February 4, 1888 Vol. III, No. 5Whole No. 57

PARTY AND CAU[SE.?]

VINCENNES, Ind., Jan. 25, 1888.

My Dear Mr. George—I hand you a private letter I received to-day from our mutual friend Bailey. I do this because it gives voice to my own ideas on the situation. Why should you abandon the leadership of the grand army of volunteers that at your call have come to the front in every state in the Union? Why disband now? Mr. Cleveland may or may not be sincere in his cry for tariff reform. One thing certain, his party will not do his bidding if he is. And he knew it when he wrote his message.

When you write an article in favor of a single tax on relative land values every man in your party cries “Amen.” Why not keep in front? You discovered and promulgated this plan of salvation for the sons of men from temporal suffering. Why should you turn aside now and let others catch up the battle cry and claim the victory for themselves when it does come? The eyes of the world are upon you. Now it is being said that you are making a deal with the democratic party.

As one of your admirers and supporters let me earnestly admonish you to avoid even the appearance of evil.

Keep at the head of the column and keep moving. You have done enough now to leave your impress upon the history of the world. Do not dim the luster of your record by turning aside or halting, simply because a politician who happens to be president called attention to himself by writing a message that had some truth recited in it. Please take no offense at what I write, but I am in earnest and so are my neighbors.

Yours, S. W. WILLIAMS.

In the letter inclosed, Warrep Worth Bailey says:

I never was more worried in my life than I am by the attitude of Mr. George just now. . . . Our friends here are hot about his position, and it is doing the cause terrible harm, if I am any judge. At any rate, it is giving republicans a chance to charge us with a sell out to the democrats, and is making our best workers throw up their hands in sheer disgust. For my part, I can find no excuse for hesitancy, or for turning back. As you say, what we want is a platform with a land plank. If somebody else wants one with a liquor plank or a tariff plank, let them make one. That’s not our business. And what could we gain by joining Cleveland in his hue and cry for lower taxes? Not a single thing that I can see. We would certainly lose our identity and our force, falling back into mere disorganized helplessness, self-conscious of the moral rottenness of the very cause to which we had made our sacrifice.

Both these gentlemen are men whom I know to be friends of the cause and friends of mine, and so far from taking offense at their frankness I welcome it as giving me opportunity to come to a better understanding [not?] only with them, but with others who may share their feelings. Let us consider the matter.

What is it that Messrs. Williams and Bailey would really have me do? Is it not to halt instead of to keep moving—to be content with advocating the application of the single tax principle to state taxation and to refuse to advocate its application to national taxation? Is it not really to tell men that they must not go near the water until they have learned to swim? What is it that they would have me lead so gallantly in national politics?—a body of men united as to what they want in national politics? or a body of men so divided on what this year is likely to be the main issue in national politics, that in order to hold them together we must, Messrs. Williams and Bailey assume, enter national politics on what are really state issues?

As to the running of a single tax party in a national campaign without taking any ground upon the subject of national taxation, I have already fully expressed my opinion. The abandonment of the clear line of principle which it would involve was admirably pointed out by Thomas G. Shearman in the last issue of THE STANDARD. Our movement is, primarily at least, an abolition movement, and for us to refuse to take any part in an effort to abolish or reduce tariff taxes, would be to refuse to take what in a national campaign is the most obvious and the most important step on the road that must be traveled before we can reach our goal. If there are some of our friends who do not see this—if there are some of our friends who have as yet so far failed to see the harmony and beauty of the single tax principle, and are still so far under the dominion of the notion that the conditions of labor can be improved by benevolence or protection, that they want to continue our monstrous national tariff taxes until we have applied our principles to state taxation—I have no quarrel with them. I am perfectly willing to agree to disagree with them in the national field, and to work with them in the field of state politics. And I shall wish them Godspeed whenever and wherever they try to advance any part of our principles. But when there is opportunity to go further I cannot consent to lag behind with them. To refuse to lend what aid I might to the free trade side of a national contest on the tariff question would be, for me, a cowardly surrender of vital principle and a stultification of all I have said and written upon the subject since I began to think clearly on economic questions. I speak only for myself and with no imputation upon others who may see these matters differently; but, for me, no consideration of policy could justify such a sacrifice of principle.

Nor, even from this standpoint, can I see the policy of such a course. If our party cannot in a national campaign take ground upon the tariff question without provoking a division in its ranks that would prove p. 1, col. 2 fatal to any hope of our polling the votes of the men who are agreed upon the application of our principle in the domain of state taxation, it is to my mind certain that in a national campaign in which the two great parties were struggling over the tariff question we could not possibly hold the votes of such men by ignoring the tariff question. The very fact that they feel strongly enough upon the matter to divide upon the question of expressing an opinion in a platform, is proof that their feelings would be strong enough to impel them to vote with one or the other of the two great parties in a national election in which the tariff question was clearly in issue. Knowing that one or the other of the two great parties must win the election, they would be irresistibly drawn into this contest, if not by the desire to secure success to one, at least by fear of the success of the other.

Any calculation of policy which ignores the element of perspective in human vision and the element of combativeness in human nature is certain to be a reckoning without one’s host. What men are asked to “stand up and be counted” for, may be in itself something they will freely admit to be very much larger than the issue on which their votes can practically tell. But the one is remote; the other immediate. The one cannot be settled till some future time; the other must be settled now. Whether it ought to be so or not, the fact remains that our mental perceptions are subject to the law that may make a chimney pot obscure a mountain. And even if they have only the smallest inclination in favor of one of the dogs, and in most cases even without any previous inclination, men will take sides in any vigorous dog fight of which they are made spectators. How, then, can we expect them to remain unmoved when all around them shall be raging a most exciting national contest over such a question as the tariff? In the event of such a campaign as is now probable, is it nct^sic certain that many of our friends who in February feel perfectly willing to “stand up and be counted” will in November feel that to “stand up and be counted” would be to “throw away” their votes?

Here, in short, is the situation: Every day as it passes makes it more and more clear that the tariff question will be the great issue in the coming presidential election. There are many of us who would not consent to go into this election as a separate party organization without taking a definite stand for free trade. There are many others who would certainly abandon the party if such a stand were taken. If, therefore, we try to make a national platform and a presidential nomination we shall certainly split.

Why then should we make the attempt? If we could not poll our whole strength, our appearance as a third party in national politics would not help the cause by giving evidence of its progress, but would tend to hide that progress and enable people to say, “See how little these single tax agitators amount to.” It may be said that we should preserve our organization. But we have not as yet any organization that is worth talking about in a national campaign, and such political and semi-political organization as we have would, it seems to me, be in better condition for future work if we kept out of the presidential campaign than if we went into it at the cost of serious defection, and then polled only a miserably small vote.

Mr. Williams says I am charged with making a deal with the democratic party, and Mr. Bailey that I am giving the republicans a chance to charge us with a sell-out to the democrats. Now, neither Mr. Williams, Mr. Bailey, nor anyone else, can imagine that I have any idea of proposing that the united labor party shall indorse Mr. Cleveland. The basis of these charges is that I do not take kindly to the scheme of ignoring the tariff question and running a presidential ticket anyhow. Messrs. Williams and Bailey can scarcely have considered what this involves. If it be assumed that our not running a ticket will be to the advantage of the democrats, it must also be assumed that our running a ticket will be to the advantage of the republicans. If, then, our refusal to run a ticket is to give rise to charges that we have sold out to the democrats, how much more certain is it that, if we do run a ticket, we will be charged with having been paid by the republicans to do so, and thus in tne^sic eyes of those who at other times might be disposed to act with us, be placed in the same contemptible position in which the Butler campaign landed the greenback labor party, that of being a mere jackal and catspaw for the republicans. Shall we not be in a much better condition to organize for future action if we take no hand in the presidential campaign and leave each individual free to do in it what he pleases, than if we come out of the presidential campaign, not only with ranks split and depleted, but with a stigma resting upon us that will effectually prevent our gaining recruits?

The trouble with Messrs. Williams and Bailey and our Chicago friends who are describes^sic as so “hot” about my position, is that they confuse the party with the principle, even if they do not indeed set party p. 1, col. 3 above principle. For my part I care little or nothing for party, for I regard parties not as ends but as means. I am not a political leader; and I do not aspire to be a political leader, not only for the reason that politics are not to my taste, but that I aspire to something much higher, a leadership of thought. I accepted the nomination for mayor of New York, not because I wanted either the place or the candidacy, but because, under then existing circumstances, that was the best way in which I could propagate principle and advance thought. I accepted a state nomination in the following year, because it still seemed that I could in that way do some good. But the abandonment of political leadership, or the finding myself without a party, has no terrors for me. It would not end my usefulness to the cause, nor would it end the usefulness of any man who really wants to advance a principle rather than build a political organization. For what we have to do to advance the principle of equal rights, is not so much to get men to vote as to get them to think. If we get men to vote with us who have not learned to think with us, our real gain is merely in the advertisement that such votes may give our principles. On the men themselves we cannot rely. But when we get a man to think with us, then we may be certain, not only that when the time comes to carry our principles into effect he will be found voting with us, but that he will bring others with him. In the one case we gain a vote for one election that is almost certain to leave us at the next. In the other we gain a life-long missionary.

No men better know than do Messrs. Bailey and Williams that there are other ways of arousing thought than by nominating candidates and conducting campaigns, for they both have worked with tongue and pen to propagate the principle of equal rights to land before there was any prospect of bringing that principle into politics. They, however, doubtless think that to get a principle into political discussion is the quickest way to get men to think about it. In this they are quite right. There is no way of so thoroughly arousing public attention to any principle as to bring it into politics, and because the interest excited by our national politics is wider and deeper than the interest excited by state politics, there is in the United States no way of promoting public education on any question that can be compared with that of bringing it into the issue of a national campaign.

But to bring a principle into politics, and especially into national politics, something more is necessary than to hold a convention and to nominate a candidate. The woman suffragists have been holding conventions and nominating presidential candidates for some time, but nobody hears of them during a presidential campaign. Besides the convention and the candidate, it is necessary that there should be some show of strength, some hope of success. Do our friends who insist so strenuously upon our entering national politics, upon the basis of ignoring a question which every one else will be talking about, suppose that we could do so with such a show of strength and hope of success that anybody would really think us seriously in politics? Instead of finding “the eyes of the world upon us,” would we not, save in a few close states, where some interest might attach to us from the speculation as to how much we might help one of the two great parties to beat the other, be much more likely to discover that no one knew of our running?

It seems clear to me that no useful purpose can be served by going into national politics under conditions that would not permit us to poll our strength, but that on the contrary the part of wisdom is that we should keep out of national politics until we can do so. And lest some of the people to whom both Messrs. Williams and Bailey allude may see in this but an evidence that I have been “making a deal with the democratic party,” it may be worth while to recall the fact that I asserted the same principle in the letter declaring the conditions on which I would accept the nomination of the associated labor organizations for mayor of New York in 1886, and, because “another failure would hurt the very cause we wish to help,” refused to take that nomination unless 30,000 men would pledge themselves to vote for me.

But to bring a principle into politics it is not always necessary to start a new party. And what I particularly wish to point out to Messrs. Williams and Bailey is, that what makes it peculiarly difficult for the united labor party to go into national politics this year is the very thing which makes such action needless. It is, that our principles are already coming into politics.

In our recent campaign in this state it was my hope and expectation that we would poll such a large vote as, by giving us the prestige of great and rapid growth, and by showing that the Democratic party was hopelessly beaten in the state of New York unless it took up economic questions, would lead to a virtual reconstruction of parties, and enable us to enter the national campaign for a clear cut fight against protection—and I, for one, never thought of entering it in any other way.

As the returns began to come in on the p. 1, col. 4 evening of election, and I realized how much less our vote was than I had hoped for, I was bitterly disappointed, but only for a few minutes. I felt as though a land slide had made impossible the road that I had hoped to travel. But hardly had I realized this, than my faith reasserted itself in the conviction that in some way I could not then see, other roads would be opened. And the speech of hope and cheer in which I expressed that faith to the audience in Webster hall that night was not forced—I felt it. Now, it seems to me that in the coming of the tariff question into national politics what I said that night is being justified.

I do not think so meanly of men as to imagine that Mr. Cleveland is not sincere in his “cry for tariff reform,” especially since all the worst elements in his party are now combining to defeat, if they can, his nomination because of it. But whether sincere or not, it is enough that he raises the cry. What may be his motives makes no more practical difference to me than the color of his eyes or the size of his shirt collar.

Nor yet do I think that the political campaign on the tariff question which it now seems certain we are to have this year, will be any the less useful because the free trade side of it is likely to be in form merely a timid proposition for a little tariff reduction, instead of a demand for the sweeping away of the whole monstrous system of robbery and demoralization. If I had had the writing of Mr. Cleveland’s message I would hardly have had him go further than he did. For Mr. Cleveland is not a propagandist; he is a practical politician. And in practical politics it is not only enough to start in the right direction; it is often best not to go at first too far. Propagandist politics are one thing; practical politics are another. If we were to-day organizing a national party with which we could only hope to promote thought by making a demonstration, I would wish to proclaim the doctrine of absolute free trade; but if there were an opportunity to enter practical politics and really struggle for mastery, I should think it wise to minimize the propositions of the party to the smallest demand that would really involve the principle.

And lest all this may seem to give color to the charges of my having made a deal with democrats to which Messrs. Williams and Bailey refer, it may be well to say that it is but a repetition of what I have said again and again to friends on both sides of the Atlantic when talking of the future of our movement and the policy that should govern it; and it may be well also to quote what I wrote on the subject befcre^sic I had been called on to take part in a political movement. I quote from that chapter of “Protection or Free Trade?” entitled, “Practical Politics:”

The working class of the United States, who have constituted the voting strength of protection, are now ready for a movement that will appeal to them on behalf of real free trade. For some years past educative agencies have been at work among them that have sapped their faith in protection. If they have not learned that protection cannot help them, they have at least become widely conscious that protection does not help them. They have been awakening to the fact that there is some deep wrong in the constitution of society, although they may not see clearly what that wrong; is they^sic have been gradually coming to feel that to emancipate labor radical measures are needed, although they may not know what those measures are.

And scattered through the great body thus beginning to stir and grope are a rapidly increasing number of men who do know what this primary wrong is—men who see that in the recognition of the equal right of all to the element necessary^sic to life and labor is the hope, and the only hope, of curing social injustice.

It is to men of this kind that I would particularly speak. They are the leaven which has in it power to leaven the whole lump.

To abolish private property in land is an undertaking so great that it may at first seem impracticable.

But this seeming impracticability consists merely in the fact that the public mind is not yet sufficiently awakened to the justice and necessity of this great change. To bring it about is simply a work of arousing thought. How men vote is something we need not much concern ourselves with. The important thing is how they think.

Now the chief agency in promoting thought is discussion. And to secure the most general and most effective discussion of a principle it must be embodied in concrete form and presented in practical politics, so that men, being called to vote on it, shall be forced to think and talk about it.

The advocates of a great principle should know no thought of compromise. They should proclaim it in its fullness, and point to its complete attainment as their goal. But the zeal of the propagandist needs to be supplemented by the skill of the politician. While the one need not fear to arouse opposition, the other should seek to minimize resistance. The political art, like the military art, consists in massing the greatest force against the point of least resistance; and, to bring a principle most quickly and effectively into practical politics, the measure which presents it should be so moderate as (while involving the principle) to secure the largest support and excite the least resistance. For whether the first step be long or short is of little consequence. When a start is once made in a right direction, progress is a mere matter of keeping on.

It is in this way that great questions always enter the phase of political action. Important political battles begin with affairs of outposts, in themselves of little moment, and are generally decided upon issue joined not on the main question, but on some minor or collateral question. Thus the slavery question in the United States came into practical politics upon the issue of the extension of slavery to new territory, and was decisively settled upon the issue of secession. Regarded p. 1, col. 5 as an end, the abolitionist might well have looked with contempt on the proposals of the republicans, but these proposals were the means of bringing to realization what the abolitionists would in vain have sought to accomplish directly.

So with the tariff question. Whether we have a protective tariff or a revenue tariff is in itself of small importance, for, though the abolition of protection would increase production, the tendency to unequal distribution would be unaffected and would soon neutralize the gain. Yet, what is thus unimportant as an end is all-important as a means. Protection is a little robber, it is true; but it is the sentinel and outpost of the great robber—the little robber who cannot be routed without carrying the struggle into the very stronghold of the great robber. The great robber is so well entrenched, and people have so long been used to his exactions, that it is hard to arouse them to assail him directly. But to help those engaged in a conflict with this little robber will be to open the easiest way to attack his master and to arouse a spirit that must push on.

To secure to all the free use of the power to labor and the full enjoyment of its products, equal rights to land must be secured.

To secure equal rights to land there is in this stage of civilization but one way. Such measures as peasant proprietary, or “land limitation,” or the reservation to actual settlers of what is left of the public domain, do not tend toward it; they lead away from it. They can affect only a comparatively unimportant class, and that temporarily, while their outcome is not to weaken land ownership but rather to strengthen it, by interesting a larger number in its maintenance. The only way to abolish private property in land is by the way of taxation. That way is clear and straightforward. It consists simply in abolishing, one after another, all imposts that are in their nature really taxes, and resorting for public revenues to economic rent, or ground value. To the full freeing of land, and the complete emancipation of labor, it is, of course, necessary that the whole of this value thould^sic be taken for the common benefit; but that will inevitably follow the decision to collect from this source the revenues now needed, or even any considerable part of them, just as the entrance of a victorious army into a city follows the rout of the army that defended it.

In the United States the most direct way of moving on property in land is through local taxation, since that is already to some extent levied upon land values. And that is doubtless the way in which the final and decisive advance will be made. But national politics dominate state politics, and a question can be brought into discussion much more quickly and thoroughly as a national than as a local question.

Now to bring an issue into politics it is not necessary to form a party. Parties are not to be manufactured; they grow out of existing parties by the bringing forward of issues upon which men will divide. We have ready to our hand, in the tariff question, a means of bringing the whole subject of taxation, and, through it, the whole social question, into the fullest discussion.

As we have seen in the inquiry through which we have passed, the tariff question necessarily opens the whole social question. Any discussion of it to-day must go further and deeper than the anti-corn law agitation in Great Britain, or than the tariff controversies of whigs and democrats, for the progress of thought and the march of invention have made the distribution of wealth the burning question of our times. The making of the tariff question a national political issue must now mean the discussion in every newspaper, on every stump, and at every cross roads where two men meet, of questions of work and wages, of capital and labor, of the incidence of taxation, of the nature and rights of property, and of the question to which all these questions lead—the question of the relation of men to the planet on which they live. In this way more can be accomplished for popular economic education in a year than could otherwise be accomplished in decades.

Therefore it is that I would urge earnest men who aim at the emancipation of labor and the establishment of social justice, to throw themselves into the free trade movement with might and main, and to force the tariff question to the front.

The truth is that the prospect of a great national contest on the tariff question offers us an opportunity that it would be worse than folly to forego. We who have fully “seen the cat” can do no more effective work than by supporting the demand for tariff reform by showing the injustice and absurdity of all tariffs. In doing this we shall advance a principle that can only be carried to its logical conclusion by the adoption of a system of taxation that will restore to all their equal rights to land. And even those of our friends who have only partially seen the cat, and who yet believe in protection as a temporary expedient, can be far more useful to the cause, if they will take active part in the tariff discussion, than if they should made^sic a compact to keep out of it. For not only does warm and earnest advocacy bring into clear light the fallacies of protection, but such men as Mr. Wilder cannot advocate protection without perforce doing a great deal to impress upon their hearers the truth that all men have equal rights to land.

A dispatch from Chicago some weeks ago stated that a movement was on foot to call a conference to form a national labor party on a platform that could be indorsed by “all the independent and clashing factions from homesteaders to socialists.” Mr. J. R. Buchanan, editor of the Chicago Labor Enquirer, who is supporting this idea, says of it:

The laboring men are not and never have been united. They have allowed themselves to be divided by the enemy and their own foibles. They have been cranky. crochety^sic and bigoted. There must be a union of the united labor party, union labor party, progressive labor party, American reform party and grange, the farmers’ alliance, anti-monopolists, homesteaders and all other political and economical organizations of bread winners. This amalgamation can be brought about by putting into it the one thing all the elements approve and by leaving out everything upon which there is a division. There is one measure that all the elements can indorse—government ownership and operation p. 1, col. 6 of the railroads and telegraphs. If the honest, non-partisan voters of the country want to completely oust the robbers and reclaim the country here is the chance.

Robert Pyne, editor of the Hartford Examiner, is advocating the same notion of “uniting all the elements,” and as organizer of the united labor party for Connecticut has issued a circular calling for a union that will “bring the scattered forces of reform together.” He wants “the leading spirits of the different ism^sic to unite,” not with the understanding “that their different ideas are to die or even to be forgotten, but that the first objective point must be to capture the power essential to the placing of any of them on the statute books.” “Is it not plain,” he says, “that the road to reform is only through the union of forces?”

And the union of forces can only be secured by each holding in abeyance his own special hobby and agreeing on some plan in advance that must lead up to this union. Let those representatives meet, as suggested, and after due examination of every issue presented, then each of such issues be voted on for acceptance, putting the two receiving the highest number of votes against each other for a final vote, or dropping the lowest until the two highest are reached and standing on them. For instance, let the sole issue be the land question or governmental control of monopolies, or both. Let it be the Henry George idea, or the “graduated” idea, whichever is determined on, with the understanding that if ever the party is successful all the different plans will be examined anew by the new representatives elected, they in turn choosing which shall first be acted on.

Where is the honest, patriotic reformer, who is not at once a fool or an egotist, that can object to some such scheme as this?

The particular scheme Mr. Pyne does not care about. In fact, as he explains in a letter, he thinks it might be best to express in the platform of this union party only the desire of the party for reform, leaving it to the representatives of reform elected to say what reform they should first inaugurate.

What is this preposterous scheme to twist sand into a rope, but the carrying to absurdity of the very same idea that in many minds gives plausibility to the notion that the united labor party could cut any figure in a national campaign while ignoring the very issue on which that campaign must turn?

The many abortive attempts to get up labor parties and reform parties in the United States on this basis of compromising differences and pooling issues ought to be enough, if there were nothing else, to show that parties cannot be manufactured first and furnished with principles afterward. It is indeed true that the two parties which constitute the normal political divisions in every country may hold together for a considerable time after the life of distinctive principle has gone out of them, by virtue of the strength of organization, the influence of habit and traditions, “the cohesive power of public plunder” or the hope of it. But a new party, which necessarily has none of these things, can only grow up by virtue of the attractive force of a principle strong enough to unite men in a common purpose and to hold them together.

What prevents the men who desire improvement in the condition of labor from uniting together to secure it, is the want of a common agreement as to how that improvement is to be secured. What prevents the union of those who desire reform, is that they are not agreed as to what would be reform nor as to the measures by which it could be had. Therefore it is, that the real work of emancipating labor and bringing about reform is the work of education.

Nor yet is it possible that a party in itself any purer than existing parties could arrive at the point of equal numbers and power. For “honest voters” cannot change their party names any quicker than can the politicians. The only way “honest non-partisan voters” or “honest patriotic reformers” can get any reform, is by the growth of such a sentiment in regard to what particular reforms they shall demand as will compel parties to carry out these reforms under penalty of losing votes.

In short, if we would carry out any reform, we must get a sufficient number of men to want that reform. This being done, the reform will be accomplished; under what party name should be a matter of indifference. The fear lest “others catch up the battle cry and claim the victory for themselves when it does come” is the fear of the politician. He who would urge on a great reform will rejoice when others take up its battle cry. And provided the victory be won he will care but little who may claim it.

HENRY GEORGE.

Worcester Sauce.

WORCESTER, Mass.—(1) Do not all improvements come through labor on land?

2. To exchange such improvements after passing the barter system, is it not necessary that labor shall receive a token to show increase of property, and be an order on the same?

3. Is not said token called money, and if issued at cost, would it not be cash?

4. If issued at cost to represent all improvements produced by labor, would there be any demand for credits?

5. Is not capital of to-day the result of credits of the past and present? if so, are not the demands of capital a tax on industry the same as internal revenue^sic?

6. Under this system, how can all taxes be placed on the land when the government and state collects but a small portion of the tax taken from labor, the great corporations, under the head of capital, being the principal collectors?

7. If the government should take the railroads and telegraphs under the right of eminent domain at first cost, how would you pay for them without taxing labor for what it has already produced?

8. If you tax labor for products of the past, how can we have free trade?

GALEN P. ATHERTON.

1. All improvements are produced by labor from land.

2. Yes.

3. The token is not always called money. It may be and often is money; but it may just as well be. and frequently^sic is, bank checks, promissory notes, due bills, orders on storekeepers, book credits, and so forth. The money token is usually called cash, though it is also quite common to speak of checks and other orders for the immediate payment of money as cash.

4. In all probability, yes. If there were no money at all and all business were carried on by barter, there would be credits; why then should we suppose there would be no credits if there was a money token to represent every unit of value labor produced?

5. The capital of to-day is not the result of credits of the past and present; it is the products of labor that are in course of exchange—the wheat that is changing into flour, the flour that is exchanging for sugar, the mills that are changing into their products. The demands of capital are not a tax on industry, but a division of the joint produce of labor and capital. When you speak of capital you probably have in mind corporation stock and bonds, mortgages, government securities, etc. None of these are capital. Some of them to some extent represent capital, as the honest stock and bonds of corporations; but watered stock, fraudulent bonds and government securities are mere forms of taxation, and their demands are as you say, “a tax on industry the same, as internal revenue.”

6. If corporations were permitted to enjoy monopolies they would in effect levy a tax on the people, and therefore the single tax would not wholly effect its purpose; but it is reasonable to suppose that the single tax may lift such a burden from the shoulders of the people as to make them free to think, and if they think they will put an end to the private tax of monopolies.

(7–8) If your house were taken for public purposes, would you regard the payment of its value to you as a taxation of labor for what it had already produced? To pay corporations for the value of their tangible property is one thing; to pay them for their franchises—their plundering power—is a very different thing.

Origin of Employer and Employe.

BALTIMORE, Md.—Whence sprang the custom of employer and employed? Is it inherent in the constitution of man the same as the faculty of exchange^sic.

Is its origin not owing to the fact of one man having better opportunities owing to monopolization of land?

Is a state of society where the custom of employer and employed exists better than one where each man is his own employer?

Is there an economy in such a custom cf employer^sic and employed?

Is it another form of division of labor?

Under free land would the custom of employer and employed exist, or would the tendency be to produce a state where there would be a larger self-employing class and consequent self reliance and independence?

By answering these questions you will greatly oblige.

JOHN SALMON.

The relation of employer and employed springs, historically, from the relation of master and slave and is traceable to the legal right that some have to the land which is denied to others. But I think that the relation would have been produced with advancing civilization even if slavery had never existed and the natural rights of all in the land had been protected by law. Minute division of labor might give rise to it. Under a free land system the relation of employer and employed would continue or would give way to co-operation, accordingly as experience proved the one or the other to be better for the laborer; but in either case the laborer would be self reliant and independent.

A Methodist in Distress.

EDGE HILL, Pa.—A good old Methodist now living here tells me he is sixty-five years old; has worked hard all his life; has now saved a little money, and has $10,000 in real estate—farm land; he and his wife are living nicely on his income, and he wishes to know what will become of them if his rent is taken from him.

Tell the old gentleman to take out his pencil and set down all the taxes he now pays directly to the tax collector; having done that, let him get a table of tariff duties, and figure out as nearly as possible what taxes he pays on the things he buys, being careful to set down the minimum figures. Then let him add all these items and subtract the result from his income. This will show how he gets along under the present system of taxation.

Having ascertained that, let him do a little figuring to see how he would fare under the single tax. He will not need his table of tariff duties, for there will be no tariff, so this sum will be easier than the other one. What he must do first is to imagine that all the improvements, buildings, fences and so forth, are swept away from his farm so that nothing but the bare land remains; then let him write down the value of his farm in that condition. Now,

p. 2, col. 2 as five per cent a year on the selling value is about all that land is worth, let him ascertain what five per cent of his land value will be. That will give the entire tax that Mr. George thinks he ought to pay. Then if he will subtract that tax from his income he will know how he would fare under the single tax.

I am inclined to think that he will figure himself out a richer man under the single tax than he is now. So much for the economic aspects of the question.

Now, for the moral phase. Suppose he had invested $10,000 in slaves, would his loss be any real Christian objection to emancipation? If he hesitates, tell him to read the Sermon on the Mount, with a good honest amen at the end of it, before answering. If he says yes, leave him to the Lord and turn your attention to a more promising case. But if he says no, ask him what better exclusive right some men can have to own land, on which and out of which all must live, than some men can have to own other men? Each is a conventional legal right, not only having no authority in nature, but being in direct contravention of the laws of nature. Let him think over this, and if his mind is clear and his heart honest, you need have no fear of the answer. He will be for rendering unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, though it leave him nothing: and then his reward will come, for he will see that in giving up the income from a little piece of comparatively valueless land he will become joint owner with his fellow men of all the land of the commonwealth.

Loose Thinking or Tight Writing, Which?

NEW YORK.—I inclose the following slip from a paper. Will you please answer?

A. D. C.

WHAT IS GEORGEISM?

1. It is absolute and entire free trade, such as the world has never known.

2. It is a single tax for all expenses; national, state and local. Wholly and entirely levied upon land.

3. It is the exemption from all taxation of whatever kind or nature of bonds, money and all personal property.

4. It places all titles to land in the government and prohibits all private ownership in land under any circumstances.

5. It makes every man a tenant at will of the government with no individual ownership of anything but portable property.

6. It confiscates the land from present owners and provides no remuneration whatever.

7. It repudiates all mortgage obligations and makes no provision for an equivalent.

8. It enables the owners of money and personal estate to burden the owners of land with taxes from which there is no escape.

9. It enables the owners of money to vote taxes upon others which they themseves^sic will not be compelled to help pay.

10. It relieves from the burdens of taxation all that class of property which is best able to pay, and places it upon those least able to bear the burden.

11. It puts a premium upon idleness and money, and a burden upon honest toil and production.

12. It is class legislation in its most objectionable fcrm.

1. True. The reason the world has never known it is because tyranny has found profit and power in “protection.”

2. True, except that the tax is to be levied not on land, but on land values. As it is not probable that the writer knows the difference his error may be attributable to a desire to economize his own labor.

3. Quite true. To tax these things is to discourage the production of what they represent and to confiscate private property.

4. The writer will have to explain how a tax can be put on land when nobody owns land, and how government can at once own all land and tax all land. The statement is not true. What this bold economist means, if he knows what he means, or if, indeed, he means anything, is that “Georgeism” teaches that exclusive title to or ownership of land is not a natural right, as exclusive ownership of labor products is.

5. It proposes to abolish taxes on buildings and personal property and levy all taxes on land values, thus securing to every one unqualified property in all the products of labor that he owns and giving to the community the annual value of the land he occupies. This does not make every man a tenant at will of the government any more than he is now a tenant at will, since we tax land values now, nor does it deny individual ownership of anything but portable property, unless such products as buildings are portable.

6. It taxes the owners of land according to the value of the land they own. That taxpayers ought to be remunerated for the taxes they pay in any other way than through the benefits they enjoy in common with the rest of the community is a proposition the novelty of which is equaled only by its absurdity.

7. This is a discovery in “Georgeism” which no reader of Mr. George’s writings has ever made.

8. The owners of valuable land, yes; but it also prevents the owners of valuable land from continuing to burden consumers with taxes from which they cannot escape and compelling producers to support a class of mere earth owners in luxurious idleness as a condition of being permitted to produce.

9. It enables the whole community, whether money owners or not, to determine what shall be done with land values which they create, instead of allowing a few people to put these common funds into their private pockets, as they do now.

10. The class of people best able to pay taxes is the class that gets something for nothing. All owners of valuable land do get something for nothing, namely, the value of their land. As it is not proposed to tax them more than the value of their land, their taxes will never be a burden upon their industry.

11. It is easy to understand that a tax on products of labor is a burden on production; but the proposition that a tax on land values, which no one produces, and exempting all products from taxation, is a burden on production, requires elucidation.

12. It is class legislation—legislation which relieves the work class^sic from taxes on what they earn, and makes the idle class disgorge the tribute they levy. It is objectionable to selfish idlers who understand it, but to workers who understand it, entirely acceptable.

The author of the foregoing remarkable

p. 2, col. 3 condensation of “Georgeism,” if not a tight writer, is certainly a loose thinker.

Notes.

W. D. VINCENT, Clay Center, Kan.—It is not disputed that there are other questions beside the land question which are important, but it is disputed that there are any which are as necessary. The recovery of the land will undermine other monopolies; the destruction of other monopolies would only fortify the land monopoly.

M. SEMS, Leonardsville, Kan.—There is a vast difference between money monopoly and land monopoly; just such a difference, essentially, as there is between a labor saving machine monopoly and land monopoly. Money, like labor saving machines, is a convenience, to be deprived of which is, in our civilization, to suffer; but land is a necessity, to be deprived of which is to die.

J. W. WALKER, Houston, Tex.—If an improvement was so old as to have ceased to be distinguishable from the land itself, it would no longer be an improvement, nor would there be any injustice in treating its value as part of the value of the land. Made ground is a case in point. If a man had improved stony, weedy and brushy land so that the land was worth ten times as much as contiguous land which was naturally better. I would not go back^sic for generations to find the original condition of his land, but would value it for assessment as if it had been naturally of the same quality as contiguous land. For example: Suppose a lake which some one fills in and makes of it useful land; for a time the filling in would be an improvement, but at some time the value of that improvement would no longer be distinguishable from the value of the location. There would then be no reason for exempting it from taxation. The work of the man who filled in the lake would be analogous to the work of an inventor whom we reward with a limited monopoly.

LOUIS F. POST.

One of New York’s Leading Lawyers Advocates a Change in Our Voting System.

At a recent meeting of the Brooklyn citizens’ league the following letter was read from Mr. Elihu Root:

President, etc., Brooklyn Citizens’ League: Dear Sir—Since writing you that I would be unable to attend the dinner of the Citizens’ league this evening and to discuss before the league the subject of “The State Distribution of Ballots,” I have been asked to write you a letter giving my idea of the reason why there should be a new law upon that subject. Our laws have fully kept pace with the changing conditions under which the right of suffrage is exercised in respect of (1) ascertaining who is entitled to vote, and (2) securing a fair count of the ballots after they are cast.

As to the intermediate step of enabling the qualified elector to cast the kind of vote he wishes to cast, our laws are far behind the necessities of the time.

We have outgrown the condition in which it is practicable for voters to write their own ballots. This fact is recognized by chapter 366 of the laws of 1880, which provides for printed ballots and carefully prescribes the kind of paper and type to be used in order that all ballots may be uniform in external appearance and easy to be counted.

The preparation and distribution of ballots, however, is left to voluntary action.

As voters do not ordinarily own printing presses, this must be the action of somebody besides the individual voter. He has no control over the people who do it. The state does not undertake to control them by any law.

Political parties have hitherto undertaken it, and voters have been in the habit of relying upon party machinery to furnish them at the polls with the ballots which they wish to cast.

Party machinery, however, has proved, especially in the larger cities, inadequate to the effective performance of this duty.

It is easy enough in small communities, where everbody^sic is known and public sentiment is a punitive force; but in large communities, party organizations have proved ineffective in this respect, because they have not the power to detect, to try, and to punish offenses; and their control, therefore, over their agents who undertake the distribution of ballots is insufficient.

Two very great evils have resulted from this system of irresponsible voluntary distribution of ballots: First, that through favoritism or fraud or bribery, the subordinate political agents, whose duty it is to furnish a particular kind of ballot at the polls, fail to furnish any, and the voter, who wishes that kind of ballot and comes to the polls expecting to get it, gets some other kind of ballot or none at all, and is thus practically deprived of the means of voting as he wishes; second, that the distributor of ballots can accompany the voter, and, if the voter be willing, keep the ballot which he has furnished in sight from the time when it is placed in the voter’s hands until it is deposited in the box, so that the secrecy of the ballot is destroyed, and intimidation on the one hand and bribery on the other may be employed precisely as if the voting were viva voce.

The first evil mentioned is very notorious after every election. The newspapers are full of reports, and well founded reports, that at such and such polling places no tickets for such a candidate were to be found, and that at such and such other polling places no tickets for other candidates were to be found. These facts frequently involve wide and thickly populated districts, in which many thousands of votes are cast. They mean not merely that a candidate or a party has been defrauded, but that many American citizens entitled to vote have been defrauded of their right, because defective laws, which require them to vote in a particular way, fail to secure them the means to vote in that way.

I doubt if the extent of the second evil which I have mentioned is fully understood.

Fifteen thousand names were registered from tramp lodging houses in New York city in 1887. It is safe to say that 14,000 of these were registered for the purpose of selling their votes. The business seems to have been reduced to a system, under which the lodging house keepers make the contracts.

There is trustworthy evidence of eye witnesses, who have seen such contracts carried out. The tramps are marshalled in the lodging houses and marched in a body to the polling places, accompanied by the ballot distributor, holding up in plain sight in one hand the ballot which he has given them, so that he may see that they are not changed until they are actually deposited in the ballot box. When that has been accomplished they proceed to some appointed rendezvous and, upon his testimony as to their performance of the contract, they receive the $2 or $5, or whatever may be the consideration, for the vote.

Of course, if each one of these tramps had full sets of tickets for all the candidates and if, instead of their being accompanied to the polls by the distributor, they were required to vote in such manner that no one but themselves could know what ballots they voted, there would be practically an end of bribery, because no one would pay money upon the word of a man who would sell his vote.

The plan of distribution of ballots by the state aims to remedy these two evils. It is very simple in theory. It is to substitute for the irresponsible and uncontrollable alleged representatives of political parties, who now undertake to furnish ballots, representatives of those parties who will be under the control of the law, who will be known, upon whom responsibility can be fixed, and who can be punished if they fail to do their duty; and at the same time to so arrange the process on the part of the voter, of receiving, selecting and depositing his ballots, that the ballot will be really secret, and there will be no evidence, upon which he can either be punished by those who have the power to intimidate, or rewarded by those who have promised to bribe.

I think that such a plan can be successfully worked out in its practical details and embodied in a statute which will not sensibly interfere with our existing system of elections.

Such a law would not introduce into our system any foreign or incongruous ideas, but would be the natural development of the fundamental ideas upon which all our election system has been based, viz.: that it is the duty of the state to guarantee to every voter an opportunity to vote, and that the secrecy of the ballot should be inviolable. The result of any individual attempt to formulate such a law must necessarily be in the first instance imperfect. Several drafts have already been prepared. One has been introduced in the legislature. They ought to receive the careful consideration of every one who believes in the general principle of the proposed change. I have no doubt that upon the basis which they furnish, and such suggestions as will be made, a practicable working law will be produced, and I hope the best efforts of the Citizens’ league of Brooklyn will be given to secure its enactment.

Respectfully yours,

ELIHU ROOT.

Spreading in Indiana.

PERU, Ind.—The single tax idea is wonderfully contagious. In this town of 6,000 people

p. 2, col. 5 we now have fifty avowed single tax men and many more who are inclining that way, and we are planning some public discussions for the near future.

R. H. SMITH.

The Buffalo Anti-Poverty Society Want a Lecturer.

BUFFALO, N. Y.—The anti-poverty society of Buffalo are trying to push forward the movement, but are laboring under the disadvantage of not having among their numbers any good public speakers.

We believe that in this city of 240,000 inhabitants a good, energetic man, who had the good of this cause at heart, a clergyman who would preach natural religion and anti-poverty ideas, could do immense good and find a harvest ready for reaping.

If among your readers there be such a man he will find a large number of earnest men here who will co-operate with him and assist him to the best of their ability.

Any communication addressed to C. C. Whittemore, lock box 274, Buffalo, N. Y., will receive careful consideration.

S. C. ROGERS, For Committee, Anti-Poverty Society.

Opinions from Dunkirk.

DUNKIRK, N. Y.—At a meeting of Land and labor club No. 122, Dunkirk, N. Y., the following resolution was unanimously adopted.

Resolved, That we, the members of land and labor club No. 22, favor the nominating of a full presidential ticket in the coming national campaign.

At a regular quarterly session of district assembly 148, K. of L., held at Jamestown, N. Y., on Jan. 16, the following resolution was offered by the delegates from L. A. 6,556 of Dunkirk, and were unanimously adopted.

Resolved, That the delegate from this district assembly to the next session of the general assembly be and is hereby instructed to use his utmost endeavors to have substituted in place of principle XIII of the declaration of principles of our order the following clause, “That a single tax on land values be levied and that all other taxes be gradually abolished.

JOHN NEIMAN, Pres. L. and L. Club. JNO. J. LIPPERT, D. M. W., D. A. 148 K. of L.

Rev. Albert Walkley at Mount Pleasant.

MT. PLEASANT, Mich.—I am pleased to let you know that we have broken the ice and commenced the job of educating the people of Mt. Pleasant on the single tax. We had the Rev. Albert Walkley of Manistee, Mich., to deliver a lecture on Monday, January 23, in Firemen’s hall, and about a hundred people were present, among whom were three ministers. Mr. Walkley delivered a very telling and eloquent lecture and was listened to with the greatest attention for the space of two hours and a quarter.

P. C. SULLIVAN.

Why Should Not the Government Manage the Railways?

Real Estate Record and Guide.

> President Cleveland, in his message transmitting the report of the Pacific railroad commissioners to congress, expressed himself as utterly opposed to any scheme that would necessitate the government taking possession and running the road for the benefit of the business community. But why not? Outside of Great Britain every government in Europe manages vast railroad properties. In Germany the principal lines in every direction are run by the state under the direct management of a military staff. The service is excellent, honest and extremely profitable to the treasuries of the several nations. In Germany taxation is comparatively light, notwithstanding its vast military establishments, because the railroad profit which in this country swells the fortunes of the Goulds, Vanderbilts, Huntingtons, Stanfords and the hosts of other railroad millionaires, in that country is paid into the national treasury and thus benefits the community by lightening taxation. In view of the new transcontinental lines recently opened to the Pacific it would be very desirable that the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific should be conducted by our government under the direction of our army engineers. It is absurd to say that the work could not be done better and cheaper than it has been under the management of the railroad corporations in the past. These roads which cost about $95,000,000 to construct to-day represent an outlay by Gould, Huntington and their associates of over $460,000,000.

How Assessors Can Create a Boom.

Burlington, Iowa, Justice.

> A citizen of Burlington who, by skill and economy made a good living, and saved enough to invest in several slices of land in the city, some of which he improved, and was duly punished through the law “in such cases made and provided,” has some lots formerly assessed at $10, but recently raised to $30; which raise admonished him to hunt a purchaser, lest next time they may be assessed at more than one tenth of their value. Some of these lots he sold at $300 each, and some are held at $750. Now, if such a slight change in assessments causes the sale and improvement of so many lots, think how rapidly vacant lots would be bought and built on if they were assessed in proportion to the rates extorted from the owners of small lots and humble cottages. What a building boom we should witness, and what an improvement in general business consequent on the employment of productive labor.

p. 2, col. 6

The Old Communal Land System vs. the New Dispensation.

Reynolds’s Weekly, London.

> The highlanders are a strong, brave, hospitable, religious, and, withal, simple minded race, who cling to their mountain glens and their unsophisticated, patriarchal habits with a love surpassing almost the love of women. By the unbroken tradition of a thousand years the brown mountain sides and the more fertile straths have belonged to their warlike ancestors of legend and of song. And in what is emphatically called among them “The Book,” which is perused in the highlands as it is perused nowhere else, they read “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the earth He hath given to the sons of men.” And again, “Woe to them that join house to house, that lay field to field till there be no place that they may be placed alone in the earth.” > > By ancient custom, and by religious precept, it is written on their innermost hearts that the land is common property, and that landlords are an abomination in the sight of God, and as such, a necessary scourge to man. The old tribal system of land tenure did not recognize the institution of landlordism. The office of chief was purely executive and elective—elective generally from the members of a given family, in whose veins the blood of the founder of the clan was supposed to have been directly transmitted. This chief had a portion of the common tribe land set apart for his maintenance during good behavior, in much the same way as the crown lands were originally set apart for the support of Saxon kingship. If he had a larger share allotted to him than his fellow clansmen, it was to enable him to discharge efficiently the heavy duties of hospitality expected from the father of a family, which embraced every member of the tribe. > > And this was the theory, and in a great measure the practice, in the highlands down to the rising of 1745. Then it was that the chiefs for the first time ceased to be chiefs, and were converted by law or usurpation into uncovenanted, rack renting landlords. For the clansmen the “waefu’-day” of Culloden was a disaster indeed. From being the freest of the free men they sank to a level of worthlessness inferior, as it is proved, to that of sheep or deer. In a district where there are neither manufacturing nor mining industries the condition of a rack rented tenant at will is the most miserable imaginable. It adds constant uncertainty as to the future to insurmountable poverty. > > Yet it was only toward the close of the Napoleonic wars that the highlanders began in earnest to feel the sharp tooth of the wrong that had been done them. From 1745 to 1815 Great Britain was engaged in ceaseless foreign wars, to which both chiefs and clansmen streamed uninterruptedly. Between 1775 and 1808 eighty thousand soldiers were recruited in the highlands. They were ever foremost in the fight in every quarter of the world. And what has been the reward of them and theirs? In 1807, when the flower of highland manhood was serving with British standards abroad, the evictions of their dependent and infirm relations began, and from that moment till now they have more or less been going on. > > It was first discovered that sheep was more profitable than man, and then that deer was a shade more profitable than sheep. The heather by natural process in the highlands constantly tends to recover lost ground wherever the human biped is sacrificed to the quadruped. Consequently vast tracts, from which the industrious clansmen have been expelled, have resumed all the savage aspects of the primeval wilderness. The desolation which now reigns in large districts of the highlands, once jocund with the merry laughter of children and the lowing of cattle, affects the traveler with a profound melancholy, intensified at every other turn by vestiges of what were once happy human habitations. . . . > > The faults of the English landlord are many, and those of the Irish rack-renter are proverbial. But for a downright callous rascal, destitute of all bowels of compassion for human woe, commend us to the highland chief turned landlord. He invariably sends the devil to do his bargaining for him in the shape of a “factor,” who is generally the hardest hearted villain in the whole neighborhood. . . . > > How highlanders, of all men, who have few equals and no superiors on the battlefield, should have permitted themselves to “hear it a’, and fear and tremble^sic,” so long, is the marvel. They have fought valiantly in every cause except their own; but now there are signs not a few that they intend, if their wrongs are not promptly redressed, to display somewhat of their pristine prowess on their own account. The Bible, the “Shorter Catechism” and “Progress and Poverty” are the chief ethical authorities in the highlands. There the “Prophet of San Francisco” is honored as he is nowhere else. His epoch making work has truly been read and assimilated with marvelous avidity. Mr George’s positions meet Donald’s notions exactly. To him they have transferred the allegiance they once owed to their chiefs. He has, metaphorically speaking, become the father of all the clans by taking up the leadership which they have so shamelessly abandoned.

Beginning to See the Cat.

St. Louis Building Trades Journal.

> It is notorious that much property situated in the best districts of the city, which is now vacant, owned by absentees, is held simply for speculation, awaiting the rise in price which is sure to result from the industry and enterprise of neighboring owners. These vacant lots, in no district more numerous than in the busiest and most progressive thoroughfares west of Seventeenth street, are not merely eyesores and fountains of filth for the neighboring residences and business buildings, but they are an actual dead weight and obstruction to improvement. The owners manage to escape all share of the public burdens, except the inevitable direct taxation, and this they would evade if they could. In utter disregard of others’ comfort, even of the commonest claims of decency, they refuse to sprinkle in summer when the dust is flying, and thus neutralize the efforts and expenditures that others make to keep clean, for wind and dust are no respecter of metes and bounds. Their property is made to become a common nuisance, and all that they care for themselves is the enormous profits they can see in the future, when they can gather where they have not sown, and enrich themselves at the cost of others. > > The true remedy for all this evil condition is, of course, to cover the vacant lots with buildings. But the class of property owners of whom we speak will not do this until they can see an enormous interest or values^sic that have grown from the labor of others. There is a piece of property which was bought thirty years ago for $250, but which now has 100 feet frontage on an improving street. To-day it is worth $10,000, and yet the owner continues to refuse to build, fighting against every cent of taxation meanwhile, in the hopes that other people may make his land worth double its present value. One way to bring such men to their senses is to compel them to bear their share of the expense of efficient municipal government. If they are forced to pay—and they ought to pay double—as much as their neighbors, compelled to prevent their vacant lots becoming public nuisances, they will speedily change their course. When they see that it costs much money to keep vacant property in St. Louis they will either build themselves or sell to those who will.

What a Boom Drives Away.

Correspondence Denison, Texas, Gazeteer^sic.

> Suppose a man who comes to Denison on the wings of a boom seeking a farm fails, because of the high price of land, to secure his prime object. The five bales of cotton he might have raised are not brought forth. Bnt is this all^sic there is of it? No! Several pairs of shoes which would have been produced by a Denison shoemaker are not wanted. The blacksmith might have had work which he does not get. The merchant fails to secure profits that he might have gained. Those five bales of cotton valued at say two hundred dollars, are not raised. But the loss to commerce is many times two hundred dollars, in the way of exchanges.

DR. M’GLYNN SPEAKS ON THE CHURCH AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT.

More About the Workings of the Ecclesiastical Machine Here and Abroad—What the Church Should Be, and What it Is.

The Academy of Music was as crowded as usual last Sunday night on the occasion of the fortieth meeting of the Anti-poverty society. Dr. McGlynn lectured on “The Church and the Labor Movement,” and dealt the ecclesiastical machine some telling blows. Dr. Edward Malone of Brooklyn was to have presided, but was unable through illness to appear on the platform, so that Mr. Croasdale officiated in his stead. Through him Miss Munier conveyed to the audience her thanks for the success of the benefit tendered her. Miss Munier sang “The New Crusaders’ Marseillaise,” the words written by herself, to the tune of the French hymn, and received an encore. Dr. McGlynn was received with the usual rapturous applause. He said:

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: I am announced to speak to you this evening on “The Church and the Labor Movement.” It is a most sad and pitiable thing that the announcement must call up in the minds of most of you an antagonism. I might, perhaps, as far as your expectations are concerned, have announced the subject as “The Church versus the Labor Movement” or “The Labor Movement versus the Church.” (Applause.)

It is a matter of regret that any such antagonism should seem to exist. “The Church and the Labor Movement!” Christ’s kingdom on earth on the one hand, and the yearning, the striving, the struggling of crushed masses of men everywhere, who are hoping for a better day, on the other. Why, in God’s name, should there be any antagonism between them? (Great applause.)

The Man of Sorrows, the Carpenter’s Son, came to break down the barriers that separate men from men. The church, if it is anything—and I do believe that it is Christ’s society on earth—is simply to carry out in the world, till the end of time, the beneficent mission of Jesus of Nazareth; to go out to rescue the masses of men, for whom his heart yearned so much; to teach them to labor for the coming of that better day of liberty, of justice and of truth on earth. It was this church, this beginning of the kingdom of heaven on earth that emancipated the slave, that raised women from the condition of the mere toy, the plaything of men, to make her the honored being that she is to-day throughout Christendom.

Christ died that he might emancipate all nations. As long as the church retained fresh the memory of this mission—as long as she remained pure and humble—she won the allegiance, willing or unwilling, of the minds of men. She compelled respect even from her worst enemies. Men were converted, not so much by the actual miracles of Christ and the church as by the greater miracle of the sanctity and heroic devotion of vast multitudes of men. But the Roman emperors who for three centuries had done their utmost to extinguish the light of the church at length found it good policy to become Christians, so as finally to subdue by favor the church that they had never been able to conquer by force. And in proportion as the church accepted the favors the masses of men were alienated from her, and slipped back into a brutal ignorance, worse than pagan barbarism.

The ages of faith were also unfortunately too largely ages of ignorance and barbarism. The church did not preach the glad tidings with the same fresh fervor as of old. She was busy hoarding her gold, providing for the administration of her temporalities. She was busy building up, at the expense of the liberty and independence of Italy, a hated temporal throne for the seat of him who is the vicar on earth of the Man who had nowhere to lay his head. And the masses of laboring men, who had hoped for emancipation through the glad tidings preached by the Christ, found themselves as much the slaves of the church as they had been of the temporal lords.

The church herself became a feudal mistress. Her pontiffs and her bishops were kings and great potentates; and they accepted temporal benefits with all their accursed responsibilities of supplying weapons of war and men to wield them. And, time and again, they scrupled not to lead Christian men to warfare to butcher their brethren.

And the very men who had been emancipated from chattel slavery found themselves reduced to industrial slavery, chiefly maintained by the assertion and extension of the principle of individual right to a monopoly of the general bounties of nature. (Applause.) The church of Christ became one of the greatest of landlords. Her institutious^sic were supported chiefly by being endowed with the lands of the people. So that the people, as tenants of the church, were cursed with this horrid slavery of landlordism. (Applause.)

It is this diverting of Christ’s society from the simplicity of its original mission that has transformed it into a kingdom which the very men whom it has emancipated now hate with a loathing of which you can have no conception. The ecclesiastical machine which controls so largely the destinies of the church has become so perverted by contact with this world, by its alliance with despots, by insisting upon maintaining for the supreme pontiff an absolutely despotic throne and his inalienable inheritance, that you have to look to other countries for some gleam of hope for freedom. And the sad spectacle has been witnessed of Italy obtaining her freedom without the sympathy of the ecclesiastical authorities, but in spite of them.

There are instances here and there of men in high places who have had not merely the heads to think, but courage to dare to stand up and say, in the face of the ecclesiastical machine, that they were on the side of national aspirations whether they happened to interfere with the politics of the pope or not. (Applause.) Father Lacordaire, who spoke with angel tongue of the beauties of liberty, was such a one. But he was silenced; he was ordered to Rome, and as if in despair for the cause of liberty he withdrew into the cloister. He was upon the point of leaving Europe and coming to New York to accept the vicar generalship offered to him by Bishop Dubois, and I think most of you will agree with me that if he had come we would have had almost as wise, as liberal, as elegant and American a vicar general as we have had since his time. (Laughter.)

It is one of the curses of this feudal system that has bedeviled the fair church of Christ, that those who become proselytes actually become far worse than those who were to the manner born. They understand that if they would not impair their own usefulness, and so fail to be promoted to higher positions, it is not wise to talk much of the rights of the people, but rather to teach the people their duties. It is not wise even to hint that authority can ever be abused, but rather to teach the people blindly to obey every authority. (Applause.) It is better to teach the people that they should not merely take their religion from Rome, but that, in order to be really goody goody Catholics, they must also take

p. 3, col. 2 their politics from Rome. (Laughter and applause.) Now it is true that this is false theology. It is not the teaching of the Catholic church. But it is the teaching that is most likely to secure honors and dignities for the teacher.

It might be said to young men aspiring to ecclesiastical positions: Be wise in time. Be always on the side of authority and do not trouble yourselves about liberty. Do not bother yourselves too much about the disinherited masses of men. With the grace of God, with prudence, sagacity and good health, you may in good time become a monsignor or a bishop. Or who knows but the Lord in his unspeakable mercy might even have a cardinal’s hat in store for you.

One or two bishops of the Catholic church have said to me in private: “Well, yes, after all that seems to be rational doctrine.” One of them, after arguing with me five years ago, said: “If you should be called upon to speak on the subject again, I don’t see how you can take any other ground except that of nationalization of the land.” That bishop recently, I understand, thinks that I have gone to the dogs; and you will hear no word from him in defense of this doctrine, although he actually advised me five years ago, if I should ever have occasion, to preach precisely that doctrine. There are hundreds and hundreds of Catholic priests in this country in full sympathy with this doctrine, but such is the horrible despotism of the machine that they are afraid of their lives to whisper their assent even with closed doors. (Applause.) And here and there a pastor or vicar general, as I go about the country, anticipates my coming by denouncing from the altar our party, our anti-poverty society, abusing his position, trying to do what the pope has not dared to do, to forbid people to come and hear my lecture. (Applause.)

We go outside of the precincts of the ecclesiastical machine and we are put to shame by finding that while there is much stupidity and much ridiculous conservatism in all ecclesiastical machines, there is no such crushing despotism in any other. There are clergymen of nearly all the denominations who are not afraid to come out and say that they are in entire sympathy with us, and no man dares to say that they shall be thrown out of their ecclesiastical commissions. If they have a quarrel with certain members of their congregations they are still in good standing, and with the faithful few can go and erect another pulpit and still be in good standing in their respective denominations. But here is a man who, not for any violation of the law of the church, not for teaching any false doctrine—for the doctrine even yet has never been officially examined by them, and as far as it has been examined at all, much as they would like to condemn it, they could not find anything in it to condemn (applause)—but for teaching a doctrine that is in full consonance with the Christian doctrine, which has never been condemned and never can be condemned by the Catholic church, a man is suspended, excommunicated, forbidden to preach, and even to refresh his soul with the sacraments of Christ, until he shall have degraded his manhood and his citizenship to a horrid foreign usurping machine.

And we find comfort by appealing to the Episcopal church, one of whose ministers is almost, we may say, our poet laureate, whose verses are sung here week after week. And we find Father Huntington, a man who loves the endearing name of priest, although I have my historical doubts about his apostolical succession (laughter), and his father, Father Huntington’s father, a bishop of the Episcopal church in central New York. These two men and a dozen or so more have come together in a society to see what they can do to discover the wrongs of the masses and what is the remedy. And to that extent I say that if they have not the true apostolic succession, they have more of the true apostolic spirit (applause); and while an honored priest, one of my friends, was censured, snubbed, sent for ten days to an ecclesiastical prison (laughter) for daring to come upon this platform, Bishop Huntington came and sat through a long discourse at Syracuse.

Let the ecclesiastical machine then smash itself up. It has been a fond dream of mine that the providence of God might perhaps send a democratic pope. (Applause.) And now I am willing to take back all I said about the stovepipe hat. I am willing to let his holiness, the democratic pope, wear any kind of a hat he pleases—a democratic pope who would devote many years of his life to the smashing beyond redemption, beyond the power of his successors for a thousand years ever to patch it up again, of his temporal throne and the feudalities and temporalities that have simply corrupted the church and taken her from the minds and hearts of men. But under the present system this machine can generate nothing different from itself. It is a maxim that every animal generates after its own kind, and I feel more consolation in that other alternative hope of mine that the machine shall be smashed not by itself but by the providence of God, that the people will tolerate it no longer, that it may be reduced to poverty, and that the pope and his disciples shall be compelled to walk the earth no better than their master. (Applause.) The richer the church is in endowments the poorer she is in all the graces that come from Christ. (Applause.) That is a long way off, but until then the prediction made by Mr. Henry George in THE STANDARD will continue to be verified, the labor party everywhere must look for the opposition, the hostility of the ecclesiastical machine.

The church of Christ should have no quarrel with the labor movement. But it has ranged itself on the side of despotism as against legitimate aspirations of the people for liberty and for emancipation. (Applause.) Its first instinct is to repress. When, many years ago, there began something of a labor movement on a small scale; when trades unions began to be formed they were condemned on account of their secrecy, and confessors told their penitents to have nothing to do with them. But have you ever heard of any confessor refusing absolution to Jay Gould, to Huntington, to any of these people of the Standard oil company or the Pacific railroads or other corporations, because they had a promise of secrecy and had formed a combination for the purpose of robbing all the people? No. (Applause.) The tendency of the machine is to repress the multitude, to try to find some silly excuse for condemning the essential doctrines of this labor movement, and the animus of the opposition is because the machine itself is eager to be free from the necessity of living upon the support of the people voluntarily given. They are anxious themselves to be great landlords, to have great endowments, to be utterly independent of the masses of men. (Applause.) The machine is suffering from enlargement of the head at the expense of the members, what physicians call hypertrophy of the head. It is not good for the head and it is still worse for the members. The first tendency is to club the new discoveries of science. Rome did its best for nearly two centuries to resist the solar system. (Laughter.) It did its best to prevent the earth from revolving round the sun (laughter), but the earth kept revolving all the same and carried Rome and everything else with it. (Laughter.) The machine was wise in its way. The old orthodox doctrine, good for the machine, was that Almighty God was up there a few hundred miles at best

p. 3, col. 3 and this was his one footstool, and the stars were like so many little ornaments to throw a little light upon this world, and the sun was there in one corner and the moon there in another, and God was up in heaven and the pope was his vicegerent on earth, and the earth was the center of the universe instead of being a third or fourth rate satellite revolving around the sun, and the sun only a third or fourth rate star of the milky way. They began to say: “If that doctrine is allowed to be taught what will become of us? (Laughter.) It will diminish our importance somewhat.” (Applause.) So you see what are the necessary tendencies of this machine.

The first impulse of the church was to condemn the small aggregations of men in various societies. And when in larger aggregation they found the society of the Knights of Labor (applause) the instinct of priests and bishops in hundreds of places was to condemn them as a secret society. And they were condemned in the neighboring priest-ridden province of Quebec. The most odious epithet that can be applied to a Catholic is “liberal.” A liberal Catholic is considered worse than the most open enemy of the Catholic church. They want to control education largely to prevent it, not to promote it. There would be no such talk of parochial schools in this country if it were not that we have a magnificent system—the Lord preserve it!—of public schools. (Great applause.) And the Jesuits in their famous periodical, the Civilta Cattolica, have time and again defended the proposition that what the people of Italy needed was simply bread and the catechism. To the pagan masses of ancient Rome it was bread and the circus, but the Jesuits of the Civilta Cattolica have substituted the catechism for the circus. And they imply that in order to be taught the catechism it is not necessary to know how to read at all; that education of the masses would raise them above their condition; that they simply ought to be taught to keep their places; that it would be the ruin of the country to put the beggars on horseback. And I could quote an Irish bishop, Cardinal Cullen, who said that all the people needed was the three R’s and the catechism. Their zeal for schools is simply out of jealousy and rivalry of the public schools. (Applause.) They would prefer to keep the masses under their thumb, without schools if they could, with schools if necessary, but under their thumb all the time.

Their disposition to oppose this labor movement is for the same reason; they wish to keep Catholics actually so much under control that they shall look nowhere else but to the ecclesiastical machine. It was urged against the Knights of Labor in Rome that it would not be a becoming thing for Catholic workmen to meet in one society with Protestants. They thought it would be much better to have Catholic confraternities, the Holy guild of hod carriers (laughter), or the Sacred confraternity of car drivers. But Cardinal Gibbons had the good sense to try to patch up some kind of suspension of this prohibition. And it was a very significant thing that in his plea for the Knights of Labor, which was presented to these Roman authorities in French, there was a certain paragraph that was carefully expunged in the translation made for publication in this country—something like this: That in our country it would be very disastrous thus to antagonize the associations of workingmen, and that the condemnation would be fraught with disaster to the church. Witness the fact that the suspension of a single priest by an archbishop because that priest was looked upon as the friend of the working masses has caused so grave a scandal, although the priest was suspended by the archbishop in the interests of discipline.

And I am sorry to have to say that the general master workman of the Knights of Labor, after going to Cardinal Gibbons and doing what he could to propitiate him, so that Cardinal Gibbons made it a powerful argument with that Roman machine that Mr. Powderly was a frequent communicant and good Catholic and that he was exercising a most salutary influence—not satisfied with that, Mr. Powderly sent an ambassador to Rome, and paid the expenses of that ambassador out of the funds of the Knights of Labor. And here is an association of workingmen—Catholics, Protestants and Jews, and their master workman at this late day, from this mighty continent, this land of freedom, is sending clandestinely an ambassador to Rome, and his expenses were paid out of the general fund. And I shall not be at all surprised to learn that a portion of this expense was incurred by being paid literally to some of the underlings, and not so very far under, of the Roman machine. That is actually a fact, and if it were not perhaps a little indelicate and indiscreet I could tell you the name of the ambassador that Mr. Powderly sent to Rome. (A voice, “Tell it.”) Now don’t ask me his name because I am not going to tell you.

I am not calumniating the machine. I know that some American bishops, desiring to get some things brought before the whole board of cardinals of the propaganda, when Cardinal Simeoni did not like it, bought up with five hundred francs an under secretary to have their document put upon the calendar for their consideration. That man that came out here with the cardinal’s hat said in my hearing that Cardinal Antonelli was very rich, as he had very many presents during the year, and that he was able to say to his brother Philip, the banker, “Here’s a little trifle of forty thousand dollars that I have been able to save this year; just invest it for me.” And toward the end of his career people began to wonder very much, and I think Pius IX among them, whether he had not been selling out the pope the whole time.

And so when a labor movement is started here more far reaching than that of the Knights of Labor, looking to a fundamental remedy for a radical wrong, by a keen instinct the machine smelt the danger and they were glad to tolerate and even coddle the society of that master workman who was such a devout Catholic and sent his Catholic ambassador to the pope. And they endeavored to wield this organization against the true labor movement that sought to go out to preach to the whole country a radical remedy. And this remedy was based upon the very essence of all religion, upon the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man; based upon the truth that God has made ample provision for all his children. Yet this doctrine was condemned by an unwise and unlearned archbishop as false doctrine. He issues a pastoral against it and compels subservient priests to read that pastoral, as if it were the very word of God, during the offering of the holy mysteries of Christ’s religion.

This society is in favor of truth, of justice, of liberty. Therefore the machine is necessarily opposed to this society. They have opposed this movement of ours unjustly, under false pretenses, implying that the doctrine is false, and yet they do not dare solemnly from their highest tribunals to say so. They never will. They have opposed this movement in the confessional, through the whisperings of monks and nuns and priests, in the visitations of converts^sic. Time and again they have exhorted people to vote against this party, exhorted women to get their husbands not to vote for it. They are actually refusing the sacraments of the church to pious men and women for no crime in the world but attending these meetings.

p. 3, col. 4 Yet they do not dare to come out openly and say that these meetings are forbidden.

Now, the summing up of all this is, as much religion as you please from the church of Rome, but no politics. The politics of Rome are sure to be bad politics. I would like you to be good Catholics, but I would not want you to be subjects of that machine. So I want you to be, as I should like to be myself, the kind of a Catholic that Daniel O’Connell was, who said that he would take his religion from Rome, but no politics; and on another occasion said that he would as soon think of taking his politics from the grand Turk as from the pope of Rome. (Great applause.)

After the conclusion of Dr. McGlynn’s speech, Henry George was loudly called for, and made a few brief remarks. In closing, he said:

Our friend Redpath, (applause) a man whose whole life has been given to struggles of freedom, a man who devoted his younger years to the freedom of the black men, a man who has been in most ardent sympathy and did good work for the Irish cause, a man who was one of the first to come forward in this movement, lies now dying. I stop to go and bid him good-by. May I say that for you?

A stillness came over the house at the announcement, and when Mr. George concluded there were cries of “Yes, yes,” and it was evident that deep sympathy pervaded the audience.

The closing hymn, “The Cross of the New Crusade,” was sung with unusual gravity and solemnity.

Hugh O. Pentecost Talks About Parasites—Social and Moral Parasites Defined—The Inevitable Penalty of Degeneration.

The subject of Mr. Pentecost’s discourse before Unity congregation on Sunday morning last was “Parasites;” and its tone was one of scathing denunciation of all who unwarrantably take advantage of the labor of others, whether in social, moral or religious matters.

After defining the nature of a parasite, as the word is understood by naturalists, Mr. Pentecost pointed out that the most marked feature of parasitic life is degeneracy—a descent into a less highly organized form of life. Said he:

The little parasite called the sacculina begins life as the nauplius, a rather interesting little water animal with several pairs of legs, furnished with fringes that serve as fins or swimmers. In that state it is an altogether respectable member of society, swimming about and getting its living as any honest and industrious animal should. By and by, however, it changes its form a little, and begins to follow the example of its ancestors for generations. It has discovered through hereditary instinct that there is an easier way to get a living than by working for it, and accordingly, as did its fathers and grandfathers before it, seeks the body of a hermit crab, to which it fastens itself, sending a pair of legs or fins into the crab’s body, by which it becomes firmly attached to its host, and which finally develop into roots, through which sustenance is sucked directly from the crab. Its wanderings are now over. It no longer roams to and fro, in danger from other creatures, seeking a precarious livelihood by the sweat of its brow. The crab now does all the work; it finds food and digests it. The sacculina has nothing to do but absorb it. But now a singular change comes over the creature. Instead of being the highly organized thing it was in the nauplius state, it begins to lose its various organs. The legs and swimmers being no longer of use, since it has taken up its final residence in the body of the crab, drop off; the organs of the stomach, having nothing further to do in the way of digesting food, since the food is all digested by the crab before the sacculina gets it, degenerate and finally disappear, and the result is that the merry little nauplius which once went gaily through the water on its own account, a producing and self-respecting creature, becomes in the sacculina stage a mere sack, entirely without organs of any kind except roots, which are simply little pipes, through which food is pumped into its body from the crab. It is henceforth a disgusting and hateful creature, terribly punished by nature in this degeneration for being willing to get board and lodging, all the necessities and luxuries of life, without any effort on its own part. It has an easy berth, it is true, but it pays a terrible penalty in this frightful loss of every organ which is needful to place it in the category of decent animal life.

The hermit crab itself is also a fair specimen of the life and fate of a parasite. Everyone who is familiar with the sea shore has seen the hermit crab, which may be recognized as always living in the cast off shell of some mollusk. Now this shell does not belong to the crab, that is the crab did not make it. We may suppose that the hermit crab was once an ordinary crab, but being of an indolent disposition he thought it useless to labor for the building of a shell of his own, such as we find on the backs of most crabs, and which are meant for protection from the teeth of fish and claws of other enemies, when there were so many empty shells lying all about him on the sea bottom. With this thought he crawled into an empty shell, and the tendency to do so in his progeny has been handed down until now the hermit crab is a wretched parasite, or rather half parasite, for it must be said in his favor that he is not so despicable a creature as the sacculina which feeds upon him. He does work for his living. He only insists upon living rent free. But if you will pull one of these crabs out of his shell you will discover that he, too, has come under the penalty of his pusillanimity and is a degraded creature by just so much as he has violated the law of independence and industry. His back legs are gone; there is no crust on his stomach, such as you will find in self-respecting crabs, and the only thing he has to show for this great loss of organs is a miserable tail by which he is enabled to hold on to his stolen shell house. Like the nauplius, he has become a backslider and must pay the penalty of his backsliding in the loss of his crabhood.

Now, if you have followed me thus far, clearly getting this thought that a parasite is a being which starts with a very respectable personality and organism, but by being willing to get its living without working for it, by sucking from the storehouse of some industrious animal or plant—for there are vegetable as well as animal parasites—it sinks in the scale of being until it becomes the most despicable and disgusting of creatures, without arms, legs, eyes, ears or stomach—a mere sack or bag—and if you will add to this that it becomes a very dangerous guest, working great injury and oftentimes death to its host, as in the case of the well known trichina, you are prepared to follow me in what I have to say by way of elucidating my text, which is an exhortation against social, intellectual and spiritual parasitism.

Then turning to the consideration of the parasites that infest society the lecturer went on:

Thieves, gamblers, swindlers, every sort of criminal who seeks to wrongfully get the property of others, are parasites. It is estimated that there are 500,000 of them in this country—450,000 who prey upon the community at large, 50,000 of whom are supported in penal institutions from the products of industry. There are many persons who cannot see the evil of “honest” gambling. It is in that the winner gets what he does nothing to produce.

Idlers, beggars, tramps, are social parasites. The tramp is a typical parasite, exhibiting all the marks of degradation.

These cases of parasitism are so flagrant that every one recognizes them upon simply having attention called to them; but there are others just as real which are not so easily recognized because the marks of degeneration are chiefly within the man, and so do not catch the eye, as in the case of the tramp, whose greasy clothing—patched or ragged—and filthy, ill smelling body are external fac similes of his degraded soul.

The elegantly dressed young swell who lives on his father’s income or on his inheritance is as much a social parasite as a tramp. He is supported in idleness by the labor of others. He is not a beggar. He is in the more fortunate position of being allowed by the laws of the land to compel others to give him their hard earned wealth. He is a robber recognized, beloved and approved by society because he has taken advantage of the conditions which society graciously accords him of practising his thefts in a perfectly legal manner. He escapes the penalty which the judge levies upon the unapproved criminal, but he cannot escape the law of nature which visits degeneration upon a parasite. He is not a manly man. His mind is empty or vicious; his soul is shriveled or contemptible. Despite his elegant clothing, housing and manners he

p. 3, col. 6 is known by right thinking men and women to be a scandal upon the human race. Any person, rich or poor, who at maturity is wholly a consumer of other people’s productions is a contemptible creature, unworthy of respect and unfit to live—a parasite!

Mr. Pentecost pointed out that there are such things as semi-parasites in the social as well as in the animal world—men who really work for what they consume, and in so far are self respecting and respectable; but who do not disdain to supply a portion of their wants by wrongfully appropriating the earnings of others. Such men, he said, are no more worthy of respect than would be a farmer who should spend his days in honest toil and his nights in garroting belated travelers.

There are also intellectual parasites—persons who allow others to do part or all of their thinking for them. There are men who think for themselves in the conduct of their business but who never know what they believe about the president’s message or the labor question till they read the editorials in their favorite newspaper—political parasites who always vote with the same party because it is easier to vote than think.

The lecturer next gave a vivid description of the religious parasite, who consents to receive his doctrine and dogma ready made and digested; and then in a few pointed sentences recurred to the inevitable, self inflicted penalty of parasitism.

I told you, said he, that the result of parisitism^sic is degeneracy—loss of organs, the descent from a complex to a simple form of life, which is the greatest disgrace that nature knows. Now, each one us of^sic may judge as to how far he is parasitic in character by the symptoms.

Are you wedded to current ideas? Do you stop your newspaper because it advances a thought displeasing to you, or declare you will never again listen to the man who advances a new idea? Do you say that this or that book is “bosh and nonsense,” and you do not even wish to read it simply because it does not coincide with your preconceived notions? If so, these are symptoms of degeneracy. You are losing your reasoning powers. Your mental stomach rejects everything but food which has been chewed and digested by some one else. Nurses sometimes chew food and then put it in a baby’s mouth. But those who swallow religious and political creeds are feebler than babies; they are parasites; they can only take food not only chewed but digested by others.

I have no terrors to thrust upon you for the future world; no doctrine of eternal torments to preach. But I warn you against degeneracy. The parasite is the most hateful and disgusting thing in nature. So is social, intellectual and spiritual parasitism to be loathed among men.

Adopted at Syracuse August 19, 1887.

We, the delegates of the united labor party of New York, in state convention assembled, hereby reassert, as the fundamental platform of the party, and the basis on which we ask the co-operation of citizens of other states, the following declaration of principles adopted on September 23, 1886, by the convention of trade and labor associations of the city of New York, that resulted in the formation of the united labor party.

“Holding that the corruptions of government and the impoverishment of labor result from neglect of the self-evident truths proclaimed by the founders of this republic that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, we aim at the abolition of a system which compels men to pay their fellow creatures for the use of God’s gifts to all, and permits monopolizers to deprive labor of natural opportunities for employment, thus filling the land with tramps and paupers and bringing about an unnatural competition which tends to reduce wages to starvation rates and to make the wealth producer the industrial slave of those who grow rich by his toil.

“Holding, moreover, that the advantages arising from social growth and improvement belong to society at large, we aim at the abolition of the system which makes such beneficent inventions as the railroad and telegraph a means for the oppression of the people and the aggrandizement of an aristocracy of wealth and power. We declare the true purpose of government to be the maintenance of that sacred right of property which gives to every one opportunity to employ his labor, and security that he shall enjoy its fruits; to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak, and the unscrupulous from robbing the honest; and to do for the equal benefit of all such things as can be better done by organized society than by individuals; and we aim at the abolition of all laws which give to any class of citizens advantages, either judicial, financial, industrial or political, that are not equally shared by all others.”

We call upon all who seek the emancipation of labor, and who would make the American union and its component states democratic commonwealths of really free and independent citizens, to ignore all minor differences and join with us in organizing a great national party on this broad platform of natural rights and equal justice. We do not aim at securing any forced equality in the distributon^sic of wealth. We do not propose that the state shall attempt to control production, conduct distribution, or in any wise interfere with the freedom of the individual to use his labor or capital in any way that may seem proper to him and that will not interfere with the equal rights of others. Nor do we propose that the state shall take possession of land and either work it or rent it out. What we propose is not the disturbing of any man in his holding or title, but by abolishing all taxes on industry or its products, to leave to the producer the full fruits of his exertion and by the taxation of land values, exclusive of improvements, to devote to the common use and benefit those values, which, arising not from the exertion of the individual, but from the growth of society, belong justly to the community as a whole. This increased taxation of land, not according to its area, but according to its value, must, while relieving the working farmer and small homestead owner of the undue burdens now imposed upon them, make it unprofitable to hold land for speculation, and thus throw open abundant opportunities for the employment of labor and the building up of homes.

While thus simplifying government by doing away with the horde of officials required by the present system of taxation and with its incentives to fraud and corruption, we would further promote the common weal and further secure the equal rights of all, by placing under public control such agencies as are in their nature monopolies: We would have our municipalities supply their inhabitants with water, light and heat; we would have the general government issue all money, without the intervention of banks; we would add a postal telegraph system and postal savings banks to the postal service, and would assume public control and ownership of those iron roads which have become the highways of modern commerce.

While declaring the foregoing to be the fundamental principles and aims of the united labor party, and while conscious that no reform can give effectual and permanent relief to labor that does not involve the legal recognition of equal rights to natural opportunities, we nevertheless, as measures of relief from some of the evil effects of ignoring those rights, favor such legislation as may tend to reduce the hours of labor, to prevent the employment of children of tender years, to avoid the competition of convict labor with honest industry, to secure the sanitary inspection of tenements, factories and mines, and to put an end to the abuse of conspiracy laws.

We desire also to so simplify the procedure of our courts and diminish the expense of legal proceedings, that the poor may be placed on an equality with the rich and the long delays which now result in scandalous miscarriages of justice may be prevented.

And since the ballot is the only means by which in our republic the redress of political and social grievances is to be sought, we especially and emphatically declare for the adoption of what is known as the “Australian system of voting,” an order that^sic the effectual secrecy of the ballot and the relief of candidates for public office from the heavy expenses now imposed upon them, may prevent bribery and intimidation, do away with practical discriminations in favor of the rich and unscrupulous, and lessen the pernicious influence of money in politics.

In support of these aims we solicit the co-operation of all patriotic citizens who, sick of the degradation of politics, desire by constitutional methods to establish justice, to preserve liberty, to extend the spirit of fraternity, and to elevate humanity.

PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE CORRUPTION.

The proposition that the federal or state governments shall reassume some of the public or semi-public functions the performance of which they have confided to private corporations, operated solely with a view to private gain, is constantly met by the suggestion that such an enlargement of the powers of government would cause great corruption of the public service. It would be difficult for those who so glibly recite this objection to point out, in the first place, how such a change as that proposed would really enlarge the powers of government, and why, if it did so, it would produce any greater corruption than has arisen under the existing system.

The first telegraph line ever built in the United States was largely built at the expense of the federal government. Suppose that the government had then bought out Mr. Morse and extended the system gradually over the country, would the men managing it have exercised any more political influence than has at times been exercised by Jay Gould and his partners in the present management of the telegraphic system of the country? That there might have been stealing goes without saying, but there is no probability that government officials could ever have stolen such amounts as are represented by the “water” in the stock of the Western Union telegraph company, on which those using the telegraph are taxed to pay dividends.

The same may certainly be said of the Pacific railroads. They were built by private parties with money obtained from the sale of government bonds and lands. The men who obtained control of this work not only paid to themselves extravagant prices for doing it, but they robbed the treasury of thirty-three millions of dollars over and above their own estimate of the cost of the roads. The building of a road to the Pacific was at the time a military, political and commercial necessity, and it was on that ground that government aid was given in its construction; but if the government had a right to help build it, it had a right to build it without the aid of private parties. Had it done so and then operated it, there might have been some stealing, and the managers might have gained some political influence, but does any one imagine that they could have gained such influence over congress as that exercised by the railway ring and disclosed by the Credit Mobilier investigation; or that all of them together could have committed such robberies as have been exposed by the recent report of the Pacific railway commission? Government officials would have been sent to the penitentiary for a hundredth part of the offenses that have made private citizens “great financiers,” millionaires and United States senators.

This talk of the corrupting influences of an enlargement of the powers of government in the direction of managing railways and telegraph lines comes largely from those who wish to hold a monopoly of corruption for their own profit. The railroads are as much a part of the government to-day as they would be if the government owned and operated them. The only question is whether the government shall openly exercise its powers in the interest of the public or farm them out to private parties who will use them solely with a view to their own private advantage. There can be no doubt as to how this question ought to be answered. If any doubt existed it would be quickly dispelled by a consideration of the present situation of the Pacific roads. Had the government built those roads and kept them in its possession the cost of the building would by this time have ceased to be a factor in operating them. It allowed private parties to build them, however, with its money, and the nearest approach to honesty proposed by these people is that the government shall give them for fifty years the privilege of taxing the commerce between the east and west in order that they shall thus be enabled to pay the debt and to make valuable the fictitious stock on which they have already received millions of dollars in fraudulent dividends.

Government officials have from time to time become thieves, but their robberies were at least confined to visible property and imposed a burden that fell on but one generation. The worst combination among them never mounted to the colossal proportions of the conspiracy that after robbing a great nation of millions of dollars in money and millions of acres of territory, and levying tribute on a vast population, now comes forward with what the conspirators call a compromise, by which they propose to fund the proceeds of their rascality into a fifty years’ bond of the kind that the late Judge Black described as an invention unknown to old-fashioned robbers, by which the modern plunderer

p. 5, col. 3 increases his stealing powers, and through which “his felonious fingers are made long enough to reach into the pockets of posterity,” so that he “lays his lien on property yet uncreated,” “anticipates the labor of coming ages,” “coins the industry of future generations into cash and snatches the inheritance from children whose fathers are unborn.”

TARIFF REDUCTION AND THE LAND TAX.

The recent wool conference in Washington decided that wool manufacturers and wool growers should stand together in support of high duties on wool and woolen goods, but already there are indications that a number of woolen manufacturers are disposed to favor the free admission of certain grades of cheap wool shorn from the backs of foreign pauper sheep. Some representatives of the wool growers are very angry over this “treachery,” and freely threaten that if a high tariff on raw wool is not maintained they will do everything in their power to secure the removal of all duties from manufactured woolen goods. The singular thing about the situation is that the sturdiest protectionists apparently see nothing wrong in this threat by some of their number to become partial free traders, but hold it up to wool manufacturers as reason why^sic all of the “protected industries” should stand together.

Now if free trade is, as those people pretend, a great moral wrong, they ought to be shocked when some of its bitter opponents threaten to embrace it if their own personal interests are not cared for. The readiness with which such threats are made and the manner of their reception show at least a partial consciousness of the nature of the bond of union between the “protected industries.” The object that each set of tariff beneficiaries seeks in protection is its own immediate pecuniary advantage, and the only reason that any one set allies itself with others is the belief that they must all stand together or lose separately the privileges that they now enjoy. Their bond of union is the cohesive power of public plunder, and the attempt by any one set to serve its own interests by winking at a reduction of the tariff that “protects” another set is regarded as a violation of the honor that ought to exist among thieves. Threats, then, to fight the whole combination by any one denied his fair share of the booty are not rebuked as immoral but are regarded as a reasonable manifestation of the spirit which animates them all.

There is in this a valuable lesson for the advocates of the single tax. This tax is so just that it commends itself to unbiased men who will give it a fair hearing. The chief obstacle to such a hearing is the powerful pecuniary interests^sic that are involved in other systems of taxation. One might as well preach the land value tax to an angry bull as to a protected manufacturer who sees the system by which he profits menaced by tariff reduction. Once destroy the personal pecuniary interest that such a man has in a high tariff and he will listen rationally to a discussion of the relative merits of taxing land values or commodities. The very readiness of the wool growers to turn free traders if they find themselves left out of the tariff “combine” shows how little root the notion that protection is founded on a great moral principle has gained among the beneficiaries of the tariff.

Advocates of the single tax should open their eyes to facts like these and give an earnest support to every effort toward tariff reduction. As soon as the protective feature is destroyed the army of mercenaries that now defends the tariff will be disbanded. Their interest in that form of taxation is purely a selfish one, and as soon as they no longer have that selfish interest advocacy of it will cease. The movement having advanced to such a stage it cannot stop, for no argument can possibly be made in favor of tariff reduction that is not equally good for tariff abolition, provided some equally available source of governmental revenue can be pointed out. When the discussion reaches that phase we shall find our opportunity. Not only will the minds of men no longer be closed against our theories by powerful selfish interests, but one of the organized, disciplined and well paid lobbies that now seeks to throttle our movement will have ceased to exist. No thoughtful land tax advocate can fail to see the enormous advantage that we should thus obtain.

LEASING CITY LANDS.

Mayor Hewitt recently made a vigorous and successful protest against a proposal to give to the trustees of a church a clear title to some city lots on which an edifice had been built in pursuance of a rather loose leasing arrangement. In two other recent instances land belonging to the city has been leased on ground rent to private parties, In the last case of this kind the rental was fixed at three per cent on the estimated value, which would yield, Mr. Hewitt said, something more than the city taxes on the property. As the common rate for ground rents in this city is five per cent of the value of the land at private sale, we fail to see why the city should lease ground owned by it for a lower rate.

However, it is not our purpose to criticise the details of these transactions. We accept them with satisfaction as evidences that even our municipal authorities are beginning in some vague way to “see the cat,” and that the craze that has for years existed among them to almost give away any land owned by the city is passing away. There was a time within the memory of men still living when the greater part of this island was owned absolutely by the people of the city of New

p. 5, col. 4 York and the town of Harlem. Had that land been held and leased out on ground rent this city would have to-day a magnificent revenue, more than double, and probably treble, that which it now enjoys, and such a thing as taxation for the support of local government would be unknown. There are plenty of men who now see this clearly, but who imagine that the theory of taxation advocated by THE STANDARD is a bold scheme of robbery. This is simply owing to an ignorance that seems to be slowly passing away.

Several generations of people have drawn ever increasing incomes from land once belonging to the city that was sold for a song by the municipal authorities many years ago. No man to whom this land was sold or given received it otherwise than as subject to taxation. All now see that the alienation of this public land was a gross blunder. All that the advocates of the single tax propose is to remedy that blunder, first by transferring all taxes to land values, and finally by taking by taxation all, or nearly all, of this rental value for public use. That is to say, the “revolutionary” land value tax people simply propose to gradually get to that condition that would have come about without effort but for the folly or jobbery of the aldermen who were in such haste to get rid of the common lands fifty or sixty years ago. Yet very conservative old gentlemen openly lament that their forefathers did not foresee the future and lease the commons on ground rents instead of selling them or giving them away. It is really not very difficult to make men see the advantages of the single tax if one begins right.

Senator Spooner has introduced a bill “to regulate commerce carried on by telegraph” which follows closely the lines laid down in the interstate commerce law for the regulation of railway charges. Though experience has shown the inadequacy of the last named measure, there is no probability that any serious attempts will be made to repeal it while, on the contrary, several proposals to make it more effective are pending. Eventually further steps in this direction must be taken, and we have no doubt that, in the end, it will be found that the only way in which the public can be thoroughly protected from the extortions of the private owners of public highways will be through the acquisition of the roads by the government. The chief value of the interstate commerce bill is found in the fact that it is an assertion of public interest in the railroads, and a first step toward the assumption of complete control over them by the goverument^sicsic. If the present schemes of the Pacific railway rings can be defeated at this session of congress, those roads will probably be the first that will be acquired and operated by the United States. In the matter of telegraphy, such a slow approach to the ultimate solution of the problem ought not to be necessary. There is no constitutional question in the way, since the post office department was created by the constitution for the express purpose of transmitting correspondence. There are, however, powerful pecuniary interests in the way of any scheme for postal telegraphy that does not include the purchase of existing lines at fraudulently inflated values, and these influences will probably be sufficient to prevent the passage of any proper measure at the present session of congress. If this be so, we hope that Mr. Spooner’s bill or some similar measure may become a law, since such legislation will be a recognition of the popular demand for a check on the present telegraph monopoly; and, the duty of congress to interfere thus recognized, the first step must be followed up until a postal telegraph shall be established.

In Mr. Croasdale’s article on “The Cost of Transportation,” published in THE STANDARD of January 21, there is a statement that an analysis of a Central Pacific report shows that the total cost per mile for moving freight is a trifle over six-tenths of a mill. It should have read six-tenths of a cent.

The William M. Jackson association of the Ninth assembly district of this city held a meeting on Monday evening last, at which the tariff tax was belauded, and the blessings of protection pointed out by an orator who said that the question in a nutshell was that by protection American workmen slept between sheets and ate wheat bread and beefsteak, while in free trade Russia and Italy the workingman had to sleep in his clothes on a bench and eat black bread, chestnuts and oil. Then the association solemnly resolved—

That we resent the interference of the national goverument with the property rights of citizens.

The William M. Jackson association may catch up with the procession yet.

General Master Workman Powderly publishes a card in the Herald of February 1, in which he denies Dr. McGlynn’s assertion that he sent an ambassador or emissary to Rome, paying his expenses out of the funds of the Knights of Labor. Mr. Powderly challenges Dr. McGlynn to name the ambassador or emissary.

THE MAYOR’S MESSAGE.

Mayor Hewitt’s latest message to the board of aldermen is in every respect a noteworthy state paper. It shows a careful study of the causes of the pre-eminence of New York among the cities of the American continent, as well as of the measures which must be adopted to preserve that pre-eminence. More than this, it is marked by a consideration for the general welfare of the people, and a disregard of class and corporate

p. 5, col. 5 interests, to which the citizens of New York have been but little accustomed in the messages of their chief magistrates. It is a document that will well repay a careful study.

After pointing out the main causes of New York’s prosperity, in her unrivaled geographical position and the access given her to the great lakes by means of the Erie canal, Mayor Hewitt devotes the major portion of his message to the internal improvements necessary to enable the city to preserve her commercial superiority. He considers the advantages to be derived from the administration of the wharfage system by the municipal authorities; he asserts the right of the city to the control of its own thoroughfares, and the necessity that the various corporations whose franchises give them the privilege of using the streets should be compelled to a regard for public convenience and safety; and he speaks at length of the pressing need of some better system of rapid transit, and urges its provision at the public expense. His description of New York as it should be testifies to the high ideal of municipal perfection which he has in mind:

With its noble harbor protected from injury and the channels of approach straightened and deepened; with its wharves and docks made adequate for the easy transfer of the vast commerce of the country; with its streets properly paved and cleaned, and protected from destructive upheavals; with cheap, easy, and rapid transit throughout its length and breath^sic; with salubrious and attractive parks in the centers of dense population; with an ample supply of pure water, now nearly provided; with a system of taxation so modified that the capital of the world may be as free to come and go as the air of heaven, the imagination can place no bounds to the future growth of this city in business[,?] wealth, and the blessings of civilization. Its imperial destiny as the greatest city in the world is assured by natural causes, which cannot be thwarted except by the folly and neglect of its inhabitants.

Mayor Hewitt’s message is interesting in what it says, but far more so in what it suggests. Plainly to be read between its lines is the acknowledgment, conscious or unconscious, that all the immense land values of the city are due to natural advantages of location, supplemented by publio^sic improvements, and the chief argument by which the mayor justifies his proposed improvements is that they will add to the public income and increase the value of taxable property. Thus in considering the public administration of the wharfage system he says:

The preponderance of testimony seems to be that it will be a profitable operation for the city to purchase all the water front at its present values and improve it with proper bulkheads and piers which can be rented at a rate te^sic make the investment pay a larger rate of interest than that which is paid by the city upon the bonds issued for the purpose. If it be true that there would thus be a balance in favor of the city on the operation, this excess going into the sinking fund, would ultimately liquidate the entire cost of the property and put the city into the possession of a magnificent source of income, which in coming generations would greatly reduce the burthens of taxation. There would be no doubt about the wisdom of the policy of thus acquiring the water fronts, if we can always be sure of honest and prudent management, and can be protected against the undoubted power of the state to reduce the rates of wharfage so as make^sic the whole property unprofitable.

And the reason for adopting a system of rapid transit vastly more costly than the present elevated structures, is thus given:

I have not discussed the comparative merits of elevated and depressed railways, for the simple reason that what this city needs is the most expeditious means of transit. The depressed system allows of a velocity sixty-six per cent greater than that of the elevated roads, and hence makes about three times as much area available for habitation within the same time limits of transit. Our object should be to develop as much of the annexed district as possible, in order to get the benefit of taxation upon the increased value of property, which, according to the best authority, “increases as the square of the velocity of the travel.” Elevated roads, therefore, which cannot compete in speed with the depressed railways unless they are constructed upon solid embankments, at a cost which would be prohibitory, would fail of the great object which the municipality must always keep in view, the increase in the area and values subject to taxation.

Mayor Hewitt has not yet reached the point of conceding the right of the whole people to the equal enjoyment of the immense land values of this city; but he at least sees clearly that it is their presence and their labors that have called these values into being. And there are not wanting in his message signs that the conviction is forcing itself upon him that those who have created should also enjoy. He asserts with no uncertain voice the superior right of the community as against the corporations of its creation. “I am aware,” he says:

I am aware that companies holding public grants elaim^sic to have vested rights; but there are no such things as vested rights which can interfere with the power of the community to do those things which are essential for its growth, its safety, and its progress in civilization. Improvident grants may have been made; but when they come in conflict with the superior rights of the people, indemnity may be claimed and awarded, but their existence cannot be pleaded as a bar to improvement.

It is long since the people of New York have heard such brave words officially spoken.

It is only when he turns to the consideration of the ever present “tenement house question” that the mayor’s logic fails him. But even here he is fortunate. For the inconsequence of his proposed method of relief is so palpable, that he himself can scarcely fail to be brought to the comprehension of economic truth by his own unwitting arguments in its favor. This is how he states the remedy for the overcrowding of the tenement houses:

Nothing so effective for the relief of those who live by their daily labor can be devised as the creation of cheap rapid transit to those portions of the city where land is plenty and the surroundings healthful and attractive. The system of separate dwellings for each family, alone realizes the true ideal of home life. This consideration, if there were no other arguments, ought be conclusive^sic as to the policy of securing, without delay, the new avenues of travel.

Mayor Hewitt need only refer to his previous statement that the value of property “increases as the square of the velocity of the travel” to be convinced how little any rapid transit system alone can do “for the relief of those who live by their daily labor.” If “rapid transit to those portions of the city where land is plenty” would do away with tenement houses they would long ago have vanished.

The people of New York are to be congratulated on Mayor Hewitt’s message.

p. 5, col. 6

ONE CORNER AT A TIME.

I once owned a little cabin on the San Joaquin plains about fifteen miles from Antioch, in California. The summers there are very dry and the winters very wet. The first winter I lived in it I noticed that the floor was very damp: and Cy Perkins told me one day that the reason for the dampness was because the floor lay almost against the ground. “What you want to do, Bill,” said Cy, “is to raise this cabin so the air can get underneath, then the floor will be as dry as can be.”

The next day I went around among the neighbors to get them to come over to my place to help me raise the cabin, and on the following day they were on hand.

There were the four Carey boys, the two Hoffmans, Doc. Patterson, Henry Gallagher, Cy Perkins and myself. We stood around for half an hour or so discussing how the thing could best be done. Matt Carey was most persistent in declaring that we could raise the cabin easily by two getting a “holt” on each corner and the remaining two shoving the blocks under; and more to have peace than anything else, the others, while differing with him, agreed to try and raise the cabin his way. I got four pieces of scantling, got the blocks on which the cabin was to rest in their places, and we went to work under Matt’s directions. When all was in readiness to lift Matt gave the word, and we tried to raise the cabin, but it didn’t budge. We tried it the second time with the same result. We tried a third and fourth time, Matt still encouraging us with his voice, but the result was the same.

Then Doc. Patterson—who said his back was “almost broke”—remarked that he had said in the beginning there were not enough of us to raise the cabin Matt’s way.

This made Matt mad, and he told Doc. to try his way and see if he could do any better. So Doc. took charge of the job. He got us all to one corner of the house. We put one of the scantlings under that corner, and four took hold of each end of the timber, and we lifted it easily. Cy and I put the block under, and then we all went to another corner and did the same, and so on; and in this way, by degrees, the cabin was raised.

WILLIAM MCCABE.

And now another

About his brother.

A boy who has just entered his teens, who sits beside the same evening lamp reading Stanley’s “Through the Dark Continent,” who is not an angel and doesn’t “want to be,” but quite as good a boy as the average.

It was the week before Christmas. Somehow it had come to pass that two sleds and one toboggan had come into the possession of this boy, whom we will call Aleck, while his younger brother (call him Dick) had none.

The lamp had but just been lighted; the long evening had hardly begun. Dick was complaining about the unequal coasting advantages, and the girls (also in their teens) were wondering how it happened that even the “family sled” was claimed by Aleck. He explained with the air of one aware of his power that he had paid for the repair of first one runner and then the other, and when it came to getting a new top board mother had consented that if he paid for that he might call the sled his. He seemed to have us all in his power, yet we felt, in a helpless sort of way, that there was a very unequal and unjust state of things.

Aleck went on to explain that he was willing to let Dick use the toboggan with him, and either one of the sleds almost as though he owned them, but he said that if Dick actually owned one of the sleds he would feel so independent that he (Aleck) would have no way of making Dick do as he wanted him to.

Here the girls began to exclaim “Aha!” and “Oho!” They are both members of the anti-poverty society, and right in this little boyish squabble they both thought they saw some features of “the cat.”

The younger boy, who didn’t see it, but who felt the iron heel of oppression, made some quick, uncomplimentary remark about his brother—I forget the exact words, but they wouldn’t look well here—and that, I grieve to say, was the occasion of an impetuous kick from the older boy that sent Dick, who had been sitting on the arm of my chair, tumbling into my lap. This hasty performance recalled me from the realm of ideas into which I had just been entering to one extremely practical. I put my arm firmly around Dick to keep him from springing at his brother (Alas! this sounds as though something like it might have happened before—this is not written for childless people to read), saying gravely: “Aleck must go right to bed.”

Well, I followed the boy, having an errand in his room. He had so much to say, in an excited, aggrieved tone that I did not say much. His main idea was that he must have some means of keeping his younger brother in his power and properly respectful. I remembered his bargains: “If you will split the kindlings to-night (one of Aleck’s chores), I will let you use the little sled all the week,” etc.

He said he didn’t care if the girls did “see the cat” in it, he wasn’t going to put himself in Dick’s power. As I gave him his usual good night kiss, I gave also a few words of warning and counsel, in a general way, telling him he would have to think and pray his own way out.

“Eariy^sic to bed” made him “early to rise.” Next morning he was looking unusually bright, and he told me, in a happy tone, with no allusion to the evening before, that he was going to make the smallest sled all over and give it to Dick, with his name painted on it, for a Christmas present. And so he did, and those who know boys can imagine the different state of things,

A MOTHER.

St. Paul, Minn.

PROGRESS AND POVERTY,

An Inquiry Into the Cause of Industrial Depression and of Increase of Want With Increase of Wealth—The Remedy.

BY HENRY GEORGE.

250 pages.

CONTENTS:

ntroductory^sic.—THE PROBLEM.

Book I.—WAGES AND CAPITAL.

Chap. 1. The current doctrine—its insufficiency. 2. The meaning of the terms. 3. Wages not drawn from capital, but produced by the labor. 4. The maintenance of laborers not drawn from capital. 5. The real functions of capital.

Book II.—POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE.

Chap. 1. The Malthusian theory—its genesis and support. 2. Inferences from fact. 3. Inferences from analogy. 4. Disproof of the Malthusian theory.

Book III.—THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION.

Chap. 1. The inquiry narrowed to the laws of distribution—necessary relation of these laws. 2. Rent and the law of rent. 3. Interest and the cause of interest. 4. Of spurious capital and of profits often mistaken for interest. 5. The law of interest. 6. Wages and the law of wages. 7. Correlation and co-ordination of these laws. 8. The statics of the problem thus explained.

Book IV.—EFFECT OF MATERIAL PROGRESS UPON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH.

Chap. 1. The dynamics of the problem yet to seek. 2. Effect of increase of population upon the distribution of wealth. 3. Effect of improvements in the arts upon the distribution of wealth. 4. Effect of the expectation raised by material progress.

Book V.—THE PROBLEM SOLVED.

Chap. 1. The primary cause of recurring paroxysms o industrial depression^sic. 2. The persistence of poverty amid advancing wealth.

Book VI.—THE REMEDY.

Chap. 1. Insufficiency of remedies currently advocated. 2. The true remedy.

Book VII.—JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY.

Chap. 1. Injustice of private property in land. 2. Enslavement of laborers the ultimate result of private property in land. 3. Claim of land owners to compensation. 4. Property in land historically considered. 5. Property in land in the United States.

Book VIII.—APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY.

Chap. 1. Private property in land inconsistent with the best use of land. 2. How equal rights to the land may be asserted and secured. 3. The proposition tried by the canons of taxation. 4. Indorsements and objections.

Book IX.—EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY.

Chap. 1. Of the effect upon the production of wealth. 2. Of the effect upon distribution and thence upon production. 3. Of the effect upon individuals and classes. 4. Of the changes that would be wrought in social organization and social life.

Book X.—THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS.

Chap. 1. The current theory of human progress—its insufficiency. 2. Differences in civilization—to what due. 3. The law of human progress. 4. How modern civilization may decline. 5. The central truth.

Conclusion.—THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE.

The new Land and labor library paper edition of “Progress and Poverty” is now ready, price thirty-five cents. This is printed on better paper, in larger type, is better bound and a considerably larger book than the previous twenty cent edition.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS.

BY HENRY GEORGE.

342 pages.

CONTENTS:

1. The increasing importance of social questions.
2. Political dangers.
3. Coming increase of social pressure.
4. Two opposing tendencies.
5. The march of concentration.
6. The wrong in existing social conditions.
7. Is it the best of all possible worlds?
8. That we all might be rich.
9. First principles.
10. The rights of man.
11. Dumping garbage.
12. Over-production.
13. Unemployed labor.
14. The effects of machinery.
15. Slavery and slavery.
16. Public debts and indirect taxation.
17. The functions of government.
18. What we must do.
19. The great reform.
20. The American farmer.
21. City and country.
22. Conclusion.

PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE?

An Examination of the Tariff Question with Especial Regard to the Interests of Labor.

BY HENRY GEORGE.

CONTENTS:

I. Introductory. II. Clearing ground. III. Of method. IV. Protection as a universa need^sic. V. The protective unit. VI. Trade. VII. Production and producers. VIII. Tariffs for revenue. IX. Tariffs for protection. X. The encouragement of industry. XI. The home market and home trade. XII. Exports and imports. XIII. Confusions arising from the use of money. XIV. Do high wages necessitate protection^sic XV. Of advantages and disadvantages as reasons for protection. XVI. The Development of manufactures. XVII. Protection and producers. XVIII. Effect of protection on American industry. XIX. Protection and wages. XX. The abolition of protection. XXI. Inadequacy of the free trade argument. XXII. The Real Weakness of Free Trade. XXIII. The Real Strength of Protection. XXIV. The Paradox. XXV. The Robber that Takes All that is Left. XXVI. True Free Trade. XXVII. The Lion in the Way. XXVIII. Free Trade and Socialism. XXIX. Practical Politics. XXX. Conclusion.

THE LAND QUESTION.

What It Involves, and How Alone It Can Be Settled.

BY HENRY GEORGE.

87 pages.

PROPERTY IN LAND.

A Passage-at-Arms Between the Duke of Argyll and Henry George.

77 pages.

FORTSCHRITT AND ARMUTH^sic.

(Progress and Poverty in German.)

TRANSLATION OF C. D. F. GUTSCHOW.

430 pages.

PRICE LIST.

Progress and Poverty, paper …….. $ 35 ” ” cloth …….. 1 00 ” ” half calf or half morocco …….. 2 50

Social Problems, paper …….. 20 ” ” cloth …….. 1 00 ” ” half calf or half morocco …….. 2 50

Protection or Free Trade? paper …….. 35 ” ” cloth …….. 1 50 ” ” half calf or half morocco 3 00

Property in Land, paper …….. 15

The Land Question, paper …….. 10

Progress and Poverty, German, paper …….. 35

For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price. Foreign editions of these books imported on order.

HENRY GEORGE, 25 Ann street, New York.

p. 7, col. 6

GERMAN TRACTS.

No. 41. The Syracuse Platform. 2 pages. No. 42. “First Principles.” Henry George. 4 pages. No. 43. “Socialism—Its Truth and Its Error.” Henry George. 4 pages. No. 46. “Taxing Land Values.” Henry George. 8 pages. No. 47. “It is the Law of Christ.” Rev. S. H. Spencer of Henry, Ill. 4 pages. No. 48. “The Case Plainly Stated.” H. F. Ring. 8 pages. No. 50. “Progress and Poverty.” Henry George. No. 52. “The Case Plainly Stated.” (Swedish.) H. F. Ring. 8 pages. No. 53. “Sailors’ Snug Harbor.” Wm. T. Croasdale. 12 pages.

SWEDISH.

No. 52. “The Case Plainly Stated.” H. F. Ring. 8 pages.

Prices, free by mail: 2-page tracts—50 copies, 10 cents; 100 copies, 15 cents; 1,000 copies, $1; 5,000 copies, $4.25. Four-page tracts—25 copies, 10 cents; 100 copies, 25 cents; 1,000 copies, $2; 5,000 copies, $8.50. Six-page tracts—25 copies, 15 cents; 100 copies, 37 cents; 1,000 copies, $3; 5,000 copies, $12.75. Eight-page tracts—25 copies, 20 cents; 100 copies[,] 50 cents; 1,000 copies, $4; 5,000 copies, $17. Twelve-page tract —25 copies^sic, 30 cents; 100 copies, 75 cents; 1,000 copies, $6; 5,000 copies, $22.50. Sixteen-page tracts—25 copies, 40 cents; 100 copies, $1; 1,000 copies, $8; 5,000 copies, $34.

Other numbers in preparation.

Address HENRY GEORGE,

25 Ann st., New York City.

This from Philadelphia.

> I am a boy, sixteen years old, and I am proud to say that I believe in the anti-poverty society. I attend the meetings every Sunday night, having missed but one since they were started, and I really enjoy them more than all the theaters and entertainments going. My father is also a believer, and reads THE STANDARD every week. I work in a mill, and get a little spending money every week, out of which I have saved the sum inclosed. I want you to send me some tracts for distribution among the men in the mill. I call myself an anti-poverty boy, and you will soon hear from me again. Should you publish this letter, please don’t mention my name, as my father holds a position under the government, and if caught siding with you he would be instantly discharged.

That’s pleasant reading, isn’t it? We have no censorship of the press here, no official hindrances to discussing our grievances or advocating changes in our laws. Oh, dear, no! This is America, not Russia or Ireland, and our chiefest boast is our political freedom. But “don’t mention my name, as my father holds a position under the government and if caught siding with you he would be instantly discharged.”

Whether this sixteen-year old boy’s fear for his father’s bread and butter be well founded or not is nothing to the purpose. It may well be that the father’s superior officers would hesitate a long time before discharging a man on account of his opinions in political economy. The horrible thing is this: That here is an American boy, at the age when his character is receiving the impressions that must determine its shape through life, who is firmly persuaded that it behooves an American citizen who works for his living to think twice before venturing to proclaim his political or economical faith. And between concealing one’s opinions for fear of a superior and accepting one’s opinions at the bidding of a superior the gulf is really not so wide that it may not be crossed in a generation or less.

There is food for thought in this boy’s letter; and the thoughts will not be altogether pleasant ones.

The renewals continue to come in day by day, and we can now feel assured that THE STANDARD has started upon the second year of its existence with at least as many subscribers as it had at the beginning of 1887. Some have fallen away, but their places have been taken by others; and the great body of STANDARD readers stand firm.

It is interesting to read the letters of those who accompany their renewals with any written expression of their feelings. Surely no periodical ever received such letters before. They come to us, not by ones or twos, but by dozens and scores. It is not because they bring us words of praise for THE STANDARD that we rejoice to receive these letters. Of course it is a pleasure to hear the paper praised, to know that its readers find it worthy of the cause it represents. But more gratifying than any commendation of THE STANDARD is the tone of devotion to the cause that runs through these letters; the utter absence of any sign of discouragement or weariness; the firm faith that the right is going to triumph, simply because it is the right. This it is that fills us with confidence in the future. The banner of the new crusade is planted deep and firm, fenced in with a growing, living wall of ardent human hearts, and it cannot be lowered even by never so little.

There is no fear for the ultimate triumph of our cause; and in so far as THE STANDARD represents that cause there is no fear but that it will in time find a sufficiently extended circle of readers. But there is danger that the enthusiastic confidence of which we speak may in some measure retard our victory. It is good to be enthusiastic. It is good to be confident. But let your enthusiasm find vent in work for the cause you love; and let your confidence be founded on the success you meet with in your own efforts, and not on the successes you hear others are achieving.

Ah! John Smith! If you only would, how much you could do; if you only will, how much you can do. You long for the reform which shall be as the coming of God’s kingdom upon earth. You are eager to hear what others are doing toward it. You know it’s coming; you believe it’s almost here; and—and—you leave other people to do the work. How many of you are there? A hundred thousand? That at least. If you would but turn to with a will, every one of you, and let your enthusiasm find vent in work, what couldn’t you accomplish?

If we may judge by the letters you send us, you have a genuine affection for THE STANDARD. You look eagerly for its weekly coming; you enjoy reading it; you feel that it is worthy of the cause it advocates; you wish it the highest measure of success. It is very pleasant and very encouraging to know you feel this way. But why don’t you let your feelings find expression in your actions? Why don’t you do something, right in your own neighborhood, to extend our usefulness and influence? You know that if THE STANDARD had half a dozen subscribers at your post office, instead of a single one, the effect on public feeling in your neighborhood would be altogether disproportioned to the mere increase in the number of STANDARD readers. The new crusade would acquire a dignity, an importance in the eyes of the community which it may be that it lacks now. You can get these subscribers if you will—not, perhaps, the whole half dozen of them at once, but one at a time. Why don’t you do it?

We don’t ask you to work for THE STANDARD because you like the paper and wish it well. We have no right to ask your assistance on any such ground as that. But we offer you THE STANDARD as a weapon with which to do your fighting on behalf of the crusade for, freedom^sic, and we urge you to get subscribers for it because every extension of its circulation brings the day of industrial emancipation, for which you, as well as we, are longing, measurably nearer.

This is what THE STANDARD costs its subscribers:

One subscription, one year, . . . . . $2 50 One subscription, six months, . . . . 1 25 One subscription, three months, . . . [65?]

p. 8, col. 2 Three or more subscriptions:

One year, each, . . . . . . . . . . . $2 00 Six months, each, . . . . . . . . . . 1 00 Three months, each, . . . . . . . . . 50

After the first club of three has been sent, subsequent subscriptions may be forwarded at the same reduced rates.

Recruit subscriptions, for four weeks, will be received, singly or in clubs to different addresses at fifteen cents each.

The recruit subscriptions are another way in which you can do efficient service if you will. It will cost you but fifteen cents to have THE STANDARD sent for four weeks to any one of your friends whom you wish to make a convert of. If you find a man indisposed to talk—inclined to regard the single tax question as one of no immediate importance—just tell him you will have THE STANDARD sent to him for four weeks, and get him to promise to look at it. He must be a curiously constituted man indeed if he doesn’t find something in its columns to interest him; and if once you get him started reading he can’t very well help beginning to think. And that a man should think is all we ask or want.

So, too, with your friends at a distance. It will be very little trouble to you to write to a friend, telling him—or telling her—of the interest you take in the matter and asking him to do you the favor to give THE STANDARD a hearing and let you know the result. And do not be discouraged if your friends, after reading THE STANDARD, should apparently remain unconvinced, should dispute its arguments and controvert its statements. It is a good sign that they should do so. That is the way men are convinced. For it is the glory and strength of our cause that the most efficient weapons in its arsenal are its adversaries’ arguments against it. Only get men to use those arguments and it won’t be long before they will discover their weakness for themselves. The child may think his glittering tin sword a very powerful and efficient weapon. The surest way to convince him of its uselessness is to get him to try to cut with it.

And now a word or two about the recruiting fund. There are many readers of THE STANDARD who want to utilize the recruit subscriptions, but can’t do it, simply because they haven’t got the money. There are many men, especially among the clergy, who are honestly anxious to inform themselves about this doctrine that is so stirring men’s minds, but cannot afford to spend the money for books, and tracts, and STANDARDS. The recruiting fund was established to enable us to supply the wants of these people, and we can assure you we have found plenty of work for it. It is for you, readers of THE STANDARD, to say just how vigorously this work shall be pushed. There are many of you who can afford to spare the money which this fund needs. Whether you ought to spare it or not is a question for your own conscience.

The recruiting fund has received during the past week:

W., Jersey City ………. 1 00 Georgeian ………. 15 ’ammer, ’ammer, ’ammer ………. 2 00 William Truster, New York city ………. 2 50 Garratt Mahan, Savannah, Ga ………. 40 Newton Fitz, Norfolk, Va ………. 2 50 Total for the week ………. $8 55 Previously acknowledged ………. $2,050 61 Total to date ………. $2,059 16

CADILLAC, Mich.—That is a good idea of Edward Griffiths’s. Send a dollar’s worth of good reading to the idle coal miners for me, along with the rest. All of us fellows here in Michigan that as yet have a job are called on from time to time to aid the “protected” coal miners; and if they will only read I will contribute my share in good literature. Tell Griffiths, if you see him. Hurrah! he has struck a lead. CROLY.

ANACOSTIA, D. C.—The recruit subscriptions I sent you are beginning to leaven up the ideas of those who received them. I inclose $1 for colporteur work among the stricken miners. The idea is, I think, an excellent one, and if it proves successful among the miners, should become a permanent organized fact. Church missionary societies report this the most effective and thorough way of getting people to think. I haven’t much money to spare, but what I have shall be consecrated to the gospel of the new crusade. I think I voice in this the sentiment of many earnest men in Washington. C—— ——.

This fund, started for the purpose of distributing tracts among the striking coal miners of Pennsylvania now stands as follows:

Previously acknowledged ………. $7 00 C. ——, Anacostia, D. C ………. 1 00 Croly, Cadillac, Mich ………. 1 00 G. H. H., New York ………. 5 00 Total to date ………. $14 00

The amount of the fund is not sufficient to enable us to send a special colporteur to the mining regions, but we have arranged with friends in Pennsylvania to have an efficient tract distribution made.

Rev. Mr. Barnhill Discusses the Duty of the Clergy—Religion Cannot Flourish Where Riches and Poverty Stand Face to Face—The Duty of a Patriot.

PHILADELPHIA, Pa.—The meeting of the Anti-poverty society of Philadelphia last Sunday night was opened with a short address by H. V. Hetzel, a member of the society. Mr. Hetzel spoke of the apparent conflict between employers and employed, and showed how the stress of competition for work has compelled workmen to the formation of trades unions, trying to force all workers to belong to these unions and forbidding their members to compete at anything below a regular scale of wages. But no trades union ever had and none ever could prevent such competition as long as there was not work enough to keep everybody busy. And why was not everybody busy? Because of the monopoly of opportunities. Because we send representatives to our legislatures to grant away special privileges to a few people. They talk of protection, but the only protection we need is to protect ourselves by abolishing these special privileges. Mr. Hetzel’s remarks were very forcible and were received with much enthusiasm by the audience.

After a few announcements by President Atkinson, the Rev. Mr. Barnhill of Illinois was introduced, and made a very telling speech. He began with an allusion to a recent tariff reform meeting in this city, dwelling upon the, to us, very encouraging sentiment of that meeting. He said he thought the campaign next fall was going to be such a one as would necessitate, far more than any campaign ever had, a general study of economic questions, and that always meant just so much gain for us.

Mr. Barnhill then justified his position as a minister entering into politics. He said preachers were expected to confine themselves to subjects that had only been of practical importance hundreds of years ago. He related an anecdote of a colored preacher of plantation times who, after having gone the rounds of the cardinal points of predestination and salvation by grace, and justification by faith in his sermons, thought he would try his hand at something practical for a change, and surprised his flock one Sunday with a fierce denunciation of chicken stealing. This caused many of the congregation to leave in a body. They said he ought to stick to religious things and not talk about things that did not concern him.

Mr. Barnhill said that many a preacher going to a new charge would be glad if some one would furnish him a list of subjects he was at liberty to preach upon. The preacher who would sit still when the nation was in peril would be recreant to his trust and forget his vows. Religion cannot flourish where great riches and abject poverty sit side by side. Christianity must face the social problem. The Christianity of to-day is very different from that taught by the carpenter of Galilee 1900 years ago. Byron, he said, tells the history of almost every nation in a few words: “Freedom, Glory, Wealth, Corruption, Decay, Barbarism.” This was true of us down almost to the last stage. There are a million tramps in the hold of the ship of state ready to seize the first opportunity to scuttle her. It is our mission to save her. The very accompaniments of the beginning of Roman decay can be seen among us by the observant eye. Satire always has flourished in the corrupt times of nations, especially satires on isolated cases of virtue. These are becoming popular with us. We can see the same disinclination to matrimony here as in the latter days of Rome, and the alarming prevalence of the vice which is substituted for matrimony. He spoke of the many instances of corrupt congressmen and the easy consolation the people found in the conviction of a few New York aldermen. Our people are given over to mammon worship. They have the disease of the heart which Cortez had and which can only be cured with gold.

Mr. Barnhill said he was not a pessimist, but his patriotism was not so blind as to prevent his seeing his country’s danger, and he wanted to struggle for its salvation in the only direction that held out any ray of hope. He then explained how the anti-poverty doctrine showed itself sufficient to save the nation.

Mr. Barnhill is a young man just on the threshold of active life and with all the world before him. He has turned his back on all his brilliant prospects and chosen the hard and narrow path of justice.

J. F. H.

The Ex-Congressman Answers the Priest—An Argument That Defeats Itself.

CANTON, O.—Ex-Congressman Roswell G. Horr of Michigan delivered an address at the Tabernacle in this city on January 23, which was intended to be a complete and crushing reply to the lecture Dr. McGlynn recently gave to the citizens of Canton. Mr. Horr said:

I have studied this question for years and I have not found yet where a man can get a living without work, and it is better that merit in this world comes through effort and through labor. Now, at first when this country was settled folks were scarce and land was plenty. In fact, everybody owned everything in common. But when a man caught an animal it no longer was in common. He owned it and his title to it was the labor that it took to get the animal. And so when a man gathered fruit. It was his by the work that it took to get it. Water belongs to everybody, but when a man digs a well the water in it belongs to him and he got his title to it by the labor that it took to dig that well. Now Mr. George’s theory about the land is the same as with the water, that it is the gift of God and should belong to everybody. Under a savage state of society it takes about 300 acres of land to support one man. One thing Mr. George never considers is the improvement on a man’s land. If a man cultivates his land and raises grain on it, does he wrong his neighbor? He does it for the special benefit of humanity. This improved value in the land is what George calls the unearned increment, and that a man has no right to that unearned increment. Everything in the world is a part of the world and the animals in it were created by God as well as the land. Now to follow out George’s theory there would be unearned increment in a horse as well as in the land. Did Brother McGlynn in his lecture show you how this would work? Did he tell you of a single place where it had ever been tried?

In looking over the tax duplicate at the treasurer’s office, I find that your county levies taxes on $38,000,000 of property. Of this, $12,000,000 is personal property and $25,000,000 real estate. But this $25,000,000 is the tax duplicate on the real estate with all its improvements. The unearned increment can’t possibly be more than one-fourth of the present value. You pay $600,000 taxes and you have about 100,000 people in your county. You would have to rent your land at twenty per cent. It is impossible. He would raise all the taxes on one-seventh of the property that now bears them.

The Pennsylvania railroad company, which has fifty-three miles of railroad in your county, pays about $19,000 tax a year. How much would they pay on George’s plan? Not one-fourth of it. And then take the national banks; they pay $5,000 worth of taxes. Under George’s plan they would not pay a cent. I can demonstrate to you beyond contradiction that it would only rob the poor and let the rich go scot free. How can George tell which is unearned increment and which is not? How can you prevent all this misery in the land by taking off one man that which he has earned and giving it to another?

In going up and down our country we find a class of people coming to our shores who know nothing about the genius of our institutions, men who say this is the meanest nation on the earth to work in. Instead of giving courage to their fellow workingmen, they are sowing the seeds of discontent. The world was made for every man to get a living, but not without effort. Great questions must be settled on moral principles. If I had my way I would try to establish these three things among workingmen: First, stop this greed and avarice that exists between employers and employes; second, don’t throw away your money for things you don’t need; and third, I would save these men from running after these false teachers. That civilization is the best, that religion is the purest, that produces the most happy homes.

Before we listened to Mr. Horr we had thought of answering him; but it seems to us now as though he answered himself pretty well. In fact all he needs now is to read “Progress and Poverty” to understand that we are the fellows he is looking for, who believe that when a man cultivates his field and raises grain on it he doesn’t wrong his neighbor and ought not to be fined for it, and that “taking of one man that which he has earned and giving it to another” is a thing that ought to be put an end to.

The effect of this McGlynn-Horr discussion has been all that we could have hoped. It has brought the single tax question to the front.

A. E. KNISELY.