May 12, 1888 Vol. III, No. 19Whole No. 71

THE STANDARD

HENRY GEORGE, EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR.

NO. 71—VOL. III, NO. 19. | NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 12, 1888. | PRICE FIVE CENTS

HOW TO MAKE MEN BETTER.

REFORMS AND POLITICS.

PERSONAL.

According to the Toledo Commercial Frank Hurd can have the democratic nomination for congress from that district if he wants it.

Dr. Montague R. Leverson left New York city this week for Burlington, Vt., where he intends to quietly set himself to the writing of his long contemplated work on the science of legislation.

Louis F. Post has been presented with a handsome double desk by the members of the political economy class before whom he lectured on “Progress and Poverty” during the winter. William J. Gorsuch made the presentation speech.

W. E. Brokaw, Keene, Cal., goes on preaching the good doctrine to whoever will listen. When the tax collector called recently he “surrounded” him, talked at him for a while and then gave him some tracts. Before the collector went away he had become interested. Mr. Brokaw is now waiting for the deputy collector.

A. G. Groh of Archer, Laramie county, Wyo. Ter., is an energetic worker in the cause of the single tax. He writes on April 30: “Mr. J. D. Johnson of Omaha, Neb., one of my converts to the single tax through a half year’s subscription to THE STANDARD, has renewed his subscription for one year. Mr. Denny Swain, a young farmer of Claremont, Minn., whom I converted through ‘Progress and Poverty’ in 1882, is doing active work with tracts. Mr. George Cudebec, a teacher and homesteader, has been reading THE STANDARD four months, and has become a free trader of the first water. I have ordered two extra copies of THE STANDARD through the newsdealer. One copy I place in the reading room of the Young men’s Christian association. Mr. Andrew Peterson (a German Catholic), another homesteader, read ‘Progress and Poverty’ and is a convert. My correspondents get single tax and free trade shots from a distance. I miss no opportunity to talk single tax doctrine with vigor and determination. Any unfavorable criticism of the cause in my weekly papers gets a brief and caustic criticism from me. I have distributed many tracts, in person and by letters and always request the recipient to write or tell me what he thinks of them.”

p. 2, col. 3

NEW YORK A FREE CITY.

NEW YORK.—Your timely editorial on “municipal home rule” stops just short of the logical conclusion that better even than a mere grant from the state legislature to New York city of the power to manage its own affairs, would be a complete release from the state board, to fulfill its own destiny as a distinct political unit, subject in no way to any higher power except that of the nation. The constant recurrence of abuses arising from legislative intermeddling so frequently brings out our indignant protest against our ridiculous position, that it may fairly be considered as one of the most important of the minor political issues which demand our attention. But strangely enough, there have been little more than propositions to tinker with the municipal charter since Fernando Wood advocated total separation at a time when, with his sinister associations, the scheme was open to the suspicion that he aimed at seceding not only from the state but from the Union. Now that all dreams of secession are over, it is surely permissible to consider whether a community of two millions of people is not large enough to dispense with leading strings.

Our state lines are not only geographical, but to some extent ethnological, marking in most cases distinct colonizations by often different races; and while as a whole the nation has become more and more firmly fused, the inhabitants of each state have retained sharp individualities. It is this that in great measure has secured our rapid developement^sic by avoiding an unwholesome monotony in national life. It is this too, that has helped us most in the evolution of local self government; for a homogeneous people, thoroughly understanding each other, having the same traditions, habits, and ways of thinking will always pull together best, whether in business or politics. But in states containing cities homogeneity tends to disappear, and, where there is one large city, vanishes as the city population comes to consist of those whose habits, thoughts and interests differ from those of the rest of the state. This is more especially true in New York state, for here the original settlers of city and state were of different races. True, the first Dutch colonists of Manhattan built forts and farm houses up the Hudson and Mohawk, leaving a distinct impression on the people and customs of the region; but the most of New York’s rural population was and is as much New England as is Massachusetts or Connecticut. In the city, on the other hand, has accumulated a population that is sui generis—that is, more cosmopolitan than London or Paris; that has a sort of conglomeration of customs and traditions which are totally distinct from those of any state in the Union, and interests that are often in direct opposition to those of the counties with which they are allied by the political bond of the state. At every election that divides our party lines the city has been absolutely depended on to go one way and the counties the other.

For years past the democratic majority in the city and the republican majority in the counties have very nearly equaled each other, and this nice balancing is usually considered of great political benefit, as tending to keep both parties on their good behavior, although close elections are really beneficial only where the division of sentiment is uniform throughout the whole body of voters, and not where it is sectional. Even then the good is perhaps problematical. New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Indiana, all doubtful states, are none of them specially remarkable for pure politics; certainly not as much so as Iowa or Vermont, where heavy majorities are customary. In fact, an even political division seems more often than not to result simply in bargaining between leaders of the worse elements of either party, by which they give each other a mutual protection from the casting vote of independent citizens that is ready to be thrown against whichever party has sinned the more grievously. That New York has been a special victim of this sort of bargaining between cliques ostensibly within the lines of opposing parties every New Yorker knows who watches at all the course of home politics. Aware that complete control of one party alone will not insure control of the spoils, since it would always be at the mercy of an independent element combined with the opposition, the ring leaders at Albany and the ring leaders in New York join hands to defeat for mutual benefit any attempt at reform that may be made by rebels against caucus rule within either line.

And while the politicians make their deals the people of the city let matters drift, trusting to a somewhat hypothetical political morality in the country districts to set things right. When some particular atrocity is committed our various dilettante reform clubs and citizens’ committees feebly protest, agitate, hold meetings, send delegations to Albany—and do nothing. Whatever amended form of charter be granted, so long as there is the possibility of appeal to a practically outside power, just so long will there be a want of local sense of responsibility. For all evils the only true remedy must be a radical one; and with the growing conviction that a great city like New York can only be well governed when its citizens learn to depend upon themselves, must come the ultimate conclusion that nothing but complete separation from an essentially alien population will ever force them to self dependence. There are good citizens enough in the metropolitan district to insure good government if they had the chance. Not the “best people” who imagine all political virtue to be concentrated in their ranks, but the small merchants, the shop keepers and mechanics who cast the really intelligent vote of the community. Give these men control of a state composed of New York, Kings, Queens and Richmond counties, the lower end of Westchester, and our suburbs on the Jersey bank of the Hudson—a state with a larger population than half the states of the Union—and they will make it a model to the country, if once free from outside interference.

Nor would the counties lose much except the power to assess the city for more than its share of state taxation, a power that would be taken away even by a scheme of partial home rule. To get rid of Tammany and the county democracy ought to be worth something to our country friends; and each section would be free to follow its special bent in experimenting on modes of taxation, one of the great questions of the near future. Perhaps here would be the chief fruit of separation. Nowhere in America are the evils of private land ownership more apparent than in New York; nowhere else so good an opportunity to test land reform. Every taxation law of the state is already a compromise between the city and the country, and as the new ideas spread the conflict will become fiercer. It might easily be well to let the farmers stand aside while a community of tenants with common interests and habits of thought demonstrate how social force can be utilized to social profit. With disturbing factors eliminated the problem will be simpler.

Let us give up partial reforms and futile tinkering with a charter granted from outside and try one of our own creation. We can spare the sentimental considerations for the sake of practical gains. The metropolis of the west has no civic pride, no political

p. 2, col. 4 power beyond the dangerous responsibility of deciding a presidential election under the present fast disappearing political division, by the turn of a few thousand possibly purchasable votes. To the politicians who struggle over the vital question whether the spoils shall be labeled democratic spoils or republican spoils, a doubtful state will give place to a certain state on either side. But to the people of New York city will be given practical self government and a fair chance to solve the political and social questions that confront them, in a manner which will meet their own needs and not the ideas of St. Lawrence or Cattaraugus county.

EDWARD J. SHRIVER.

GOOD FOR DISTRICT 87.

COVENT GARDEN MARKET.

ANTI-POVERTY.

The Landlords Rule Scotland.

At present the members of parliament returned from Scotland represent the following interests: Landlords, 18; lawyers, 21; merchants, 8, shipowners^sic, 6; army, 5; manufacturers, 3; schoolmaster, 1; doctors, 2; newspaper proprietor, 1; brewer, 1; various learned professions, 6; total, 72.

It will be seen from this that the landlords and landlords’ lawyers predominate, being thirty-nine as against thirty-three belonging to other classifications.

p. 3, col. 4

A WOMAN SPEAKS OUT.

A Religious Editor on the D.Ds.

This is from the religious editor of a good western daily paper, the name of which we suppress:

“To say that I have ‘seen the cat’ in all its beauty would be, perhaps, premature, since I can hardly realize that only a very few months, indeed weeks, ago it was beyond my ability to discover the most shadowy outlines of that suggestive animal. But I see a good many of its parts now, and I trust that a continued study of the theme will discover the entire shape to me.

“I am continually surprised to see with what ease one can floor the D.Ds. and LL.Ds. on this branch of government, the most important of all. When I find myself, only a few weeks ago ignorant of the truths of political economy, knocking out gray haired students who have been honored by this and that institution of learning, I learn the sad fact that very few of the ‘thinking people’ that is, those so classed, know anything of the science of taxation, the science of government.

“A little incident will illustrate. The other day a D.D. in talking to me accidentally assailed the single tax theory. I at once defended it, to his intense astonishment. Being unable to tell me why the land along the Mississippi river should be owned in private any more than the water flowing by, he called in three of his brethren, two of whom were D. D.’s. It is needless to say that in p. 3, col. 5 fifteen minutes the four were up in the corner saying that they had never read ‘Progress and Poverty’ but would be very glad to. And yet these men preach every Sunday!

“Being the religious editor of the —— —— I am thrown into daily contact with the clergy and am more and more surprised at their ignorance, yet I consider them as very valuable subjects for missionary work. Not one has ever failed to express a lively interest in the ‘land theory’ as soon as he learned that it did not mean socialism or communism, as generally understood.

“I am on intimate terms with the editors of the religious papers (some twelve or fifteen) published here, and frequently have chats with them on the effects of the single tax. I find them by no means unwilling to investigate it if they could find time. But they are busy men and complain that they cannot spare the time to go through”Progress and Poverty,” not even from book vii to the end.

“To some of these I have given Mr. Samuel Clarke’s ‘Reply to Criticism,’ the brevity of which can not offer an excuse for neglecting to read it.”

—— ——.

HOME PARKS ON THE ROOFS.

THE BEATING OF THE DRUMS.

There is a tax on every pound of iron you buy and every yard of cloth you wear. This tax takes just so much money out of your pockets. It makes your wages just so much less. Before theses taxes^sic were so high our laborers were better off.—[Minersville, Pa., Free Press.

“Does Canada have a protective tariff? If so, name articles and amount of duty.” Canada has a protective tariff much like our own, but lower. The natural result follows. She is deeply in debt and getting in deeper every year. Her tariff law is too long to publish.—[Toledo Blade.

The tariff debate has opened again, and the main text of high tariff congressmen, from now on to the close, will be that the manufacturers want “protection” in order to reduce prices and increase wages—an assertion we will doubtless believe about the time we see labor strike for longer hours and less pay.—[Chicago Herald.

Our industries are no longer infant, but stalwart, and yet we have a tariff nearly six times greater than that with which we began. It averages now over 47 per cent, and the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer; certainly at least so far as these industries go. We see a multitude of millionaires like Carnegie, and hordes of Hungarian workmen, such as there are in his iron works.—[Indianapolis News (Rep.)

A bill is before congress proposing to spend about $20,000,000 to improve our rivers and harbors. What for? To make trade, foreign trade as well as home trade, easier. How was the money raised? By a tax on foreign goods to make trade harder! In short, our war tariff is maintained to-day as a barrier against foreign trade and then a part of the receipts are spent to promote foreign trade.—[Philadelphia Call.

How explain the fact that whenever the country has been most prosperous the balance of trade has been what is called “against us,” and whenever the balance has been what is called “in our favor” the blight of “hard times” has been upon the country? The statistics seem to show that the workingmen and business men of this country have nothing to fear from heavy importations even if they cause what is termed an “adverse balance of trade.”—[Boston Globe.

Protection, notwithstanding the fact that it is the religion on which the “grand old party” bases its salvation, is a relic of barbarism, and the one atagonistic^sic principle and practice of our government. The founders of this republic, in erecting for us a political fabric, based it entirely on self government. To this end we have free speech, a free press, free schools and free religion. In a word, everything is free until we touch barter and exchange.—[San Francisco City Argus.

Minister Phelps, who has just returned from England, states that English manufacturers are beginning to manifest much concern in regard to the prospects of tariff reform in this country, and well, indeed, they may. The more sagacious among them clearly recognize that it is the taxes upon wool, hemp, flax, jute, dye-stuffs and other materials of production that prevent American manufacturers from meeting them on equal terms in all the markets of the world.—[Philadelphia Record.

The progress of events is proving the wisdom of President Cleveland in refusing to be guided in his policy by the advice of the “practical politicians,” with whom dodging is always in favor. His steady course of honest boldness has intrenched him in the respect of the people. The tariff message, which set the soul of every democratic trimmer quaking, has been an inspiration to his party. It has divided the republicans and driven them as an organization into the position of bourbons determined to oppose all change. It has made doubtful western states hitherto strongly republican. It has alienated no democratic state. It has centered the popular mind on one of the greatest of economic problems. It has united the democracy as it has not been united since the war. It has insured the president’s re-election. It has given a purpose to politics and has made the coming campaign a battle for principle rather than a fight for office.—[San Francisco Examiner.

John E. Russell, congressman from the Worcester district and ex-secretary of the state board of agriculture, appears to have made a brilliant entry into the tariff debate in the house, Saturday. Congressman Whiting took a hand by exhibiting the lusty growth of Holyoke as a product of the protection policy. This is all well, but the paper manufacturer and representative from the eleventh district must not go too far. Modification of the tariff that aims to give the manufacturer free raw materials is calculated to augment the prosperity of New England’s manufacturing interests, and even the Massachusetts republican convention declares that “this reduction of the revenue to the current needs of the government the republican party will continue when in power.” Here is recognition of the need that exists, and representatives of the people are not warranted in waiting until any party gets full control of the government before discharging a plain duty. The issue is an immediate one.—[Springfield, Mass., Republican (rep.).

THE STANDARD.

HENRY GEORGE, Editor and Proprietor.

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BUCKET SHOPS.

Of course the Ives bucketshop bill ought to pass; and equally, of course, it will be utterly abortive if it does pass. For the bill really proposes to make it illegal for one set of men to do in one way that which it shall remain perfectly legal for another set of men to do in another way.

The most persistent enemy of the bucket shop is the stock exchange. The stock exchange pursues the bucket shops, not from any motive of morality—which would be absurd—but because the bucket shop is a dangerous rival in business. And the reason the pursuit has been unsuccessful is simply because of the difficulty of framing a law which shall effectually squelch the bucket shops and at the same time leave unsquelched the stock exchange.

District Attorney Fellows, who is vigorously urging the passage of the Ives bill, gives this description of the bucket shop:

The most common kind of bucket shop is equipped with a telegraph instrument—either a stock ticker or Morse instrument—from which quotations in stocks or produce are from time to time taken and written on a large blackboard in presence of the customers of the shop. Wagers are then made on the fluctuations in the quotations as they are recorded on the blackboard, and various devices are resorted to by the proprietors and their customers to make the transaction appear a bona fide contract for the sale and delivery of stocks or produce, whereas, in fact, none of the parties engaged in such transactions have any intention other than to wager on the quotation that may appear from time to time on the board.

Except for the presence of the blackboard, an establishment of this kind is nothing but a miniature stock exchange and broker’s office rolled into one. True, if a speculator does his gambling through a regular broker there is, presumably at least, an actual delivery of stock between the brokers. But in the vast majority of cases the speculator never sees the stock, and only realizes that a delivery has been made at all through being called on to pay interest on the value of the stock carried for his account. The speculator who wants to gamble in 100 shares of stock goes to a broker, deposits a certain sum as margin, and receives a memorandum certifving^sic that 100 shares have been bought for his account. If the stock falls materially, his margin is wiped out and the gamble is at an end. If it advances, he instructs his broker to sell, and receives an account in which he is charged with the full price of the 100 shares, commission for buying, commission for selling and interest for “carrying,” and credited with the selling price of the stock and his own margin deposited; the difference being paid to him in cash. The speculator in a single share of stock does practically the same thing, with a good deal less fuss. If the stock exchange would allow dealings in fractional lots, every bucket shop would be wiped out of existence in a day.

The truth is that, in some shape or other, the bucket shop will remain with us just as long as the stock exchange does, and no longer. While rich men continue to gamble for dollars, poor men will persist in gambling for pennies. To get rid of the minor evil we must extirpate the greater.

In what way this can effectually be done is an open question. Certainly no direct legislative action can ever do it. The bull against the comet was not more powerless than would be a statute forbidding men to speculate in things whose value is liable to sudden and severe fluctuations. But it is worth noting that it is not so much the value of existent wealth that rises and falls on the floor of the exchange, as the values of franchises—of taxing privileges pure and simple. Perhaps when the parent monopoly of all—the monopoly of land—is swept away, and the minor monopolies are administered for the people who create them, we may see the end of both parent and child—of the little gamblers’ bucket shop and the big gamblers’ stock exchange.

When Allen B. Wilson, the inventor of the Wheeler and Wilson sewing machine, had completed his invention he wanted to erect a factory at Pittsfield, and offered to do so if the town would reduce his taxes. But Pittsfield declined, and Wilson located his shops at Bridgeport. That was very bad judgement^sic on the part of Pittsfield. It would have been a good thing for the town to have the shops there. But it is no better for a town to have sewing machine shops within its limits than it is [to?] have other shops and personal property p. 4, col. 2 and houses; yet what town is there that does not do all it can to drive away shops, personal property and houses by the same method that drove Wheeler & Wilson away from Pittsfield? The village that will arrange to pay all its taxes from its land values and exempt everything else will, if it is reasonably well situated, be a loadstone to every kind of manufacturing business and a Mecca for the home seeker.

When we read of the anxiety of the Dutch settlers of Manhattan over the clam shells, which they in common with the Indians used as money, we are inclined to smile at their simplicity; but gold pieces are our clam shells, and we make the same kind of fools of ourselves over our clam shells that our ancestors did over theirs. It is a century since Adam Smith demonstrated to English speaking peoples that it is not possession of the precious metals, but of goods, that makes a nation rich; nevertheless, the commercial columns of our newspapers could not have been more superstitious about gold if they had been published before Adam Smith wrote. Here, for instance, is the Rochester Post-Express, which descends into statistics to show that our foreign trade was very unsatisfactory in March because our exports were below the average and our imports above, and winds up with the dismal statement that if Europeans had not bought liberally of American stocks and bouds^sic “this country would have been obliged to export large quantities of gold to settle the balance of trade against us.” But suppose we had been obliged to export large quantities of gold! Would not that have been an exportation? Are we not producers of gold as well as of machinery and wheat? And being producers of gold, ought we not to be very glad to exchange our surplus of that product for the goods which Europeans sent to us? And if we had no surplus of gold, ought we not to be glad of the opportunity to produce a surplus as the easiest way of getting the goods of countries that wanted gold? A gold miner does not regard it as a calamity when people are willing to give him their goods which he wants in exchange for his gold which he does not want. Why should a gold producing country?

Mr. S. C. Hall, a wealthy wool grower of Nevada, who, because he thinks he cannot supply our market with wool as cheaply as Australian and South American wool growers can, wants us all to “chip in” and make up the difference to him, has been interviewed by the Press with gratifying results. He says he was brought up a democrat and voted that ticket for years, but cannot vote for free trade nor with a free trade party, and therefore will vote the republican ticket this year. Next to learning that republican free traders will vote the democratic ticket this year, nothing in the world political is so satisfactory as to learn that democratic protectionists will not. It shows that sides are being taken on the question of protection or free trade, as THE STANDARD predicted three months ago, and that, whatever party conventions may do or platforms declare, the issue in the coming presidential contest will be the question of free trade.

Certain citizens of Michigan are a little surprised to learn from the supreme court of that state that the ownership of land carries with it ownership of the birds of the air while they are flying above the land, and the fishes of the sea if the land happens to be covered with water and the fishes swim over it. But this is a perfectly logical result of land ownership. As Daniel Webster put it, “a title to land reaches up to heaven and down to hell,” and of course includes everything animate or inanimate, movable or inmovable^sic, within the boundaries expressed. Indeed, Webster exhibited more than a lawyer’s caution in fixing limits, for the common law of real estate carries land titles all the way through both regions mentioned by him. If the property right has no value there it is not the fault of our law, but rather because in the one place its beneficiaries cannot enforce[,?] it, and in the other, more exacting business claims their attention.

In the interesting diary of William Smith’s journey from Philadelphia to South Carolina in 1791, which appeared in the Evening Post last week, a reference is made to the prosperity of Baltimore, which the observing diarist attributed to the protective policy of Virginia. Until the adoption of the constitution Virginia was as free to “protect” herself from the other states and all the world besides, as, under the constitution, Pennsylvania is to “protect” herself from foreign countries. And Virginia did it then through her legislature at Richmond, just as Pennsylvania does it now through the national legislature at Washington. By her high duties Virginia drove her own trade into Maryland. And, as appears from the diary, it was not alone Baltimore that prospered from the foolishness of Virginia, but Georgetown, also, from which exportations that would naturally have gone from Alexandria were made to such an extent as to give Georgetown considerable importance in the commercial world.

The diarist also gives us a lesson on the land question, quite unconsciously. After describing the site of the national capital, which then had just been chosen, he remarks that the mere selection of the spot by the president caused land in the neighborhood which before sold for five or seven pounds an acre to be sold for thirty and forty pounds. This is one of those instances of increase in value which dumfounds the old-fashioned economist who p. 4, col. 3 undertakes to explain that the value of land is a labor product.

One of the strongest arguments of the protectionists against the passage of the Mills bill consists in speaking of Mr. Mills as “premier.” Apparently it has not yet occurred to them to reinforce this by calling Judge Kelley “dernier.”

That was a funny scrape the tariff talker of the Press got into the other day. He published a treatise on flax, describing the process of its cultivation and manufacture, from the seed to the loom, and pointed out how, at every stage, the finished product of one set of men became the raw material of another. It was a very interesting article, but the protectionist readers of the Press didn’t quite understand the talk about “raw material,” and several of them have been sending letters asking the tariff talker what he meant by publishing what was “plainly and evidently a plea for free flax.” And so the tariff talker has had to put on a white sheet and take a candle in his hand, and make solemn recantation. In the Press of May 3 he intermits his tariff talking, and talks about the tariff talker. This is the nub of his explanation:

I want to assure those who do me the honor to read me that I am first, last and all the time an advocate of protection, not only to American manufactures, but to American “raw material,” as it is called. I cannot, help, however^sic, looking upon this expression, “raw material,” as a species of joke, and especially so when applied to the staple flax. It was while enjoying a little smile over this little joke that I fell into the unpleasant predicament of being misunderstood by my tariff friends, from which predicament I am trying in my feeble way to extricate myself by this personal explanation.

We hope the tariff talker’s friends are satisfied with this “personal explanation.”

Amid all their patting of working people on the back and telling them what happy homes they have, what tremendously high wages they get, what low prices they pay for everything, and how they owe it all to the good protectionists, the tariff tax journals once in awhile run against a solid wall of actual fact, which, if facts could produce any effect on them at all, would make them cease their vaporings for very shame. Here, for example, is that stanch upholder of texts and protection, the Mail and Express, telling its readers some cold truths about the earnings of women in New York:

There are hundreds of establishments on all the business streets where sewing is either done or given out to be done. A reporter for the Mail and Express recently asked two sewing girls what sort of living they made.

“How much are you paid for making those garments?” asked the reporter.

“Twenty-five cents apiece.”

“How long does it take you to make a garment?”

“I do very well if I make four a day,” said one.

“But it takes more than ten hours to make four, work as hard as you will,” rejoined the other.

The garments referred to were thick woolen jackets. They were wadded, lined with alpaca and had the appearance of a garment made by an adept. The sewing machine did most of the straight work, but the button holes, putting in the lining, and other work had to be done by hand. The seams had been pressed, the threads picked off, and the garments were neatly folded and all ready to be sold. Wages for the making of underwear, and indeed for all gentlemen’s apparel, have dropped considerably during the past few years. The pay of the girls who make up the smaller articles, such as gloves and neckties, does not average more than $5 a week^sic. Many have to be content with less, and $6 is considered good pay nowadays. Most of the work is done by piece. Men’s drawers are made complete for 50 cents a dozen pairs. For the hickory shirts that laboring men wear, made out of striped blue, fifty-five cents a dozen pairs^sic is all that is paid. Overalls are made complete for fifty cents a dozen. Striped calico and white shirts are made for sixty-five cents a dozen. The forewoman fixes the price and sees that the work is satisfactorily done. If it is not good it is not paid for. Forewomen’s wages vary from $15 to $20 a week. A button counter gets $9 a week during the busy season, and $6 during the slack time. When the new shirts come from the laundry she counts the buttons to see that none are missing, folds the shirts and puts them in boxes. There is a general rule in factories that those who work there are fined for being late; five cents if they earn $5 a week and ten cents if they earn $10.

Now, just consider how these women are protected. Duty on the cheapest woolen cloth, 35 per cent; duty on wadding, 35 per cent; duty on alpaca, 35 per cent; duty on thread, 7 cents a dozen spools; duty on the completed jacket, 45 cents per pound and 40 per cent on value; duty on sewing machines, 45 per cent; duty on the cheapest kind of gloves, 35 per cent; duty on neckties, 35 per cent on cotton, and 50 per cent on silk; duty on men’s drawers, 35 per cent; duty on hickory shirts, 35 per cent; duty on overalls, 35 per cent; duty on shirts, 40 per cent; duty on the cheapest kind of buttons, 25 per cent. Surely, if ever people were “protected,” these poor women are so. Yet look at the pitiful result.

The Single Tax and Free Trade in Texas.

WEATHERFORD, Texas, May 5.—The tariff discussion is making lots of openings for single tax men to get in their work, and I find that people who are predisposed for revenue reform measures are also willing to listen to propositions that go much further. I have written to our local democratic paper, the Gazette, beginning my communication with a consideration of the tariff reform and closing it by advocating the single tax. I had no difficulty in getting it inserted. The fact of the matter is that most people, especially democrats, have been ready to read almost anything on the subject of taxation since the tariff discussion came up. We single tax men are getting in a word at every turn and the single tax theory is fast acquiring recruits.

W. M. BUELL.

Guess They Don’t Read Them.

Philadelphia Press.

Henry George’s New York STANDARD, founded for the poverty stricken, has a department devoted to society notes of the Gotham millionaires.

p. 4, col. 4

OUR PRESENT DUTY.

It seems to me that the time has come when the plain truth ought to be told concerning the present condition of the political movement in New York in behalf of the single tax. The daily papers announce that a full delegation has been chosen by the united labor party to represent the various congressional districts of this city and state in the so-called national convention of that party to be held on the 15th inst. at Cincinnati. Outsiders may naturally assume that these delegates represent the nearly seventy thousand voters who cast their ballots for the united labor candidates last November. Nothing could well be further from the truth.

In the first place, the party was never thoroughly organized outside of this city and Brooklyn, and even in those cities the enrolled members within the party organization never knew who it was that cast the majority of the votes for the party’s candidates. No such canvass as is made by the old parties was possible, and hence the organization could not with any certainty know how far it represented the views of the great body of voters who supported its candidates at the polls. The extent of this uncertainty was shown at the last election. The party organization was much stronger last year than the year before, and the leaders were confident of a corresponding increase in the vote, and yet there was a falling off from 68,000 in 1886 to 37,000 in 1887.

But this was as nothing to the falling off in the membership of the party organization that has taken place since the discovery of the design to use it as an annex to the republican party in the coming presidential election. Districts that had before the election carried the names of from two hundred to eight hundred members on their rolls, dwindled away until not more than from a dozen to thirty members remained entitled to participate in their proceedings. These little remnants continue to act as the regular party organization, and they have sent representatives to the county committee and to the various conventions recently held to choose delegates to Cincinnati. The representation of the districts in the county committee is one for each hundred votes cast for the head of the ticket at the last election. In a number of districts those present at meetings are little if any more numerous than these members of the committee, and yet these little groups of self-elected delegates claim to speak and act authoritatively, not only for those who have ceased to be members of the organization, but for the vastly greater number of voters who have supported the party’s candidates while holding aloof from its organization. The fact is that the united labor party, so called, is to-day a mere paper organization, and those controlling and using it have no authority to speak for the 70,000 voters who supported the party’s candidates at the last election.

Furthermore it is undeniably true that though some sincere advocates of the single tax are still engaged in the attempt to sustain a third party the effort receives its chief support from those who want a party for the sake of having a party rather than for the purpose of advancing a great principle. These men have, in a perfunctory way, accepted the declaration that all taxes should be levied on land values, but many of them would consent to a very considerable sacrifice of that principle in order to gain allies. In fact this tendency extends even to the leaders of the movement, as is shown by Dr. McGlynn’s advocacy of Congressman Smith as a presidential candidate, despite the fact that Mr. Smith’s public utterances show that he has no clear comprehension of the single tax doctrine. The craze to have a party for the sake of belonging to it seems to run through the whole crowd, though here and there an active manager may be found who has more substantial reasons for persisting in this effort.

Without further comment on this attempt to pose a moribund party as a living factor in present politics, the more interesting and important question remains as to the present duty of the large number who have quietly dropped out of the ranks of the party during the past few months, and who are in no wise represented by the men who gather next week at Cincinnati. To me it seems perfectly clear that there is but one answer to this question, and that intelligent advocates of the proposal to transfer all taxes to land values ought to vote for Grover Cleveland for president. The time has gone by when any man can truthfully say that no great principle is involved in the coming presidential contest and that the only question is one of mere tariff tinkering. Such a policy may have been desired by many democrats at first, but the debate in congress and the discussion in the newspapers have already put an end to any such idea. Every speaker who has supported the Mills bill has vigorously attacked the protective system, while every opponent of the bill has, without contradiction or rebuke, insisted that the policy of protection will be menaced by the passage of the measure. The fight is on the lines of the bold and able democratic platform of 1876 instead of on those of the foolish and feeble platform of 1884, and even the tub thrown to the protectionist whale in the president’s message has been entirely lost sight of.

On such a contest no thorough advocate of the single tax can look with indifference. It is a part of our demand that all taxes on the products of industry shall be removed. Here we find a great political party engaged in a serious effort to begin the work of reducing and removing such taxes. Tariff reduction will not merely lessen the taxes laid by the federal government on the limited amount of imported goods brought to this country, but it will accomplish something far more important by reducing the onerous taxes now levied by protected manufacturers on the vast quantity of goods of domestic manufacture consumed by our people. The relief that the masses are sure to experience because of this beneficent change will go far toward teaching them the necessity of abolishing all taxes on articles of consumption.

But it is questionable if this is the greatest thing that tariff reduction will do toward aiding the single tax propaganda. All who have by personal argument sought to convince others of the truth of our theories have discovered that a belief in the protection delusion is an almost insurmountable barrier to success. Candid minds, even though prejudiced, can be influenced by a clear presentation of the great truth that we advocate, but the men who are beyond the reach of all

p. 4, col. 5 argument are the land speculators and the protectionists, and of these it is the latter alone who are organized to maintain and defend the present perverse system. The protected monopolists pay and maintain the powerful lobby that has hitherto successfully resisted every attempt to reduce the tariff. Every proposal for a rational tax reform encounters among these people, not argument, but powerful selfish interests wedded to the very abuses that it is proposed to reform. No greater service can be rendered to the cause of tax reform than the destruction and dispersion of this force drilled and organized to maintain the tariff monopolies.

The speediest way to accomplish this is to reduce the tariff. Every removal of a duty not only curtails the power of the existing high tariff combination, but it decreases the number of those interested in maintaining the system. It is the weakness of the tariff ring, that it is an artificial combination of diverse interests, based on greed, not principle, the members of which have tacitly agreed to support one another in plundering the public. The moment that one member is permanently placed outside the circle of those profiting by the combination he not merely ceases to be interested in maintaining a high tariff for the benefit of the others, but his interests demand that he shall insist on the reduction of the tax on numerous other articles. This was illustrated some time ago by the open and angry threat of the wool growers that they would demand the repeal of the duty on woolen goods if the manufacturers favored free wool. A similar threat is said to have been made by a western forest monopolist to a Pennsylvania iron manufacturer who proposed the free admission of lumber. Such threats are not idle, and they indicate that each abolition of a duty will add to the number of those whose interests will thereafter lead them to demand the abolition of other duties.

But this is not only true of tariff abolition; the same condition is brought about by a reduction of duties below the protective point. The logic of events will force the democratic party to continue the reduction of the tax on imports to this extent, since it has now returned to its old tradition in favor of a tariff for revenue only. Such a policy will break the tariff combination, disperse its lobby and clear the way for an unprejudiced and favorable consideration of a more reasonable and less burdensome system that will levy no tax on goods, foreign or domestic. Can the advocates of the single tax reasonably expect more than this in ten years? Could they accomplish half as much by independent political action in twice ten years?

In the face of facts like these, would not advocates of the single tax be false to their faith and derelict as citizens if they stood idly by and failed to take an active part in the coming contest? Now is the time when we can do something effective, not merely toward educating the people in sound economic principles, but toward incorporating a portion of our principles in legislation. Shall we shirk the duty immediately before us and amuse ourselves on election day by voting for a candidate not in the race, playing base ball or “standing up to be counted?” Any one of these has just as much as the other to do with our discharge of the duties of citizenship.

For my part, I have had of late vastly more time for reflection than suits a man of my temperament. I have considered the question of present duty fully and carefully, and to my mind the answer is clear. I have resigned from the united labor party because it has ceased to be an organization capable of any good, and what remains of it is about to be perverted into a petty obstacle to the success of the only practicable effort now making to advance our principles. I have no desire to join any other party, but as a firm believer in the doctrine enunciated in “Progress and Poverty,” and as an individual who feels it his duty to help the better cause to win, I intend to embrace every opportunity open to me to aid in the re-election of Grover Cleveland to the presidency, not because he is a democrat, but because he is right. He has forced the tariff issue into politics and put himself and his party on the right side of that question, and those who agree with him ought to stand by him and help re-elect him, instead of passively consenting to the only alternative—the election of a protectionist.

There are doubtless thousands of those with whom I have voted during the past two years who hold views similar to those I have just expressed as to our present duty. Is there not some way in which we can still act together in performing that duty?

WM. T. CROASDALE.

The Frying Pan and Fat Dog Arguments.

F. N. Barrett has an article in Science on the “Pecuniary Economy of Food.” He tries to prove that the American people are suffering from extravagant habits; that it is “willful waste” that makes the “woeful want.” He quotes approvingly Mr. Edward Atkinson, who, as is well known, is much opposed to the wasteful methods of cooking now in use by our American poor people and Americans generally. Mr. Barrett says in his article:

“A gentleman formerly prominent in the Massachusetts state board of health, and of extended experience in studying all subjects connected with food, states that no greater truth has been uttered before the American people in recent years than that made by Mr. Atkinson, that ‘if the people of this country would knock the bottom out of the American frying pan they would have one-third more money to spend for rent than they now have.’”

Then Mr. Barrett goes on to say: “We plead guilty. Are not American dogs sleek and fat? Wherever there is a profusion of food there you will find fat dogs, while in countries where the supply is scant, or where economy in food is compulsory, dogs are lean and hungry; for instance, as in Turkey.”

A Way to Reduce the Surplus and Enrich the Land Owners at the Same Time.

It is said that the Union club of Denver, Col., is going to ask congress to grant an appropriation for building mountain reservoirs, in which the water which comes down from the mountain sides can be stored. The river channels will thus remain filled all summer. It is claimed that thousands of acres of land in the arid region could thus be irrigated and made fertile.

But Rents Will be Lower There.

New York Sun.

“My friend,” he said solemnly, “do you ever look forward to the time when you will occupy a mansion in the skies?”

“Well—er—no, sir; I don’t believe I do. I haven’t the time. At present it keeps me busy to pay rent for a seven-room flat in Harlem.”

p. 4, col. 6

For Humanity.

Air: Scots Wha Hae.

Men who hear the children’s cry, Men who hearken woman’s sigh, Pledge once more your purpose high For humanity! Now’s the day, and now’s the hour! Would ye, listless, shame your power? Would ye, craven, shrink and cower? Choose ye liberty!

Unto you the ages call! Will ye, helpless, die in thrall? Up, for freedom, one and all Strike the bloodless blow! Not by strife on battle field, Not by clash of sword and shield, Mightier arms hath truth to wield O’er relentless foe!

By the chain that bound us long, By the past of shame and wrong, We have vowed our manhood strong That we shall be free! See the front of battle lower! Fear ye evil’s dying power? God’s own hand has struck the hour For humanity!

Up! our heritage to claim; Up! in love and honor’s name. Hearts that falter, would ye shame Trust our fathers gave? Once again the belfry swings, Freedom’s bell above us rings; Palter not with baser things, Rest but in the grave.

FRANCES M. MILNE

San Luis Obispo, Cal.

STRAWS WHICH SHOW THE WIND.

The single tax theory is rapidly growing in favor among the masses of the people in this country, notwithstanding the unfavorable comments and sneers of the press and the adherents of the old political parties.—[Milwaukee Review.

A committee of the Coustitutional^sic association has presented a report strongly advising the executive board to recommend legislation by congress for the establishment of a system of national telegraph throughout the country in connection with the post office, and under government control.—[Philadelphia Dispatch.

For goodness sake, let up. We have enough to worry and fret over without the constant howl that labor, the producer of all wealth, is robbed. A man who has not discovered this already will never know it. How to catch the robber, stop the robbery and enjoy the fruits of our own labor is what we want to find out.—[Industrial News.

The Australian, or secret ballot bill, now before the Massachusetts legislature, has developed a degree of opposition which might have been expected from the party bosses. Now is the time for organized labor to put its work in. Each labor society should pass resolutions insisting upon the adoption of this measure which will prevent blacklisting at the polls.—[Boston Labor Leader.

This nation is not prosperous. This social situation is not normal or permanent. There is something the matter with it, and the matter is taxation—before and behind. In front is the false government of Samuel J. Randall, taking twenty-eight per cent on all things, plus four times as much for “protection.” In the rear is the oil ring, the coal ring, the gas ring, the sugar ring, the railway ring, taking absolutely every penny of the wage earner’s savings.—[Chicago Herald.

We believe that the land question is that upon which all others are based, for without the earth we could have no existence. Anything, then, that will settle this question will work a general and permanent reform in all directions, and will in the end settle the whole labor problem. The only thing that can forever settle this land question, as we believe any one will be forced to admit, who will look deeply into the matter, is a tax on the values of land in lieu to all other forms of taxation^sic.—[Minneapolis Labor Union.

The miners of the Lehigh valley were driven to desperation and they struck, but it was against a wall of adamant—their own torn and bleeding hands were all they gained. Had they been wise; had the work of education gone on among them, had they understood the principles of knighthood and, instead of striking had they gone to the ballot box a solid phalanx for state ownership of mines, the first round would have brought that proud “trust” to its knees.—[Troy, N. Y., Ray.

The Henry George theory to place all taxes on land values is spreading very rapidly. That the increase in land values should belong to the whole people and not to individuals is beginning to be understood as a self-evident fact. The course of events is marching on, and it will be but a few years when this economic theory will become an established fact. While it is probable that the acceptance of this theory will not do all that is claimed for it, it is certain to go a great ways toward ameliorating the condition of the poor. It will tend to bring the whole people nearer to a common equality by lifting the very poor out of their degradation and poverty. It will reward all persons according to the labor they perform, and not, as now, give to those who hold natural opportunities, but do not work, the lion’s share of the product, while those who are dependent on the will of others for the opportunity to labor, and do all the work, receive only just sufficient to keep themselves from starvation.—[Houston, Tex., Labor Echo.

The genuine satisfaction with which Cleveland’s great message was received in the west showed that the war was at last over. The farmer who had lost his son in the war had ceased to regard all war taxes as tributes to his son’s memory. The questions were: Has corruption existed, and ought it to cease? Has aristocracy flourished under the policy of revenge upon the south? Is the government fast or loose in the tenets of freedom which the triumphs of Jefferson over toryism brought to the people in the early years of the republic? Are all men born free and equal in these days when recorders, judges, district attorneys, supreme justices go out of their way to twist the law so that powerful scoundrels may escape the anger of the people? Have place and power so puffed re-elected officials that they rob the tax box and grow indignant at patriotic protest? Are some of the noted robbers senators? Are patriots in personal danger because they dare ask for lower taxes? Was Morrison beaten by Hessians sent into his district by high taxers? These are the questions that the western man, democrat or republican, is asking this spring just before a presidential campaign that will fasten either aristocracy or democracy on the government for many a generation.—[Chicago Herald.

How the City May Have Been Maintained.

The following is an extract from an address by Gustave Paulsen to the citizens of Chicago, being circulated in that city in tract form:

To illustrate the result of the private appropriation of rent, we state the following facts: Early in the history of Chicago the United States gave the city a section of land to be used for school purposes. That section is bounded by State, Madison, Halsted and Twelfth streets. In [1833?] the city divided this section into 142 blocks and sold 138 for $38,600. Of that which remains in the hands of the city, one block, that bounded by State, Madison, Dearborn and Monroe streets, pay annually, in ground rental, to our school fund, $162,000.

The ground value of the whole section is upward of $50,000,000, making an increase, at simple interest, of over 2,500 per cent per year for fifty years. If that section of land had been retained by the city the entire expenses of the city could be met without levying taxes on any one.

MEN AND THINGS.

The passage of the ballot reform act by the New York assembly is an excellent example of the power of public opinion to influence legislation. It is scarcely imaginable that those who voted for it were anxious to see it pass, or even were not anxious to see it defeated. For the bill is a direct blow—and in all probability a deadly one—at that machine system of politics to which most of our legislators owe their elections. But there was a feeling that the people at large wanted a measure of this kind passed; men showed unmistakably that they were thoroughly weary of ballot box corruption; and so the assembly, as a body, has done that which its members, as individuals, were thoroughly opposed to doing. Whether the bill will become a law at this session of the legislature or not it is impossible to say. But in any event its passage by the assembly is a distinct victory of honesty and good citizenship, and its ultimate enactment into law should be only a question of time.

In all this there is a lesson for us who are laboring for freedom. It reminds us that all we have to do to secure the great reform we seek, is to sufficiently influence public opinion. The triumph of electing, by a desperate effort, a dozen legislators in any state, or to congress, would serve us less than the election of legislators utterly opposed to us, by voters who think as we do. The politicians who make our laws care little about carrying out the principles they profess to profess^sic. But they care a great deal about carrying out those they know their constituents favor.

What a terrible blow the ballot reform act, if it becomes law, will be to the machine system is evident from a glance at its provisions. The state is to print the ballots, putting on them the names not only of the candidates nominated by the great parties, but of those nominated by any party which at the previous election polled three per cent of the vote, or whose nomination is indorsed by one per cent of the voters. The ballots are to be marked in secret and deposited in such a way as to render it absolutely impossible for any person to tell what candidates are voted for.

This will do away with the enormous expense of printing and distributing a separate set of ballots for every set of candidates; and by rendering it impossible to tell how a man votes, will make bribery and intimidation unprofitable. And with these abuses swept away the political machine will have little reason for survival.

The projectors of the arcade railway propose to construct an underground road, extending beneath the surface of Broadway from the Battery to Madison square, and there dividing into two branches, one following the line of Broadway and the Boulevard, and the other that of Madison avenue—both branches to pass beneath the Harlem river and extend into Westchester county. The tunnels are to be equipped with four tracks, two for fast express trains and two for slower trains making frequent stoppages. It is estimated that passengers can be carried by the express trains from the foot of Whitehall street to Thirtieth in six minutes, to Central park in ten, to 100th street in fifteen, to 130th street in seventeen, to High bridge in twenty-two, and to the northern line of the city in thirty-four. At night, when fewer passenger trains are needed, the roads are to be used for transporting freight to and from different parts of the city.

Besides accommodating the railway tracks, the arcade tunnels are to provide space for sewage, gas, water and steam pipes, as well as for electric wires. In fact, the tunnels will be underground streets, devoted exclusively to railway and pipe service, only, unlike any other streets, they are to be made the property of a private corporation, which undertakes to maintain and operate them, and will get what profit it can out of the public for doing it.

The promoters of this enterprise, in an illustrated advertisement which fills a page of the World and is only differentiated from an ordinary newspaper article by a tiny cone of three stars at the end, sets before the people of New York an account of the proposed manner of building and operating the railway, and a little list of the benefits which it will confer on New York. Chief among these latter is the abatement of poverty and crime:

The density of population has brought to tax payers enormous burdens in the way of greatly increased expenditures for street cleaning and for police, health and fire departments; has crowded our courts, filled our jails and penitentiaries, increased the poverty and distress of one-half our inhabitants, and the number of drunkards, thieves and other abandoned and dangerous characters; has debauched morals and increased disease and death to a degree almost unparalleled among civilized people. . . .

In some portions of our Sixth, Eleventh, Fourteenth, Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Twentieth wards the living have very little more ground space than is given to the dead, a distribution not less fatal than impartial, and primarily due to the want of proper facilities—practically any facilities—for transporting the inhabitants to and from their places of business.

All this is to be brought to an end by furnishing the dwellers in the Sixth, Eleventh, Fourteenth, Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Twentieth wards with the means of getting from the Battery to Westchester county in thirty-four minutes. Another way in which the road will benefit the working classes will be by furnishing employment for thousands in the construction, and afterward for thousands more in its operation.

So much for the workers. The nonworkers are to be benefited also. The advertisers point out that they will practically give every piece of “property” along Broadway a double street frontage—one on the upper pedestrian and vehicular Broadway, and one on the rapid transit road beneath. The effect of this “will be, of course, to increase the local trade and the renting value of all property along the line.” Again, the proposed system “will solve the problem of the future development of New York as to residential p. 5, col. 2 accessibility and business facilities. Millions of dollars in value will be added by the construction of the road, and its operation will cause the building up of hundreds of millions more.”

Of course it is easy enough to see that when these arcade people talk about diminishing crime and poverty by their rapid transit operations, they are talking bosh; whereas, when they speak about increasing land values they are talking hard sense. Some of the dwellers in crowded down town tenements may, perhaps, move to slightly less crowded tenements beyond the Harlem; but their places will be quickly taken; the tenement houses will neither be emptied nor pulled down. Nor will the majority of suburban land owners be at all anxious to see the tenement dwellers come among them. The people they want to attract are the well-to-do class, whose presence and improvements will still farther raise the value of the land. But it is one of the misfortunes of our civilization that this sort of talk has to be talked, even though the men who talk it and the men who listen to it, alike know that it is but talk and nothing more.

New York needs rapid transit. She needs it imperatively. But she doesn’t need to make a private corporation a present of a lot of stock in order to get it. Let New York build her own rapid transit system, operate it herself for the free benefit of all her citizens, and assess the cost where it legitimately belongs, on the land values which the improved means of intercommunication will create.

God has been unkind to the people of New York. In providing the salt store of the world, instead of putting it all in Bohemia and England and other pauper labor countries, He went to work and stowed a lot of it underneath the state of New York, and thus made it impossible for the people of New York to get salt without paying an extra price for it. We know this is so, because Mr. John W. Parker says so; and Mr. John W. Parker says so because, living at Syracuse, and being engaged in the salt making industry, he naturally knows all about it. Take off the duty of eight cents a hundred on salt, says Mr. Parker, and “it will wipe out all the salt industries of Onondaga.”

Mr. John W. Parker’s chain of reasoning is simple and convincing. He used to employ four thousand men making salt, but now has work for only fifteen hundred, owing partly to the competition of Michigan salt makers, but principally to the low protective duty. As long as the duty is retained, Mr. Parker can manage to get along and benevolently pay his men their wages. He could do better, of course, if there were more duty, but he can get along as it is. But if the duty should be taken off, that terrible English salt maker will rush in, take possession of the market —what a noble phrase it is, that “take possession of the market”—choke up the salt wells and compel the fifteen hundred laborers to go to farming, at which occupation, Mr. Parker naively informs us, “they would find it pretty hard scratching, you may be sure.” Then having got possession of the market, the unprincipled foreigner will put the price of salt up, up, up, and tax the American people at his own sweet, or rather salty, will.

All this might have been avoided if only providence hadn’t put salt in New York or Michigan. How thankful we ought to be that we can’t grow coffee in New York. It would cost us twice as much if we could.

The honorable Fatty Walsh, late warden of the Tombs, is preparing to go into active politics again. As a necessary preliminary step he has opened a liquor saloon in Centre street, where he is said to be rapidly regaining his former influence.

Professor W. A. Pratt, the state geologist of Georgia, is said to have invented a process by which Bessemer steel can be turned out direct from an iron furnace without passing through the intermediate condition of pig iron. The conversion is effected by the introduction into the blow pipes of the furnace of a chemical compound which eliminates the excessive phosphorus from the ores. The chemical steel company of Birmingham, Ala., are to operate the process, and claim that it will effect an industrial revolution. So it will. It will squeeze thousands of men out of work. If Alabama gets hold of a few more such inventions, she will be overpopulated almost before her territory has been explored.

The following notice has been issued by the Philadelphia and Reading railroad company:

Notice is hereby given to employes that it will not be permitted to any man in the employ of this company to attempt to use undue or improper influence with our men for the purpose of securing members for labor organizations. After the strike of last winter it was found that many employes who desired to remain independent had been compelled to join labor organizations in order to protect themselves from ill treatment and possible loss of situations. We will discharge every man in the employ of this company who is guilty of such action hereafter. Our experience with labor organizations during the last twelve months has not been of such a character as leads us to look with favor upon members of them as against good men who prefer to remain independent.

The elephant’s reputation for strength is well established. Hereafter it will be greater than ever. He has actually broken through the United States tariff wall, and all along the protectionist line the wail of Ichabod! Ichabod! goes up to heaven for the glory that is departed. The performing monkeys tried it on and failed miserably; but Adam Forepaugh’s performing elephants have rushed in where monkeys feared to tread. They came from Havana to New York and brought their bicycle with them, and the collector demanded twenty per cent. Then Adam appealed to Washington, and the treasury department telegraphed to New York to throw down the bars, and let the elephants walk in. It is to be hoped they will not tread on any infant industry.

It was a kindly thought of James Hooker Hamersley, to celebrate his wedding day by giving twenty-four homeless p. 5, col. 3 lads the means to leave New York. The boys were inmates of the various lodging houses of the Children’s aid society. Each lad was given a good dinner and a suit of clothes, and after dinner the whole crowd was shipped off to the west, where Mr. Hamersley has arranged to provide them with permanent homes.

But though Mr. Hamersley’s act was a kind one, the system which renders such acts necessary is simply barbarous. These boys were, presumably, citizens of New York. They had as much right to remain here as Mr. Hamersley himself. They had an equal right with him to the pursuit of happiness right here in New York; and there is as much happiness to be found here as anywhere in the world, if only a man were allowed that liberty of pursuing it that the Declaration of Independence asserts to be his inalienable right. But it has come to this that a citizen of New York must either find means to pay for the privilege of living in New York or go into exile. These boys were unable to pay, and so they had to go. It was kind of Mr. Hamersley to send them off. But it was a brutal outrage on human rights that they should be driven away.

The Pratt coal mines at Birmingham, Ala., employ 600 convicts and 500 free miners. The free miners have quit work for a time because the company insist on reducing wages five cents a ton, from 50 to 45 cents. The convict laborers will remain at work, because they can’t help themselves.

The good people of Minneapolis are doing their share toward the practical solution of the social problem. They are trying to make things comfortable for the women workers.

There is a women’s Christian association in Minneapolis which has been running a young women’s boarding house, intended to furnish girls who have to work for a living with a home within the limit of their means. But somehow the limit has contracted. The W. C. A. boarding house is intended for women who earn big wages—$7 to $10 a week, and the majority of girls who work for a living in Minneapolis can’t make more than $4 a week. So the philanthropists have taken the matter in hand, and now they are going to start a boarding house which will supply all the comforts of a home for $2.50 a week, leaving the Minneapolis young woman something less than 22 cents a day for car fares, gloves, charities, pleasure excursions and dress.

These Minneapolis folks mean well, but they’re all wrong. In place of encouraging these young women to remain in Minneapolis, where there evidently isn’t room for them, they ought to help them to get away. Assisted emigration is the thing. Help the $4 a week young women to get away to Dakota, or Utah, or Africa, or somewhere else where population isn’t so terribly dense. They’re trying it over in London, where women’s wages are about as low as they are in Minneapolis. And they say it works beautifully. That is, it would work beautifully, if fresh lots of young women didn’t persist in getting born and growing up to embarrass the philanthropists.

After all, the Chinese method may be the best. We got our protective system from China, and why shouldn’t we adopt some of their other customs. Out there, when a superfluous girl child is born, they just quietly explain to her that they’re very sorry, but there’s no room for her in the world, and so they put her in a baby tower and that’s the end of it. Cruel? Barbarous? Well, it doesn’t sound gentle and civilized, that’s the truth. But how about the gentleness and civilization of making girls work for $4 a week in Minneapolis?

Mr. Andrew Carnegie and the Pinkerton protective system have scored a victory at Braddock. The strike at the Edgar Thompson steel works^sic has been declared off, and the strikers are scrambling to secure such of their old places as are still vacant.

Mr. J. Juvenet, a Texas farmer, finds his farming does not pay, and modestly proposes, through the columns of the Press of this city, that the national government, or the state of Texas, should help him out. Mr. Juvenet has been trying to raise jute. He likes the work, and would gladly keep on at it, only it doesn’t pay. So he thinks “government” ought to give him an annual present or testimonial of enough to support him and enable him to lay by something while he amuses himself with his jute cultivation.

Mr. Juvenet’s argument for his proposed pauper labor is a curious one. It is that the natives of India raise jute, and sell it to us at a low price, taking our cotton manufactures in exchange. The Indian jute raiser, he says, wears “a wardrobe not worth speaking of,” and earns eight cents a day; and apparently he thinks that if “government” doesn’t do something for him he will have to exist on eight cents a day and wander round in Texas “with a wardrobe not worth speaking of.”

Mr. Juvenet is altogether too modest. He ought to widen out his claim for charity so as to take in another very worthy class of agriculturists. These eight-cent-a-day fellows on the other side of the world raise wheat as well as jute. Clearly every American farmer who raises wheat ought to receive a yearly dole of enough to enable him to live in comfort. If not, why not? What else is the surplus there for?

On the whole, though, we fear Mr. Juvenet is hardly likely to get what he asks for. Our advice to him is to give over trying to make a pauper laborer of himself, quit whining, and go to work.

Let the Irish Emigrant Consider Well Before He Starts for this “Protected” Country.

New York Tablet.

Before any Irishman, then, decides upon emigrating to the new world he would do well to inform himself as to what he is likely to meet on his arrival here. Has he any conception of New York tenement house life in its worst aspects? Of the difficulties of properly bringing up his children amid the vilest surroundings? Of the great difficulty of procuring employment and the precarious tenure of the “job” when it is procured? If emigrants could only forsee^sic what they have to undergo here, we think most of them would prefer to stay at home, defy Balfour and the landlords, and keep a firm grip upon their holdings. p. 5, col. 4

FOREIGN NOTES.

A correspondent of the London Star gives some interesting figures concerning the Barrow hematite iron and steel company (limited). The company produced last year 420,000 tons of pig iron, but of this the stockholders received for the use of their capital, nothing; the laborers received for their work of production £57,750, and the landlord who owns the ground out of which the Barrow company extracts the ore, exacted, in return for allowing other people to work, £126,000.

Mr. Albert Pell, who used to be under secretary of the British local government board, uplifted his testimony the other day against the ingratitude of those wretched working classes. It appears that some time ago some charitable people placed $30,000 in Mr. Pell’s hands to enable him to send out of England 300 honest, hard working Englishmen whom the owners of England were tired of seeing round. The exiles had been originally agricultural laborers in Kent, and being driven out of Kent they had first gone to work at railway building, had been ordered to quit that, had then gone to ship building, had been ordered to quit that, and when Mr. Pell took hold of them were “in great distress.” No wonder. Mr. Pell’s complaint was that, although he had asked these exiles to write and tell him how they were getting on, not one of them had ever sent him a line. He judged from that that they had been unsuccessful, but felt himself compelled to express “a poor opinion of their ingratitude.”

Now just suppose a farmer, with an empty corn bin, half his land uncultivated and a steadily increasing bill for meat and meal—just suppose such a farmer should deliberately kick out of doors a dozen or more stalwart sons, who only asked the privilege of cultivating the fallow land, on the pretense that he had no work for them to do and couldn’t afford to keep them? What a consummate ass we should judge that farmer to be. Yet that is precisely what Great Britain, acting through the ex-secretary of her local government board, has been doing. She has hundreds of thousands of acres of idle land on which wheat can be raised more easily than in Dakota. She wants wheat badly—keeps on buying it all the time. And yet she deliberately thrusts forth a lot of men whose trade it is to raise wheat, because, forsooth, she has no work for them to do.

As for the ingratitude, it seems to us to be all on the other side. Instead of expecting those 300 Kentish agriculturists to be grateful for being thrust out into the world, Mr. Pell ought to feel intensely thankful that they consented to go quietly.

Among the clauses of the new local government bill now before the British parliament is one which provides that whenever the newly constituted county authorities shall refuse to renew the license of any liquor dealer who already has a license under the present system, a proper sum shall be allowed as damages for the extinction of a “vested interest.” The clause is defended on the ground that by granting a license in the first place the authorities conferred a franchise on the liquor dealer, which it would be horribly unjust to take away.

The true inwardness of this amazing tenderness for the liquor dealers is quite in keeping with the principles of English social economy. It’s the landlord that is to be taken care of, not the rum seller, who, for any real interest the legislators take in him, may go hang. The freehold of the English public houses is held by the landlords; the leasehold is held by the brewers; the actual liquor dealer and beer seller is little more than a tenant at will, and his license is considered as part of the premises for which he pays rent. Now an established public house will rent for more than the building next door to it; and there you have the secret of the parliamentary tenderness for vested rights.

Within the last generation the landlords have hit upon an ingenious method of enhancing the value of this public house privilege. They issue a species of private rum selling licenses themselves and charge a round price for them. As thus: When a plot of hitherto vacant land is laid off in streets and squares, and let on building leases, the owner of the “property” decides beforehand just where the public houses shall be, and inserts in the building leases a clause providing that those sites, and no others, shall be so occupied. In this way they guarantee to every public house on their land the absolute monopoly of business within a certain area, since no rival establishment can be set up without forfeiture of the building lease.

The tithe war is being vigorously waged in Wales. On the one side the people are determined that they will not pay the tithes; on the other, the tithe owners are equally determined that they shall. As the tithe owners have the assistance of the law, and as property of any kind may be seized and sold for tithes on summary process, the tithe owners are for the present getting the best of it; but if the tithe payers keep up their system of passive resistance, they will surely win in the long run. There is nothing the owners of England dread so much as the necessity for the constant application of the strong hand. It breeds discontent. And discontent, the landlords know full well, will be fatal to their supremacy. Let it once be settled that the tithe tax can only be collected by seizing the widow’s cow or the cottier’s pig, and tithes will soon be numbered among the things that were.

These tithes, too, are the most impudent of taxes. They are a tribute wrung from industry, without even the pretense of a return of any kind whatever. The tithing privileges are bought and sold as openly as church preferments, and most of them are owned by persons or corporations at a distance from the places where they are collected. The farmers and cottiers of Wales are taxed to support Oxford and Cambridge fellowships, to maintain men in idleness in London, and for other purposes in which the wretched Welshmen who are robbed have absolutely no interest whatever.

There was an excited discussion at a p. 5, col. 5 recent meeting of the poor law guardians of the English county of Cheshire a few weeks ago over a proposal to appropriate a large sum of money to enable a number of native born laboring men to emigrate to Canada. The advocates of the motion pointed to the fact that the men were all able bodied, sober, industrious—when they had anything to do—in short, just the kind of men whom Canada wanted. It would be a terrible injustice, they claimed, to retain such men in England, where the pressure of population was greater than could be endured, when a few pounds would send them to a country where there was plenty of room for them.

One of the poor law guardians, a Mr. Thompson, replied to this argument by producing a parliamentary return of the statistics of immigration into England from the pauper labor countries of the continent. He claimed that “the moment an Englishman left the country a Polish Jew came into his place,” and he proved his claim by figures.

The appropriation was not passed. But neither Mr. Thompson nor his associates seem to have caught even a glimpse of the absurdity of one set of Englishmen deliberating whether they should allow another set of Englishmen to remain in their native country or give them a few sovereigns and kick them out of it.

Among the tenants on the Kentish estates of Lord Brabourne was an fellow^sic, Mace Morley by name, who was eighty-two years old, and for two generations had been loyally helping to support the great Brabourne family. But Morley got past doing any more work, or the noble lord wanted the place for somebody else—any how, Mace Morley got notice to quit. He was an unreasonable old fellow, and he declined to go. He said he’d been born in that house, and he was resolved to die there. And he did die there; for when they came to evict him he bolted the door and hanged himself by the neck. They broke into the house before he was quite dead, and would have put him out even then, but a kind physician who had been summoned gave a certificate that he was “unfit to be moved,” and they had to let him alone. So he died. They get ahead of the landlords once in awhile, these happy peasants of England, but it costs them dear to do it.

The Young women’s Christian association of London has started a system of evening classes for working girls, at which will be taught, among other things, stenography, book keeping, scientific dress cutting and instrumental and vocal music. A fee of only one shilling entitles any working girl to the full benefit of the course. What the young women’s Christian association will do for the stenographers, and book keepers, and dress cutters, and musicians, whose lives will be made harder by this introduction of fresh competion^sic, we are not told. Probably it has not occurred to them to look at that side of the question.

So true it is that a wrong can never be remedied save by the absolute undoing of it. While English women, like English men, remain fenced off from access to natural opportunities, the artificial relief of crowding in one place can only lead to crowding in another. If all sewing girls were taught book keeping and stenography, the sure result would be that some book keepers and stenographers would have to become sewing girls or perish.

The land value tax movement is not allowed to languish in England. The latest London papers tell us of an enthusiastic meeting at the St. John’s schools in Waterloo road, which was presided over by the Rev. A. W. Jepson, vicar of St. John’s. The following resolution was adopted:

That no system of taxation can be equitable unless a direct assessment be imposed upon the owners of ground rents and upon the owners of increased values imparted to lands by building operations or other improvements, as recommended by the royal commission on the housing of the working classes.

It will be news to many readers of THE STANDARD to learn that Portugal is, in some parts, still an unsettled country. All the same it is quite true, and the Portuguese government is considerably exercised about it. Portugal owns her own railways, and finds that those south of the Tagus are run at considerably loss^sic, owing to the sparsity of population. So they are studying a plan by which the inhabitants of the densely populated northern districts may be induced to move south in sufficient numbers to make things even.

The cause of the trouble, the Portuguese authorities find, is that while in the northern provinces everybody owns land and works it, in the south the soil is held by large proprietors, who neither work it themselves nor permit others to work it. The government will acquire these uncultivated lands, divide them into lots of two and one-half acres, put a furnished house on each lot, supply seeds and manure, and offer the lots for sale on annual installments, with the proviso that the purchaser must cultivate or forfeit the land.

Thus from various directions the nations are struggling toward the light.

They have the land question in Roumania, too. Where don’t they have it? The Roumanian peasantry are rebelling against their landlords, plundering houses and corn magazines, threatening the local authorities with scythes and pitchforks, and clamoring for a redistribution of the land. Of course the foreign correspondents at Bucharest claim that all the discontent is fomented by the agents of the czar. Perhaps it is. But it seems plain that the discontent was there before the czar fomented it, and will remain whether he continues to foment it or not.

A return has been compiled at the Irish office, and will shortly be issued, which sheds—so the London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian states—an instructive light on the comparative criminal bases for the temporary crimes act of 1882, and the permanent repressive legislation of the unionist party, carried last year. The number of agrarian offenses, exclusive of threatening letters, committed in Ireland during the first six months of 1882 was 1,040, p. 5, col. 6 while in the corresponding period last year they had fallen to 306. But the contrast between the state of Ireland in 1882 and 1887 is best illustrated by the number of capital crimes perpetrated in each of those years. In 1882 there were twenty-six murders committed, while in 1887 the number was six. The return, which contains a good deal of other valuable information, all tending to the same purpose, was prepared at the request of Mr. John Morley.

M. Marambat, a member of the French academy of medicine, has presented a report to that body on the connection between drink and crime. M. Marambat finds that seventy-nine per cent of the vagabonds and beggars of France are drunkards. The deduction he draws is that drunkenness leads to beggary and vagabondage. It does not seem to have occurred to him that the reverse may possibly be true, and poverty be the parent of drunkenness and crime.

Some two thousand leases have just fallen in on Lord Portman’s London estates, which embrace about 250 acres in the very heart of the metropolis. His noble lordship will not only increase his rents 800 per cent, but according to an ancient English custom will gather in about $5,000,000 in premiums, which is the euphemistic term for blackmail imposed on tenants in consideration of permitting them to re-lease on any terms whatever. Henry Labouchere in Truth speaks of this as “a very pretty unearned increment.”

SOCIETY NOTES.

The Coventry (England) society for the prevention of cruelty to animals offered a number of money prizes to be competed for by the local higglers who could present their horses, ponies, mules, or donkeys, having been in regular work and in their owner’s possession at least six months in the best condition and showing the surest signs of kind treatment. The society’s object is to inculcate among the coal higglers a kindly feeling for the beasts of burden they employ.—[London Christian Commonwealth.

On Saturday morning, at the Albert institute at Windsor, Princess Christian was presented with a pendant of sapphires and rubies, and a pear shaped pearl drop, which had been subscribed for by the inhabitants of Windsor, in recognition of her royal highness’s valuable and sympathetic work among the poor of the town. The gift cost about £500, and accompanying it was a handsomely bound volume containing the names of the subscribers, numbering 2,000.—[London Christian Commonwealth.

William Kohl, in Winfield, Kan., unable to obtain employment and unwilling to steal, killed himself.

If you are very rich and want to be very stylish in these days, you must not go to a furniture store for very much besides your mattresses and kitchen appointments. The best architects and decorators are now busied with the invention of chairs, lounges, bedsteads, billiard tables, dining tables, buffets, bureaus, and nearly every other portable thing that goes into a grand house. Nearly all the furniture in the Vanderbilt houses, Law club, and many other establishments was especially designed for them, and has no counterpart elsewhere in the world. The revolution usually begins with a quaint fire place, then the buffet or bedstead or bureau has to match it, and next the chairs and tables follow suit to be in keeping.—[New York Sun.

At two large balls given last week the flowers were the great feature of the entertainments. Mrs. Murphy, of Carlton house terrace, devised a charming English version of an American surprise party. When the guests entered the supper room they saw, under the spreading branches of a great tree palm, a Roman chariot, drawn by a swan and filled with exquisite yellow roses. To each lady was handed a dress spray of yellow rosebuds, and to each male a buttonhole to match. The mantel shelves and window recesses were masses of yellow roses and mauve orchids, and on the table were silver baskets filled with the same flowers. The other ball was given by Mrs. Noble, at Henley, who some time ago conceived the poetic idea of calling each of her daughters by the name of a flower. As her garden of girls develops she signalizes the entry of each into the social world by a festivity, in which the name flower plays a prominent part. The ball given lately was for the queen of flowers’ namesake, and consequently roses reigned supreme. They were everywhere evident, yet never crowded, the colors being shaded and blended by a master hand. It was difficult to know which to admire most, nature for producing such floral gems or art for the absolute perfection with which they were arranged.—[London Society.

The season has arrived when night lodgers at the police stations are being refused admittance. They are turned adrift to sleep on the docks or anywhere they can escape molestation.

The annual report of crime from the state department of New York gives the following figures for the past year: Convictions in courts of record (increase), 3,301; offenses against person (decrease),505; offenses against property (increase), 2,010; miscellaneous (increase), 730; special sessions convictions (increase), 88,394.

The steamship Rhaetia from Hamburg, which landed her passengers at Castle garden yesterday, had 200 Greeks aboard. Some of them were entirely destitute. The entire lot were detained in Castle garden until it shall be decided whether they shall be released or sent back. It was said that congress will be petitioned to raise the head money on immigrants who are flocking here from Europe and Asia this spring.

The king of Spain will celebrate his second birthday by a grand fete at the Madrid hippodrome. All the school children will be present. Each child on entering will be presented with a gold medal with the picture of the baby Alphonse. There will be 12,000 cakes, 12,000 rolls, 12,000 cups of chocolate and 15,000 pounds of bonbons.

W. W. Wilmot, an old man who appeared on the streets of Montgomery, Ala., a few days ago begging for enough money to buy a railroad ticket to Mobile, has had a romantic history. Many years ago he invented a machine for crimping shoes, and soon acquired a fortune. Of late years, how,ever^sic, luck turned against him and one misfortune was crowded closely on the heels of another until he has lost his entire fortune and his health as well.

Mrs. Van Auken’s theater party and dance on Tuesday evening was socially the afiair^sic of the week. The fifty guests arrived at Mrs. Van Auken’s residence on Fifth avenue, a little before 8 o’clock and were driven to Daly’s in five stages. Small china bonbonieres filled with candied rose leaves or violets were given to each lady. After the play the party reassembled in Mrs. Van Auken’s drawing rooms and were joined by about one hnndred^sic others. Dancing continued until after midnight, when an elaborate supper was served in the billiard room. The dining room and music room, which can be thrown into one room, were used for dancing.

He’ll Spend All His Time Howling for Free Trade This Year.

Detroit Tribune.

A “tariff reformer” is a man who spends one-fourth of his time denying that he is a free trader and the other three-fourths howling for free trade.

Our Daily Bread.

Charles Mackay.

What do we want? Our daily bread; Leave to earn it by our skill; Leave to labor freely for it, Leave to buy it where we will: For ’tis hard upon the many— Hard, unpitied by the few, To starve and die for want of work, Or live half-starved with work to do.

What do we want? Our daily bread; Fair reward for labor done; Daily bread for wives and children; All our wants are merged in one. When the fierce fiend Hunger grips us, Evil fancies clog our brains, Vengeance settles on our hearts, And Frenzy gallops through our veins.

What do we want? Our daily bread; Give us that; all else will come— Self-respect, and self-denial, And the happiness of home; Kindly feeling, education, Liberty for act and thought; And surety that, whate’er befall, Our children shall be fed and taught.

What do we want? Our daily bread; Give us that for willing toil: Make us sharers in the plenty God has shower’d upon the soil; And we’ll nurse our better natures With bold hearts and judgment strong, To do as much as men can do To keep the world from going wrong.

What do we want? Our daily bread; And Trade untrammel’d as the wind; And from our ranks shall spirits start, To aid the progress of mankind. Sages, poets, mechanicians, Mighty thinkers, shall arise, To take their share of loftier work, And teach, exalt, and civilize.

What do we want? Our daily bread:— Grant it:—make our efforts free; Let us work and let us prosper; You shall prosper more than we; And the humblest homes of England Shall, in [proper?] time, give birth To better [men than?] we have been, To live upon a better Earth.

THE PLUMLEYS.

I was strolling along upper Broadway one evening last winter when I heard a sudden hail of “This must be Bill McCabe,” from a well dressed man who passed me, and then turned suddenly round. I stopped and turned. The stranger came toward me with outstretched hand. “It’s Bill McCabe, ain’t it?” he said, half doublingly^sic.

“Yes,” I said; “it’s Bill McCabe, sure enough. Though I must confess I don’t know who you may be.”

The man was so clearly disappointed, there was such a tone of genuine regret in his “you ain’t forgot me, hev ye?” that my conscience smote me for my lapse of memory. I led him to an electric lighted window and looked at him closely. As soon as I caught the twinkle of his eye, I knew him. “Why, it’s old John Plumley!” said I.

“Yes, Bill, its old John Plumley^sic, and I’m glad, very glad to see you. The neighbors said you had drifted off to New York, and I made up my mind when I started on this trip^sic to find you if you were in this town.”

Well, I was as glad to see old John Plumley as old John Plumley evidently was to see me. Not wholly for his own sake—though I always liked John—but because when I looked at him I saw the faces of my companions of twenty years ago, and heard their voices in his speech. As I shook old John Plumley’s hand the lights and bustle of Broadway seemed to vanish somehow, and I was back in the quiet San Joaquin valley with only the stars above me, and a solitude around, and old John’s hand in mine.

“Come to my room,” said John, “and let’s have a talk about old times.”

It was a fashionable hotel that old John Plumley was lodged in, and a pleasant suite of two rooms fronting on Broadway that he ushered me into. “Yes,” said he—I suppose I must have looked surprised—“it’s a little better than the old cabin, ain’t it? But there! I’ve worked hard all these years, and I ain’t a denyin’ myself anything in reason now that I kin afford it.”

Well, I was glad to know my old friend was so prosperous. I didn’t envy him, though I coudn’t^sic help contrasting his case with my own. I had worked hard all these years, too, and a week’s stay in that hotel would have bankrupted me. But it was pleasant to find that hard work really would make some men rich, if it wouldn’t others. I felt more reconciled to the social system as I looked at old John Plumley, and thought how hard he must have worked, and how saving he must have been.

And Plumley was glad to see me. There was no mistake about that. He fairly beamed with pleasure, and talked sixteen to the dozen. He had messages of remembrance from people whom, to my shame be it said, I had almost forgotten. I think he invented some of them. More honor to him if he did. It isn’t every rich man who will take the trouble to compose a fiction, merely to please a fellow he hasn’t seen for twenty years, and a poor man at that. Yes, Mrs. Plumley was well, and so were the family. Did I remember Tom, Dick, Harry, and the rest? Here my little fiction came in, and I vowed I hadn’t forgotten one of them. Well, they were all in good health, and so were seven others whom Plumley had added to his quiver since I saw him last. “Let ’em come,” said old John Plumley, “I wouldn’t care if there was half a dozen more. I’ve worked hard and saved money, and I kin afford ’em, Bill.” It was pleasant to see the old man’s pride in his offspring.

And what had brought him east? Sure enough, he’d meant to tell me that the first thing. Of course I remembered Andrew? Andrew was the baby in them days when he first struck the valley. Well, Andrew was a-goin’ to school in one o’ them colleges near here. They sot a good deal o’ store by Andrew, did Mis’ Plumley and himself. Andrew had the makin’s of a great man in him, and they meant to give him a chance. The others was smart enough, an’ good—thank the Lord, they was all good young ‘uns—but Andrew, by gosh! and here old John Plumley extended his arms and waved his hands slightly p. 6, col. 2 to convey an idea of the mental expansiveness of Andrew. So as he and Mis’ Plumley had never been cast^sic before they had decided to come on and pay Andrew a visit, and take a look at New York and Washington, and in short make what old John Plumley called a reg’lar tower of observation.

I sat with my old friend far into the night, and had to fairly tear myself away at last. I should have liked to stay longer, but I have to be at work at half-past seven in the morning, and I need sleep to fit me for my day’s labor.

When I got my discharge from the army, at the close of the war, I went back to California and hunted for a job. There was a coal oil company in those days which held some land in the San Joaquin valley, and I got a job with them. My duties were to live on the land, take care of the company’s property and look after their interests generally. The job didn’t last long. The company soon found there wasn’t any oil worth talking about in those parts, so they carted off their plant, abandoned the land—which was practically worth nothing—and left me on the world again.

Pretty much all the land thereabouts was government land then, and it struck me it would make a good sheep range. So after taking counsel with some sheep men I went to San Francisco and managed to raise enough money, added to my own savings, to buy a flock of sheep. Everything was in my favor. The land for the range cost me nothing, as the unwritten law of those days gave the first comer the right to the use of the whole range and forbade any other sheep man from interfering with his pasture. I was entitled to a homestead of one hundred and sixty acres on which to build my cabin and sheep corral. The cabin was easily put up, and the corral was was^sic made with brush, limbs of trees and earth. So I became a sheep man and made money at it, as all sheep men did in those days, when land was plenty and a man could use his arms and legs and eyes and brains without having to pay some other fellow so much a year for the privilege. A few other homesteaders gathered by degrees, until we had a quiet, sleepy, happy little settlement of four families and three bachelors.

It was something of an event when a wagon came into the valley in those times; and so when I looked up the road one day and saw an emigrant team coming slowly along, I saddled my mare and rode off to meet it.

It was Plumley and his family. That was the first time I met him, and he was certainly in anything but a prosperous condition. There was only one bull in the yoke, and Plumley himself was plodding wearily along. holding^sic up the yoke on the other side and getting mightily shaken and thwacked as the “team” slowly pitched and wobbled along. The other bull, he said, had died “way up the valley.” The survivor looked as if he wished he had had the good sense and forethought to die too.

Plumley halted the “team” as I rode up and lowered his end of the yoke to the ground. We greeted each other, as strangers do when they meet on the plains or in the woods, and then Plumley told his story. He was a Missourian. I knew that before he spoke, by the cut of his hair, and he was hunting for a place to settle. Any family? Oh yes! A wagon full. The front flap of the cover was down, so I went round to the rear end and looked in, and, sure enough, he had a wagon full.

Plumley asked if there was any good camping ground thereabouts. I told him he would find a good place under the trees on my claim. To-morrow, I said, if he liked, I would show him a good place to settle on. We would be glad to have him come among us.

So Plumley shouldered his end of the yoke again, urged the weary bull to make one last effort, and slowly crawled toward my place. Then we unyoked the team, and Plumley and I together assisted the wagon full of family to the ground.

Mrs. Plumley was a square built woman, of the regular Missouri type, with her hair cut in the same style as her husband’s. She was dressed in a calico gown that had most decidedly seen better days, and an old broken pair of army shoes; and she was covered with alkali dust from head to foot. The children were in calico slips, bare legged and bare headed, and were even dustier than their mother. When the camp was made, the woman and children stood in a half circle, looking at me with vacant curiosity, while Plumley and I talked. I noticed that no move was being made toward building a fire, and suggested to Plumley that the children might as well be doing it.

“No use,” said Plumley sententiously, “nothin’ to cook. Got some jerked beef—that’s all—no fire needed for that. Been livin’ on jerky and corn, or anything we could pick up for some time back. Got down to hard pan now.” And Plumley got into the wagon and brought out a hunk of dried deer meat, which he began to chop up, while the children gathered round him, clamoring for slices of it. The wretched “team” had moved a few feet off and was greedily cropping the grass.

I remember thinking that, take it all in all, I had never seen a more destitute, poverty stricken set of people than the Plumley tribe were at that moment. There they were, nine of them, with not a penny in the world, just rags enough to cover them, a broken down wagon, a bull all used up, and actually ravenous with starvation. They were about as near to having nothing at all as man, woman and children could be with any decency. If ever people began life on nothing, the Plumleys did when they came to the San Joaquin valley.

Of course I had to help them out. We all helped each other out on the frontier in those days, without any thought of charity bestowed or accepted. Of course it would be different if the Plumleys should present themselves in the streets of New York in that fashion—though, after all, there is more food and house room to spare here than there was there. Plumley and his family would be tramps here in New York. Out there in the valley they were emigrants, and for all their rags and dust and poverty they thought themselves

p. 6, col. 3 as good as anybody else. Plumley wasn’t a bit deferential when he spoke to me.

So I told Plumley to throw his hunk of jerky back into the wagon and let Mrs. Plumley start a fire, while he came with me to my cabin. I had nearly a whole sheep there, hanging in a safe to a tree. I had a bin full of potatoes; my herder always kept a week’s supply of bread baked ahead; and I had plenty of corn in the ear. I loaded Plumley and myself with victuals and started back to the camp. Mrs. Plumley had no frying pans, so I lent her two of mine. Then, leaving them to do their cooking, I ate a hasty snack in my cabin and rode off up the valley to tell my neighbors about the new comers and their wants.

When I got back I found the Plumleys getting on famously. The potatoes were boiling in the camp kettle, the corn was roasting in the ashes, the two frying pans were full of sizzling mutton chops, and the children, each with a piece of bread in one hand and a mutton chop in the other, were greasily feeding—“just to kinder stay their stummicks,” Pumley^sic said, “until dinner was ready.” Mrs. Plumley had brightened up considerably and became talkative. She remarked that “the weather looked fine—perhaps a little blowy.”

Then the neighbors began to arrive. The Hoffmans, being bachelors, had nothing to delay them, and got there first; the others, being married men, had to wait for their wives to get ready. But almost before the last of the sheep was eaten, nearly everybody in the settlement was round the Plumley camp. The women welcomed Mrs. Plumley; the children stared awhile at the little Plumleys, and then began to scrape acquaintance with them, and the men adjourned, with Plumley and myself, to my cabin, where Joe Carey bit off a chew of tobacco and handed the plug to Plumley, and by this act constituted himself the representative and leader for us all. We were soon having an interesting talk—that is, Joe and Plumley were—while the rest of us listened and only occasionally put in a word.

We weren’t long in deciding that Plumley would do. Nobody said so, but it was clear everybody thought so. He had nothing, it was true, but what difference did that make? As Joe Carey said: “There was enough and to spare in the settlement to give Plumley and his folks a lift?” So without any more delay the wagons were hitched up, and we all went over the ground with Plumley, pointing out the quarter sections of government land in various directions. Plumley finally chose a quarter section adjoining my place on the east, and so that matter was settled.

Then came the questions of lumber, house building, and plowing up land enough for vegetables, etc. These were soon arranged. I had some lumber—the Careys, and the Pattersons, and the Welshes, and the Perkinses offered the use of plows and cattle—there was no lack of seed—and everybody was willing to put in a day or two of work. Plumley expressed no special gratitude for all these favors, nor did any one of us expect it—we should have looked upon him with some suspicion if he had. We know if we^sic once started him he couldn’t well help getting along, and we knew, too, that after he once got started he would help us when we needed it, as we were now going to help him.

Meantime, around the emigrant wagon, the women had arranged matters with Mrs. Plumley. The provisions were furnished for the afternoon and the next day, and we found the party talking as sociably as if they had known each other for years. Plenty of offers were made of house room for the night; but the weather was warm, the night promised to be fine, and Mrs. Plumley declined with thanks. It occurs to me now that while she took the provisions without much acknowledgment she was somewhat profuse in her acknowledgment of the offers of hospitality. Then the shadows began to lengthen and the neighbors dropped away one by one, promising to be on hand bright and early in the morning. Then evening came, and supper over, Mrs. Plumley, after some urging took possession of my cabin with her children, and Plumley, the herder and I rolled ourselves up in our blankets outside. Plumley talked of the the^sic adventures he had met with on his trip.. I listened awhile, then dozed, then fell asleep.

. . . . . . .

The stars were still [shining?] when I awoke. Plumley and his wife were already up and stirring and had a fire built and the kettle boiling. Mrs. Plumley cooked the breakfast, while the herder and I went down to the corral. By the time we had finished breakfast, and done our chores, Si Perkins was on hand with his team, and before the lumber was loaded up, all the men were on the ground, with hammers, saws, nails, and everything else necessary for the building of a cabin. The woman folks had sent word that they would be on hand in time to provide the dinner.

It took a little time to select a site for the cabin, but when that was agreed on, we sat to work, and by noon the cabin was finished excepting the weather strips. Dinner was ready for us. What a dinner it was! My larder never furnished all the good things spread before us. The women had brought down tue^sic things; and it was enjoyed and appreciated—especially by the Plumleys, and more especially by the Plumley children.

Well, we rested for over an hour, enjoyed our pipes and arranged the work for the afternoon. Plumley and I were to put on the weather strips; Perkins and his boy and the Hoffmans were to plow up a piece of ground; Mat and Joe Carey were to bore for water, and the others to assist wherever they could be useful. When evening came all were to go to their homes for supper and come again next morning.

Before the week was out the Plumleys were living in their own house; there had been given to them a few head of sheep, some chickens, and plenty of potatoes and corn, and about fifteen acres had been plowed up and seeded. When the neighbors killed, a share was sent to them. Mrs. Plumley and the children had been helped in clothing by the women, and they made a good appearance—for the country. And so the Plumley family were fairly

p. 6, col. 4 established, and lifted beyond the fear of want.

After Plumley got settled he happened to say that his specialty was bee keeping. It wasn’t long after that before a couple of hives were provided for him, and he soon showed that he was an expert at the business. He was able, after a time, besides attending to his own place, to pay back in work what the settlers had done for him; he had no killing day, but he worked out his share; and while for a time he had to struggle harder than his neighbors to get along, still he got along. When there was anything to be done which would be paid for in money or truck, the neighbors got him the job. When the grain was to be gathered in he got work on a threshing machine, and he traveled with it until the season ended. This put money in his pockets—for at the time of which I write men on a threshing machine got four or five dollars a day and their board. He was able from his earnings to add a great many things to his possessions. His bees were increasing, and he had honey to sell. He wanted to make his neighbors a present of it, but they preferred to buy. He got a little wool from his sheep; his chickens grew in number. During the winter he drove a team. The following spring found him plowing by the day. He got money, and added to his store. When I left the valley, two years after he came into it, he had decided to devote his whole time in future to attending to his own place, and especially to his bees. I heard afterward that he was very successful with his bee culture. The bees fed in the tule grasses, and this gave to their honey a new and peculiar flavor.

Mrs. Plumley took up a quarter section of land adjoining her husband’s claim, and both claims were put in grain, which turned out well, and for which a good price was secured. They were then even with the world, and their tramping days had come to an end. They intended to settle down to independent farming.

This was when I left the valley and lost sight of the Plumleys, I met^sic with some reverses in the San Francisco stock market which compelled me to let go of my sheep raising business. I sold my cabin, and abandoned all claim to my quarter section to a new comer for twenty-five dollars.

And so old Plumley, by simply sticking to his business—staying in the valley and working hard, had managed to accumulate a fortune. He told me more about it a few days afterward, when we spent another evening together. Old Plumley insisted on my taking dinner with him, and we had a very pleasant time.

“Yes,” said Plumley, “I’ve worked hard—there ain’t no denyin’ that—and I’m well paid for it. I just sat right down and worked hard and grew up with the country. You ought to stayed there, Bill. You ’member Bowman?”

Yes, I remembered Bowman very well. He was a Bavarian—a sailor who had deserted his ship in San Francisco and drifted up to the San Joaquin. “Has Bowman made his pile, too?” I asked.

“Lord! yes,” said Plumley. “That is, Bowman ain’t rich himself, because he died a year or two after you left. But he left his folks over in Bavaria well off. They must be takin’ at least $5,000 out of the valley every year.”

I began to wish I had remained in the San Joaquin. It seemed as though it paid a man better to be buried there than to live anywhere else.

“Ye see,” said old Plumley, “along in ’70 the Central Pacific road laid out a branch right plum across the valley, and settlers poured in. All the land that wasn’t reserved for the railroad was taken up, and after that we just commenced to make money hand over fist. Why, my land’s worth $800 an acre to-day, if it’s worth a cent.”

I began to understand. “And I suppose that’s the way poor Bowman made his money after he died?” said I.

“Yes,” said old Plumley innocently, “Bowman’s folks is well fixed. They tell me $5,000 a year is a big fortune over there in Bavaria, and they live high. But they’re a pretty tough lot, I reckon. They just skin their tenants—crowd the last cent out of ’em; and if a man puts up any kind of an improvement they just raise his rent for it.”

“Then I suppose a man could hardly land in the valley like you did, Plumley, and get along as you have done?”

“Well,” said Plumley, “I don’t know. ‘Pears like men are different nowadays. There’s a smart chance o’ tramps drifts into the valley, but somehow they won’t do no work. It costs us something to run the poor house just on their account. Just before I left there was a regular tramp family chanced along—man, woman and a lot o’ the skinniest, toughest lookin’ brats I ever did see. Mis’ Plumley, she sort o’ took pity on ‘em, and told Jim—that’s my head man round the place—to make some sort o’ work for ‘em for an hour or two, jes’ to take the edge off the charity, and then send ‘em into the kitchen for a meal’s victuals. But, Lord bless you! them tramps weren’t lookin’ for no work! They just up and cursed Mis’ Plumley up and down, and traveled off along the road. No, Bill, men ain’t got the enterprise and push they used ter have way back in the sixties. Ah! Bill, you’d oughten stayed in San Joaquin. You’d a made your pile there, like the rest of us.”

Well, when I come to think it over, I wish I had remained in the San Joaquin valley.

WILLIAM MCCABE.

The Professor May Be Right, But His Name’s Agin Him.

Professor Gould says that aerial telegraph wires on poles transmit electricity at the rate of from 14,000 to 16,000 miles per second, and that the velocity of transmission increases with the distance between the wires and the earth, or, in other words, with the height of suspension; and that subterranean wires, like submarine cables, transmit with reduced rapidity. Again, while wires suspended at a small height are known to transmit signals at a velocity of some 12,000 miles per second, those that are suspended higher give a velocity of from 16,000 to 24,000 miles.

Read This.

Chicago Herald.

In 1860 there was not a child working in a factory in America. In 1880 there were 182,000 children working in factories.

p. 6, col. 5

THE GREAT POLITICAL ISSUE IN NOMANSLAND.

Why Should the Railroad be Permitted to Take This Value Which It Did Not Make?

In 1887 the Union Pacific railway company advertised for sale one million acres of so-called “Golden belt” lands owned by them

p. 6, col. 6 in Kansas. Of these the lists show that 862,615 acres, situated in seven counties, were valued at from $3.50 to $8 per acre. During the year about 300,000 acres were sold in these counties, and the present lists show that the remaining 560,000 acres are worth three-quarters of a million dollars more than they were last year. The increase was in no case less than $1 per acre, and in some cases as high as $11 and $14 per acre. This rise was entirely due to the steady immigration and general improvement of that part of the state, and not due to any extension of the railroad.

J. E. FOREMAN

Sorrow.

My lute is broke; I cannot sing; My heart is like a tired thing To whom no rest can come. A body sleepless, wracked with pain, A bird upon the trackless main, And far from home.

Yet will I try, for my poor song No chorus hath—it is not long; In four words it is said, Four little words so full of woe. Ah me! that God should will it so: My love is dead!

HENRY ANCKETILL.

PEN, PASTE AND SCISSORS.

The New York World is authority for the statement that a Chicago policeman recently arrested a boy on suspicion because he said something about stealing bases.

The London typographical association now numbers 7,493 members. The general fund amounts to over $60,000, while the special fund set apart to meet the claims of superannuated members amounts to more than $30,000.

M. Gervais, a French authority, says there are men capable of bearing arms—in Germany, 5,000,000; in France, 4,500,000; in Austria-Hungary, 1,800,000; in Italy, 2,000,000; in England, 800,000; in Russia, 6,000,000; and in all the other European states, 4,000,000. That gives a total of 25,000,000. Of that number 10,000,000 are trained soldiers.

A Boston cheese dealer says that adulterated cheese, when fresh and well made, can not be distinguished from a good skim milk cheese. It is made largely in western factories, and is composed of stearin, oleo oil, cotton seed oil and skim milk. The cream is first extracted from the milk, and then it is sought to substitute for the cream fats of a cheaper quality. A considerable quantity of rancid butter is also used.

Mr. Samuel Laing, M. P., has prepared a table showing on what classes of property the weight of local taxation in England falls. He demonstrates that in 1814 land paid 69 per cent; in 1843, 49 per cent; in 1868, 33 per cent, and in 1884, only 23 per cent of local taxes. On the other hand, houses and other products of human industry paid in 1814 only 31 per cent; in 1843, 51 per cent; in 1868, 67 per cent, and in 1884, 77 per cent.

The gaekwar of Baroda, his wife, and a numerous suite, since their return from the jubilee festivities to Baroda, were, until quite recently, excommunicated and expelled from their castes on account of contamination in London. They have lately all performed the prescribed penance, which cost the gaekwar about £2,000, and have been readmitted to their respective castes. A few years ago the mere visit of a Hindoo to England destroyed his caste for ever, although he might have kept strictly all the Hindoo observances.—[Manchester Guardian.

For about one hundred years most of the sugar in the West India islands has been obtained from the Otaheite cane, originally brought from the Pacific islands by Captain Bligh in his majesty’s ships in 1796^sic. Latterly strenuous efforts have been made to introduce new canes, in the hope that they would prove richer in yield of sugar. In one instance we learn that a cane introduced by the present assistant director of Kew gardens when in charge of the Botanical gardens at Jamaica has supplanted the Otaheite cane and proved most productive.—[Pall Mall Gazette.

The annual report of A. H. Heath, commissioner of labor statistics of Michigan, is devoted to a consideration of farm mortgages. From investigations regarding 90,803 farms Mr. Heath concludes that about one-half, or 45,400 are mortgaged. The number of foreclosures last year was 1,667. Of these 90,803, there were 6,315 occupied and worked by tenants. The number of permanent laborers was 25,717, and the average wages for one laborer, with board, was $16.77 per month. The interest on mortgages averaged 7¼ per cent.

The Toledo, Ann Arbor and Northern Michigan railway company has entered into a profit sharing agreement with its officials and employes excepting the president on the following basis: When a dividend on the capital stock is declared each official and employe who has been in the railway’s employ for five years shall be entitled to a dividend on an amount equal to his salary for one year, as if he were the owner of capital stock to the amount of his salary. Thus if his salary was $1,000 and the dividend ten per cent he would receive $100. Employes of twenty years service who voluntarily retire, and disabled employes, are entitled to certificates of stock equal to the amount of their yearly salary.

The land question pervades every country in Europe at present, with the doubtful exception of France, where the divorce of the population from the soil, if it ever existed, has been modified. The latest agrarian crisis dates from Roumania. Of its details little is yet known, but in its leading features it recalls many facts and incidents long familiar to us nearer home. The peasants are demanding grants of land, and a share in the profits of the land owners. Disturbances have arisen in which landlords, farmers, and officials have been coerced, and even ill-treated. Finally, troops have been sent to the disaffected districts, and the premier has promised to act with vigor in enforcing order. It is the old story of “resolute government” in alliance with landlordism, apparently.—[London Star.

How, Then, Are Wages Higher in England Than in These “Wisdom of Protection” Countries?”

New York Press.

The value of the exports of flax goods from the United Kingdom has in twenty years declined half—from a magnificent trade of nearly $50,000,000 to one of $25,000,000. It is still declining. Poor Ireland, now bowed down with a double burden, is likely to be the greatest sufferer in the loss of this trade, because she has the greatest stake.

The reason for this decline is partially that continental countries have by protection increased their own machinery. In 1860 France had 500,000 spindles, to-day she has 680,000; Germany, since the tariff of 1878, has increased her spindles from 318,000 in 1877 to 650,000 in 1885. Austria-Hungary has more than doubled the number of spindles in use. In short, these countries have been supplying their own wants by the wisdom of protection, while Great Britain has been losing ground by free trade.

He Would Only be Carrying Out Protection Principles if He Did.

Mauch Chunk Democrat.

Mr. Sowden says he will vote for the Mills bill if it is amended to suit him. As about thirty iron ore miners and their families were sent to the Lehigh county poor house during the past winter, Mr. Sowden might render substantial service to these highly “protected” constituents if he would move to amend the bill so as to appropriate about a hundred thousand dollars of the surplus to enlarge the poor house and afford a permanent home for all the ore miners in the region whose wages are protected all the way down to sixty or seventy cents a day.

QUERIES AND ANSWERS.

NEW YORK.—(1) Do not Mr. George’s former “free trade, with a ‘bounty’ policy,” run counter to his present free trade idiosyncracy? And why has Mr. George abandoned the former for the latter?

2. I can easily understand how “free trade” with a bounty guaranteeing against any possible tremendous influx of foreign importations into this country will benefit the workingmen of this country; for, in the first place, it will protect our industries; in the second, considerably cheapen the cost price of the home article, and thus enhance the demand of the home article and find for it a ready market. But I can’t understand how under a system of absolute free trade our American manufacturers will find it profitable to employ American labor while the competition of foreign pauper labor is brought to bear upon them.

3. If, as Mr. George says, the trade between two nations is identically the same as the trade between two men, does he not overlook the fact that the relations of the labor of two nations are not the same? Has European labor already attained the civilized standard of wages as compared with the wages of American labor?

4. In view of the fact that our country is too large to maintain either a strong protective policy or free trade policy, would not the settlement of the tariff question be better left to local option?

PHILIP BAUSCH.

(1) When did you find out that Mr. George ever had a “free trade with a bounty” policy? He has argued that bounties are preferable, from the standpoint of the protectionist, to indirect taxation. But this was not his policy any more than it is the boy’s policy to be punished when he says he would rather be kept in than be whipped.

2. Can you understand how under any kind of a protective tariff system American manufacturers will find it profitable to employ American labor when at Castle garden they can get all the foreign pauper labor they want? Pauper labor working abroad does not compete with our labor, because it works under foreign conditions; but foreign pauper labor working here does compete with our labor, because it works under our conditions. It is not lower labor cost of foreign commodities that makes them cheaper than ours; it is the lower cost of material. In this country, under free trade, we can undersell the world in all commodities to the production of which our natural conditions are better or even equally well adapted.

3. I do not think the civilized standard of wages has been attained either in Europe or here. The civilized standard of wages is the full earnings of the laborer, and that standard cannot be attained so long as part of the laborer’s product is taken from him in taxes, either public or private.

4. This idea is well adapted to the wants of the Cincinnati convention. You had better put it in shape and forward it in time for incorporation in the platform.

He Wasn’t Far Wrong.

Tid Bits.

Pedestrian—You say you are a beggar by profession? Beggar—Yes, sir; won’t you help me a trifle to-day? Pedestrian—Why don’t you try to get into some honest business? Beggar—I’m afraid a change at my time of life would be disastrous. It doesn’t do for a man to throw up a good thing for an uncertainty.

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THE LAND AND LABOR LIBRARY.—We are now publishing under the title of “The Land and Labor Library” a series of short tracts on various phases of the social problem. These pamphlets contain facts, figures and arguments expressed in concise, vigorous language easily understood. As a means of propaganda we recommend them to all who desire to help on the movement for social reform. Those who wish to have these tracts placed where they will do good but who are unable personally to attend to their distribution, can remit the price to us, as we have every facility for sending them where they are needed and will be read.

The following have already appeared:

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Croasdale. 12 pages. No. 15. “Only a Dream.” By Abner C. Thomas. 4 pages. No. 16. “The Anti-Poverty Society.” Dr. McGlynn’s address at the first meeting. 8 pages. No. 17. “The Cross of the New Crusade.” A poem. By David Rorty. 2 pages. No. 18. “It is the Law of Christ.” By Rev. S. H. Spencer of Henry, Ill. 4 pages. No. 19. “My Landlord. By John Jones. 4 pages. No. 20.”Thou Shalt Not Steal.” An address by Henry George before the Anti-Poverty Society. 8 pages. No. 21. “Christianity and Poverty.” An address by Father Huntington before the Anti-poverty society. 4 pages. No. 22. “Poverty and Christianity.” An address by Rev. Hugh O. Pentecost before the Anti-poverty society. 8 pages. No. 23. “The Single Tax.” By Thomas G. Shearman. 8 pages. No. 24. “Hymns of the New Crusade”—No. 1. 4 pages. No. 25. “Hymns of the New Crusade”—No. 2. 4 pages. No. 26. “Religion vs. Robbery.” Address by Rev. Dr McGlynn before the New York Anti-poverty society, June 12, 1887. 8 pages. No. 27. “Back to the Land.” Bishop Nulty’s letter to the clergy and laity of his diocese. 16 pages. Price, 5 cents. No. 28. “Anti-Slavery and Anti-Poverty.” An address by the Rev. Hugh O. Pentecost before the New York Anti-Poverty Society, June 19. 8 pages. No. 29. “Tenement House Morality.” Rev. J. O. S. Huntington in the Forum. 4 pages. No. 30. “The Case Plainly Stated.” A speech by H. F. Ring before the Knights of Labor at Houston, Texas. 8 pages. No. 31. “Questions and Answers.” Questions by Rev. Howard Henderson of the Sixty-first street M. E. church of New York; with answers by Henry George. 2 pages. No. 32. “Objections to the Land Tax.” By Thomas G. Shearman. 4 pages. No. 33. “Socialism—Its Truth and Its Error.” Henry George. 4 pages. No. 34. “Horse Sense.” W. C. Woods. 2 pages. No. 35. The Syracuse Platform. 2 pages. No. 36. “Citycus and Rusticus.” Tudor S. Jenks. [illegible] pages. No. 37. “Taxing Land Values.” Henry George. 8 pp. No. 38. “God Wills It.” Henry George. 4 pages. No. 39. “What We Want.” Everett Glackin, president Typographical Union No. 6. 2 pages. No. 40. “Protection or Free Trade.” Henry George. Price, 35 cents. No. 41. The Syracuse Platform. (German.) 2 pages. No. 42. “First Principles.” (German.) Henry George. 4 pages. No. 43. “Socialism—Its Truth and Its Error. (German.) Henry George. 4 pages. No. 44.”How John’s Father Saw the Light.” W. C. Woods, M. D. 2 pages. 45^sic. Platform of the United Labor Party. 2 pages. No. 46. “Taxing Land Values.” (German.) Henry George. 8 pages. No. 47. “It is the Law of Christ.” (German.) Rev. S. H. Spencer. 4 pages. No. 48. “The Case Plainly Stated.” (German). H. F. Ring. 8 pages. No. 49. “The Distribution of Wealth.” Thomas G. Shearman. 16 pages. No. 50. “Progress and Poverty.” (German.) Henry George. No. 51. “Ten Thoughts for Christian Thinkers.” Rev. John W. Kramer. 4 pages. 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THE DEMOCRAT.

A RADICAL REVIEW MONTHLY.

The Democrat advocates Land Resumption and those reforms which are necessary to make the English people a free people. It asks “compensation” not for those who have benefited by unjust legislation, but for those who have suffered thereby.

For one dollar the Democrat is supplied for 18 months to any address in the United States or Canada.

Address 5 New Bridge street, London, E. C.

CURRENT THOUGHT.

Mr. Frederic Taylor(1) flatters himself that he has not only discovered the cause of most of our social troubles, but knows how to remove it as well. It is our railways that have done it all. They have corrupted our legislatures, choked our courts, demoralized our industrial system and brought about our financial crisis:

Thus it will be seen that for fifteen years not only have railway matters largely occupied the time of congress and the state legislatures, and, to a great extent, of the federal and state courts, but that, because of the overbuilding or underbuilding of railways, because of their capitalization and financiering, because of their combinations and consolidations, because of the rivairies^sic and wars between them, because of the uncertainty and instability of their tariffs, because of their troubles with employes, because of their bankruptcies and reorganizations, the financial and business interests of the country have not been permitted, for any length of time, to “rest upon an even keel;” that, in short, for fifteen years, the railways and their concerns have been a constantly disturbing element in the country’s affairs.

Mr. Taylor’s remedy is ingenious. He wants the national government to take charge of railways. Not to own them, nor to operate them, but simply to look after them and see that they don’t misbehave. He would have a commission of “five, seven, nine, or even more members, appointed for life, as the judges of the supreme court are appointed, and with salaries commensurate with the responsibilities of their office—twenty, thirty, or even fifty thousand dollars a year apiece.” This commission should have power to forbid the building of any railway for which they might not see the necessity; to supervise, through a competent engineer, the construction of every road and see that it was done in the best manner; to restrict capitalization and bonding to the actual cost; to establish uniform rates for traffic; and to prevent interference, vexatious or otherwise, by the state legislatures. If all this is done, Mr. Taylor assures us, “our system would be the best on the globe, our people would be hundreds of millions richer, our position before the world would be improved, and the country would be better to live in.”

Mr. Taylor supports his scheme for national railway control by the analogy of the national banking system, which he evidently thinks is the most perfect on this or any other planet.

Under national control and uniform law, the vast system, comprising 3,000 banks, representing $800,000,000 of capital, and carrying $1,500,000,000 of deposits, works with perfect smoothness, and benefits every interest in the country. Why would not the railway system, under precisely the same sort of control and under uniform law, work just as smoothly and contribute as much or more to the daily comfort and convenience of the whole community? So controlled, why should not the railway system—which, with the continual agitation, the everlasting pulling and hauling that goes on in its affairs, is almost a public curse—come to be a public blessing?

Mr. Taylor does not seem to have heard that there is, here and there, a misguided man in the United States who is not disposed to admit that the national banks have been an unmixed blessing to the country. It might astonish him to be told that there are really some irreconcilables who go so far as to assert that the national banking system is an impudent taxing of the many for the benefit of the few, which ought to be swept out of existence as quickly as possible. Nor does he seem ever to have heard that a large proportion of the legitimate banking business of the country is done by banks, private and incorporated, that have nothing to do with the system he so praises. In fact, there are a good many things that Mr. Taylor doesn’t seem to know about. As for his suggested scheme for controlling the railways, it is not worth serious consideration.

In Harper’s Magazine for May, Edwards Roberts tells the story of the city of Denver; tracing its growth from the days when it was but an insignificant frontier settlement up to the present year, when it proudly ranks as “the largest and perhaps the most famous” city “in the great middle west:”

Like a romance is the story of Colorado’s growth, and not less so is that of the growth of Denver. We miss finding in its history the fanciful doings of Spanish adventurer and pious padre. No fierce wars were ever waged for its possession, no glittering pageants were ever held in the long wide streets, with their vista of mountains and plains. There was little that was poetical, but much that was practical. Still the story is as interesting as though there had been these well worn episodes to draw upon and to magnify and render picturesque, for the tale is of how man came to a wilderness and lived down all trials and all disappointments; how he fought against great odds and battled with hardships, and came out victorious.

Mr. Roberts has made an interesting article—all the more interesting, because peeping out between its lines, we every now and then encounter facts and figures which to him who will look at and compare them, tell a story of their own and make the true inwardness of the narrative more intelligible. Thus we learn that the assessed valuation of Arapahoe county, of which Denver is the seat, has risen from $11,0[33?],520 in 1878 to $47,037,[874?] in 1887, while the rate of taxation has sunk at the same time from 20.9 mills to 9.7 mills. The same paragraph informs us that Denver’s manufacturing establishments will employ this year 5,000 hands, who will earn in wages $3,000,000, or $600 each. It seems clear, therefore, that while Denver as a whole has increased marvalously^sic in wealth, the people who do the work are not getting rich with phenomenal rapidity.

Again Mr. Roberts tells us:

In his surveys Professor Hayden estimated that Colorado contained not less than 6,000,000 acres of agricultural land. From reports made by the land office in Denver up to 1885, over 4,000,000 acres of that amount had been taken up. In 1885 nearly 900,000 more acres were added, and in [1886?] fully 1,000,000 acres, thus making more than the original estimate.

But when we ask what use Colorado is making of this agricultural land, we learn that it produced, in 1886, 2,100,000 bushels of wheat, 600,000 bushels of oats, 250,000 bushels of barley and and 175,000^sic bushels of corn. Only 3,125,000 bushels of grain altogether from more than 6,000,000 acres of agricultural land—say half a bushel to the acre! And the land all gone! Evidently Colorado, like England, Ireland, New York, Minnesota and other old and thickly settled states, will soon have to deal with the problem of the [continued in column 2]

(1)National Control of Railways, Frederic Taylor in Forum for May 1888.

p. 8, col. 2 congestion of population. When next Mr. Edwards Roberts visits Denver he may find the public buildings of the city increased by the addition of a poor house.

> The village nestling at the foot of the hill, where I am now writing, contains a thousand inhabitants, and is the central neighborhood of a township of twenty-five hundred. The township, or town, as it is called, lies among the hills of western Massachusetts, a thousand feet above the sea. It is six miles long and three broad, and is occupied chiefly for agriculture, there being only five or six small factories where cloth, paper and machinery are made. The total value of property, real and personal, placed upon the tax rolls, is $[2?],670,000, rated at about sixty per cent of its real value, which, therefore, must be near four and a half millions. The taxes for roads, bridges, schools and every other town, county and state expense, amount to a little less than one per cent upon this assessed valuation. Thirty-nine persons only, including two sent to the state insane asylum, receive aid as paupers, twenty-nine of them but a partial support. The number of dwellings is 478, and of families about 500. So that nearly every family lives by itself, usually in a dwelling of its own; that is, a house with a garden, all owned by the head of the household. There is a public library of 6,000 volumes, where any resident may read as much as pleases him, and from which any tax payer may, without charge, take books for reading at home. The number of volumes taken and retaken from the library during the year is 8,000, and not one has been lost in ten years.

There is a town hall for town meetings; there are five school houses, one of them sheltering under the same roof a primary, intermediate and high school, and there are five churches of different denominations, two Congregational, one Episcopal, one Methodist, and one Roman Catholic. The schools are free to all, and books are provided for the scholars. A wooded hill is dedicated to the public, as a pleasure ground for all, rich and poor, young and old. The little community in its internal affairs, is governed by the town meeting, where every adult male who pays a tax, however small, has a voice; that is to say, the town meeting is the legislative assembly of the town; it is convened twice a year, and as much oftener as there may be occasion, and disposes of town affairs. The chief executive officers are three selectmen. There are but three federal officials in the town, and they are postmasters; the only state officials are six justices, three notaries public and a deputy sheriff. The town is one of thirty-two towns in the county, which has a population of 74,000, and is itself a corporation, with corporate officers, for the management of its corporate affairs, though there is never a meeting of the citizens of the county. The county is one of fourteen counties in the state, which has 2,000,000 of inhabitants and a government of its own, and the state is one of the United States which have a population of 60,000,000 and a common government of all.

In this charming fashion does David Dudley Field(1) begin his brief, but exhaustive account of the theory of American goverment^sic. It is one that no American can read without pleasure and few without profit. For Doctor Field does not, after the fashion of the defenders of “things as they are,” take our American government as it actually exists, and endeavor to construct a theory which shall justify its want of symmetry and defend its imperfections. He shows us simply what our governmental system was meant to be by those who founded it, and would be were free play given to its basic principles:

I have confined myself to this ideal. I have not attempted to show wherein or how widely the practice departs from the theory; how much, if at all, the real lags behind the ideal. I have endeavored to portray this ideal as it yet lingers in tradition and may be traced in the pages of the fathers; the ideal of a self-balanced and self-governed state, where every man stands erect in the fullness of his rights and the pride of his manhood, neither cringing nor overbearing, owing no allegiance but of duty, claiming none but from the heart, fulfilling every service and exercising every right of the citizen. This, I am fain to think, is the true ideal of American government; a government founded not on the traditions of remote ages, not on usurpation, not on conquest, but on things older and firmer than all—the equality and brotherhood of men.

Are not these noble words? How true and sonorous they ring out above the discordant jangle of men shrieking that all is lost unless Americans are forced to buy all their tomato cans from one gang, and all their peanuts from another gang, and all their clothing from a third gang. It needs no logic to defend them. They are self-evidently true. Americans by millions disregard them, but not one dreams for a moment of denying them. In David Dudley Field’s own words: “The doctrine of equal rights for all the children of the common Father will not be shaken till the earth trembles to its foundations.”

To secure to all the rights recited in the Declaration of Independence—the equal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—this, as Dr. Field tells us, is “the just explanation of the theory of American government.” Whatever legislation works in this direction is justifiable. All else is naught.

Equality is not an end but a means. If each person stood isolated, though he were the equal of every other person, he would be useless and miserable. Equality of itself will not insure happiness. That is obtained by pursuit. It is not the province of government to promise happiness to any one. That he must pursue for himself. His right to the pursuit is defended by government. The great men who formulated and proclaimed the Declaration of Independence knew very well on what foundation a state should be built, for they were themselves representatives of political societies long established, which had administered justice, mustered troops and engaged in many public enterprises. They knew as well as we know, out of what instincts and for what ends governments had been maintained in the colonies for nearly two hundred years. When, therefore, they spoke of equality they spoke of it, not as an end, but a means; not as the reason for having a government, but as the only just condition on which it was to be had and enjoyed. They meant that governments were instituted for the protection of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that preliminary to all was the great primal truth, that these several functions were to be exercised with equal reference to all the inhabitants of the state. The theory is set forth in their own words, not in some of them only, but in all. Knowing the rights to be secured, we know that the means to secure them are: just and equal laws, the administration of justice, the public defense, the education of children, the construction of public works necessary for the common service, and the care of those feeble members of the state who are unable to take care of themselves. If there be any means of securing men’s rights other than these, I know not what they are. There is no occasion to revise the formula of our fathers. It is as true now as it was when it was first proclaimed.

How these grand purposes may be defeated, Dr. Field tells us in a few pithy words:

The danger . . . is favoritism to the few, at the expense of the many. . . . Thus it has happened in countries where the power is in the hands of the landlords that the laws favor the landed interests. When, however, all have a hand in making the laws, they will be made for all, unless the general movement is obstructed or deflected by interested combinations.

The italics our ours^sic, not David Dudley Field’s. They emphasize an utterance that

[continued in column 3]

(1)The Theory of American Government, David Dudley Field in North American Review for May.

p. 8, col. 3 is specially worth attention at the present time.

Everybody who has read Mark Twain’s story of Huckleberry Finn will remember the ingenious manner in which Huck and Tom Sawyer effected the release of the unfortunate nigger Jim. They had their choice among several methods. They knew, or at least Tom Sawyer knew, that Jim was wrongfully imprisoned anyhow, and that it would only be necessary to tell what they knew about him to obtain his immediate release. That was method number one. Method number two was almost equally simple; they could open the door and let Jim out. As the readers of the book will remember, the boys rejected both these plans as altogether contrary to the principles of prison evasion laid down in the books, and decided that the proper thing was to dig Jim out, which they proceeded to do, with an immense expenditure of time and energy, and with the lamentable result that Tom Sawyer was shot in the leg and Jim locked up again in double irons.

One cannot but think that a good many students of the social question—and who is there, who studies anything, that isn’t studying the social question in these days?—have prepared themselves for the task by a careful reading of “Huckleberry Finn,” and especially of the part we have epitomized. They have such a noble scorn of simplicity. They are so perfectly certain that it would be ridiculous merely to open the door and let the prisoner walk out. There must be painful tunnelings, cautious communications, rope ladders introduced in pies and all that sort of thing—above all, time. Nothing must be done in a hurry. Let Jim endure his imprisonment patiently, scratch pretended messages on his tin pan and cultivate the society of his imitation rattlesnakes. Huck and Tom will do all the work—and, incidentally, have all the fun. They’ll dig Jim out in their own good time, if the foolish nigger will only be patient and not spoil everything by trying to get out through the door or window without their help.

Here, for example, come two new aspirants for the honor of setting things to rights—an English layman and an American priest—Mr. John Martineau (1) and the Reverend John Talbot Smith (2). Each has his own little plan for Jim’s release, and agrees with the other in one respect only, that it would be the height of folly to try the door or window.

Mr. Martineau points out the absurdity of supposing that the land question is at the bottom of our troubles—if indeed we really have any troubles. All the talk about land is a mere caprice of communism, which might just as well have turned its attention to some other form of property:

It has for some time been a caprice of the communistic spirit to attack property in land in contradistinction to personal property; and that, too, just at the time when land is least profitable and most burdened with obligations.

How ridiculous such a caprice is, Mr. Martineau demonstrates by telling us that there are only two grounds on which “land, as distinguished from personal property, has been claimed as a proper subject for total or partial confiscation:”

First, that it has increased in value without any expenditure of capital or labor on the part of the owner; and, secondly, that being limited in quantity, the demand for it is so great that it cannot be left to be owned by comparatively few people.

Apparently, no one has ever explained to Mr. Martineau the Christian theory of creation: that God made the earth for men to use, and made men, among other reasons, that they might use the earth. He is quite sure the earth was made for the enjoyment of its “owners,” and thinks it is outrageous that an outcry should be made against landlords, particularly just at this time, when agricultural land in England is actually going out of cultivation, because nobody can afford to rent it. If it is want of land that keeps poor Jim in prison, why the plague doesn’t Jim go off to Australia, where “a single week’s wage will purchase the absolute freehold of a couple of acres.”

And so, having showed us what is not the matter, and demonstrated clearly that our trouble has no connection whatever with the land, Mr. Martineau goes on to explain just what is the matter. He is very lucid and explicit here. It’s the land that’s making all the trouble. Mr. Martineau is, in the least, troubled^sic by his previous declaration that the land had nothing to do with it. The land isn’t being used to the best advantage:

That the speculator, the man who buys land merely as a profitable investment, without a thought of the obligations and responsibilities which the ownership of land brings with it—that such a man should be frightened away is indeed an unmixed benefit. If the present condition of things has had this effect, it will not have been without its wholesome use.

England needs more squires of the good old sort—that’s the whole difficulty. She needs men who live on their estates, and build model cottages, and patronize Giles and Hodge, and get up clothing clubs, and distribute blankets and medicine, and generally poetize the rural life of England. Above all, they must take the emigration question into their own hands, must these patriotic squires. They must see that only the best men are sent out of the country to relieve the congestion of population. Such, in brief, is the plan of Mr. Tom Sawyer Martineau for digging nigger Jim out of his uncomfortable prison.

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Mr. Martineau that there is a certain absurdity in all this talk. He tells us in one paragraph that “The healthy rural population is always increasing, always outgrowing the demand for labor in the country. It is idle to expect that any change in the system of land holding, any improvement in cultivation, will in the long run materially check this redundancy.” Yet elsewhere he informs us that “many a thousand acres is now untenanted,” and that “large farms may be hired on lease at no rent if the tenant will pay the outgoings of tithes, taxes, etc.” In the name of common sense, why shouldn’t Jim open the door and go out? Why shouldn’t those agricultural laborers go to work on those lands? The land is as fertile as it ever was; the laborer as muscular and broad shouldered as of yore. A thousand acre farm would support, in such comfort as they have never dreamed of, at least 250 laborers’ families, and there is “many a thousand acres now untenanted.” Why should Giles and Hodge be driven off to Australia or Dakota to raise food there for English eating, when they might just as well stay at home and raise it right there in England? Why, indeed, except that Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn must have their little fun?

As for the Rev. John Talbot Smith, he won’t even admit that there is any door or any window. According to him, Jim must either be dug out through the ground or snaked out through the chimney:

For a state of change, for a crisis, nature has only one help, and that is perfect quiet. Mr. Henry George offers another and different one for our present condition, but it has the disadvantage of being a cure-all, and a

[continued in column 4]

1. “A Plea for Landlords,” in Blackwood’s Magazine for April.

2. “Let Us Study the Land and Labor Question,” in the Catholic World for April.

p. 8, col. 4 > cure-all is rarely a cure-anything. The ramifications of the land and labor problem are such as defy a simple solution. Many minds, frequent failures, and at least a few generations must give their best and do their best toward the settling of our great questions.

Poor Jim can’t get out for a few hundred years yet, that’s clear. But Tom and Huck can begin to dig their tunnel, and Jim can help them from the inside, and together they can accomplish a good deal in this generation. Jim must organize and instruct himself—scratch letters on his tin pan, so to speak. No Knights of Labor business—that would be un-American, says the Rev. John Talbot Smith—no striking for higher wages, or against lower wages, or anything of that sort. Jim’s work is simpler and easier than that. “It embraces the overthrow of the gigantic corporations and their influence in legislatures, the better regulation of the hours of labor, the maintenance of a fair standard of wages, the utter destruction of the tenement house, and the abolition of child labor.”

It must not be forgotten by the workman that in the present struggle the employer is quite often as blameless as any man concerned. Our complex business system has him often at its mercy, and he cannot give decent wages and proper hours when he would. Therefore, not so much against persons must the work be directed as against the encroachments of those creatures of the state called corporations. The great railronds^sic, the great mining corporations, lumber companies and carrying companies must be shorn of all privileges and made to pay their way like other business persons. The nation is now too wealthy to pay these creatures for getting rich on its privileges. Grants of land must cease. Rights of way must be a source of everlasting tribute. Without actually taking in charge these carrying offices, the state must make them as docile as its children ought to be. It is a stupendous job, but it must be done before any citizen can advance one step in the path of real progress. The workman must aid by securing the downfall of the corporation’s tyranny.

Poor Jim is likely to have a good many scratches on his pan before he gets through.

Meantime, Huck and Tom are to work away at their end of the tunnel, of course under the Rev. John Talbot Smith’s advice. While Jim scratches at the labor problem, Huck and Tom are to dig away at the land question—that is, not exactly at the land question, for the Rev. John Talbot Smith says there isn’t any land question—but at the question of “the status of land cultivators and the manipulation of the entire food supply of the nation, whether the government, the people, or an individual, be the landlord;” for the proper solving of which “the land laws must be so strengthened and administered as to kill off the land grabbers.” Mr. John Talbot Smith seems a trifle confused in his ideas, but the boys can start digging all the same. And if you don’t clearly understand just what it is that Huck and Tom and Jim are to play at doing, here is the reverend gentleman’s summing up of the way he thinks poor Jim may be ultimately delivered from his misery:

To sum up what has been said in this article let me put it in this way:

The land question is in truth the question of the land cultivator’s legal standing in society and the better management of the nation’s food supply. The principle of ownership at present has no bearing on the question; the method of ownership may have such a bearing.

The labor question is really how to determine the ethical and legal standing of a workman in relation to his employer, his work, and its profits.

Neither question can be settled on the spot, nor is there one solution possible, such as Henry George would have us accept.

Therefore the wisest thing all parties can do is to study and to wait for particular opportunities.

The next wisest thing is to attack the corporations unanimously, put an end to child labor and to rotten tenements, and to have labor societies and to rightly manage them for the purpose of looking after wages and hours of labor, with the advice and assistance of all good men in the community.

Ah, well! it’s a good deal gained that men like John Martineau and the Rev. John Talbot Smith concede that there is a prison, that poor Jim is in it, and that he ought to be got out. Perhaps it won’t be long before they’ll acknowledge that there is a simpler mode of egress than by a tunnel. And there are signs that poor Jim himself is beginning to do a little thinking, and to ask whether, after all, the door through which he came into his prison may not be a very handy way to go out again.

WOMEN.

Dr. Hattie Allen has been elected a professor of medicine at the university of Michigan. No woman before has ever received such recognition in the west.

Such is the competition among young girls and full grown women for situations at type writing that some of them are working for $3 and even $2.50 a week.

Recently at a woman’s rights meeting in London there was a particularly vigorous speaker who waved her long arms like the sails of a windmill, and said: “If the women of the country were to rise up in their thousands and march to the polls, I should like to know what there is on earth that could stop them!” And in the momentary silence which followed this peroration a small voice remarked, “A mouse!”

It is said that Fenimore Cooper became a novelist through his wife’s challenge. One evening while reading a novel he threw it aside, saying, “I believe I could write a better book myself.” “Let me see you do it,” said his wife. In a few days he had written several chapters of “Precaution,” which he published at his own expense. It attracted little attention, but he continued and wrote “The Spy.” Hawthorne, too, it is said, was induced to write “The Scarlet Letter” by a remark of his wife.

In 1865 Jenny Lind in Edinburgh visited a music seller’s in Prince street. The attendant, a young man, asked her if she had ever heard Jenny Lind. The singer replied in the affirmative, and herself asked if he had heard the “Swedish nightingale.” He replied that the very high price of the tickets kept them far beyond his income. She asked him to play an accompaniment to the song which she held in her hand. He did so, and at the close the singer saying, “Now you have heard Jenny Lind,” walked out.

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NEW PUBLICATIONS.

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ANNOUNCEMENT.

BELFORD’S MAGAZINE.

Messrs. Belford, Clarke & Co. beg to announce that in May they will issue the first number of a new monthly magazine, to be devoted to politics, fiction, poetry, general literature, science and art.

In politics the new magazine will give an independent support to the democratic party and to the present administration. It will advocate the extinguishment of the surplus, not by squandering it in extravagant expenditures, which are usually merely a thinly disguised form of widespread corruption, but by a reduction in taxation. It will advocate the consummation of this reduction by a reform of the present iniquitous and burdensome tariff in the direction of free trade or of a tariff for revenue purposes only; such reform to be effected in the interests of the farmers, the workingmen, and the great mass of the population, as opposed to the manipalators^sic of rings and trusts, and other monopolists whom the present tariff enables to accumulate vast fortunes at the expense of the general community. These and other political and social questions of general interest will be treated in a popular manner, suitable to the pages of a magazine which is intended to reach all classes of the people.

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[Notice] CHICAGO, ILL., APRIL 6, 1888.

CHICAGO, ILL., APRIL 6, 1888.—To Single Tax Advocates, Greeting—By virtue of the authority invested in me^sic by letters on file in my office from the several states and territories, a call is hereby issued for a national conference of the single tax advocates of the several states and territories and the district of Columbia of the United States, to convene in the city of CHICAGO, Ill., at ten o’clock a. m., on WEDNESDAY, JULY 4, 1888.

All persons who believe that the public revenues should be raised by a single and direct tax upon relative land values are invited to attend and take part in the deliberations.

The following is the general committee on arrangements:

Chairman, Warren Worth Bailey, No. 281 South Hoyne avenue, Chicago.

Secretary, M. K. LaShelle, Times building, Chicago.

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Judge James G. Maguire, San Francisco, Cal.

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C. A. S. Higley, Minneapolis, Minn.

Thomas A. McCann, Detroit, Mich.

Richard L. Atkinson, Philadelphia, Pa.

E. Q. Norton, Mobile, Ala.

WARREN WORTH BAILEY,

Chairman Provisional Committee.

Chicago, April 8.—All those who contemplete^sic attending the national conference of single tax advocates, to be held in this city July 4 will confer a great favor on the committee by notifying the secretary of their intentions as soon as possible, The work^sic of the committee will be made much easier if it may know about how many visitors to expect. Where a number of persons will come from any club or organization let the names be given. Where there is no concerted action it is requested that each person will write, saying that he will come. This will enable the committee to proceed in its arrangements intelligently[,?] and also be a great aid in bringing the conference prominently before the local public.

Address all letters to M. K. LA SHELLE,

Secretary Provisional Committee, Times Building, Chicago, Ill.

[Advertisement] Kansas State Lecturer

KANSAS STATE LECTURER.—THE undersigned state lecturer and member of the state central committee is now ready to respond to calls for work anywhere in the state of Kansas. Address Rev. W. M. GOODNER, box 553, Larned, Kan.

[Advertisement] Holland’s Coffee and Dining Rooms

HOLLAND’S

COFFEE AND DINING ROOMS,

1[15?] Fourth avenue,

Bet. 13th and 14th sts.

[Advertisement] James Bogan

JAMES BOGAN, PRINCIPAL AGENT for James Means’ $3 and $4 shoes. 2[36?] BOWERY, near Prince street.

[Advertisement] THE SINGLE TAX.

THE SINGLE TAX.

Special editions of ready-printed newspapers containing current Single Tax reading matter. All sizes; low prices. UNION PRINTING CO., 15 Vandewater street, New York.

p. 8, col. 6

[Advertisement] UNITY CONGREGATION.

UNITY CONGREGATION.

REV. HUGH O. PENTECOST,

MINISTER.

MASONIC HALL,

Sixth avenue and Twenty-third street.

SERVICES,

Sunday Morning, 11 o’clock.

Sermons published weekly. Annual subscription, one dollar. Address, 56 Oriental street, Newark, N. J.

MISCELLANEOUS.

[Advertisement] Braham’s

SUITS TO ORDER FROM $13.50.

PANTS TO ORDER FROM $3.50.

Samples and self-measuring chart mailed on application by stating price and as near as possible design desired.

BRAHAM’S,

212 BOWERY, NEW YORK CITY.

[Advertisement] The Keystone Watch Club Co.

[Illustration: display advertisement in an ornamental border whose bands carry city names, partly legible (NEW YORK, PHILADELPHIA, PITTSBURGH, WASHINGTON, BALTIMORE, DENVER, BROOKLYN, BOSTON, CHICAGO [?]; rest illegible); engraving of an open-face pocket watch whose dial bears a keystone and the words “THE KEYSTONE WATCH CLUB CO. NEW YORK PHILADA”.]

A Gold Watch

For $38. That tells the TRUTH.

Fully equal for Accuracy, Durability, Appearance and Service, to any $75. Watch.

Philadelphia’s building associations have done much toward building it up and making it the city of homes. The same system of co-operation carefully and economically managed, has built up The Keystone Watch Club Co., until they are now selling more Watches to consumers than all others combined. They handle only the

Keystone Dust-proof Watch

which is deservedly regarded as the crown and climax of Pennsylvania’s manufactures. This Watch contains every essential to an accurate time-keeper, and many important improvements patented by the Company. They are Dust and Damp Proof, a quality possessed by no other movement in the world. Jeweled throughout with genuine rubies. Patent Stem Wind and Set, strongest and simplest. Sold through authorized agents at $38.00. Either all cash down or $1.00 per week. There can be no disappointment in this system. An active, reliable Agent Wanted to represent us in every city and town. Write for full particulars.

The Keystone Watch Club Co

9[26?] Chestnut St., PHILADA., PA.

REFERENCES—Any Commercial Agency.

[Advertisement] Canned Goods (C. M. M. P. A.)

[Illustration: circular trade-mark stamp lettered “HAND MADE” around the top and “C. M. M. P. A.” around the bottom, with a small device in the centre.]

Canned Goods

WITH THIS STAMP IN THE BOTTOM OF CANS ARE

Free from

Poison,

AND ARE MADE BY

ORGANIZED LABOR.

Trade-Mark.—Registered.

[Advertisement] Piso’s Remedy for Catarrh

[Display advertisement: the word CATARRH in white letters on a black band.]

Piso’s Remedy for Catarrh is the Best, Easiest to Use, and Cheapest.

CATARRH

Sold by druggists or sent by mail. 50c. E. T. Hazeltine, Warren, Pa.

[Advertisement] The Great American Tea Co.

[Illustration: black block logo in the shape of a T, lettered “THE GREAT AMERICAN TEA COMPANY”, with T, E, A stacked down the stem.]

GOOD NEWS TO LADIES.

Greatest offer. Now’s your time to get orders for our celebrated Teas, Coffees and Baking Powder, and secure a beautiful Gold Band or Moss Rose China Tea Set, Dinner Set, Gold Band Moss Rose Toilet Set, Watch, Brass Lamp, Castor, or Webster’s Dictionary. For particulars address

THE GREAT AMERICAN TEA CO.,

P. O. Box 2[89?]. 31 and 33 Vesey St., New York.

[Advertisement] Ollendorf’s Neurodontine

OLLENDORF’S

NEURODONTINE.

Instantaneous cure for Toothache, Headache and Neuralgia. 25 cents. Central depot, 3[03?] E. 14th st., N. Y.

[Advertisement] Charles B. Schaidner, Photographer

CHARLES B. SCHAIDNER,

PHOTOGRAPHER,

2280 Third avenue, cor. 124th street, New York.

Children’s Photographs by instantaneous process a specialty

[Advertisement] Coogan Bros.

[Illustration: engraving of a five-story commercial building with horse-drawn wagons and pedestrians in the street. Signs on the facade: “COOGAN BROTHERS”; “WHOLESALE & RETAIL FURNITURE CARPET[S?]” (partly illegible); “BEDDING WAREROOMS” (partly illegible); “MANUFACTURERS”; and across the first story “125 COOGAN BRO’S 121”.]

COOGAN BROS.,

CARPET AND FURNITURE DEALERS,

COR. BOWERY AND GRAND STS.

[Advertisement] Miss Agatha Munier

MISS AGATHA MUNIER IS NOW forming classes for instruction in vocal sight reading for ladies and gentlemen, as well as in solo singing in all its branches, and in elocution. For terms, etc., address MISS MUNIER, 22[3?] East Thirty-second street, New York.

[Advertisement] Briggs’ Pianos

[Illustration: engraving of an upright piano framed in a box with foliage below; a pointing banner reads “SEND FOR CATALOGUE”; decorative display lettering.]

BRIGGS’ PIANOS

C. C. BRIGGS & Co.

5 APPLETON ST. BOSTON MASS.,

MANUFACTURERS OF

GRAND · SQUARE · & · UPRIGHT

PIANO FORTES

GRACEFUL DESIGNS · · SOLID CONSTRUCTION

MATCHLESS TONE · · BEAUTIFUL FINISH.