to do so, the very men who were most relied upon give up the ungrateful task of protecting their natural enemies against the rightful claims of men of their own class. So I venture to predict it will be in England and Ireland. But not quite yet.

Meanwhile, the tories are of course jubilant and prognosticate for themselves twenty years of continuous domination.

One thing also which shuts out a knowledge of what is going on among the people is the close division of the press in Great Britain into the upper and middle class press, and the working class press. In America the workers read the daily papers. Here, speaking broadly, they don’t. They read only their weekly journals. They have no time to do more. The middle class, including the shopkeepers, see the London dailies, and so do they the dailies in the great provincial towns. But the workers do not. Now these weeklies, though not nearly as good as they might be, are a good deal more advanced in every way than the dailies. Reynolds’, the Weekly Dispatch, Lloyd’s and similar papers in the provinces circulate by the hundreds of thousands. But no well-to-do person sees them as a rule. Their opinion has no weight in the political world. A journal with not a twentieth part of their circulation has more direct influence on the course of courts^sic ten times over than one of those sheets which numbers its readers almost by millions. I don’t believe, and I never have believed, that a newspaper could ever either make or unmake—I am not of course, speaking of money—a man or a party. But it can render much assistance in spreading ideas and in forming the judgment of the people by putting before them plain facts in a readable shape. In my opinion, therefore, there is an enormous future here in Great Britain before the cheap weekly penny press. I believe, in the democratic days we have entered upon, it will be well worth the while of statesmen and politicians to lay their views before the mass of their working countrymen through the columns of the journals which alone they can afford to buy and which alone they have the time—Sunday is the working man’s only leisure day—to read. The original saying of Mr. Robert Lowe, now Lord Sherbrooke, “We must now begin to educate our masters,” had a good deal of truth in it after all. And how can they be educated except through the literature which goes straight to their homes? Now it is worthy of remark that the weekly papers are, as a whole, beginning to deal more with social questions than they did, and that ideas of revolution and class now find find expression^sic in them to an extent which I could never have anticipated would “pay.” A newspaper is, after all, a commercial enterprise dependent on advertising for success. That even so they should be talking plainly about the need for very complete political social changes^sic shows that we are moving on.

There is a very uneasy feeling here that the passage of the coercion bill—and I repeat that it will become law—will be marked by some violent action on the part of the extreme Irish party, and that of this Mr. Parnell has already been specially notified. Well, as I once said, I am opposed to dynamite, and, for that matter, I am opposed to an earthquake. I take no stock in conflagrations, and I don’t want to see or hear of any man’s weasand being slit with a surgical instrument. Besides, Mr. Goschen lives within a few yards of us, and an awkward conspiracy might aim at the crow and hit the pigeon—that’s me. So that I trust for personal reasons this will not come. But for other reasons, too. Public public opinion^sic is veering. That men like Lord Spencer, Lord Rosebery, Lord Kimberly^sic, etc., etc., should be forced to declare for home rule, which they hate, shows that but a little patience is needed to win justice in place of oppression—to emancipate Ireland once for all. If, therefore, I counsel patience for yet a short period, I believe that as a revolutionist who stood by the cause of Ireland at some risk when the liberals were all against her, I am urging what is really for the benefit of the Irish and democracy generally.

Yes, and yet at this time of writing “Buffalo Bill” is the hero of the day, the coming Wild West show is the talk of all London. Coercion, anti-coercion, dynamite, daggers, devilment galore, what is all that to bucking stallions, genuine scalping Indian chiefs and a border man who has held his own at all sorts of break neck and dare devil pastimes? Nothing, dearly beloved brethren. And so the world wiggle-waggles on, and we with it. Farewell.

H. M. HYNDMAN⁶³.

An Immense Audience Listens to His Lecture on the Cross of the New Crusade—“They Read in the Fathers that I am Wrong, but I Read from Christ that I am Right”—Comments of the Boston Press.

Dr. McGlynn delivered his lecture on “The Cross of a New Crusade⁶⁵” under the auspices of the Irish societies of Boston before an enthusiastic audience that filled the great Boston theater on Sunday evening last. The Boston Globe says: “Over 3,000 people, mostly young and middle-aged workmen, heard his talk and applauded his sentiments frequently. Every seat was occupied from the gallery to the orchestra; some 200 people sat in chairs on the platform, and there were hundreds more who were unable to get any kind of a seat, and were only too happy to stand up and hear the great disciple of Henry George expound the relations of the cause of labor to Christianity, and particularly to Catholicism. Whatever may have been the religion or political opinion of the audience, every man was pleased with the force and logic of the argument made. . . . The reverend reformer arose, bowed, smiled, and the audience yelled an old style Boston yell, such as is heard nowhere away from the”Hub,” and heard here only when a very inportant^sic event takes place. The event of last night was Father McGlynn, so the people yelled and cheered and applauded.”

The doctor preceded the lecture with a personal declaration, in the course of which he said:

“I have no quarrel with the holy Roman Catholic church. I shall never say aught against the precepts I have taught and tried to inculcate by my life and conduct. I love her. Her memory is dear and fragrant. (Applause.) When I arose this morning I took my way to a Catholic church in this city, and with many more I knelt before the holy altars and partook of the holy sacrifice. (Applause.) I know I was never a more devout Catholic than I am to-day. The lessons I have learned are dearer and sweeter—far sweeter—now than ever before. No man and no propaganda shall tear me from my first love. (Tremendous applause and cries of”That’s right.”) But there is nothing in the doctrine of this new crusade that is not in keeping with the teachings of Christ, who is the light of the world. Our faith and our religion are founded on the lessons given by Him who spoke as never man spoke. This cannot be against the Catholic church. I say it cannot be, for I love the church and I love the new crusade, and in my mind—in the mind of every honest, well meaning man—their teachings are alike.

“The Catholic church has not demanded, it does not require, the absolute obedience, of the mind to priest, to propaganda, or to pope. Are we Catholics such fools that our opinions are the playthings of priests and bishops? If the propaganda were to make an order which would be abhorrent to reason, should we bow and submit without question? Can we have no revelations? What if they do prohibit me from ministering at the altar, I am not cut off from the church. I can still feed the hungry, clothe the poor and minister to the wants of the needy. In this 1 am a true Catholic^sic, and I shall always love the sacred duties which make my church the foremost church in the world. (Applause.) I am a Catholic, and I know, I swear, I shall always be a true Catholic as long as I live. No power can bar me out from this. What if the pope has ordered me to be suspended? He has done it to better men than I, and they have lived and died true Catholics. Suspended is ecclesiastical for hiding. (Laughter and applause.)

“I am suspended now, waiting the action of those above me in ecclesiastical power. If the time shall come when my superiors think I must be sacrificed, I am willing to have my head cut off. I shall not falter. I am in for the cause. They read me the sayings of St. Augustine and many of the fathers, and show me where I am in the wrong. I read from Christ and find I am right. I, too, can read from the holy fathers and show that many went far beyond me. I do not try to go as far as they. I am more moderate. (Laughter.) The love of man for God’s sake, and the love of God for His own sake is the essence of true religion.

“There are unknown millions fighting in our ranks. The people are not with me because I, a simple priest, have come out to defend them, but I am with the people. And many are with us. Only last week I was talking with a learned bishop of our church about the teachings of that great, that glorious man, Henry George, (cheers and long applause), and he told me there was nothing in the doctrine of Henry George that was contrary to the spirit of Catholicism. If the church should say that two and two make five I should say it was impossible. The church has no right to say such a thing. God has no right, because it is impossible. The man who could suppose that God could issue an order making two and two five would be guilty of blasphemy. But you ask if the propaganda has not condemned me. Yes, but the propoganda^sic is not the church, and I owe my fealty to the church.”

All of the Boston papers give personal descriptions of Dr. McGlynn. The Globe, which, by the way, itself prints a picture of him, says: “The pictures of Father McGlynn are libels on his physiognomy. He looks far better than any alleged likeness of him that has yet been printed. He has the heavy mouth, to be sure, and a nose that is far from handsome; but that magnificent beetling⁶⁶ forehead, poised on a big neck, above a broad pair of square shoulders, causes everybody to forget all other features and look at his head alone. This is worth looking at. Broad, deep and high, with a Websterian⁶⁷ width above the eyes, and a Socratic bulge in front, that head would attract the attention of an anatomist if it were stripped of flesh and put up inside a show case in a museum. Under his two black brows a pair of kind brown eyes burned with a subdued and steady fire. Below them were the ordinary features of a large, strong man. Above them, crag on crag, towered that great forehead, in which lurk many thoughts that cannot crowd themselves into lesser brains. A thin coat of straight black hair, with a bald spot behind, completed his head-gear. Like his head, his body is large and deep and strong. A full chest, holding lungs that are as tireless as bellows, large arms, with big, fat hands for knobs, muscular legs, and feet with an aristocratic arch at the instep, make up the body of the man who has caused the great convulsion.

“For two hours and a half he talked, apappealing^sic, arguing and beseeching, telling of the great good done by the holy church and the great wrong suffered by the working people, and trying to reconcile the duty he owed to one to the allegiance he had sworn to the other. There was no rhetorical trick in his speech, no attempt to make a point out of sentiment at the expense of reason, and no Ingersollian appeal to the selfish nature in order to bolster up his theory or convince his auditors. The speech was not so brilliant as some of Wendell Phillips’, nor so cultured as those of George Willliam^sic Curtis, but it did not have a tame passage in it. Cut it in half, quarter it, and then halve the quarters, and every bit was a gem of eloquence and logic, no better and no worse than any other part that could be selected.”

The Boston Herald says: “Dr. McGlynn was received with tremendous applause, which lasted considerable time and was renewed again and again. He is rather above the medium height, stout and muscular, and has a remarkably expressive and pleasing face. A benignant smile forever plays about his mouth, from out of which flow those mellow sentences, tipped with Irish brogue, just marked enough to make stronger the utterances, and one scarcely notes the frown which lowers at times upon his brow. So smooth and polished,

p. 3, col. 6 and filled with imagery, was his discourse at times that he seemed to be talking blank verse. Dr. McGlynn’s art seems to be rather of the captivating and the fascinating than of the persuading kind, his vivid pictures and uplifting aspirations carrying the hearer along irresistibly rather than willingly. In many respects there is a striking resemblance to Henry Ward Beecher.”

The Journal says of the doctor: “He is a man of decidedly impressive appearance, being above medium height and very well proportioned. His forehead is high and projects over deep-seated yet penetrating eyes, while his clean shaven face reveals a firm chin and square cut, resolute mouth. As he spoke in clear, decisive tones, reaching every part of the theater without apparent effort, he might well stand for a leader in a crusade, firm and uncompromising, and yet with a suavity of address and a play of native wit that would make him more friends than enemies.”

The Advertiser refers to him as “a man with the dome shaped head of a thinker and the square jaw of a fighter, of broad shoulders and commanding stature,” and says: “Dr. McGlynn is an eloquent speaker. He was by turn argumentative, impassioned and witty, but earnest throughout; and very few speakers could drop as he did from a noble moral strain to the level of a funny pun without making the judicious grieve.”

Dr. McGlynn’s Well-Considered Views—The Bible Should Not Be Made an Object of Mere Fetich Worship.

The meeting of the Nineteenth Century club⁷³ on Tuesday evening last was devoted to the consideration of the question of the Bible in the public schools. After Judge Hoadly had urged that the reading of the Bible should be forbidden because it was the province of the parent rather than of the school to teach religion, Dr. McGlynn took the floor, and in a few weighty words defined the true Catholic view of this important question. The idea that mere reading of the Bible, without note or comment, to the children of a school was in any sense a step toward religious education, was, he said, practically to make a fetich of the Bible; while to do more would be to force upon children religious teaching to which their parents might object.

“The Hebrews,” said Dr. McGlynn, “have a perfect right to object to the singing of hymns in schools where their children must pray to Christ as the son of God. Suppose that the Roman Catholics should demand their religion taught in the public schools in places where they have the power to do so ?”

Dr. McGlynn then pointed out that so far as Catholics are concerned, if the Bible was to be taught in school, it would do them no harm, and if it was not taught there the Catholic would hear the truths of his religion in the parochial school. He closed by referring to the decrees of the last plenary council regarding the position of the Catholic church on the question.

Dr. McGlynn’s appearance was greeted with applause, and the serious attention paid to his remarks, and the evident approval with which they were received, evidenced the importance attached to his opinion by the members of the club.

Misleading the Unemployed.

SACRAMENTO, Cal.—I wish you would contradict the statements made in California papers, by informing the readers of your paper in the east that there is not a scarcity of mechanics in this locality. Every day our assembly has calls for assistance from good mechanics, members of the order, out of employment. Carpenters are running all over the country and offering to work for any price to get work. Machinists, blacksmiths, molders and boilermakers are as plenty as mosquitoes in summer here.

The papers here are booming up this country, and they are deceiving eastern people in a shameful manner. All they care for is to get pay for their work in deceiving people in the east. They have people come here and run all over this country to find land in the Sacramento valley that they say can be got at government prices. And some people believe it. I have been in this country for thirty years, and am acquainted with every foot of land in this valley, and I do not believe that you can find an unoccupied piece of land in the whole Sacramento basin, not excepting tule⁷⁶ land, which is flooded every year.

J. P. B.

Reading the Handwriting on the Wall.

Syracuse, N. Y., Evening Herald.

This morning the announcement is made that the united labor party, which last fall cast 68,000 votes in New York city alone, will meet in state convention in this city on the 17th of August. This party has developed unexpected strength in the larger cities, and, with the democrats and republicans so nearly equal in voting strength, the followers of Henry George probably hold the balance of power in this state. This makes that party an important factor in the political problem, and the old parties may be expected to do all in their power to capture the newcomer. The convention can but be a most notable one, and in all likelihood far-reaching in its influence.

p. 5, col. 3

Poverty Developed in Less than Forty Years—An Object Lesson in Political Economy.

ST. PAUL, Minn., May 6.—Here in the northwest more than any other place, perhaps, can be seen how the grabbing up of nature’s resources breeds poverty for the million. It is a comparatively new country, and its quick strides toward the poverty line are remarkable.

Forty years ago land values in this region had no existence. The wealth-producing power of St. Anthony’s falls and all the other vast natural resources, were nearly valueless in a money sense. A man at that time appropriated but few of nature’s resources—enough merely for his own use and benefit. The early pioneers found no trouble in placing a claim on enough of the virgin soil to assure themselves of a competence, by which I mean enough of nature’s resources to keep them from want. Population grew, and land values were born. The speculator came in due time. All the natural opportunities yet available were seized and held tenaciously. Late comers, unless possessed of wealth, found it hard to gain a foothold, until, at the present time, a poor man coming here is as badly off as his brother who remains in the thickly settled and poverty-stricken east. The grand natural power of St. Anthony’s falls, instead of bringing a just revenue to the people, has been turned into a monopoly on which greed waxes fat.

So with the other great resources of this grand northwest. Nature, it seems, produced them for the few, while the million must look on and wonder why things are thus. Duluth, with her great natural advantages, offers another example of how monopoly grows as speculation runs riot.

THE STANDARD is the brave pioneer of justice, the beacon light to lead the millions out of the dark night of despond. Keep boldly on your way. Truth is traveling fast, and even here the “light is spreading,” and “the land for the people” will soon be the universal cry.

J. J. BRENNAN.

Introducing Un-American Ideas.

NEW YORK, May 5.—The tendency of ignorant foreigners to introduce un-American and anarchical ideas into this country has been much commented on by the press lately, and a great deal of editorial regret has been expressed that any native born citizen should be foolish enough to listen to the ravings of these imported apostles of disorder. A peculiarly aggravated case of the kind is now attracting much attention throughout the country.^77?79?80?

The people of Ireland are setting the laws at defiance and ignoring the sacred rights of property in a thoroughly “un-American” way. They decline to pay their rents; and, not content with that, they actually refuse to move out when their landlords tell them to; and, not content with that either, they make it extremely hot for any just minded and law-abiding tenant who does pay his rent, or does move out when ordered. Anything more “un-American” it would be difficult to imagine. Any American tenants—say those of Mr. Scully, in Illinois, for example—who should do the like would find themselves in jail in short order.

Well, these Irish anarchists have, or think they have, a grudge against a gentleman named Lansdowne because, forsooth⁷⁸, he owns some land in Ireland and wants his rent from the poor devils who live on it, just as the landlords of New York want their rents from the people who live on their lands. And as Lansdowne is a public servant in Canada, they have combined to send an “abandoned ruffian” named O’Brien over to Canada to make speeches and excite popular prejudice against him, and force him, if possible, to stop demanding rent.

Mr. O’Brien arrived in New York the other day, accompanied by a Catholic prelate, one Bishop Ireland, who shamelessly approved his principles and proceedings, and who will doubtless, as soon as Archbishop Corrigan can telegraph to Rome, be suspended. Luckily, he has spent but little time in New York, leaving almost immediately for Canada. Among those who called on him here, and who have expressed their approval of his criminal intentions, are ex-Mayor Grace, Amos J. Cummings, Joseph I. C. Clarke, Eugene Kelly, Judge Browne, General James R. O’Beirne, Major John Byrne, Bryan G. McSwyny and Chauncey M. Depew. The police will do well to look after these un-American fellows who have thus avowed their sympathy with a “doctrine of lawlessness and confiscation.”

E. J. EDWARDS.

A Bank Cashier Takes Up the Cudgels.

A late number of the New York Journal of Commerce contains what Matthew Arnold would call an “immense misunderstanding.”

It says: “It has been generally supposed that laziness and intemperance are prolific causes of poverty. But according to Dr. McGlynn and Henry George, ‘we are all wrong. It is the law alone that makes paupers.’”

Dr. McGlynn and Henry George do not say that. They, and all who hold their views, agree with the Journal of Commerce about the effect of “laziness and intemperance,” but they say also that poverty is a necessary “result of human laws that allow individuals to claim as private property that which the Creator has provided for the use of all.”

Again. “They (George and McGlynn) want the land of the country divided up even.”

Mr. George is opposed to division. That is the gist of his opposition to private holding of land.

Again. “And this reminds us to ask Mr. George if he would carry out his system of land taxation after the whole country has been parceled out among his followers?”

Is this simple misunderstanding? When—where—has Mr. George taught the idea of “parceling out to his followers?” What he proposes is simply that the state shall appropriate by taxation the land’s full rental value which is produced by the presence of population, and which is to be used for common purposes.

The evils of poverty press upon rich as well as upon poor, and all have equally good reason to “look into things,” and if the land system is at fault, there must be reform.

The Anti-Poverty Society in Wall Street.

NEW YORK, May 3.—Poverty is certainly mitigable, if not eradicable—mitigable by judicious applications of superior means to more equitable ends—and it may even be said that slavery in the United States at one time seemed less likely to be abolished than poverty now in its more grinding forms, and so I send to you the inclosed initiation fee for membership in the Anti-Poverty society. It was a great stroke of genius, the origination of this name, the Anti-Poverty society.

18 Wall Street. C. N. BOVEE.

An Active Club in Yonkers.

YONKERS, N. Y., May 11.—We have an active land and labor club here, the membership of which is steadily increasing. We hold regular meetings every Saturday night, and have instructive addresses and discussions. William Ewing, Jr., addressed the club at an extra meeting on Monday evening. The officers of the association are Duncan Mackenzie, president; George F. Bidder, secretary, and Thomas S. Nichols, treasurer. We are doing what we can to “spread the light.”

GEORGE F. BIDDER.

So Say We All of Us.

NEW YORK, May 10.—My earnest hopes are with the Anti-poverty society. May its success be one of the wonders of the nineteenth century.

CHARLES D. ORTH.

p. 5, col. 4

Dr. McGlynn’s Eloquent Discourse on Monday Evening Last in Behalf of the “Leader” Fund.

Dr. McGlynn delivered a brilliant and eloquent discourse on the “Sanctity of Labor” before a big audience in Cooper Union, on Monday evening, in behalf of the Leader fund. The audience, composed in large part of ladies, was very intelligent and paid marked attention. Dr. McGlynn said that he found in labor a peculiar dignity which comes from a necessary law, the law of nature, the law of our being. When we speak of labor we speak of something very different from the eager pursuit of its prey by the beasts of the forest; we speak of something that is peculiarly characteristic of man, who, while he shares with the beast creation qualities that go to make up an animal body, is yet conscious that he is something more than an animal. He, above all visible things, is able to ask: “Whence am I? Why am I here? and whither am I journeying?” This rational animal, conscious of his capacity to know the truth, is conscious of a dignity immeasurably superior to anything else in creation. He becomes conscious, at the same time, that he is capable of loving the good and discriminating it from evil; he is conscious of a liberty within him that makes his soul the mistress of its choice, and so he is conscious that he alone of all the visible creation walks this goodly habitation that God has made for him, a free man, the master of himself.

Man thus becomes conscious of an æsthetic sense that requires æsthetic satisfaction. He is conscious that man requires something more than material food or raiment or shelter, that if he had nothing higher than these things to seek in the world he would be but like the brute that perishes. . . . In laboring man is conscious that he is obeying a law, and he of all creation alone is capable of understanding what law is. The stone falling to the earth is totally unconscious of the law governing its fall. The brute animal, with some kind of dim consciousness of appetites and instincts, is yet governed by those appetites and instincts in the pursuit of the things which satisfy its wants. The wild beast of to-day is the counterpart of the wild beast of a thousand years ago, while man can introduce, and by a law of his nature is required and compelled to introduce, even into the pursuit of those material things necessary to satisfy the appetites, something of the spiritual. Thus, man finds in labor the symbol and promise of a future existence.

It is not labor that we should quarrel with, but excessive labor; it is the unduly heavy burdens that are put upon some of the laborers, while others labor not, toil not, neither do they spin. It is the unwholesome, unhealthful, unhygienic surroundings of labor that we complain of. It is the condemning to labor of little men and little women whose muscles are not yet properly hardened for labor. It is the confining in the workshop of little children who should be at play. It is the condemning to irksome and ill-requited toil in unwholesome rooms of mothers who should have no other care but that of their little ones. It is the condemning to toil of women who should be venerated with a peculiar deference, It is^sic of the unjust, the harsh, the horrid burdens that are placed upon the laborer that we complain, and not of labor itself. . . . We are the children of God, and therefore brethren, one⁸³ to the other, from the fact of the great truth that is the text and the gospel of this labor movement—the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Man being a land animal, it is a violation of the dignity and sancity of labor^sic to discriminate as against any one of God’s children, or to deprive any of them of the perfect, absolute, equal access to all the bounties of nature. In order to assert and reassert and vindicate the sanctity of labor^8182?, it is necessary to give to all men what they absolutely need, in order that they may have the freedom of exercising their labor; and that is equal access to the workshop and the magnificent, boundless stores of materials with which God has enriched it. . . . There are in the world and there have been for many a day sets of men—a privileged few—who, by the sanction of unjust laws and customs, are permitted to monopolize these bounties and to charge the highest prices that they can extort for the use of these bounties that God made equally for all. Now, it is a necessary part of the reassertion of the dignity and sanctity of labor that we shall abolish all such monopoly, because it is by the abolition of private ownership in the general gifts of nature that we shall be able to assert the God-given freedom of labor, without which it matters not whether you call the man a slave or not. By the necessary operation of a law which will work as mercilessly as the law of gravitation, man will sooner or later become worse than the chattel slaves of those who own the land. So you cannot have free men without absolute equality in the distribution of nature’s goods.

The Hard Lives of Some Citizens and Facts That Are Making Them Think.

WILKESBARRE, Pa., April 26.—In this city there is much destitution and misery. Men, unable to support their families, send their boys, some even at the age of eight, to work in the “breakers.” To do this many of them must make false affidavits regarding their children’s ages, the law prohibiting the employment of any under fourteen.

There is not another spot in the country where the evils of land monopoly are so apparent as here. Legitimate capital and honest, willing labor are unable to employ themselves without making the hardest kind of terms with the owners of land. There are a number of buildings in this city that have been erected upon leased ground. The owner of the land dictates the kind of a building to be erected, and the person who puts up the building agrees to pay all taxes to be levied upon his improvements and to keep up the insurance upon the improvements. Upon the expiration of ten years, and sometimes only six years, the whole thing reverts to the “owner” of the land; and yet the newspapers talk about “Henry George confiscating private property.”

The owners of the coal lands do not work themselves, but compel capital and labor to pay a royalty often of fifty cents per ton before taking the coal out of the ground that the Creator placed there thousands of years ago for the use of all men equally. The land for building purposes is held at such high prices that even the better class of working mechanics are unable to secure homes without going to the outskirts of the city and paying from $250 to $350 for a small lot that has perhaps been undermined, and is liable to “cave in” at any moment, as was the case in Mahanoy City, Pa., a short time since, wrecking the buildings and losing lives.

The monopolists have seen the “handwriting upon the wall.” They are trembling with fear, because American labor has asked the question, “How much longer will we allow land monopoly to rob and despoil us?” And they hear the answer to labor’s question coming from New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, Milwaukee, Dubuque, Denver and other places: “Courage, brothers! not long! not long!”

AN AMERICAN MECHANIC.

Spreading the Light.

Louis Pilcher of Nicholasville, Ky., has recently been doing good work. A working newspaper man, filled with the fire of the great reforms, he got leave of absence and jumped into Ohio, speaking in Dayton and some other towns. By public and private p. 5, col. 5 speeches and the distribution of tracts and the sale of more exhaustive literature, he has induced many to take up the “cross of the new crusade” and to make every effort to “spread the light” far and wide.

Utterances the Like of Which Are Beginning to Be Made in Many Pulpits.

The sermon preached by the pastor of the Second street Methodist church, Rev. C. S. Williams, on last Sunday, contained many expressions that indicated the earnest desire of an intelligent man to eradicate the evils of our social organization. Mr. Williams said, in substance, that we are living amid new developments in commerce and industry, and we are vainly trying to regulate the new order of things by inadequate laws. The law and the government need adjustment to the newer and larger life, but not to the prejudice of any one’s real rights. A man has a right to all he can properly produce. An undue aggregation of wealth in the possession of a few is dangerous to the state. He believed that a graded income tax might effect a beneficial limitation of a man’s possessions. If he had half a million dollars he could afford to pay fifty per cent of his income as a tax, and if he was worth a million the state ought to take dollar for dollar above that. Five hundred acres of land are enough for anyone, and it ought to be the maximum allowed to be held. Every man owed something to society, and a million dollars is ample compensation to the highest talent for the benefits it might bestow upon society. It would give full scope to a man for a devotion of his talent to his country’s interests. The law should prevent corners in coal, wheat, iron, etc. In such cases as those recently brought to public notice, in which men forget what had been the manner of the disposal of large sums of money, he thought the man having a memory so bad ought to be put in a dark cell until he recovered it. The state, it seems, cannot fortify itself against perjurers, and the law is too lenient with men who testify in connection with bribery cases involving large amounts. A poor man might be put in jail, unable to get bail, but a rich perjurer could furnish bail and go free. There should be such changes in the law as would afford justness and fairness to all the people, and the law should be administered impartially. The people must be intelligent and virtuous if anything like justice is to be attained. Ignorance and vice are always victimized.

Mr. Williams, on being spoken with in relation to his sermon, said that he had in mind no required legislation other than such as in a general way would bring about the just conditions he had described. He believed corporations to be inevitable, but believed that they should be subjected to law to the same extent as the individual. The workingmen were going in the right direction. Wealth alone should not be represented in the law-making power. Mistakes are being made by the wage workers in their progress toward reforms, but apprentices were always expected to spoil some of their work.

About Mr. Hyndman’s Letter.

BALTIMORE, Md., May 8.—I feel bound to protest against the gross misrepresentations of H. M. Hyndman in his letter in the current number of THE STANDARD. His statement that even Gladstone could not carry a resolution in open meeting in London “against us” is so misleading a statement and one so far from the truth that I feel bound to speak. As an Englishman and Londoner into the bargain I protest as misleading in the extreme both the matter and manner of it in Hyndman’s letters. I deny the fact that his views are at all in the ascendant, for were it so we should not be exiled here and in other foreign lands, while in our own the class Mr. Hyndman would lead us to suppose is underneath, still has its hand on the throat of the rest of us in the shape of their pernicious land system. Samuel Bennet, who you mentioned was with you a few weeks ago, would, I feel sure, bear me out. I feel bound to protest.

H. W. R.

[We print H. W. R.’s letter with pleasure; but we must point out to him that what Mr. Hyndman claims is simply that the ideas he advocates have taken firm hold on the great mass of London laborers. Mr. Hyndman is careful to point out that these laborers are practically disfranchised, and have, for the present, little or no influence on legislation.

ED. STANDARD.]

A Member of the New Church Becomes a McGlynn Catholic.

EAST ORANGE, N. J., May 7.—Please find inclosed $1 for initiation fee for membership to the Anti-poverty society. I noticed in THE STANDARD of this date that among those welcomed to membership, Swedenborgians are not mentioned. I am called a Swedenborgian, and do not deny the justice of the imputation; but in a spirit similar to that of the socialist mentioned in THE STANDARD, I avow myself a “McGlynn Catholic.” As I think there are other Swedenborgians also of the McGlynn faith, please do not leave us out of the descending New Jerusalem which Dr. McGlynn is ministering for.

ALBERT SMITH.

[There was no intention of doing a slight to the people of the New Church, often called Swedenborgians, as may be seen from the fact that we give considerable space in this issue of THE STANDARD to the report of a stirring sermon by a clergyman of that faith, Rev. S. H. Spencer of Henry, Ill. The chairman of the first Anti-poverty society meeting extended a general welcome to the peoples of all denominations, and named some simply to show the broad and catholic scope of the movement. The movement is one to help our fellow men, and all are exhorted to take a hand in it.—Ed. STANDARD.

Anti-Poverty is the Right Name.

ST. PAUL, Neb., May 2.—The name “anti-poverty” is a most fortunate hit. It takes the place now vacated by “anti-slavery.” It suggests the whole scope and field of the movement without preamble or explanation. Anti-monopoly is but a side-show compared with it.

J. B. PACKARD.

Anti-Corn Law and Anti-Poverty.

BURLINGTON, Ont., May 6.—I have enjoyed reading THE STANDARD, and am delighted to know that Dr. McGlynn means to maintain to the end the manly stand he has taken. What John Bright was to the anti-corn law agitation Father McGlynn will be to the new movement.

R. G. BAXTER.

The Landlord.

Mathilde Blind.

p. 5, col. 6

A Glut of Labor in California.

Local assembly No. 3337, K. of L., of Eureka, Humboldt county, Cal., has issued a circular to the workingmen of the country, notifying them that northern California is completely overrun with men out of employment, and that notwithstanding this, employers are shipping laborers in large numbers to that section, with the evident design of breaking down wages, this being particularly the case in Humboldt and Mendocino counties.

Abolish Involuntary Poverty.

NEW BRIGHTON, S. I., May 8.—I heartily approve of your course in behalf of Dr. McGlynn, and hope that you and he may live to see your fondest hopes fully realized. I think that in suspending the doctor, Archbishop Corrigan has greatly aided the labor movement, as Dr. McGlynn is now enabled to give more time to the cause than he otherwise could have done.

JOHN COSTELLO.

A Movement True to Catholic Teachings.

ALBANY, N. Y., May 10.—With my initiation fee to the Anti-poverty society, which you will find inclosed, I wish to say a word in approval of Dr. McGlynn’s course. He is doing the greatest work of the nineteenth century by enlisting in this cause. I am a Roman Catholic and I think he preaches the true gospel and will live long in the hearts of the people.

JOSEPH C. ROSHIRT.

Doing What He Can.

LION’S HEAD, Ontario, Can.—I attended your first Anti-poverty society meeting in Chickering hall, May 1, and was much interested. I have read all of your works, and am proud to say that I have made many converts during these six years past.

DAVID WEBSTER.

A Good Suggestion.

Catholic Herald.

> His Holiness Leo XIII is not above receiving petitions, and one should be gotten up with the signatures of a million Catholic adults asking, in the first instance, that Dr. McGlynn be reinstated, and in the second that he and Dr. Corrigan be ordered to Rome, each to advance his land theories before the propaganda, so that Rome would know which side to take in the mighty conflict between labor and capital that is coming. The petition might also set forth that while there are in this country but 10,000,000 Catholics there should be 15,000,000 at least, and these from immigrants and their natural increment alone since the year 1820. It might be advanced in the petition that the Catholic church loses to Methodism and the Baptists every year at least 50,000 and that the cause is poverty. But what does an archbishop who lives in a marble palace know about this? Or what will he know? He never by chance comes in contact with the poor wretches who are liable to be perverted, but Dr. McGlynn does. I sometimes think in the interest of the Catholic church it would be a good thing to have an intellectual junta of American priests in supreme control of the Catholic church in America, subject only to the Vatican.

Wealth and Land.

NEW YORK.—Please inform us what reply you would make to the argument that all values and all wealth are simply transmuted land values, and should therefore be taxed.

There are too many replies for our space. Briefly, we should say that the argument is due to a confusion of thought. The fact that wealth is transmuted land gives rise to the notion that it is not more an appropriate object of ownership than land. But it is the transmutation that makes all the difference. The ice in your cooler is transmuted North river; but there is a vast difference between the North river and that ice as a subject of ownership. And if it so happened, through the improvidence of our ancestors, that the North river was privately owned, there would be a vast difference between taxing the value of the river and taxing the value of your ice. The latter tax would be paid by you, the consumer; the former would be paid by the owner of the river, the monopelist^sic. If you tax the value of transmuted land, you discourage transmutation; but if you exempt that and tax the value of the land, you encourage transmutation and discourage land-grabbing.

It is not true that all values are transmuted land values. The basis of wealth values is labor. No one will transmute land unless he wants the product or can exchange it for a product that he does want, and consequently when any product ceases to have value it ceases to be produced. But it is not so with land values. Their basis is not labor, but population.

Perhaps the simplest reply, and one which is conclusive with any one familiar with the fundamental laws of taxation, is that a tax on wealth values is paid by the consumer, and one on land values is paid by the owner.

Will the Tax Increase Values?

BOSTON, Mass., April 19.—Suppose two men to own an acre of land apiece, side by side, one acre with improvements and the other without. By levying a tax on the two acres, according to your idea, would it not increase the value of the unimproved land? J. C. T.

No. The tax would fall generally upon all land values, and would be so high that no one could afford to keep land idle. Therefore, all improvements that were needed would be made at once, and land that was not needed for use would be abandoned, since all possibility of speculating in its future value would be gone. This land being free, would afford an outlet which would react upon the value of improved land, bringing it down to its real, as distinguished from a speculative. value^sic. When that point was reached the value would rise again. but^sic it would be actual value for use. and^sic would be appropriated to the common good.

Interest in Dakota.

OKOBOJO, Dak.—1. What is the meaning of rack rent? 2. Also of “soggarth aroon?” 3. In Dakota money is being loaned on chattel security at from two to five per cent per month. Will your land taxation scheme do anything to lessen the rate of interest, or won’t it have the opposite tendency, because it will add to the earnings of capital? SUBSCRIBER.^86?

1. An application to land of the railroad phrase “all the traffic will bear.”

2. Priest of the poor.

3. That depends. If capital in Dakota is now earning to the borrower, over and above his wages, from two to five per cent a month, the land value tax will not reduce the rate of interest, but will increase it for the reason you give. But if people are now paying from two to five per cent a month because the monopoly of land makes it difficult for them to produce their own capital, the land value tax will reduce it. With that tax in force, no one will pay more for your capital than it is worth—that is, than it will earn for him. Read chapters two and three of book nine of “Progress and Poverty.”

Eight More Questions.

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn., April 15.—As your works are largely read here, of course discussions of your theory are very spirited, and there are many different opinions. Please answer through your paper the following questions for the benefit of many:^87?

1. Is your theory to raise tax by assessing such a per cent on the amount that a piece of land would rent for, or have the amount of rent paid as taxes? (2) Does your theory do away with all titles to lands? (3) If so, how are the present owners to be recompensed for amounts they have paid for their titles in fees simple? (4) In case of all land being owned by the government, what guarantee would a settler have that he could hold a piece of land; or if some other person should offer to pay more rent or tax to the government than he could afford to pay, what would become of his improvements? How would he be secured from losses by competition in rent? Would he have to lose his improvements, or would his successor have to pay him for them? If so, how would the value be reached? (5) Would you have assessors appointed or elected to appraise what rent a piece should pay, or how would you come at the tax value? (6) Would not taking the tax off of all personal property and improvements make the taxes on land a great deal higher than they are now? (7) If the private ownership in land is not done away with, how would your theory help the poor man? (8) If it is done away with, how will it be accomplished?

W. D. MORRILL.

1. Ultimately to have the ground rent paid as taxes; but in the beginning to shift all taxes to land values. Precisely as real estate values are now taxed, we would tax land values alone.

2. Ultimately and in effect, yes; but in form titles would be the same as now, and for a time they would have a selling value.

3. We do not propose to recompense any one. Read chapter three of book seven of “Progress and Poverty.”

4. The value of land would not be fixed as you suppose. It would be fixed as it is now—by general demand. No one could dispossess the settler by offering more to the government than the settler could pay. If any one wanted the settler’s place, he would have to buy it of the settler. Government would have nothing to do with the matter.

5. We would come at the tax value as large land owners and their tenants under renewal leases come at rental values now: by appraisement. Whether the assessor was appointed or elected would make little difference, though we believe in electing public officers.

6. On land values it would; but a great deal of land that is now taxed would then be free and untaxed.

7. It would make free all untaxed land, and much that^sic was used; it would take for the common good all that income which results from common effort; it would secure to the individual, free even from taxes,

p. 6, col. 2 all that income which results from individual effort; and it would make the poor man independent, so that his contracts for wages would be free contracts.

8. It is not necessary to do away with it in form. When the owner of land pays its rental value to the community, he may be permitted to call the land his. It might amuse him, and would hurt no one else. The private ownership of land may be done away with in effect by taxing away its rental value.

An Interesting Letter.

OAK PARK, Ill.—I am very much interested in the land question, which you have brought and are bringing so prominently before the American people in your books and your paper. I believe, with all my heart, that the only adequate remedy for the social evils of our time, and the still greater social evils which appear to me to threaten us in the not distant future, is in the nationalization of the land—God’s free gift to all men. But it does not seem to me that taxing the land to its full rental value is going to enable the dwellers in the tenement houses of our great cities to erect homes for themselves on the vacant land in those cities, for this reason: If the tax be so high as to destroy the selling value of that land, it will be so high that a workingman cannot pay it. Suppose a lot to be valued at $7,000 and the tax to be five per cent per annum, the tax would be $350 a year. This sum the workingman must pay out of his wages—earned just as they are earned now. Of course the money thus paid would be used for the benefit of the community, but it would be just as difficult for the workingman to pay it to the tax collector as it would be to hand it over to the agent of an estate for the benefit of some private individual.^88?

Again, suppose a compositor, for example, having saved a little money, finds a lot in the suburbs of the city in which he wishes to live, upon which he can afford to pay the tax, builds a cottage and makes himself a home there. Gradually, as the city grows, the land becomes more valuable and the tax higher while his earnings do not increase in the same proportion. You can see that a time might come when he could not pay the tax. Then, I suppose, he must be dispossessed and his improvements sold for the payment of taxes.

Also, it seems to me that this method of taxation would cause the working farmer in a well settled and well cultivated section of country to pay a considerably larger tax on his land than he now has to pay on land and improvements both.

In order to obviate these difficulties, I believe we ought to look forward to, and labor for, a time when the people of the United States in congress assembled shall declare all titles to land in this country null and void; also, that anyone may take possession of any vacant land in the United States which he may wish to use; further, that all taxes shall be levied upon land, but that the taxes shall be only so large as to provide for the expenses of the government, and to make such improvements as the people of the state, town or city shall vote ought to be made at public expense. By this plan the “dogs in the manger” would be effectually “choked off,” while the taxes would not be so high as to prevent any workingman from holding possession of a city lot where, perhaps, his home had been established for years; and the working farmer, no matter how well settled the community about him might be, would find his taxes far less than at present.

Perhaps my ideas are crude and not well expressed, but, even if it be so, please do not throw this into the waste-basket, but show the folly of it in your paper, for I am willing, nay, anxious to learn. By so doing you will oblige one of the 68,000, who has wandered a considerable distance, but is trying, to the best of his ability, to preach the gospel of “the land for the people” here.

WARREN J. MCCARTER.

Your ideas are by no means ill-expressed, but they are crude, as you say. Your letter is one of the most important that has found its way to this column, for it expresses well the vague notions that are the weapons of our enemies and frighten off so many who would be our friends. If it had been much less important, however, it would not have gone into the waste basket. We make it a point to answer all inquiries; and if an answer is long delayed the inquirer may be sure that he is not ignored, but is waiting his turn among hundreds of others whose letters are in hand for reply.

A tax so high as to appropriate the rental value of really valuable land would make all non-valuable land free; and while the dweller in a tenement house might not be able to erect a dwelling on the valuable land of a city, he might erect one on the non-valuable land of the city. It is not probable that dwellers in tenement houses would want to live on land worth $350 a year; they would prefer, until their condition improved, to live on free land and enjoy their share of the $350 which some one else paid to the community for the valuable land. If you and your brother owned a farm, part of which was mountainous and rocky and the other fertile, it would make very little difference whether you occupied the fertile part and paid your brother half its rental value, or the mountainous part and received half the rental value of the fertile part from him.

While, under this system, contract wages would be earned just as they are now, the amount would not be fixed as it is now. Now, workmen must take what employers will give, or starve; there is no freedom of contract. Then, they would take no less than they could earn working for themselves on free land; there would be absolute freedom and perfect equality of contract.

It would not be so difficult to pay ground rent to the tax collector as it is to pay it to a landlord. The landlord, in consequence of the scarcity and inaccessibility of free land takes all that tenants can afford to pay; but the tax collector would be able, in consequence of the ample supply of free land, to take only what occupiers would be willing to pay rather than to go upon free land.

If a compositor found a vacant lot in the suburbs of the city in which he wished to live, the question of his ability to pay the tax would not arise. There would be no tax on such a lot. If he built, and the city grew until other people needed his lot—that is, until his lot was more desirable than the nearest free land—his lot would have a rental value which he would have to pay as a tax for the special privilege he would enjoy. A time might come when the tax would be more than he would be willing to pay; but that could be only because the capabilities of the lot were greater than he could utilize, in which case he would sell his real estate to some one who could and would utilize the special advantages of the lot, and go upon a lot the value of which accorded better with his abilities and desires.

The working farmer in a well settled section of country might have to pay a land value tax higher than the aggregate of what are called direct taxes that he pays now; but farmers in sections not so well settled and owners of the poorer farms in well settled sections would pay less direct

p. 6, col. 3 taxes than now; and when all taxes are considered. direct as well as indirect^sic, every working farmer would pay less taxes than now, to say nothing of the better wages for his work and the better interest on his capital that he would receive. There are some difficulties in the way of your proposition to authorize any one to take possession of any vacant land which he may wish to use, and that all taxes shall be levied on land, which you overlook. If one man took 100 acres in Illinois, why should not another take 100 acres in the city of New York? Or if one wanted a block on which to erect a great building, why should another not take a block on which to erect a shanty? Or, if one took up an acre in the heart of the metropolis on which to construct an Equitable building, why should not another take up an acre in the heart of the metropolis for a cabbage garden? And if you tax land. regardless of value^sic, the country farmer with his 100 acres, must pay a hundred times as much as the Equitable building with its one acre, although the acre of the Equitable is worth dollars where the 100 acres of the farmer are worth pennies. The only equitable and practicable way of nationalizing land is to nationalize, or townshipize, rent. That would give the value of valueable^sic land to the community and make all vacant land, as well as a great deal that is not vacant, free.

The Meaning of “Land.”

BALTIMORE, Md.—The Henry George social science club of Baltimore asks a reply to the following query: Are the forces, heat, light, electricity, chemical affinity, etc., included in the economic term “land?” W. N. H.

Yes. These forces cannot be utilized without access to land, and whoever owns land owns them. As Daniel Webster said, a title to land does not include the surface merely, but reaches upward as high as to heaven and downward as deep as to hell; or, as Carlisle^sic puts it, a landlord owns a cone with its apex at the center of the earth and its base at the uttermost limit of space.

Taxes on Waste Land.

As a constant reader of THE STANDARD—the workingman’s educator—I beg to ask if there is a tax on waste or unimproved land. One of your energetic agents says there is. I said there is not.

I thought that if a man bought a piece of ground and hedged it in, as we see done around us, he paid no taxes on it while waste or unimproved. H. J. DAVENPORT.

There are waste lands on which there is no tax; but in the city of New York unimproved land is taxed. You are in a large measure correct however, for unimproved land is taxed much less than improved land of the same market value. In the growing part of the city the basis of taxation on unimproved land is less than forty per cent of its value, while that on improved land is sixty per cent; and in the annexed district large areas of unimproved land of immense market value are taxed at farm valuations, while improved lots adjoining are taxed on a sixty per cent basis.

Small Owners.

HOUSTON, Tex., April 17.—Deprived of all other resources of making an honest living, I find myself a laborer on the great Southern Pacific system. I expect to toil this summer under the rays of a Texas sun for the miserable pittance of $1 a day of ten hours, [out?] of which I shall clear about $12.50 a month. This is what the magnanimous Leland Stanford deems “adequate remuneration.” And often, especially during the winter months in this “boundless, illimitable west” have I seen strong, able-bodied men unable to obtain extra work even on these terms.^89?

The reading of “Progress and Poverty” a year ago was a revelation to me, and I have often wished to put the following query to its author:

If the private ownership of land gives such an immense advantage to the owner, why is it that the few small farmers of this state who hold their farms free of indebtedness do not seem to make farming much more profitable than their neighbors who are encumbered or merely renters^sic. SNIPE.

The private ownership of land gives no advantage to the owner unless it is land which many people want. The only value of the land to which you refer is a speculative value. It would not sell for anything if it were not for the probability that in the future the population of Texas will increase to an extent that will make it saleable at a good price. And as land having only a speculative value yields no rent, its owners are dependent for a living on the produce of their labor and stock. They get no advantage from owning the land, except the independence that comes from having a home and the probability that they or their children may in the future, as population grows, be able to live upon the labor of other Texans. Until then their net income is little if any more than it would be if they invested the value of their improvements in four per cents and got a job like yours on the railroad. Their real advantage over you is that they cannot be discharged at the caprice of a boss. If they are any better off in the matter of income than you or than the tenant and mortgaged farmers of their section, it is because their land has a rental value; and you will find on inquiry that their prosperity is greater or less than their neighbors according to that value. Read number twelve of the “Land and Labor Library” and inquire again if the matter is not clear to you.

A Poor Man’s Question.

BALTIMORE —If your system of taxation was put in operation, would it not force the poor man from the most desirable places into the back alleys, etc.? To explain: Suppose I located on the corner of Fifty-ninth street and Fifth avenue when that spot was not so much in demand as at present, and suppose I am working for $10 per week; then as the value increases, my taxes also increasing until they reach the wage standard of $10, would I not be forced to vacate to some back street and let some rich usurer or cornerer step into the desirable spot, to whom $10 was but a drop in the bucket? J. SALMON.

The poor day laborer or mechanic who lives in a brownstone front on Murray hill might be forced into a side street. But poor people who now live in back alleys would be released. There would be so many better places to be had for less rent, so many places where there would be no ground rent at all, and wages would be so much higher, that the back alleys as places of residence would be deserted.

The only advantage to a $10 a week man of owning a lot at Fifty-ninth street and Fifth avenue would be the power it would give him to draw unearned rent from other people. No man who earned only $10 a week would think of retaining possession of such a spot if he were not allowed to rent it to others and keep the rent. On those terms, however, men who earn nothing at all are glad to keep it. If you had

p. 6, col. 4 located there when the spot was not so much in demand and its value had increased until the tax had reached your wages standard of $10 a week, you would not pay that tax out of your wages; you would pay it out of your income from the land. It would make no difference, therefore, how high the value went; the taxes would never touch your wages. It would be only in case you kept the lot vacant, actually or virtually, that your tax would have to be paid out of your earnings. If you chose to do that, it would be your own affair as long as you paid the tax; and when you could not pay any longer, it would be the people’s affair. We do not believe that a poor man has any more right to close in opportunities to labor and monopolize building sites than rich men. Under this system of taxation, if you had discovered a coal mine on your lot, you would have been free to do one of three things: to work the mine, paying its value as a natural coal deposit to the community, and enjoying the full benefit of the labor and capital you expended; to rent it to somebody who would work it, turning the unearned rental over to the community and plodding away on your $10 a week; or, to keep it closed. If you adopted the latter course you would have no right to complain if the people said: “This mine of ours must either be worked, or paid for every year the same as if it was worked!” It is the same thing whether a piece of land acquires great value through the discovery of its advantages for mining purposes or for residence purposes.

If you would not work your mine or improve your lot, and could not pay its rental value in taxes, you would certainly be forced to vacate. But you would have an advantage over the army of people who, under present conditions, have to vacate from inability to pay rent. They have nowhere to go to without paying rent, while you would find a lot near at hand that would cost you no rent. As to the usurer and cornerer who would take your lot, if he thought it a profitable operation to pay an annual tax equal to the rental value of the lot without improving it, it would make no more difference to you or to any one else, except to the fool who did it, than it makes to the storekeeper when a spendthrift buys candies to throw into the gutter. But usurers and cornerers are not hunting for such opportunities so anxiously as you seem to suppose; nor are $10 a week men much terrorized at the prospect of being compelled to vacate building lots on Fifth avenue.

A Yankee Wants to Know.

MERIDEN, Conn.—(1) Suppose your land reform is accomplished. I go out on the free land and select a few acres which I cultivate myself, having had it marked off on the map, and get my paper for it in the assessor’s office. Now, after a little while, another man comes along and gets his eye just on the same strip and makes up his mind this is just the piece he wants, but finding that I have been first, he comes to me and offers a sum of money to let him occupy it; but I refuse, and tell him to take some of the other free land, but he declines. Now can that man make the assessor put a tax on my piece up to the sum he offered me for it?

2. If a man holds ten lots on a street in the city, five of which are swampy, would his land value tax be the same on the poor lots as on the good ones. supposing^sic the rest of the lots on the street were valuable?

CHARLES JENSEN.

1. If one man was willing to pay something for the privilege of using your land rather than go on the other land, it would not compel you to pay a tax; but if enough men were willing to do so to give your land a value in the market, you would be taxed on that value. No one would be willing to buy your land if other free land just as good were near at hand.

2. If the swampy lots were worth as much, without being improved, as the others, he would pay the same tax; otherwise not?

The Buyer of a City Lot Investigates the Benefits to the Public Arising from Land Speculation.

Correspondence Dubuque, Ia., Industrial Leader.

I observe that the Herald of the 8th inst. copies the eighth and ninth planks of the labor platform, and sees therein reason to fear—

That a blow is aimed at the prosperity of the city; that activity in real estate will cease; that investments will be driven away; that building enterprises will be retarded; that taxes will be greatly increased; and that, in a word, rich men will be made to sweat.

Now, the Herald is a first-class paper, conducted by excellent friends of mine—men with a generally level head, but somehow I find it a little difficult to see through this logic. Let me begin at the end of the paragraph quoted, and work my way back, pointing out what I do not quite understand.

When I came to Dubuque, beginning the world penniless, I went to work diligently, and lived economically, with a view to obtaining a home. A rich real estate dealer in the city had on Seminary hill a number of lots, that probably cost him (as a forty acre tract) $5 apiece. Possibly in the course of the dozen years he owned them he paid in taxes upon them the equivalent of their original cost—making a total of $10 each. He sold me one for $260. He thus cleared $250 without even lifting a finger to earn it. (I am assuming that he did honestly earn the $10 the lot cost him.) The $250 that went into his pocket without any labor on his part was the savings of five years’ hard work, on a low salary on my part. Now the Herald “fears” that the labor party will put an end to all that sort of financiering; “in a word, that rich men will be made to sweat.” The thing that puzzles me is—though I frankly acknowledge that I have always been considered a little thick skulled regarding financial matters—what injury would have resulted to “the prosperity of the city,” if the rich man who sold me that lot had done his share of the sweating, instead of my being compelled to do it for him?

“Building enterprises will be retarded.” As before stated, it took me five years to save enough money to buy that lot. If the prior proprietor had been content with simply doubling his money, and charged me only $20, I could soon have saved that much, and begun at once to lay up money toward building a house—five years earlier than I did. But according to the Herald, if I had needed to pay only $20 for that lot, instead of $260, my building enterprise would have been “retarded.” That is one of the things I do not quite understand just yet.

“Activity in real estate will cease.” That is, if in any way a land speculator could be prevented from charging high prices for lots, people would not be so willing nor able to buy. According to the Herald’s logic, it seems probable that if the prior proprietor of my lot on Seminary hill had only thought of it and charged me $800 or $1,000, I would have bought three or four lots, within a few weeks after coming into the city penniless and going to work on a salary of $12 a week. I used to study arithmetic when I was a boy, but I do not think I ever reached the rule whereby the Herald works out its financial problems.

“Investments will be driven away.” In

p. 6, col. 5 other words—if I understand the Herald—had the government (general, state or municipal, as the case might be) owned that lot, and offered to lease it to me perpetually at a rental equivalent to its taxes, I would have been “driven away” and never would have invested $3,000 in a house there; but the instant I found a rich real estate man standing between me and the little parallelogram of earth on which I wished to set my foot and settle my family, and demanding of me $260 for the privilege, that beatific vision invested the spot with most alluring charms, and rendered it the place of all on earth where I longed to live and die. Now, strange as it may appear to the Herald, yet looking back to those days I do not recollect feeling that way.

And I am afraid I am not alone in my stupidity. Several times, in Dubuque, I have seen “activity in real estate” work out about thus: A would buy a tract of land for $200 and sell it to B for $300. who could^sic sell it to C for $450, who would sell it to D for $700, who would sell it to E for $900, who would sell it to F for $1,050, and so on till X had paid $2,500 for it. About that time Y, Z & Co. would come along looking up a location for a little manufacturing enterprise; X would ask $3,000 for the tract, but Y, Z & Co. would conclude the price was too high and go on to some other city—and there that Dubuque lot still lies, untouched, unused, unproductive, almost untaxed. Now, I am getting so near-sighted in my old age that I really cannot discern at this distance how that sort of “activity in real estate” invites “investments” or redounds to “the prosperity of the city.”

The Herald speaks of the following as the “communistic” plank in the platform of the labor party:

“The full increase of value made by the community should be drawn for the public use.”

Let me see whether I understand that. The same real estate man from whom I purchased my lot (as square in his dealings and as moderate in his prices as any in the city, or I should have gone elsewhere), owned about a hundred other lots on Seminary hill. From a hundred other purchasers he pocketed $250 each—a total of $25,000—without ever lifting a finger to earn it. This profit resulted from the labor and enterprise of the community in pushing their improvements in that direction. And your labor platform holds that this increase should have gone to those whose labor and enterprise created it, and not into the pockets of the one man who did nothing whatever toward it. In other words: if between the time when he purchased those lots and the time when we hundred Seminary hillers bought them of him they really did increase in value $250 each, that increase being caused by the labor of the surrounding community, should have been placed in the city treasury, to reduce by $25,000 the amount necessary to be raised by taxation. And the Herald fears that, in case the taxes were thus reduced, “taxes would be greatly increased.”

So far, I have gone on the assumption that the alleged owner of that Seminary hill addition had a clear title from God Almighty to that portion of the earth, and an unquestioned right to sell. I do not ask my money back—let the dead past bury its dead. But if—as your labor platform intimates, though it is a little tenderfooted about saying it squarely—if the general government, for the protection of the honest, hard workingmen against the idlers and Shylocks of the community, should decide to change its policy, and henceforth retain possession of the priceless heritage which God gave the race for the common welfare; to let every man have control and use of so much land, for a perpetual home or for business purposes, as he could use, on the same terms as now—that is, that he should pay the taxes on it, but prohibit A from charging B an enormous bonus for the use of what belongs to B as much as to A. Then, according to the Herald, it would cost a great deal more, in the shape of taxation, to support the government (general, state and municipal) than it now does to support the government and maintain in idleness and luxury the whole multitudinous swarm of land speculators and land renters besides!

For we workingmen now do both—and the latter is the heavier burden of the two.

As I remarked before, I cannot quite understand the Herald’s logic.

J. L. MCCREERY.

[Advertisement] An Editorial Statement.

From the Indicator, Detroit, March, 1887.^90?

The thirty-fifth annual report of the Berkshire Life Insurance Company, giving the result of its business for 1886 and its condition on January 1st, 1887, shows, as was to be expected, gains in every direction, where gain tends to strength and security; and that the conservative prudence and good business judgment which has so long characterized the company, and with which the name “Berkshire” is always associated, still prevails in its management.

We wish, however, to call attention to the following facts, shown by this report, which illustrates most forcibly the difference in results to the members of a solid company like the Berkshire, doing business upon legitimate, approved and scientific methods, and the results to members in assessment societies.

In 1886 the policy holders in the Berkshire paid in premiums the sum of $711,2[0?]2.64.

What did the company do with this amount?

They paid to members……………………………$686,155 35
They increased their net assets………………….[46?],091 84
They therefore paid to and invested for the members..$752,247 19

This is a clear gain of $[21?],044.55 to the policy holders of the Berkshire over their premium payments during the year, or a virtual receipt of $1.0[3?] for each $1 paid.

Carrying this line of comparison back to the date of organization of the company, we find the figures to be as follows:

Total payment to members………………………..$7,921,561 77
Invested and on hand for members…………………3,824,555 05
Total paid and in hand………………………….$11,746,116 82
Total premiums received…………………………10,920,369 08
Gain to members over premiums……………………$825,747 74

Again, this report shows that for each dollar of liability, including its reserve fund, fixed by the highest standard, that of Massachusetts, the Berkshire has in well invested assets, $1.1[3?]. The Berkshire therefore can stop taking new business to-day, and never insure another man, and yet meet all its obligations as they mature. Yes, more. If the Berkshire should to-day not only close its doors to new business, but if, also, the present policy holders should never pay another dollar in premiums, the company would still be able to meet all liabilities under its policy contracts, and when the last one has matured and been paid, would have a handsome sum of money left. Most emphatically the Berkshire is solid, and gives insurance that insures.

Now, contrast all this with the results in any assessment company doing, or pretending to do, a life insurance business. No one of them can, or claims to, return to its members all they pay in; but the Berkshire, as we have seen, does this and more. Insurance in the Berkshire, as a whole, is therefore not only cheaper than it can be in any assessment company, but every dollar of premium paid is sure to be returned to its members. The Berkshire does not depend upon new members to keep the company going and to enable it to meet its existing policy contracts as they mature. An assessment company, on the contrary, necessarily depends entirely upon its ability to secure new members, and upon their willingness and ability to respond to the assessments when made.

For the purposes of comparison we have selected the three most prominent assessment companies doing business in Massachusetts, and give herewith the results of their business for the year as tabulated in the last report of the Massachusetts insurance commissioner. We combine the figures of the three, which are as follows:

Total payments by the members for the year were…..$2,387,469 36
The total payments to members were……………….1,553,558 44
Loss to members………………………………..$833,910 92

That is, the members of these three assessment companies paid $833,910 92 more than they received.

It is true that these companies increased their assets during the year $320,106.31; but as they had $502,350 of unpaid claims, this gain “doesn’t count.”

For each dollar paid to these assessment companies, the members received in return 65 cents, and have no security for the payment of their policies or certificates except the ability of the managers to secure, for many years to come, new members who will pay assessments as they may be called.

For each dollar of premium paid to the Berkshire last year the members received, as above stated, $1.03, and each member holds a policy contract, the fulfillment of which is secure, whether new members join the company or not.

The moral is obvious: Insure where insurance is cheapest and safest. Insure in the Berkshire.

George W. English, manager for New York and New Jersey, will send circulars descriptive of the new five-year dividend policy now being issued by this old and reliable company, by addressing him at company’s agency, 271 Broadway, New York.—Adv.

p. 6, col. 6

Rev. Dr. Easton of Newark, N. J., Exhorts the Churches to Teach This, the True Gospel of Christ Crucified.

There are thousands of Christian men who stand opposed to any presentation of the “land question” or “labor and capital agitation” in the pulpit. They are the stanch defenders of orthodoxy. They feast on dogma. They demand that all such themes and living issues of the hour shall be handled by the public press. Their watch cry is “Preach the Gospel.” What do they mean? Their answer is “Not politics, not political or social questions, but Jesus Christ and Him Crucified.” Now, we grant at the outset that the one theme towering over all others in importance and which should be ringing out from every pulpit in the land is “Christ crucified.” But what is meant by preaching Christ crucified? Is it to dwell upon the scenes enacted upon Calvary over eighteen centuries ago—its gory cross and agonizing victim, a mere spectacular panorama of shame and suffering? Does it mean an utter exclusion of all its relations to human want and woe in this nineteenth century? Is it to ignore the gaunt poverty and disease in the body politic? Is it to repudiate the oppressions of monopolists and the serfdom of men, so-called “citizens of a glorious republic?” Is it to pass by the grim want and woe found in the homes of American wage workers in whom Christ is crucified to-day? If so, then we have a mutilated gospel—a gospel only for rich and sanctimonious hypocrites destitute of a spark of living sympathy for those in whom Christ to-day is crucified.^91?

This is nothing new. In the days of American slavery we had men come to us fired with a holy zeal for dogma, creed and liturgy, and say: “Oh, don’t bring politics into the pulpit; let slavery alone. If you discuss that question you will create schism; let the churches preach only Christ and Him crucified.” Who were these men? They were worshipers of old King Cotton. They were blinded with cotton; cotton in their ears, cotton in their noses and consciences; like the Egyptian mummies, wrapped up in cotton. They could not see Christ crucified in the bleeding, manacled, lashed slaves, sold like cattle upon an auction block. So it is now. History repeats the wickedness of some of our churches. Our boasted march of progress is simply the tramp, tramp, tramp of millions to greater poverty. There is but one remedy, and that is for every pulpit and press in the land to show up Christ as He is crucified to-day in the person of the American wageworker.

But says one, “That will be dragging politics into the pulpit, and we cannot allow that.” Let me say: Ye do err, not knowing the word of God. Exclude political questions and you cannot have Christ preached. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ by Pontius Pilate was a political act. It was a political murder. It was so understood by the apostles and preached by them as among the political crimes of their day. Now, Christ is no longer visible among us, but He is found in all His living representatives. The widow, oppressed by a grinding landlord for rent and driven to the streets; the wronged and injured workingman—in these I hear the cry from a wounded and crucified Savior exclaiming, “Why persecutest thou Me?” Press on! Press on the new crusade! When our preachers get the golden padlocks off their mouths and can stand up boldly and honestly and with clean consciences charge home the truth of God, “woe unto them that lay house to house and land to land till there be no room,” we shall see true progress toward the dawn of the millennium, and not till then.

W. G. EASTON.

The Party’s Name.

CINCINNATI, May 2.—We have become more and more convinced here that it is becoming necessary, and vitally necessary, to find a distinctive name for the new party that is gradually forming throughout the country. All names like “united labor,” “union labor,” “land and labor” have the signal drawback that they come inevitably to be looked upon as class measures.

I had felt this personally, and was particularly impressed by the fact that I was constantly meeting persons who were more or less imbued with the fundamental reforms that we hold to be necessary, but whom no persuasion could prevail to join a “labor” party.

I had hesitated (being a professional man) to voice my doubts as to a name of this stamp being the most advisable, knowing the sensitiveness of the men in all labor organizations upon points of just this character; but I find that many of our intelligent, thoughtful leaders among the workingmen are entertaining the same doubts as to the advisability of such names.

Of course names representing but a single class, or indicative of but one reform, are not to be considered for the new party.

Unfortunately the name “democratic” is already taken, and very much taken in vain. The term “union” is general and vague. It does very fairly as an adjective, but when made into a noun is misleading. A “unionist” is generally understood to be a member of a trade union; so a party name containing the word “labor” does not afford a word which can designate an individual.

My reading of the land movement in Ireland and England had led me to choose the name “national” as best suited to our purpose for a party name here also.

If we come to place under a few concise headings what we want, I find that we propose:

1. To “nationalize” the land.

2. To “nationalize” our means of distribution (railroads, etc.)

3. To “nationalize” our means of communition^sic (telegraph, etc.)

4. To “nationalize” our medium of exchange.

5. To “internationalize” our commerce.

A man who believed in such a broad and fundamental, such a clear and logical, such a complete and symmetrical system of principles could very properly and accurately be designated a “nationalist.”

It would indicate that in those social functions that are by their very nature monopolies, he would advocate national control, while in those functions that are properly a matter of individual action, he would be in favor of national freedom.

I had come to these same conclusions some time since, and am led to give them public expression by the fact that Judge Magibben of Newport, Ky., has begun the issue of a most excellent weekly, the National Herald, in which paper he advocates most strongly the adoption of this name, the “national” party.

Some others in THE STANDARD have expressed in favor of this name, and I notice in the last number, just at hand, that you recognize the fact that some distinctive name must soon be selected. DAVID DEBECK⁹², M. D.

In Norwegian.

[Huseby?] & Co., limited, of Kristiania, Norway, who published last year a translation of Henry George’s “Progress and Poverty” into Norwegian^93?, by V. Ullmann, have now published a Norwegian translation of “Social Problems,” which has been made by Hans Brekke. The Norwegian title of “Progress and Poverty” is “Fremskridt og Fattigdom,” and that of “Social Problems” is “Samfundssporgsmaal.” Both books are beautifully printed and bound. The same firm also announce a translation of Mr. George’s “Protection and Free Trade^sic” under the Norwegian title of “Beskyttelse eller Frihandel.”

[UP?] WITH THE CROSS OF THE NEW CRUSADE.

[Another?] Clergyman Unfurls the Banner—An Exhaustive Sermon by the Rev. S. H. Spencer of Henry, Ill.—Might Does Not and Cannot Make Right.

[Henry?], Ill., Republican.

And all that believed were together, and [had?] all things in common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them all as [every?] man had need.—Acts ii, 44, 45.

Here is communism, a term which has lately come to have a very unpopular meaning. How long or to what extent this communism existed among the early Christians we have no certain means of knowing. But whatever else we may infer from the account here given, this generous division of property certainly indicates a high degree of brotherly love.

I have selected this text, not because I think it points out the course to be generally pursued, nor because I think it sanctions what is now commonly understood as communism or socialism, terms suggestive of anarchy as the means and of encouragement of idleness as the object of social reform; but because, while this generous division of property would be impracticable in society at large, it nevertheless suggests that brotherly love, or the golden rule, is the true foundation principle. And if this principle can be embodied in civil law, and at the same time offer sufficient incentive to individual exertion, it must, if the Christian religion is to be depended upon, be the only hope of society for permanent happiness and peace and ele vation to that high condition which this religion contemplates.

Society, as it now exists, is not founded on Christian principles. The corner-stone is not Christ, but selfishness—just the opposite of the spirit shown in the text. True, we have free institutions, such as free representative governments, free competition in business, free schools, free churches, and so on; but having sprung from a stock whose rights were those of conquest, we have but transplanted the branches of the parent tree in a newer soil and freer atmosphere. We have charitable institutions, too—asylums, almshouses, hospitals, secret fraternities and church missions of various kinds, all tending to alleviate present suffering, and making poverty a little more endurable; but all of these charities together give no more than temporary relief, merely healing over the eruptive diseases that originate in the impure blood of the social system. And the more radical the defects of this system, the more need will there ever be of charities of this kind; so that multiplicity of charities, instead of indicating the Christian character of our civilization, do rather indi cate the opposite. The theory of our social system is not the golden rule. It is Darwin’s “survival of the fittest.” It is every fellow for himself. While it is not impossible for an individual to live by the golden rule, even in a country where monopoly flourishes under the protection of law, it must certainly be admitted that “the game of grab” is not favorable to the cultivation of Christian principles, when played in earnest, and when the whole country is put into the bag. The acquisition of all that God has provided in this country for the sustenance and well-being of his children is only a “game of grab.” It is just as if a parent having many children of various ages and degrees of strength should bring home every day their food, clothing and toys in a basket, and overturning the basket, allow big and little, strong and weak, to grab and struggle for the contents, some getting more than they can appropriate, others going half clad and half starved, and some even dying of privation and disease. Such conduct among God’s children is not conducive to the [real?] happiness or welfare of those even who are successful in the strife, because it is destructive of sympathy, mercy, justice and every other element of Christian manhood.

The true theory for the formation and welfare of civil society lies between the generous and unregulated extreme shown in the text, and the other extreme now exhibited on so grand a scale in the greedy monopolies of the civilized world. Both of these, wherever tried, have been productive of bad results, and can end only in the downfall of any nation or community that is built upon them.

This golden mean we find in the theory of Henry George. The key words of this theory, as nearly as I can see, are community of benefits by means of laws founded on natural justice. Surely this ought not to be objectionable, providing the theory can be realized in practice without violent change. Anarchy may well be dreaded by any people, and wise heads are necessary in the conduct of great reforms. Henry George is not an anarchist. Neither is he a socialist according to the common acceptation of the term. That he has been so regarded because supported by the laboring class as candidate for mayor of New York city is not strange; for when people are inflamed against anarchists, they are likely¹⁰¹ to be too sweeping in their denunciations. Ex cited prejudice is blind to just distinctions. I find his writings pervaded with a deep sense of justice and right. They indicate a more genuine love of God and humanity than I have seen in any other writings on political economy. And as “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding,” he seems from his regard for the eternal principles of God, to comprehend the problem of our national future with a clearness unknown to others. The eye that is single is full of light. His careful regard for existing interests also goes to show that his aim is only good, and his judgment not that of an earaged^sic or excited anarchist. He has certainly every quality to commend him to the candid consideration of any Christian and humanity-loving people. If what he says in his writings or his speeches adds to the discontent already prevailing among wage laborers, it also controls and wisely directs this discontent. He is law-abiding, and urges reform by constitutional methods. He appeals not to lawless passions, but to reason and conscience.

But the ideas this man has, these are what you want; and then you want to know how these will better the condition of society.

The main feature of this reform relates to the ownership of land. We are land animals, so to speak. We are made to live on the land. Every human being, then, has a birthright here—a birthright to the land—and an equal right. The land is as truly God’s natural gift to all as is the air for breathing or the water for drinking; and no one has any god-given right, whatever other right he may have, to appropriate to himself, and own for himself, what is common property. Natural right is before legal right. Individual ownership of land came originally by conquest, or superior might. Might does not and can not make right; but right, though it be ignored and rejected of men and buried in the tomb of forgetfulness for centuries, can and will eventually rise to unmake and overflow might^sic: for what is of man must come to naught, and only what is of God can stand. Thus men are finally compelled to recognize the laws of God, because every wrong has its consummation. “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil;” but no sentence of God goes unexecuted. Neither individual nor nation can disregard divine laws, whether spiritual or natural, with impunity. These laws are written in the nature of things, and must supersede all human laws not in harmony therewith. It is just as much a transgression of divine law that a few

p. 7, col. 2 men, or many men, acquire and hold all the land, as it is that they acquire and hold the bodies of all the rest of mankind. This is illustrated by supposing a people on an island, and having no means of getting away. If a few men own the entire island, they thereby own the bodies of all the other inhabitants, having the power of life and death; for if the tenants do not accede to the terms of the land owners, they must be ejected into the sea. The land is the basis of all property and all means of subsistence; and they who monopolize this monopolize freedom and even earthly existence. It is God’s law that land be held by governments for the common benefit. Here is the justice of George’s theory.

As to wealth produced by labor, this is altogether different. It is just that every man have the products of his own labor. Wealth represented by labor cannot justly be made common property. It cannot justly be taxed for public uses. Only land—naked land—should be taxed, whether farms, city lots or harbors—taxed without reference to improvements upon them, but with reference to location and to such other values as have been created by the whole people. It is unjust that speculators, whether small or great, hold land for increase of value made only by increase of settlement; and it requires no over-scrupulous conscience to perceive this.

Here a number of questions present themselves; and I will endeavor to answer them one by one:

1. What will be done with lands already owned by individuals or companies? Nothing, except to put all the taxes of that individual or that company upon the land, and none upon improvements or personal property. All will hold their lands as they do now while they pay the tax, which is only another name for rent paid to the people.

2. What benefits will result from this? It will induce all land speculators in country and in city to give up all the land they cannot profitably make use of, withholding it no longer from settlement or occupation. If, for instance, I own a piece of land which is bringing me a certain sum annually in rent or in increase of value, it will cease to be a profitable investment if I can get no more rent or rise of value from it than I have to pay as tax to the state or government. I will then sell my improvements on that land, the land going with them, if I cannot utilize the land myself. This will furnish homes to the homeless upon equal terms with their more fortunate neighbors. It will make wage workers scarce, or in demand; and manufacturers and merchants, who will have no other taxes to pay but on their lots, will pay what they now pay as other taxes in higher wages to workmen. It will also, in time, put a check upon the accumulation of interest-drawing capital by equalizing the opportunities for money making and lessening the opportunities for speculating and monopolizing; but this involves some other questions which I must not now stop to consider. It will set all people to work, every one at some useful avocation, and eventually break down these artificial class distinctions now widening to such an extent as to threaten the safety of our republic.

3. What will be done with the taxes or rents received by the people’s agents, the tax collectors? They will be used for the common benefit. Besides the expenses of government, which will be greatly reduced by the incentives given to industry, these funds will be expended upon national, state and local improvements for the convenience, happiness and education of the people; so that all will realize the benefits; and even the aged and helpless, being provided for from these funds, will not feel humiliated at the thought of an almshouse, but feel that they are receiving only what is justly due them.

4. How will this reform affect other reforms? It lies at the bottom of all others. As all wealth comes originally from the earth through the labors of men, and the whole vast superstructure of civilization rests upon the land as its foundation, so the character of civilization begins here. When the stone which the builders of our present civilization have rejected shall have become the head of the corner, then will the whole “building, fitly joined together, grow into a holy temple of the Lord.” Enforced idleness removed, crime and vice are removed. What is a tramp? It is a man who, unable to find living employment where he is, starts out in quest of employment elsewhere; but, finding nothing better, becomes discouraged, begs, loses self-respect, steals from necessity, is treated as a nuisance, and ends his career in a wretched death, perhaps⁹⁴ in a civilized prison! From this discontented and suffering element of society, whether composed of actual tramps or not, our saloons derive no small portion of their support. Troubled men seek temporary relief in the intoxicating bowl and in all sorts of sensual diversions. And pampered wealth is the other root of the giant evil tree intemperance, which we are vainly trying to destroy by cropping off its branches. Give men opportunities and they will rise in the scale of being. The downtrodden are the criminals. Give them incentives to procure homes and provide comfortably for their wives and little ones, and natural affection will stimulate them to improve such opportunities. If you say there is an element in this country from the slums and jails of European cities, who have nothing human left in them to be ap pealed to, remember what has brought them into this condition, even in their native land, on whose God-given soil they had no legal right. Our present land system is the same in substance.

There is now a great rush to California. Land speculators are reaping a golden harvest because this tide of population is giving increased value to those unoccupied lands. But what does all this boom called national prosperity do for the great army of wage workers in this country? National prosperity! It is to them a mockery and robbery; and say what we may against their expressing the sentiment, it is a sad and fearful fact that the American flag, while it floats over such partial prosperity, cannot, in the nature of things, appeal strongly to their patriotism. They feel that both state and church are against them, and as outcasts indeed they naturally become infidels and rebels. Let reformers look to the origin of things—to the root of all our evils—to the necessities that drive men to crimes and drunkenness and women to prostitution, and let them apply the ax to this root. Self-examination is as wholesome for nations as it is for individuals.

Besides its productiveness of want, crime, vice, and finally of revolution, this land system, now upheld by all civilized governments, has given rise to the Malthusian doctrine that population naturally tends to increase faster than means of subsistence; and that it is necessary, therefore, that famines, pestilences, disasters and wars shall come to kill off occasionally the surplus in order that the rest may be supported. This not only unchristian but murderous doctrine is the legitimate conclusion of our present social system. Our christianity is one thing, and our civilization quite another. Religion, it is admitted, is incompatible with business. If we should appeal to the God and Father of us all for a solution of all our national questions, I think the solution would be plain and easy.

There are some important but minor problems that would demand consideration in a more elaborate effort to present this theory—problems whose solution would make what I have said more complete. But I must be content with the fundamental principles and with showing that these are just and divine principles. They are the principles of the “New Jerusalem” ultimated in civil government; and any one whose perceptions have been quickened by that higher sense of the sacred Scriptures, which is the Lord’s coming, cannot with unprejudiced eyes, it seems to me, fail to see that this yet unpopular and yet to be persecuted theory of Henry George, Herbert

p. 7, col. 3 Spencer^9596?97? and others, is that embodiment of heaven-revealed justice, unselfishness, mercy and divine purpose, which will verify the prophesy not only of a new heaven but a new earth. The writings of Henry George abound in these heaven-born sentiments, and this is the very secret of the bitter enmity they must incur. It is the dragon against the new-born child of the church. That “old serpent which deceiveth the whole world,” disturbed and writhing under the painful light of heaven, will misrepresent, will sneer in his glitter of wealth and pride, and will use every possible means to devour this child of the new age.

The better to show the spirit of this reform, I will quote from the writings of the author:

“All we need do to secure a just distribution of wealth is to do that which all theories agree to be the primary function of government—to secure to each the free use of his own powers, limited only by the equal freedom of all others; to secure to each the full enjoyment of his own earnings, limited only by such contributions as he may be fairly called upon to make for purposes of common benefit.

“I wish,” he says, “to emphasize this point, for there are those who constantly talk and write as though whoever finds fault with the present distribution of wealth were demanding that the rich should be spoiled for the benefit of the poor; that the idle should be taken care of at the expense of the industrious, and that a false and impossible equality should be created, which, by reducing every one to the same dead level, would destroy all incentive to excel and bring progress to a halt. In the reaction from the glaring injustice of present social condition, such wild schemes have been proposed and still find advocates. But^{9899?102?103?} to my way of thinking, they are as impracticable and repugnant as they can seem to the loudest denunciators of ‘communism.’”

Speaking of the communistic state of society existing among the early Christians, he goes on to say that such state can be attained only by what these wild schemers, the modern socialists, ignore—“a deep, definite, intense religious faith, so clear, so burning as to utterly melt away the thought of self.” “But the possibility of such a state of society seems to me,” he says, “in the present stage of human development, a speculation that comes within the higher domain of religious faith rather than that of practical statesmanship. . . . Yet it is manifest that the only way by which man may attain to higher things (than he now enjoys) is by conforming his conduct to those commandments which are as obvious in his relations with his fellows . . . as though they were engraved by the finger of Omnipotence on tablets of imperishable stone. In the order of moral development, Moses comes before Christ. ‘Thou shalt not kill’—‘not commit adultery’—‘not steal,’ before ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ . . . That justice is the highest quality in the moral hierarchy, I do not say; but it is the first. That which is above justice must be based on justice, and include justice, and be reached through justice. It is not by accident that the old testament declaration, ‘The Lord thy God is a just God,’ precedes the sweeter revelation of a God of love. Until the eternal justice be perceived, the eternal love must be hidden. As the individual must be just before he can be truly generous, so must human society be based upon justice before it can be based on benevolence.”

Such are the sentiments, and such is the theory, of a man whom wealth and partisanship combined to represent to us as one of the rabble when he ran for the mayoralty of New York city. Such is the man of whom, when he had since spoken in one of our smaller western cities, it was said, “Our people did not turn out largely to hear him, because they were not much interested.”

Concerning the man, I will not venture a prediction. In the ultimate triumph of his theory I have much confidence, because it is founded on the eternal and omnipotent principles of true religion. It is the only theory, it seems to me, that can solve permanently and peacefully the greatest and most serious problem of the ages. It is the only remedy for the intestine¹⁰⁴ strife that threatens to des troy our republic, and indeed disturbs the peace of all civilized nations. In this view I am not influenced by its unpopular reception. Only a moment’s reflection is necessary to convince us that such is the first reception of every doctrine or theory that aims at radical and thorough reform. It is the persecuted Babe of Bethlehem over and over again. If we want to be on the side of truth, we shall most likely find it on the unpopular side. But it is none the less the duty of the watchman on Zion’s walls to watch for the morning, so that when inquirers shall ask, “What of the night,” he may be ready to answer, “The morning cometh, and also the night; if ye will inquire, inquire ye: return, come.” (Isa. xxi. 12). “O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord.” (Jer. xxii. 29.)

The Tenant System Forcing Its Way at [An?] Alarming Rate—Men to Whom the Tax on Land Values Would be Nothing But [a?] Benefit.

The Chicago Inter-Ocean has been lately investigating the question of farm mortgages. To its interrogatories sent to trustworthy correspondents, the following are among the replies received, no two from the same county:

“What proportion of improved farms in your county are under mortgage?”

According to the Inter-Ocean there are 134 companies organized for making real estate loans which have been incorporated in the states of Kansas and Nebraska alone, besides a large number of eastern insurance companies, as well as mortgage loan companies in Iowa and Missouri, not to mention the various eastern money loaning companies. In answer to the question: “What in your opinion is the largest per cent of the present selling value which any of said companies loan on farm?” the opinions ranged from fifty per cent to full value.

In answer to the question: “In case of a general failure of crops, is there sufficient accumulation of capital in the hands of your farmers so that they could purchase the farms owned by those who are unable to pay, in case of numerous foreclosures among those mortgaged?”

The substance of the general reply was to the effect that there was no accumulation of capital in the hands of the farmers, and in the event of a failure of crops the farms would fall into the hands of the loaners.

The Week’s Testimony to the Waxing Strength of the City Organizations.

THURSDAY, May 5.—The general committee of the county met at Clarendon hall, with John McMackin in the chair. The committee on credentials reported favorably on all the new credentials submitted to them, with the exception of that of George D. Lennon, from the Sixth district, and the report was approved. There was considerable debate over the report of the committee appointed at the previous meeting to call a state convention. Some of the delegates were disposed to criticise the action of the committee because the call it had sent out did not embrace in its scope all the measures of the county platform. But it was pointed out that no convention should have its platform made up for it in advance. When the vote was finally taken only two or three votes were polled against adopting the report of the committee. The executive committee reported that the district organizations were generally in splendid condition; also that they intended during the coming month to visit all the assembly district clubs and assist in strengthening the united labor party forces still further. A resolution was read from the Fourteenth, stating that in the opinion of that organization the general executive committee was the servant of the general county committee, and not of the district clubs; also one denouncing the action of the United States government agreeing with Russia to extradite political offenders as criminals. Resolutions were handed to the committee on resolutions denouncing the prison labor system, the attempted coercion in Ireland, the persecution of the German people by its government, and the puritanical blue laws at present being enforced in this city. A resolution indorsing the general course of the Leader was adopted.^109?181?

All the delegates to the general committee will be furnished by mail with new membership cards. Mr. O’Meara, corresponding secretary, desires all district chairmen to send in the names and addresses of the delegates to him, at room 28, Cooper union.

The Fifth assembly district held its usual business meeting at Warren hall to arrange for a grand picnic to be held on the afternoon of the 25th June at the Atalanta Casino. Mr. Wm. Anderson is president, Mr. Chas. White vice-president, and Mr. George Grieve corresponding secretary. The work in the election districts is progressing most satisfactorily, and the fortnightly entertainments are a great success. Next entertainment Thursday, May 19, 8 p. m.

A largely attended meeting of the members of the Eighteenth assembly district was held to arrange for the lecture to be delivered under the auspices of the district association by Dr. McGlynn at Cooper Union on Monday, May 23. The title of the lecture is “The duties of labor.” Arrangements are being made for a grand picnic to be held on the 2d August in Brommer’s Union park. This district is full of talent, and it is proposed to start fortnightly entertainments as soon as possible. Ten new members joined.

FRIDAY, May 6.—The Ninth district held its weekly meeting at the hall, corner of Hudson and West Twelfth streets. The executive committee approved of forty-eight applications for membership. Action was taken in reference to the qualifications of new members. The picnic committee reported that a member had offered a marble top table as a prize to the person selling the largest number of tickets for the picnic of Aug. 17 at Atalanta Casino. Mr. Hunter, chairman of the district executive committee, addressed the meeting on the principles of the organization and the duty of attending the meetings of the Anti-poverty society.

At the meeting of the Eighth district, 153 Forsyth street, the amendments to the constitution of the general county committee were debated, and the delegates to the county committee were instructed to vote against the adoption. New members were enrolled.

The Twelfth adjusted its difficulties in regard to a meeting place. The meetings will continue to be held in Paul Wilzig’s hall.

MONDAY, May 9.—The Fourteenth district association held its first regular meeting in the new headquarters, 178 First avenue, and heard reports concerning organization in the various election districts. This club had a house warming on the previous Thursday night. Mr. Philip McGrath, a carpenter member of the club, volunteered to make a number of benches. Joseph McCloskey presented a picture, John Murphy, Sr., presented ten chairs, F. H. Koenig sent in a table and three chairs, and other members brought in a chair or two apiece and other necessary furniture. Mr. Thiele, one of the most active members of the club—a painter—painted a transparency for the front of the rooms, and other members will make the frame. M. J. Murray put in the gas fixtures. A secret subscription to pay the rent and expenses of the rooms has been almost filled up. These actions show that the members are in earnest. Within two weeks the rooms will be completely furnished, without having cost the association a cent. The rooms will be open from 7 in the morning until half-past 10 at night, excepting Sundays, so that any friends who may not be working will have a pleasant place to read the papers and spend their leisure time, and not have to resort to beer saloons to kill time.

The Twenty-first district association met at 705 Seventh avenue. The committee having the Dr. McGlynn mass meeting in charge reported that, in conjunction with the Eleventh district, a demonstration would be given in Lyric hall on Sunday, May 15. The Henry George mænnerchor of the Twenty-second district will be requested to furnish music, and John Swinton, Louis F. Post and other good speakers asked to make addresses. The resignation of Abner C. Thomas from the county committee was accepted with regret, and the business of electing a successor, and also electing delegates to the state convention, was fixed for the next regular meeting.

The English branch of the Twenty-second district association adjourned until the evening following (Tuesday), in order that members might attend the lecture of Dr. McGlynn at Cooper institute. The German branch met, however, at 1422 Second avenue, having been compelled to postpone their meeting from Sunday morning, as was their custom, on account of the enforcement of the excise law, which closed up the hall in which they hold their proceedings^sic. There was little business, other than considering where the association had better locate its permanent headquarters.

After the reading of the minutes in the Twenty-third district association, the meeting adjourned until Friday evening, and those present went to hear Dr. McGlynn lecture on the “Dignity of Labor.”

TUESDAY, May 10.—The Sixteenth district met at Gossweiler’s hall, 350 First avenue. Preparations are being made for a picnic on May 10^sic, and the committee in charge reported progress. The resignation of Charles A. Maxwell as a delegate to the county convention was accepted with regret, and Mr. Christopher J. Williams elected to fill the vacancy. The committee on the McGlynn fund reported that there were about $60 in its treasury. Preparations were made for the organization of the election districts.

At the adjourned meeting of the Twenty-second district, the hall 1438 Third avenue was selected as permanent headquarters. Meetings will be held hereafter on Tuesday fortnightly. James Redpath was elected delegate to the county convention. A resolution denouncing the blue laws was adopted. The organization of election districts was discussed. The adoption of rules preventing the calling of the [previous?] question or the laying

Regular meeting of the Fifteenth assembly district was held at its headquarters, Mansman’s hall, 475 Ninth avenue. Vice-president Larkin presided. After the regular order of business had been transacted, the privilege of the floor was granted to James T. Coughlin to open the debate, the subject of which was that private ownership in land should be abolished. The gentleman defended the question in a very satisfactory manner, bringing out many very fine points in the affirmative. Edward Conkling opposed the question, but he failed to show why it should not be abolished. Several other membes^sic followed, defending each side of the question. On a vote of the house the debate was decided in favor of the affirmative.

WEDNESDAY, May 11.—The Tenth district organization admitted a number of new members. The election district organization committee reported the work as progressing favorably, and was given power to expend the necessary money. The evening was mainly taken up with a debate on the call sent out last week for a state convention, and at adjournment it was resolved to hold a special meeting on Wednesday evening to discuss the merits of the call.

The Thirteenth assembly district met at 208 Eighth avenue for the transaction of business. The committee on entertainment presented their report, recommending a complimentary entertainment for the 28th inst., at the regular meeting hall of the assembly, the programme to consist of music and recitations.

A lengthy discussion was held as to the propriety of choosing new delegates to the county general committee in place of those who persistently fail to attend the meetings of the committee. The assembly already has on its minutes a resolution providing that any delegate who shall fail to attend three consecutive sessions shall be held to have resigned, and his successor shall forthwith be elected. It was decided by the chair that as the general committee had met only twice since the passage of the resolution, no vacancies could yet be declared. The discussion will be resumed at the next meeting.

The Central land and labor committee, 28 Cooper Union, has appointed Mr. Robert Pyne of the Hartford Examiner to be state organizer for Connecticut; Mr. F. Harvey Lincoln of the Berkshire Leader to be organizer for Berkshire county, Mass.; and the executive committee of the Henry George club of Cincinnati to be ex officio organizers for the states of Ohio and Kentucky.

NEW YORK TO THE COUNTRY.

To Organized Labor throughout the United States, Greeting:

The great moral victory which we have won in this city by the polling of 68,000 votes for our candidate in the campaign begun by the Central labor union, and the congratulations which the men of New York have received from all parts of the country, encourage us to believe that it is now within the power of organized labor to begin a national movement that shall carry to triumphant success the great principles on which industrial and political emancipation must be based.

This campaign has shown us that by ignoring minor differences it is possible to unite the political power of labor on a platform confined to fundamental principles. What we have done in New York has been accomplished in the face of greater obstacles than exist anywhere else in the United States. We see that it is only necessary to improve our organization here to carry this city, and we believe that general organization must result in the formation of a national party that will sweep the country.

We call on organized labor everywhere to form political associations based on the principles of the platform of the convention of trade and labor associations of New York, and having in view political action, local, state and national, at the earliest possible moment.

It is desirable that organized labor, wherever it exists, should take the initiative in this movement. But it is our opinion, confirmed by our recent experience, that the most effective organizations for political action are to be formed outside of labor associations, though as far as possible animated and controlled by their members. In this way we may avoid any conflict with the rules and regulations that forbid political action on the part of associations primarily designed for industrial purposes; may bring into our ranks a large class now outside of labor associations, but whose sympathies are thoroughly with us; may secure that organization by election districts which is necessary to efficient political work; and by means of reunions, lectures, the dissemination of literature, readings from sound works on social science, and debates, carry on the work of education. This is the course we have resolved to adopt in this city, and we commend a similar course to our brethren throughout the land. We believe the time has come when, for the accomplishment of its purposes, labor must step into the political arena, and, rallying all the forces that are upon its side, make an open fight for the assertion of those equal rights which the great charter of American liberty guarantees to us all, but which both the old political parties have heretofore ignored.

The difficulty which everywhere confronts us, in our efforts to raise wages and secure leisure, is the existence of an impoverished mass, forced by their necessities to accept work on any terms. Until we can lessen the intensity of that struggle for existence which makes so many men and women ready to do anything to procure the mere necessaries of life, the work of our labor associations must be conducted under tremendous disadvantages. Men who cannot find employment are everywhere the force which those who oppose us utilize to resist our just demands. It is therefore necessary that we should make war upon the great wrong which causes poverty—the primary injustice which makes the land on which and from which all of us must live the exclusive property of individuals, and denies to the rest of us the right to live and to work, unless we pay blackmail for the privilege.

We therefore ask you to form political associations based upon the principles set forth in our platform, and, through the central committee, room 28, Cooper Union, New York city, which has been appointed for that purpose, to put yourselves in communication with other similar associations throughout the land.

As soon as this work shall have gone far enough, a national conference will be called to organize the new party—a party powerful enough to re-write the laws and execute the people’s will.

By order of the executive committee.

JOHN McMACKIN, Chairman.

LAND AND LABOR.

The Central Committee has been organized for the purpose of carrying into state and national politics, by means of tracts, circulars, correspondence, lectures, etc., the principles of the United Labor Party of New York.

We oppose the stupid fiscal system that piles up hundreds of millions of dollars in our treasury vaults, while we are paying interest on an enormous debt; we aim at the abolition of the system which makes the railroad and the telegraph a means for the oppression of the people and the aggrandizement of an aristocracy of wealth and power; and we advocate the raising of all public revenues from a tax on land according to its value, throwing the burden of taxation upon mining lands and upon the wealthy monopolizers of land values in and near our great cities, thus relieving, on the one hand our crowded tenement population, and on the other the farming interest of our country, lifting all taxes from the products of industry.

Members of trade and labor organizations, and all citizens in favor of independent political action who are desirous of taking part in the formation of land and labor clubs, or in tract distribution, are requested to address

SAM HOBART, THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER.

A Workingman’s Solution of the Labor Problem. By Justin D. Fulton, D.D. 12 mo. 239 pp.; paper 25 cents; cloth, $1.00.

“The memoir is exceedingly well written, and should be read and pondered. Mr. Hobart’s solution of the labor problem indicates the possession of an unusual amount of common sense, and is worthy of special attention.”—Interior, Chicago.

LETTERS TO WORKMEN AND LABORERS.

By John Ruskin, LL.D. 4to. in two volumes. Vol. I. 48 pp.; vol. II. 38 pp.; paper, each, 15c.

“Ruskin always fills his readers with delight. One goes back to his books with the pleasure felt on their first perusal. They are a mine of riches.”—The Presbyterian, Philadelphia.

THOUGHTS ON MODERATION.

By Axel Gustafson, author of a Study of the Drink Question. “The Foundation of Death.”

A valuable and convenient hand book, full of clear and potent arguments against that most insidious foe to the temperance reform—moderation. 12mo, cloth, 40 cents.

A STUDY OF THE DRINK QUESTION

“The Foundation of Death.” By the great English temperance reformer, Axel Gustafson. Pronounced to be “The Bible of Temperance. Reformers for Years to^sic Come.” Highly commended by all prominent workers in this reform. Send for descriptive circular. Price reduced from $2.00 to $1.60. By mail, $1.75.

“BEFORE AN AUDIENCE;

Or the Use of the Will in Public Speaking.” By Nathan Sheppard. A splendid book for all public speakers. The New York Evangelist says: “They are very racy and earnest talks, full of sense and most delightfully dogmatic. The author knocks to flinders the theories of elocutionists and opposes all their rules with one simple counsel: ‘Wake up your will.’” 12mo., cloth, 75 cents. Send for descriptive circular.

“BATTLE OF BIETIGHEIM.”

An American book that is creating great interest in Europe. Its author is unknown, and he is safer in Europe to-day because unknown. Just now attention is called in Europe to the striking verifications of portions of the remarkable prophesies in this book. In the democratic circles of Rome it has created a veritable sensation. A copy of it has been confiscated on the Austrian frontier, and the German government is believed to be taking steps to suppress it. Soldiers and statesmen in Europe and America have spoken of it in the highest terms. Illuminated paper cover, 12mo., 50 cents.

CAPTAIN OF THE JANIZARIES.

A historic novel of great value. By James M. Ludlow, M. D. It is both a model of romance and standard history. Dr. Field in the New York Evangelist says: “It stirs the blood in our veins and makes us eager to revisit those lands of the east, the scene of such great events, and on which the curtain is to rise again.” The Atlanta Constitution says: “The events move in a dazzling procession, with raids, battles and intrigues, culminating in the capture of Constantinople, which is described with lurid power.” Price $1.50.

DADDY DAVE.

By Mary Frances. 12mo., paper 50 cents. Is a charming story of southern home life in anti-bellum^sic days. It presents a graphic picture and dissipates many false ideas.

“Apart from the character of Daddy, which is drawn with consummate art, and his lingo, which is genuine negro speech, the description in certain scenes, both in point of pathos and humor, are above the average of the general tale writer.”—Sunday States, New Orleans, La.