June 9, 1888 Vol. III, No. 23Whole No. 75

THE STANDARD

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Terms of subscription will be found on the fourth page.

THE GOOD WORK IN TEXAS

LETTER FROM H. F. RING.

Tax Land Values and the Dutch Company Won’t Care to Claim the Land.

Boston Transcript.

Suits have been begun in the United States court at Denver, Col., against ninety-seven farmers in the best part of the San Luis valley, the lands being claimed by a Dutch company called the United States Freehold land and emigration company. The suits involve half a dozen villages, including San Luis, the county seat of Costilla county. The company purchased 500,000 acres of land in the Beaubien grant fifteen years ago from Governor Gilpin for $500,000, but have made no claim until now.

Good Advice.

Elmore Sharp of Norwich, N. Y., writes: “I find the public mind so ready to take up the free trade agitation and to adopt our views that I hasten to urge our local writers in every locality to use the columns of their newspapers for argument. It is an excellent time, as the papers are glad of the opportunity. I think the best work can be done before prejudices are aroused. I have written a series of letters to the leading democratic papers in this locality.”

p. 2, col. 4

OPENING UP A NEW COUNTRY.

Propaganda Work in Glasgow.

THE HENRY GEORGE INSTITUTE, 8 WATSON STREET, GLASGOW, May 22—The Henry George institute, originated by workingmen “to spread the principles of political economy as taught by Henry George and others of that school,” is doing good work. A reading room has been opened, a political economy class has been started and a course of lectures have been delivered on Sunday evenings. During the summer months several of the members betake themselves to the open air propaganda, and in this way the work of the institute is carried on during the whole year.

The third yearly course of lectures has just terminated and the summer campaign has commenced in real earnest. In previous years our lecturers have for the most part been workingmen, out this year^sic our list has included at least one clergyman, three teachers, one member of parliament and one town councilor, besides several other gentlemen occupying influential positions in the city. Several of the lectures delivered to the institute have by special request been re-delivered to various political associations, Christian institutes, young men’s guilds and kindred societies in Glasgow and its neighborhood.

In connection with the dissemination of

p. 2, col. 5 literature, I may mention that during the year close on two thousand copies of THE STANDARD have been distributed, upward of three thousand of your “Land and Labor Library” tracts have found ready purchasers, and that nearly two thousand other pamphlets have been put into the hands of the public.

Our membership roll continues steadily to increase, our finances are in a satisfactory condition, and we look forward to a very successful season next year.

With kindly feelings to yourself and to all the brethren in America as well, and best wishes for the success of that movement which we here feel to be the dawn of that

“Brighter day which awaits the human morn, When every transfer of earth’s natural gifts Shall be a commerce of good words and works,”

I am yours in freedom’s cause, JOHN MILLER, Secretary.

IN PENNSYLVANIA.

Card from Mr. Gaybert Barnes.

28 COOPER UNION, NEW YORK CITY, June 1.

Editor STANDARD: In THE STANDARD of June 2 you republish an article from the Star of May 29, commenting upon which article you editorially say: “Mr. Gaybert Barnes, the secretary, has denied the report which the Star gives of a difference between himself and Dr. McGlynn, and it is probable that the only ground for it is the fact, asserted by other prominent men in what is left of the united labor party, that the nomination of a separate candidate at Cincinnati was by Dr. McGlynn’s influence and against the views of Mr. Barnes.”

Although reported in several papers to have denied the Star’s account, I never did deny it, and for just such reasons as governed you when in THE STANDARD of October 15 last you refused to deny the allegation of the same paper, the Star, that you had once been a “pirate.”

In answer to the assertion which you make on the authority of “prominent men” that the nomination of a separate candidate at Cincinnati was against my “views,” it will be enough to say that but one delegate in the convention opposed a separate nomination, and that among those who took the floor to urge a separate nomination was myself. I ask space in your columns for this letter.

GAYBERT BARNES.

The Herald and World in alleged interviews with Mr. Barnes, were authorities for the “denial” which Mr. Barnes disclaims. Mr. Michael Clarke, secretary of the New York anti-poverty society, is authority for the other statement.—ED. STANDARD.

The Indianapolis Organization Changes Its Name.

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind., May 31—At its last Sunday night’s meeting, the anti-poverty society, by a unanimous vote, changed the name of the organization to “The tax reform league,” and elected the following officers: President, L. P. Custer; vice-president, Thomas J. Hudson; secretary, Charles H. Krause; treasurer, Gilbert Seibert.

Colonel J. B. Maynard, formerly editor of the Indianapolis Sentinel, was with us the last two meeting nights and took great interest in the proceedings, and joined in the discussions with vigor and great logic. While

p. 2, col. 6 not indorsing the doctrine in its entirety as fundamentally right, yet he is not combatting it, but rather biding his time and learning all the points before committing himself. The significent^sic feature of these visits lies in the fact that the colonel not long ago expressed himself as very emphatically opposed to the “Henry George fallacy,” and now he is as near a Henry George “crank” as he can be and still not be. We will get him sooner or later.

L. P. CUSTER.

Hammering Away at the Tariff in Brooklyn.

The Brooklyn revenue reform club is doing excellent work. Another one of their interesting meetings was held last Monday evening in Avon hall, Bedford avenue. Thomas G. Sherman^sic was the chief speaker. He took pig iron for his text, and argued that if 2,000,000 tons of pig iron were prevented by a tariff from importation, 150,000 workingmen engaged in manufacturing it for use in the country would be thrown out of employment until the pig iron furnaces were started. When started, English workmen, thrown out of their labor by the stoppage of the exportation, would come to the country, and where could any increase of wages result? In exchange for the 2,000,000 tons of pig iron, wheat was shipped to Europe. This supply would be cut off by the tariff, for Europe would not send for wheat because they would have nothing to give in exchange. The farmers’ supply of wheat was more than home consumption demanded, and instead of higher wages farm labor would necessarily be cheaper. Mr. Shearman also showed that workers on cotton in Massachusetts received $2.58 as wages, while in Georgia they only received $1.80, and in North Carolina $1.36; yet Massachusetts, with higher wages, prospered more than the lower wage sections.

No Place for a Poor Man Forty or One Hundred Miles Away from a Railroad.

A boom article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press says that “Oregon has as much, if not more, public lands open to entry to-day than the territories to the east of her. It is true that these lands are away from railroads, but so was all Oregon when the present wealthy men of the state first came here. The lands now open to entry are from 40 to 100 miles from railways, but roads are now projected through some of these unoccupied countries^sic, and ere five years, it is safe to say, nearly all these counties will be contiguous to railways.”

Weighting the Safety Valve.

BALTIMORE, Md., June 2—I clip the following from the Baltimore Sun:

Four young women, the eldest of whom was twenty-five years of age, called at the city hall yesterday and stated to Colonel Love, the mayor’s secretary, that they had been employed at one of the concert halls which the mayor had deprived of its license. They had been paid $1.25 per night, but now their “occupation is gone,” and they wanted aid in getting other employment. They had not been raised to any particular kind of work, and did not know what to do to keep the wolf from the door. One of them said she had supported her mother the past eight years. Two of them had infants in arms, and one of them said her husband had gone to Atlantic City to find employment at piano playing. They were rather prepossessing looking girls. Colonel Love gave them a card of the Charity relief association, which directed an agent to inquire into the cases.

This is an outcome of a local crusade against certain dives by a certain class of social reformers who find remedies for what is politely “the social evil^sic” in repressive measures. They never think of freedom; their sole remedy lies through repression. Not a few of them, meanwhile, see no harm in “standing in” with Uncle Sam to “skin” the public. Others sit back in respectable ease and wait for their corner in land to bear its fruits. In the words of Hudebras^sic they

Compound for sins they are inclined to By damning those they have no mind to.

WILLIAM N. HILL, M. D.

If the “Evening Post” Would Study Its Own Editorials It Would See the Cat.

New York Evening Post.

The remuneration of a hired man must be, speaking broadly, equal to what he could obtain by working for himself, and this is regulated by the cheapness or dearness of land. Professor Sumner has illustrated this point by citing a well known fact in the history of Massachusetts. “In the good old colony times, when we lived under the king,” it was customary for the general court of Massachusetts to fix the wages of carpenters and masons. The aim of the public authorities was to fix the rate so that the house builders’ earnings would be about equal to those of the farmers, but one year they put the rate a little too low. So the carpenters and masons said, “We know that we can build our own houses, and we know that we can make better wages than you allow us by going out to Springfield and taking up land of our own; and that is what we will do.” Some of them accordingly started with their families for Springfield. House building in Boston came to an end, or would have come to an end had not the general court rescinded their action and put the rate of wages up to the standard that the men could obtain by working for themselves.

The true regulator of wages in this country is the farm. What a man can make by going to the west and becoming a homesteader he must be paid on the average by any employer of labor, whether in protected or in unprotected employments. This silent regulator of wages is performing its office under our eyes all the time. Twelve hundred immigrants arrive here from Europe every day. Some of them go the western states^sic and territories and engage in agriculture. Others hire themselves out to work as miners, railroad builders, domestic servants, or what not, some in protected and others in non-protected trades. Individual cases there are where the new comer has not the option of taking up land or hiring out to an employer. He may not have the small amount of capital needed to become a homesteader. He may not have the price of a ticket to the west. But so large a portion do have the means to decide whether they will work for hire or work for themselves that the rate of wages is regulated for the one as well as for the other by an influence in which the protective tariff cuts no figure whatever, except so far as it increases the price of the protected articles and the cost of living, and thus reduces the effective wages of all laborers.

The Sort of a Monster We Are So Carefully Rearing.

Philadelphia Record.

Another evidence of the tendency of the times toward consolidation is to be found in the contemplated merger of the St. Louis and San Francisco railroad company with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad company, which would make the proposed system the largest in the world and give it the control of about 8,000 miles of trade and render tributary to it the territory extending from Chicago and St. Louis on the the east^sic to San Diego on the west and the gulf of Mexico on the south. At a similar rate of combination not many years would be required to weld all the railroad lines of the United States into one concern, which in business magnitude would stand in about the same position toward the public as that now occupied by the Western union telegraph company to the telegraph service of the country.

Among English speaking nations, it is now an accepted doctrine that there is no such thing as a vested right “in the perpetuation of a public wrong.”—[Christian Union.

PLAIN TALK TO PROTECTIONISTS.

THE TEXAS PRIZE POEM.

THE PRESS ON VICE-CHANCELLOR BIRD’S DECISION.

No decision of a court since Shelley was denied the care of his children because of his agnosticism has gone farther than this in its revocation of a legacy. It may serve in time to come as the top water line in our courts left by the floods of monopoly.—[Chicago Labor Enquirer.

Does New Jersey law limit educational bequests to the promulgation of such doctrines, political or religious, as the judge may consider orthodox? Does it authorize him to stop the publication of books which he deems heretical, whether they are immoral or not?—[St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

A decision of this kind in the Cannibal islands might be all right, but in free America its author should be voted an ass.—[Albany Independent Citizen.

If law is common sense, we don’t see how this decision is to stand. Prohibition is against the law of the land, in Indiana, for instance. Yet would it be held that a legacy left to a prohibitionist to further that doctrine could not be received by him: The history of slavery affords illustrations of the attempt to carry out the doctrine propounded by this judge in this decision. Henry George’s proposition of no private ownership in land is not so radical as the proposition of no private ownership in human beings. Yet such ownership was once the law of the land as private land ownership is now.—[Indianapolis News.

This is a radical and startling interference with the right of disposing of property by will; and inasmuch as the power of Mr. Hutchins to spend his money in behalf of Georgeism while he lived could not have been questioned, we doubt the expediency of the decision rendered. There is no real question that the funds which would have been put in Mr. George’s hands, had the will stood, would have been used to delude the credulous, increase the unrest and bitterness of the discontented, and pave the way for more or less serious disturbances, but in the prevention of such misfortunes the rights of individuals must not be infringed. Socialism must not be met with the tyranny to which it would inevitably lead.—[Cleveland Leader.

This decision appears to have been reached by the court, not because the testator’s mind was unsound, but because the legatee’s teaching was unsound. This is queer.—[Philadelphia Record.

The court of chancery of this state has held up a sort of looking glass for Henry George to gaze into and try and realize what he looks like to other people from a mental point of view.—[Newark, N. J., News.

If there are any more wealthy Jerseymen who want to leave their money to aid in disseminating the land doctrines of Henry George they are notified by Vice-Chancellor Bird that it will be necessary to give Mr. George the money before they die. The heirs will get the money and Mr. George and his cranky land theory will get left.—[Philadelphia Times.

The discretion of a judge in a court of equity is very large, but the latitude which Vice-Chancellor Bird has allowed himself is probably without precedent. Although he personally makes no claim to infallibility in any respect, he has done apparently with a light heart what even the pope of Rome cannot be persuaded to undertake. His offhand dismissal of Mr. George’s theories as contrary to public policy would be amusing were it not in all it involves a matter of too much seriousness to be merely entertaining. It has always been one of the privileges of the American citizen to think and speak for himself and to advocate any and every such theory not inconsistent with common decency and public morals as commended itself to his judgment. A strict application of the principle underlying Vice-Chancellor Bird’s decision would deprive that right of very much of its value and importance and is therefore a proper subject for protest.—[Philadelphia North American.

The decision of Vice-Chancellor Bird of New Jersey that a bequest to Henry George for the promotion of his doctrines is illegal, because George’s views are opposed to laws and contrary to public policy, is the sublimest sample of bourbonism and barbarism that this free country has seen for some time. The spirit of the freedom of the press demands the utmost liberty of legal protection of the right of free discussion, and it is easy to see why such a policy works for good. Such extreme doctrines as those of Mr. George, when wrong, call out much prompter and more vigorous presentations of the right than would have been made but for the original publicatian^sic.—[New York Press.

Every fair minded man, no matter whether he agrees with Mr. George or not, must condemn such a decision as this, for it strikes directly at the right of free speech; in fact the constitution of New Jersey distinctly states that “every person may freely speak, write and publish his sentiments on all subjects.—[Philadelphia Justice.

According to this ruling, the peculiar views of the sitting judge are to be taken as law. and^sic if he were specially narrow minded, a bequest to what most people regarded as a great, charitable, benevolent or religious enterprise might be set aside. A law which permits any judge to enforce his own peculiar notion is a dangerous law, and it occurs to us that the vice-chancellor of New Jersey exceeded his authority in the decision referred to. Mr. George’s views may be immoral, but it is scarcely unlawful to hold or to advocate them.—[Altoona, Pa., Times.

Truly it would be hard to say where such decisions would stop. A dying man is supposed to have the right to leave his property as he pleases, subject to the legal exemption in favor of his widow. If he leaves it for public purposes, as did this Jerseyman, is it for the judge to say whether it was wisely left? If the judge’s private opinion of the merit of an idea is to weigh against the validity of a bequest in its favor, we can imagine that able lawyer, Colonel Robert Ingersoll, elevated to the bench and deciding against the validity of a bequest to a Christian church, on the ground that, in his judgment, the church is engaged in spreading an hallucination.

Besides, how does Vice-Chancellor Bird know that the purpose of the bequest was “neither charitable, benevolent nor educational?” The ideas advanced in the books are all three, in the opinion of those who believe in them, and that includes many college professors, and, it is said, at least eleven members of congress.

As to the vice-chancellor’s statement that Mr. George’s doctrines are at variance with the laws which the courts are every day called upon to uphold, why, so are the doctrines of the prohibitionists in New Jersey and the license party in Maine; so are the doctrines of the free traders and the monometalists; so is the doctrine of Mayor Hewitt and Edward Atkinson, that taxes should be levied exclusively on real estate. Mr. George does not propose to violate the law, but to change the law, which surely is not a crime in a free country. It would be strange indeed if a bequest of money to propagate the idea of prohibition should be declared illegal because prohibition is at variance with the liquor laws “which the courts are every day called upon to uphold.” The logic of the Jersey chancellor’s decision is that it is illegal to agitate for a change in the law. If the decision has been correctly reported in the newspapers, Mr. George’s epithet of “immortal ass” is not exaggerated. This is a free country, and every kind of an idea should have a free chance on equal terms with every other idea.—[Boston Globe.

We believe Mr. George’s theories to be communistic in their tendency, and false, but doubt whether any legal power exists in this country to suppress them.—[Pittsburg Chronicle.

The vice-chancellor does not set aside the will because the maker of it was not a crank, and the will so entirely an improvident one that it is not fit to stand against the very plain interests of the wife and children, but

p. 3, col. 5 because he does not like Henry George’s doctrines, and regards their promulgation as improper. This kind of equity is a good deal more dangerous to the community upon which it is imposed that the George land theories^sic are or are ever likely to be.—[Philadelphia Telegraph.

The vice-chancellor may not be aware of the fact that there are millions of books in this world that express views that are opposed to existing laws. Or if he is, he must be of the opinion that a man has no right to spend his money to publish books that express views in opposition to existing laws. He is probably entirely innocent of all knowledge of the fact that half of humanity, if not all of it, is constantly engaged in the business of expressing views in opposition to existing laws, and that, as an effect of these views, the laws are constantly changing. If he is aware of things of which we suspect he is unaware, then he must, nevertheless, be blissfully unconscious of the fact that he has delivered an opinion which is a unique specimen of crankiness that is not justified even for the purpose of breaking the will of a crank.—[Philadelphia Inquirer.

People who don’t indorse Georgeism will not regard favorably such an extension as this of the function of courts. A man who has money has a right to give to whom he pleases. This is common sense and, we have no doubt, is good law.—[Hamilton, Ohio, News.

The reproach of mediævalism which has occasionally been directed against New Jersey seems to be again justified by the decision of Vice-Chancellor Bird. . . There is no more potent civilizing agency than the possibility of individual possession of a share of the soil. But inasmuch as Mr. George does not advocate the violation of the laws, but only their modification by due legislative process, does it not appear a dangerous impeachment of the right of bequest to say that a man shall not leave a portion of his money for the peaceful propagation of the opposite doctrine? It would seem that Vice-Chancellor Bird must have forgotten this other right of property, the right of bequest, which, in spite of a good many assaults upon it, is still undeniably a principle of our legal procedure.

Vice-Chancellor Bird, in summing up, bases his decision against the legacy upon a single sentence in Henry George’s works, which is as follows: “It is not merely a robbery that deprives of their birthright the infants that are coming into the world.”

It is apparent enough that Mr. George did not mean, in writing this sentence, so fatal to the late Mr. Hutchins’s bequest, to intimate that land owners should be prosecuted for grand and petit larceny. He used the expression in its literary or argumentative sense. Some of the documents of a free trade league might, no doubt, denounce protective tariff laws as a form of robbery, and yet, if we are not mistaken, bequests have more than once been made without hindrance to disseminate free trade literature. We are inclined to think, if Mr. George takes this legacy into the federal circuit or supreme courts—either of which he may do, the former by virtue of his citizenship of another state than New Jersey, and the latter upon appeal—that Vice-Chancellor Bird’s decision will not stand. We are afraid, too, that it will tend directly to popularize the George doctrine; so that Mr. Hutchins’s bequest, whether Henry George gets the money or not, will have its effect, not merely in spite of, but on account of the decision against its legality. It would hardly do to establish an impression that money might be left by will to assist in the argument of one side of a public question, but not to assist in the argument of the other side.—[Boston Transcript.

Such a rule of law might have held good in the reign of King James, but the world has advanced some since then. Any theory or policy is open to discussion. Even anarchy may be advocated, so long as it is done peacefully; and why the teachings of Henry George should be considered unlawful we fail to see. Is it wrong to say there should be no private ownership of land? If so, we had better begin to look sharply lest we have enacted the old alien and sedition laws.—[Rockville, Ind., Tribune.

New Jersey has a judge that should be embalmed and placed on exhibition. His name is Bird, and he is vice-chancellor of the state courts. . . One such narrow headed ass as Bird is about as much in that line as one state is likely to have in responsible judicial position, and no doubt the chancellor will reverse his decision. The idea that the advocacy of a theory in economics which is intended to be put in practice by peaceful means is illegal is so superlatively asinine as to beggar the language to criticise in adequate terms. Such men as Bird, were they generally prevalent, would clap a stopper on the dial of time, and not rest satisfied until the earth should reverse its diurnal motion. However, he has his uses, one of which is to attract attention to Henry George’s theory, which theory, defective as it may be, is better than the practices in vogue.—[Pittsburg Labor Tribune.

This eminent jurist of the state of New Jersey may have read a book written by Herr Most from which such a conclusion might possibly be drawn, but from a book written by Henry George—never.—[Junction City, Kan., Tribune.

The opinion rendered by Vice-Chancellor Bird at Trenton, N. J., concerning Henry George’s land theories is simply ludicrous.

A man named Hutchins left a liberal bequest to be used in circulating George’s works. The heirs contested the will. The vice-chancellor holds that the bequest is invalid on the ground that George’s theories are “in opposition to the laws,” and hence that the court will not aid in disseminating them by upholding the will.

Such a ruling is absurd. To defeat the will of a testator in that way is a judicial abuse. Whether the doctrines advocated by Mr. George are sound or unsound, whether their adoption would be a public good or a public evil, is a question with which a court has nothing to do in a case of this kind.

This is a free country. The people govern themselves, make their own laws and unmake them. Every person has a right to advocate any change in our laws, to advance any theories, however visionary. The people have a right to adopt them if they choose to. It would be perfectly lawful to argue in favor of changing the form of government from a republic to a despotism. The people are their own rulers and hold the power to make any change they please in the laws, constitution or system of government. If they want to adopt Mr. George’s theories they can do so.

There is no law against the dissemination of these theories nor any reason why a man may not will money for their dissemination if he wants to. Whether such a bequest is wise or politic is not for a court to inquire. It is for a lawful purpose and should be enforced.—[New York Herald.

STRAWS WHICH SHOW THE WIND.

The Houston Post has announced the publication of a series of articles on the single tax by H. F. Ring.

If the tariff on foreign products is levied for the “protection” of American laborers, why don’t they get as much for making the article as the tariff on it amounts to?—[Grand Rapids Workman.

The burden of labor is that while it must perforce sustain the expenditure of the world, the social organization forbids it free access to the “means of life,” the springs of wealth production. It must not only support the world but pay for the privilege of doing it.—[Chicago Labor Enquirer.

The Australian system which is being introduced in some states should be universally adopted. We hope some one will introduce a bill in our legislature this winter compelling the adoption of this method of elections. It will do more good than any election law we have.—[Nickerson, Kan., Argosy.

Nothing is a more barefaced humbug than the supposed assessment of personal property. While this kind of property has been for years keeping pace with population, it is gradually disappearing from the assessment rolls of the country, so that now about all that is assessed belongs to widows and orphans.—[Menominee Laborer.

Henry George says there is no escape from the dilemma that the “state must own the railroads or the railroads will own the state,” and the country is day by day coming nearer his way of thinking on this and many other questions. If we must have monopolies, let them be government monopolies, managed in the interest of the entire people.—[Buena Vista, Col., Democrat.

Taxing improvements on land is a burden upon labor, and means fewer good homes for our wives, children and ourselves. To exempt all improvements on land and all personal property from taxation means an invitation for capital to come into Texas and make us rich. Manufactories would be built all over this state if they were exempt from taxation.—[Pearsall (Tex.) Sun.

The platform of the California democracy demands government postal telegraphy. There is a very simple rule by which the propriety of government enterprises as distinguished from private is tested, and it is this: Services whose economical or efficient performance makes a monopoly desirable or necessary should be undertaken by the government.—[San Francisco Examiner.

Taxation destroys business. High license, which is a tax upon the liquor business, cut down the applications for licenses one-half. This was the expected result. But the protectionists proceed upon the theory that business may be benefited by taxation. They point to the prosperity of those persons who are allowed to tax other persons as a proof that taxation is a beneficence.—[Philadelphia Record.

The rights of individuals in all lines of business are entitled to protection against corporate aggression. There should be remedy for every oppressed or defrauded workingman. All that is needful in these directions may be provided without yielding to the socialist his wild demands, or treating all the achievements of capital in this age as if they were but monuments of wrong and oppression.—[Chicago Standard.

The mortgage indebtedness of our farms, it is perfectly safe to say, is at the very least fifty per cent more to-day than it would be if the farmer had not suffered from evils which never should have been permitted to exist. Every industry has received consideration from the government except the industry of agriculture. No wonder there are mortgages. The only wonder is that there are not more.—[Decatur, Ill., Labor Bulletin.

As society is organized the average citizen pays more money out in the form of taxes than he is able to keep for himself; the greater part of the fruits of his labor are taken up and absorbed in some form of taxes, whether these be paid to the state directly, for the support of the government, or paid in the form of indirect taxes, excise duties, or for the protection of the so-called “infant industries” of the country.—[Jackson (Tenn.) State Wheel.

The attempt to secure greater purity in our elections by means of a secret ballot is a reform which all good men should support. It is only in this way that the free, untrammeled voice of the people can be expressed. So long as one man is richer or more powerful than another, so long as he occupies a position where that other may suffer by incurring his displeasure, there is danger of the ballot and the voter being subjected to bad and corrupt influences.—[Oneida, N. Y., Post.

If the creator has given to each man an equal right to the source of all wealth, why should he not have all that his labor draws from that source? To effect a just distribution of wealth we must establish a just relation between labor and land; between man and the great storehouse from which he draws wealth; from which he must draw it. We must secure to each his equal right to the common heritage of all. Nothing short of this can solve the problem.—[Topeka Post.

The Toronto Globe has a great deal of curiosity. It now wants to know why coal that sells in Buffalo at $4.75 a ton cannot be purchased for less than $6 a ton in Toronto Evidently^sic our Toronto contemporary does not understand the methods of the coal ring. If it did it would know that distance has little to do with price. In some towns not half the distance of Buffalo from the coal fields coal is higher than in Buffalo. So is transportation. The coal combination works in a mysterious way its income to enlarge, and some consumers are obliged to pay out of all proportion toward it.—[Rochester Herald.

We have, after the creation of our debt, changed the standard of value, a monstrous crime, by which we increased the debt to be paid and diminished the power of the people to pay, so that it would take more wheat, corn or any product of labor to pay our debt to-day than in 1865. Handicapped with all this, we continue by a vicious system of tariff taxation, established for war purposes and perpetuated by a greed of special interests, to pour into the treasury a surplus of $150,000,000 a year, and hold locked up from use by the people nearly $700,000,000 of the people’s money.—[J. Burrows, President National Farmers’ Alliance.

There probably are not over 40,000 persons in the United States who are as sanguine as Mr. George concerning the benefits to be derived from the adoption of this plan of taxation. But the real growth of the single tax movement cannot be measured by this. The vital and starting point of Mr. George’s philosophy is gaining ground among practical, business men and among thinkers. The Chicago and Minneapolis papers have been interviewing many of their leading business and professional men concerning the single tax and nearly fifty per cent understood and approved it. Those who read the daily papers carefully know that Mayor Hewitt of New York city advocates the adoption of a modified form of Henry George’s scheme of taxation. The movement is having a wonderful growth in Texas, where the legislature will be urged by a powerful influence to consider the subject.—[Ann Arbor (Mich.) Register.

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SATURDAY, JUNE 9, 1888.

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A SHORT TARIFF HISTORY.

Protectionists say that in this country prosperity has invariably followed in the wake of high protective tariff and depression as invariably followed on free trade legislation. Thus: 1788, tariff followed by prosperity; 1812, higher tariff, greater prosperity; 1816, tariff reduction followed by depression of trade; 1824, high tariff, immediately followed by prosperity; 1832, free trade followed by a panic; 1842: protective tariff followed by revival of trade: 1850, free trade, result, stagnation in business; 1861, protection followed by twenty-seven years of prosperity.

The above statement, taken from a correspondent’s letter, is one which, with very little variation, has been the stock argument of protectionists for many years. The correspondent who quotes it is naturally very much puzzled, for although he cannot see any reason why an increase of the tariff should produce prosperity, he is nevertheless staggered by the assertion that this has always been the case. The simple truth is that this statement is a tissue of falsehoods. Against it I will put in very brief form the actual facts:

1789.—Abolition of all interstate tariffs and reduction of state tariffs on foreign goods, followed by rapid in- crease of prosperity.

1808.—Absolute prohibition of all importations, followed by universal disaster.

1809.—Repeal of prohibition, followed by renewal of prosperity.

1812.—The tariff doubled and all importations stopped by the war. Result, hard times over the whole country; general suspension of banks, and such suffering in New England that secession was threatened.

1816.—A protective tariff adopted—in some things higher than that of 1812; although in some things lower. This was the first tariff which was framed all through upon the principle of protection. The protectionists themselves always say that it was followed by great depression of trade.

1818.—This tariff made still more protective; and the protectionists always refer to the year 1819 as one of great disaster.

1824.—A higher tariff; followed by great depression in the protected manufactures, and certainly without one cent of increase in wages.

1828.—A very high protective tariff, immediately followed by hard times in 1829, and low wages so long as this tariff existed.

1832.—No “free trade” at all; but a slight reduction of the tariff, followed by improvement in business.

1833.—A gradual reduction of the tariff, leaving it still so high that an enormous surplus accumulated in the treasury, which was distributed among the states in 1837. This distribution was immediately followed by the famous panic of 1837, which was the direct result of wild land speculation all over the country, brought about largely by the surplus.

1842.—Protective tariff restored, followed by one year (1843) of the greatest stagnation of business ever known; while during the whole existence of this tariff farm wages were cut down about one-half from what they had been even after the panic of 1837, and wheat, corn and cotton sold at prices disastrous to farmers and planters. Good times and fat profits for iron, cotten^sic and woolen mill owners; bad times for every one else.

[1846?].—The tariff cut down by about one-third to one-half. Result, an immense increase in commerce and shipping, a rapid increase in manu- factures, unprecedented prosperity in agriculture, and the most rapid advance in wages ever known in the history of the country, before or since.

1857.—Even under the low tariff of 1846 the revenue had become excessive, and a surplus accumulated. In order to get rid of this surplus the tariff was reduced in July; but in September, before the new tariff could have the least effect, the short panic of 1857 occurred, as the result of another wild land speculation, combined partially with the failure of crops. By 1858, however, almost the whole effect of this panic had passed away; and in 1859 and 1860 agriculture, commerce and manufactures were all more prosperous than they ever had been before.

p. 4, col. 2

1861.—A protective tariff, constantly increasing until 1867. According to protectionist logic, the result was our terrible civil war, because this, as a matter of fact, immediately followed the new tariff. For more than a year after the adoption of this protective tariff, the business of the country was in a fearfully depressed condition.

1864.—Tariff raised fifty per cent. Manufacturers made fortunes for three years. Wages, in gold, lower than ever.

1867.—Great increase in tariff on wool. Result, immediate slaughter of 400,000 sheep, reduction of wool product and ruin of many woolen factories. The years 1867, 1868 and 1869 were periods of great depression in business, and especially in manufactures. In 1868, the protectionists themselves declared that there were more unemployed workmen than had ever before been known.

1870.—Slight reduction in the tariff and considerable reduction in taxation generally. As a result, business improved considerably. But, the tariff being still maintained in all its protective features, the great panic of 1873 ensued, which was far worse than the panic of 1857, and which lasted for more than five times as long a period. From September, 1873, until January, 1879, the business of the country was more depressed, and more laborers were driven out of employment, than in any previous period of the country’s history. So far from there being “twenty-seven years of prosperity” under the last protective tariff, fully half of that time has been a period of extraordinary business depression, especially marked by falling wages and the wholesale discharge of laborers from employment. This was especially the case in 1861, 1867, 1868, 1869. 1873, 1874, 1875, 1876. 1877 and 1878.

1883.—Pretended reduction, but real increase in tariff. Wages cut down everywhere in factories and mines. Great panic of May, 1884, leaving depression for two years.

The most extraordinary fact about this whole story is that men of sense who have lived through the fearful period of depression, extending from 1873 to 1879, when, for the first time, legislation against “tramps” was needed, should yet listen gravely to the assertion of protectionists that nothing is needed to secure prosperity except just such a high tariff as we have now and had then.

THOMAS G. SHEARMAN.

THE FIVE MINUTES DEBATE.

The five minutes debate on the Mills bill has been even more interesting than the speech making that preceded it because it has partaken more of the character of a true debate. The real difference of principle that underlies the whole dispute is brought out more clearly, and it has been quite common for the republicans to refer to the “free trade” side of the house without protest from the democrats.

The republicans showed very clearly that it is their intention to use every possible device to protract the debate unreasonably, but the democrats, in turn, showed that they have the power to prevent the success of this attempt. The whole of the first day of the discussion was taken up with the nominal consideration of five lines in the first paragraph of the bill, and the republican members manifested a disposition to prolong the debate on these lines. but, on motion^sic of Mr. Mills, the committee rose, and before the house resolved itself into a committee of the whole for considering the tariff bill next day it made an order limiting debate on the lines already considered to forty minutes. The vote by which the house rose on the first day with a view to accomplishing this result was 122 to 83, showing a good working major- ity against the tactics of unreasonable delay. It appears from this that though the opponents of the bill may greatly prolong the debate they have not the power to prevent the forcing of a vote when the majority determine that it shall be done.

Though the discussion took a wide range, involving the whole question of protection, it was ostensibly confined to the proposal to put lumber on the free list, and the opposition came chiefly from the Maine members and others having constituents largely interested in lumber operations. The lack of real union among the republicans was curiously illustrated. The venerable representative of Pennsylvania pig iron, Mr. Kelley, made an appeal to the southern members to remember the large lumber interests of the south and not vote for a measure that would reduce the price obtainable for the product of southern forests. Mr. Reed of Maine, on the other hand, insisted that the proposed change would bring about no reduction in the price of lumber, while other republicans denounced the provision as a sectional one, some of them saying that the south had no lumber interests, and others that the cost of transportation was so great that southern lumber is practically out of the market.

Mr. Breckinridge of Arkansas called attention to these clashing statements, and, while declaring that his state produced large quantities of excellent timber and had a large and growing demand for it from Chicago and the west, said that his constituents did not ask congress to tax the farmers and builders of the south and west for the benefit of the owners of Arkansas timber. Mr. Holman of Indiana thought it most fortunate that this debate

p. 4, col. 3 should have opened on the lumber clause of the bill, as it admirably illustrated the attitude of the two great parties on the question of tariff reform. He quoted the existing law to show that all woods that are exclusively used in the manufactures of articles of luxury are now on the free list, as are also railway ties for the benefit of the great railway corporations, while a duty is levied on all lumber suitable for building houses, fences and barns. Mr. Weaver of Iowa made a strong speech in support of the bill, and was interrupted by a member who sneered at his greenback views, eliciting the following retort:

The gentleman’s lack of knowledge concerning the lumber trust is only equaled by his lack of knowledge concerning finance. I am somewhat older than he, perhaps. I saw this great government, by an exercise of its sovereign power, create money and with it preserve the life of this nation. The gentleman twits me with believing that the government can make money out of paper. It is not a matter of faith. I know it. The whole country knows it; and the supreme court have declared it lawful in war and constitutional in peace; and I am not only opposed to the lumber trust, but to the national bank trust, and to all other trusts as well.

Mr. Outhwaite of Ohio and Mr. Wilson of Minnesota pressed home this matter of the lumber trust in a way that was apparently uncomfortable to the republicans, who did not dare to deny that there is such a trust, though several of them, like the Irishman’s twenty witnesses, who swore that they had never seen him steal a pig, insisted that they had never heard of a lumber trust.

Mr. Breckinridge of Kentucky quoted, in the course of the debate, a speech by Mr. Blaine protesting against the imposition of any tax on an article so necessary to everybody as lumber. The speech had been made when an internal revenue bill was pending, and the republican members now insisted that there was a great difference between levying a tax on American lumber and putting a tariff on imported lumber. When confronted with their own admissions that the latter was intended to enhance the cost of lumber, and asked what difference it made to the consumer how this increase in price was brought about, they ran off as usual into loose statements concerning the great benefits derived by everybody else through the putting of money into the pockets of a favored few. They were cornered constantly and their attitude throughout the whole discussion was little short of ludicrous. One of the best things said by a republican in the course of the debate was said by Mr. Guenther of Wisconsin, who confessed his respect for the out-and-out free trader, but spoke with contempt of the Mills bill. If the democrats insisted on putting lumber and wool on the free list, he declared that they ought, by way of compensation, to “give us, at least, free sugar, free rice, free woolens and free medicines.” Some day, when Mr. Guenther finds it necessary to consider the interests of the consumer and has no longer a protected lumber trust at his back, he may recall this utterance with pride, and, with a judgment and regard for the public welfare no longer perverted, help compel the democrats to put the articles he names on the free list. The free traders will help pass the pending bill against the wishes of Mr. Guenther and his fellow defenders of monopoly; but if any of its advocates imagine that any free trader looks on such a measure as the Mills bill as a finality, or even as a reasonable measure of reduction, they will find that they are gravely mistaken.

In the course of debate Mr. Randall found opportunity to further indicate his hostility to the present policy and past traditions of his party by taking sides with the protectionists against free lumber, but his defection was balanced by that of Mr. Lind, a republican from Minnesota, who made a strong speech in favor of its admission. These changes are not important, looking no further than the vote on the pending bill, but they are of great importance as indications that political parties must soon divide on this question alone, the democratic party having no room for a protectionist, and the republican party no room for any but protectionists.

As is now customary, and probably inevitable, when any great economic topic is under discussion, the land question bobbed up serenely during the debate. In response to a statement that the lumbermen were making enormous fortunes, Mr. Guenther interposed a statement that the money was made, not on the operations, but from “stumpage;” that is, from the royalty charged by land owners as the condition on which they will permit labor and capital to go to work on the northwestern forests. Mr. Wilson of Minnesota, who also represents a lumber region, but not as the agent of the lumber trust, said it was within his own knowledge that, in the lumber region in part represented by himself and Mr. Guenther, pine lands had risen in value within the past fifteen years from 300 to 500, and in some instances 1,000 per cent, while the value of farming lands in the same region had not risen one per cent. These farmers, he truly said, were taxed to enrich millionaire owners of timber lands, and he declared that the issue before the country to-day is “whether the agriculturists and the mass of the people generally shall be compelled to contribute, not for the support of the government, but for the enrichment of these prosperous protected industries.” Turning to the republican members from the northwest, he told them that they would have to answer to their constituents the question why poverty should protect wealth.

The obstructive tactics of the protectionists did not prevent the adoption by the committee of the whole of the clause

p. 4, col. 4 putting lumber on the free list, but on Monday the republicans made a determined effort to get rid of the existing surplus by forcing the consideration of the pending bill and, being successfully resisted by Mr. Mills, they broke the quorum by abstaining from voting and thereby prevented further progress of the tariff bill. The consideration of the bill was resumed on Tuesday, however, and some slight progress made.

It is impossible to say at present how long a time will be occupied in the consideration of the bill, but there appears no reason to doubt that the democrats will force the house to remain in session until a vote can be taken on the bill as perfected by the committee of the whole; and the republicans may, in view of a result that is inevitable, consult their own comfort by refraining from further ob- struction. There is a general belief that the senate will reject the house bill and pass a measure of its own that will offer no basis of compromise, but the Washington correspondence of the New York Herald intimates that there are enough republican senators who desire a reduction of the tariff and the surplus to bring about a compromise that will reduce the present revenue derived from the tariff. Such a bill may pass, but it is not likely to prove satisfactory to either side and will leave the door open for a new struggle at the next session of congress. The outlook is not a happy one for those “statesmen” who ardently wish to get the whole troublesome question out of the way. The tariff question has come to stay.

WHY SHIPS ARE LOST.

The latest issue of the North American Review contains an article by W. H. Rideing, in which an effort is made to decide whether with the increase of speed of the great transatlantic liners there has arisen any increase of danger. Letters are quoted from the commanders of a number of ships of the different lines, as well as from a distinguished ship building firm. On the whole, the burden of the testimony is that, with proper care, fast ships are quite as safe as slow ones. While their rate of speed may augment certain dangers, it undeniably lessens the duration of all danger. A ship which crosses the Atlantic in twelve days is exposed to the dangers of the seas just twice as long as one making the passage in six days. Mr. Rideing, therefore, announces the cautious conclusion that “speed does not necessarily increase peril.”

But after all, why should there be any such discussion as this? Why should ship masters and experts be invited to give their opinions as to whether fast ships or slow ships are the safer? Why should one ship be in any degree less safe than another? Why should not all ships be absolutely safe?

The answer is easy to any one familiar with maritime affairs. It is because of the survival of an ancient superstition that the Almighty exercises peculiar power upon the sea, and by special decrees provides for the safety of one vessel and the destruction of another. Let a railway train be wrecked by a collision, by a breaking bridge, or by a misplaced switch, and it would be thought a blasphemy to say that God did it. It is justly assumed that it is somebody’s fault; and the law doesn’t wait to ascertain on what particular somebody the blame should rest, but makes the railway corporation, one of whose em- ployes must have been at fault, pecuniarily responsible for the loss of property and the damage to life and limb. But when a great steamer founders in midocean, her owners are relieved from all liability in respect of the goods they have contracted to deliver, and the human beings they have undertaken to transport, specifically upon the ground that the foundering was the act of God—that the Almighty, in his wisdom, saw fit that the ship should sink, and she had to sink accordingly. The same superstition survives in our churches. The Episcopal prayer book contains a special form of petition for persons going to sea, in which the “eternal God, who alone spreadest out the heavens and rulest the raging of the sea,” is besought to “conduct them in safety to the haven where they would be, with a grateful sense of thy mercies.” No such form of prayer is thought necessary on behalf of those who travel by railway train.

Now, it is safe to say that for every danger a steamship has to encounter on a voyage between New York and Liverpool, a railway train running from New York to Chicago has to encounter fifty. Yet in proportion to the number at risk, the lives lost by disasters at sea, as compared with those lost in railway accidents, are at least as a thousand to one. The reason is, that when a railway company destroys or damages a case of goods, or breaks a limb, or loses a life, they have to pay roundly for their carelessness; but when a ship owner does the same thing, he may rub his hands and refer the claimant to the chancery of heaven.

How great is the carelessness which this lack of responsibility breeds in ship owners, men who follow the sea know full well. Time and again steamers carrying pas- sengers have been sent to sea when they were in actual need of repairs to hull and machinery, simply that the extra expense of repairs in a foreign port might be saved. The unseaworthiness of the “tramp” steamers has passed into proverb. Careless lading, insufficient manning, rotten timbers, leaky boilers, flawed machinery and spars, deficient groand^sic tackle—what sailorman is there who is not familiar with these inviters of disaster? Why should the owner care so long as by hook or crook he can maintain the insurance rating of his vessel? If evil come of it, the result is generally a positive gain to him. His vessel is insured for a good

p. 4, col. 5 price, and for the lives and cargo on board he has no responsibility.

There is no reason under heaven why every steamer that sails the sea should not be so constructed and fitted that only gross carelessness could involve her loss. This will never be done so long as we persist in insulting providence by clinging to the superstition of “the act of God.” But when ship owners are made responsible for their own laches. and the carelessness^sic of those in their employ—when the whole murdering system of marine insurance, general average, particular average, and bill of lading exceptions, is swept into the dust bin of the middle ages, where it properly belongs—it will be done very quickly.

THE “PRESS” AND ITS LOOKING GLASS.

That the United States is a country in which all who are willing to work can secure employment at exceptionally high wages; that every American who chooses to be ordinarily economical in his expenditures may be assured of a home and rear his family in peace and comfort; that food, clothing and shelter are sold for less money here than in England, while those who produce them get vastly more for their labor; and that these blessings are due entirely to protection, and would vanish from the land if the protective tariffs were repealed; these are the ideas which, in its editorial columns and its tariff talks, the Press of this city is tireless in inculcating. Manufacturer after manufacturer has told us through the tariff talker of the horror that fills his mind as he contemplates the possibility of having to cut down the wages of his hands if the dreadful Mills bill should be passed. And day after day the editorial writer has pointed the finger of illustration toward the pauper laborer of Europe, and warned us, now entreatingly, now scornfully, to desist from following after the abomination of free trade, lest we become even as that wretched being.

But in its news columns the Press is a different paper altogether. There it holds the mirror up to nature and shows us American workingmen and women, not as evolved from the depths of its own inner consciousness, but as they really are. The high wages, the happy homes and the steady employment which adorn the editorial page are nowhere to be seen; and in their place we gaze upon the sweater, the tenement house and the desperate, despairing scramble for work. The Press, indeed, reminds us of nothing so much as a philosopher sitting behind a looking glass and moralizing over what he fancies he can see by looking through its back. We congratulate it on its deft handling of the looking glass, but cannot help wishing it would occasionally step round to the front and study the pictures it presents to other people.

On Sunday last the Press turned its mirror in the direction of South Fifth avenue in the city of New York, and gave its readers a chance to catch a hasty glimpse of workingwomen’s life on that thoroughfare. To drop the metaphor, it described the visit of certain ladies to two factories in which protected industries are carried on—the one a paper box establishment, protected by a duty of thirty-five per cent, and the other a manufactory of ladies underclothing, also protected by a duty of thirty-five per cent.

The box factory was visited first:

The name of “Wiemer” on the sign board was familiar as being that of an employer who was thoughtful of the people working for him, and ready to do what was in his power to change and better their condition.

But it does not depend upon the employers to accomplish the change—at least, not upon the one or two who recognize that there is a wrong to be righted. It depends upon the women themselves. They alone can free themselves from bondage. The time is surely coming when they will comprehend it, but they are timid and hopeless as yet. One hundred women work at Weimer’s. An employer who is willing to have his employes “organize” is not to be met with every day. This man has kindness and consideration marked in strong lines on his face, and looks as if he means it when he says that he shall be glad to see women’s wages augmented, and will be among the first to join in the reform.

As it is he does better by his employes than most men in the trade; but to give the women the wages they ought to receive would be impossible for any one employer at present. He could not enter into competition with other manufacturers, his profits would be entirely swallowed up, and he would be a ruined man. Meantime Mr. Wiemer is willing to have the women he employs go to organization meetings, and, indeed, some of the sturdiest and most earnest of the workers in the only society yet formed solely for women come from this very factory. The more expert the women become in the business of making boxes the more time they have to think out the problem and dream of something better in days to come, for it is twice as easy to work hard if there is something absorbing to think about.

The deftness with which the hands fold the cardbord^sic, cover it over with fancy paper and ornament it with gilt, calling it a flower box, or a muff box, or a hat box, as the case may be! What days and weeks and months it must have taken to gain that deftness of fingers! And what patience and willingness to work. Employers pay by the piece, because if time is loitered or not spent to their advantage they lose nothing by it, whereas if the women worked by the day or week the case would be different. In any way of looking at it, how nervous the women must sometimes become that they cannot work faster and accomplish more. Paste and paper, paper and paste, all the day long. But there is a charm about work after all, of no matter what kind; there is a charm about being paid for it, too; and there’s the rub.

What wages these hundred women earn, the visiting ladies do not say. But it is evident from the context that they are insufficient for a decent support. Yet the employer is by no means an oppressor, but on the contrary, a good hearted man, who sympathizes with his employes, and would gladly pay them more if he could afford to.

And pray why can’t he afford to? What

p. 4, col. 6 is the beneficent protective tariff for, if not for the very purpose of enabling employers to pay high wages? When the Press, a week or two ago, exposed the horrible treatment of hotel servants, it explained that the tariff didn’t do its work in that case because the oppression was carried on in a corner, and it required to be re-enforced by public opinion. But here in this box factory the tariff is so re-enforced. Public opinion has done all it can possibly do, since it has converted the employer himself, and made him as anxious to pay high wages as the girls are to get them. Ah! but there is one thing lacking still. The girls must organize and strike for higher pay. Alas! poor creatures! let them overhaul the files of the Press, and learn from the story of the Edgar Thomson works at Braddock, Pa., how little organization can do for wage workers when outside the organization stands an army of hungry seekers after work at any price.

From the box factory the visitors proceeded to the underwear establishment, which is described as one of the largest, if not the largest, in the city. The governing powers here were by no means as benevolently disposed as Mr. Wiemer. In fact, they were rather discourteous than otherwise, and turned the ladies out of doors without permitting them to visit the work rooms. Nevertheless some things were seen and other things were learned from girls who had worked in the factory:

Supervision such as convicts receive is apparently the motto of the proprietors. It is not difficult to find girls who have been in Mr. Siegel’s employ, but who have left their places as soon as they have been able to get something better to do. Such a one told the writer that she was able to earn at best only $3 per week—$2 and $2.50 were the wages she usually received. Payments were made every two weeks, and the earnings of the oldest and most untiring and skillful workers were $16 and $18 for the two weeks.

And what were the demands made? Every woman was to pay for her own thread. She must buy it in the establishment, and the price charged was forty-five cents and twenty cents per spool. She must pay for her own needles, and each needle costs three cents. The oil cloth cover for her machine was twelve cents, and the price of that must be taken out of her wages. For each drop of oil that she get on her work^sic she was fined fifteen cents, although when the work passed through the hands of the presser the oil was taken out. The fifteen cents was then the clear profit of the employer. If the box became broken, in which the finished work was piled thick and fast, a charge for it was made to the girl in whose presence the accident occurred. The women could not laugh or sing, and if by chance they forgot themselves another fine of fifteen cents was imposed.

There did not lack forewomen to take note of all that passed. There was no notice posted that the girls might know what was expected of them, but the information was sprung upon them at the unfortunate time when they had given way to a happy mood. There was placed upon the walls one sole notice. It was that no girl should comb her hair before 6 o’clock. A little time would be lost if a woman left her work before the hour struck. Just one-half hour was allowed for dinner, although section 14 of the factory inspection law says: “Not less than forty-five minutes shall be allowed for the noonday meal in any manufacturing establishment in this state.”

Two other interesting things were discovered concerning this establishment. One, that it employs children under thirteen years of age in spite of the statute to the contrary; and another, that the four hundred girls who work it in^sic by no means represent the most wretched class of its employes, since at least half and perhaps three-quarters of its work is done outside and passes through the hands of sweaters.

Now, why won’t the Press walk round, for just one moment, take a peep into its own looking glass, and see things as they really are, and as its own columns show them? Here are two sets of wage workers, one under a kindly employer, the other under a tyrannical and brutal one, both shielded by protection, and neither getting decent wages. Cannot the Press see that what these women need is not a selfish organization to prevent other women getting employment, not mere factory inspection or other statutory protection, but simply and solely more opportunity to go to work? These women crowd into New York from farms and villages, clamoring for the privilege of making boxes and underwear at starvation prices, and by the pressure of their competition forcing wages down, and down, and downward still. Why don’t they stay at home and buy underwear, instead of starving to death making it? Why don’t they keep bees, or raise poultry, or grow roses, or write, or teach, or in some way follow the line of their natural talents and inclinations? Why don’t they obey the law of nature and become wives and mothers?—there is a man born into the world for every one of them. Simply because industry of every kind is so fettered and weighed down with taxes—rent tax to landlord, tariff tax to protected manufacturer, tax to township, tax to county, tax to state, license tax, internal revenue tax, tax upon everything taxable—that neither can they themselves afford the outlay—principally taxes of one of the kinds named—necessary to engage in these occupations, nor could those around them afford to buy of their products; while as for getting married—the men who by rights should be their sweethearts and their husbands, are as badly off as themselves, and as little able to support families.

Cannot the Press understand that in this nineteenth century, on this richly stored earth, in this land that boasts of freedom, amid the harnessed forces of nature, it is a blasphemy against God that girls should be wearing their lives out making underwear at $2 and $2.50 a week? Does not the Press know that since the world was, not the millionth continued on p. 5 →

[continued on page 5]

SOCIETY NOTES.

At Augusta, Ga., a tramp in the police station astonished the officers by repeating from memory several chapters from the Bible.

A New York broker made $42,000 in two days. He put $50,000 with it to make $150,000 in three days, and lost the entire sum in six hours’ turn of the market. In the morning he lived in a palace. In the evening he was out looking for apartments.

The body of an unknown woman was found the other morning on the dairy farm of Lewis Lafferty, at Stone house and Jones’s lanes, in Philadelphia. An investigation by the police and coroner’s officials showed that she had committed suicide by taking poison. The woman was first seen in the neighborhood on Saturday. She applied to several persons for work, and in each case was soon afterward followed by a man, who also offered to work for a meal.—[Philadelphia Record.

The famous dinner which was described in detail by the London Court Journal as an example of American extravagance was an engagement dinner given by Mr. Rhinelander on the occasion of his engagement to Miss Kipp, and was designed and served by Louis Sherry. This dinner, or, rather, one similar to it, with a litte change^sic in the menu and slight diversity in the decoration, has been served several times by this caterer, and though an elaborate affair, has been frequently exceeded in expense. In the center of the polished table a miniature table was arranged, above which ferns and lilies nodded and swayed, and in which fishes of varied colors darted, the whole surrounded by tropical plants and glowing parterres of flowers. Small electric lights were arranged about the lake, and in the center a fountain tossed its spray, while a colored glass ball lighted by electricity rose and fell in the crystal jet. A wealth of tropical foliage and bloom transformed the banqueting hall into a bower of beauty in which tiny colored electric lights flashed and glowed, and each of the twenty courses was placed before the guests on a natural palm leaf. Amid the tropical bloom small orange trees here and there were laden with their golden fruit, which, when served from the branches, were found to contain Roman punch, their pulp having been deftly removed through a small opening near the top. The truffles came from France, and the fruit was worth its weight in gold. Beside each plate was an artistically decorated satin souvenir, costing $6, and a painted menu card valued at $10 each. Dinners of yet greater cost are often given, for sometimes the favors consist of a piece of jewelry cunningly concealed in the bonbonnieres, and vary in value according to the number and size of the precious stones used.

Menus, too, are often thirty and forty and even fifty dollars each, engraved on gold or silver plate, or beautifully painted on satin or ivory. A quaint and original menu used at a gentleman’s dinner had no printed work^sic, but the picture of each viand was used in stead of the name. Frequently meat pieces, ornamented with truffles, elaborately constructed in architectural designs, with statuettes of gum paste or stearine, requiring an artist to design and fashion, and several days and even weeks to complete, cost fabulous sums, and beautiful center pieces of glace fruit or nougat are arranged at con siderable expense. It is no new fancy to serve Roman punch in oranges or even hanging on the natural trees, for Delmonico has had for some time trees for this purpose. Roman punch is also served in shells of ice, in ice roses, and in small goblets of frozen water as clear as crystal, but the latest fancy is to discard all these quaint conceits and devices of the confectioner’s skill and serve the ice in beautiful and rare cut glass cups or wine glasses.

The latest decoration for the table is a satin table cover of blue, scarlet, pink, or gold, over which a lace spread is thrown with a border of very open meshes. In the center a large parterre of rare and expensive flowers follows the outline of the table. At each lady’s plate a corsage bouquet of the choicest flowers is placed, the style of the dinner decorations in general being costly and uncommon rather than elaborate.

Louis Kanauwitz, a Frenchman, seventy years old, who was proprietor of a small candy shop and soda water fountain at 1,932 Catharine street, committed suicide at his home early yesterday morning by hanging himself. The cause of the suicide is believed to have been despondency, by a fear that he would lose his business.—[Philadelphia North American.

Killing the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs.

A. J. Kintz contributes to the Canton, Ohio, Democrat an article in which he shows that the over production of capital which is said to exist while men are out of work is imaginary, and that idle men means really restriction of production, not over production. He says:

We are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, and unless there is a change in this arrangement of things, bankruptcy, repudiation and ruin is our certain doom, sooner or later.

p. 5, col. 2

MEN AND THINGS.

If, whenever a New York housekeeper buys a peck of potatoes, she were compelled, besides paying for the potatoes, to contribute five cents to a charitable fund, what an outcry there would be! Yet this is precisely what the New York housekeeper really does. Only instead of charging so much for the potatoes and so much for the charity, the dealer simply lumps the two together and increases the price of his potatoes by five cents or more a peck. He doesn’t make anything by it, poor fellow! The trifling commission which he is allowed to keep as a reward for collecting the contributions is a poor compensation for the reduction in his sales of potatoes. What then becomes of the myriads of nickels that New York housekeepers thus generously bestow? Partly they are used to increase the surplus in the United States treasury; partly they are distributed among the Americans and foreigners—many of them resident abroad—who are lucky enough to own land in the United States on which potatoes can be grown; and partly they are given to the men who pay the contributions in advance as profit upon the capital required.

Within the last eight months there have been imported into this city from Great Britain 1,365,000 barrels of potatoes, on which forced contributions have been paid, through the custom house, to the amount of $511,875. Counting in the profits to the merchants who advanced the money for the tax, it is safe to say that the housekeepers of New York have paid $600,000 more for these potatoes than they were worth in open market. How much they paid during the same time by way of forced gratuity on American raised potatoes there are no means of knowing; but it must certainly have been enough to bring the total up to $1,000,000.

Why are potatoes sent from England to this country? “Pauper labor,” shouts some protectionist. Nonsense! If cheap labor were the reason we should have them sending wheat and oats, instead of buying those grains from us. The simple truth is that the British islands, with their moist climate and almost daily rains, are peculiarly adapted to the growth of potatoes. On land of equal fertility the same labor will produce in England more than twice as great a crop as in the United States. The English people buy from us immense quantities of our products—they would buy twice as much if we would only let them—and by an inevitable law of trade they take from us those things that we produce more cheaply than they can, and pay for them in things that they produce more cheaply than we can. The result is that both parties profit by the transaction. They get wheat at less cost of labor than if they raised it for themselves; and we get potatoes and other things ditto ditto. They profit more than we, because they really get what we send them, whereas we take a goodly portion of what they send us and throw it into the sea—or what is the same thing, into the custom house. As in the case of these potatoes.

We suggest to any New York housekeeper who wants to get a realizing sense of what protection is to buy a child’s savings bank and drop a nickel into it every time she buys a peck of potatoes. And when, at the end of six months or so, she turns out and counts the hoard, let her re flect that this potato tax is but the least of the protective duties—the runt, so to speak, of the whole accursed litter.

A land owners’ convention assembled at Findlay, Ohio, June 1, at which twelve hundred delegates from the principal towns and cities of Ohio and Indiana were present. The object of the convention was very simple. Its members have got control of the natural opportunities of Ohio and Indiana—the gas wells, and the coal lands, and the iron mines, and the town sites—and now they want to get people to come and pay for the privilege of using them. The mere ownership of a gas well is in itself no security against starvation. It is only when some man comes along who wants to apply labor to the natural gas, and, sooner than not apply it, is willing to pay backsheesh to the well owner, that the well becomes valuable. So the problems to which the convention addressed themselves were: first, how to induce manufacturing establishments to remove from the east and locate in the oil and gas sections of Ohio and Indiana; and, second, “to induce capitalists to come to these localities and invest money in buildings to rent to the workmen who will be employed by the new manufacturing institutions which may be secured by such inducements as the land owners may offer them.” To put it more briefly, these land owners, having become possessed of a franchise to tax production, assembled to consider how they could most effectually exploit it.

Of course it didn’t take them long to decide what to do. A few large manufacturing establishments will be tempted to come by the offer of free land and free fuel; perhaps still farther by the offer of land on which to erect houses to rent to their workmen, which, of course, will be equivalent to a guarantee of lower wages. These establishments, enjoying these exceptional facilities, will compete with their rivals at an advantage. Other establishments will seek to secure the same opportunities. Thus land values will be developed, and after that all will be plain sailing—for the land owners. Cities will grow, rents will increase, manufacturers will make some money, land owners will make a great deal more, and the men who will derive least benefit will be the workingmen, whose labor applied to the gas wells and coal and iron will be the foundation of all the wealth produced. However, they will have speeches made to them about God’s bounty to their country, and doubtless will find sufficient compensation in listening to them.

But it was hardly worth while for the Ohio and Indiana land owners to assemble in convention for the sake of settling such an elementary programme as this.

The Brooklyn city railroad company are experimenting with an electric motor, and seem to have very little doubt of complete success. Should their expectations be fulfilled, the running time will be so shortened that the service of the road can be performed p. 5, col. 3 with one-third the number of cars now required. This will enable the company to dispense with two out of every three drivers and conductors now in their employ, besides greatly reducing the number of hands required to keep the cars in order, and dispensing with the stable help altogether.

This ought to be a distinctly good thing for Brooklyn. That work which now requires the labor of 3,000 men should be so simplified as to need the labor of but 1,000, ought to mean that 2,000 men would be left free to devote themselves to some other form of production and thus increase the wealth of the community. There is plenty for them to do. There are thousands of acres of land near Brooklyn and New York uncultivated on which they might go to work with scarcely more capital than a spade and a hoe. There are people wanting houses who would gladly employ these men to build houses for them. There are rocks and hills to be be removed, ravines to be filled up, swamps to be drained—a hundred things to be done, for the doing of which the unskilled labor of these men would be sufficient. And the more work they might do the higher should wages rise, because the greater would be the wealth product out of which wages are paid. Brooklyn should be better off if two-thirds of her car drivers and conductors should be dispensed with, and better off still if the City railroad company could run its road without any men at all.

But as a matter of fact nothing of this sort will happen. When these drivers and conductors are discharged they will have to hunt around for somebody to hire them to work. And by the very fact of their hunting they will make work more difficult to get. For they will be earning no wages, and will consequently have no money to spend. The butchers and bakers and grocers whom they now deal with will sell less meat and bread and vegetables; the clothiers and shoemakers will have fewer customers; the industrial system of the whole country will be, to a certain extent, paralyzed. And when at last they do succeed in finding work, the average rate of wages will be slightly lower than when they first began to hunt for it.

The latest complication of the great fisheries question is a curious one. It seems that certain American fishermen have been buying bait in Canadian ports and selling some of it to French fishermen at advanced prices. The Canadians are grumblingly willing to sell Americans what bait they actually need, but they are firmly resolved not to let the French fishermen have any. So the Canadian government is considering the policy of “sizing up” every American bait buyer, making a close estimate of the quantity of bait he actually needs for his own fishing, and allowing him to buy just that quantity and no more. As for the Frenchmen, it is hoped that, being forced into a position where they can neither fish nor cut bait, they will go ashore for good and all and buy their codfish instead of sinfully trying to catch them.

What these Canadian statesmen are trying to do is to take some bread out of the mouths of American fishermen and all the bread out of the mouths of French fishermen. They would unquestionably look with horror on a proposition to descend on the little islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, burn the houses and the fishing boats, and leave the inhabitants to starve. Yet between such an act of open war and the attempt to prevent by legislation the same inhabitants from catching fish, there is a difference only of degree.

The Wood yard association of the city of New York is in trouble again. They want $1,000—$500 to make up what they have lost during the past year, and another $500 to enable them to get the use of more land, buy larger lots of wood, and do a bigger business next year. They have given out 3,598 days’ work during the past year, and consider that they have helped the objects of their charity in a way “less demoralizing to them than the direct receipt of alms.”

Of course, it is a very dreadful thing for anybody to be assisted in his life struggle by “the direct receipt of alms;” and it is doubtless highly conducive to the self respect of an American citizen, temporarily hard up, to be allowed to give a wood sawing exhibition as an evidence of his own humility and for the greater glory of the founders of the wood yard. But the scheme is open to the objection that it takes work away from non-charity wood sawyers, and thus increases the destitution it is meant to relieve.

The Wood yard association people mean well; but they aren’t logical. They try to relieve men who can’t find any work to do, by taking work away from other people and giving it to them; just as the Irishman tried to lengthen his blanket by cutting a strip off one end and sewing it on to the other—the result being that the blanket was shortened by the width of the seam. But if they would sit down and think awhile they would see their way out of the difficulty.

These poor devils who wander round New York looking for work and finding none, are simply American citizens whom the great American protective system somehow hasn’t protected. The problem to be solved is, how shall we secure the blessings of protection—steady work and high wages—for them, without reducing other people’s work and wages. The solution is simple—when you think of it. Put them in the temple of protection, and let the god of protection do his duty by them. Make them custom house officers—collectors, naval officers, spies, women searchers, inspectors, tide waiters, etc. In that way they would be supported at the public expense, just as they are now; and as they would do no useful or productive work of any sort, there would be no danger of their interfering, as at present, with the employments of men who have been lucky enough to find masters without going to a charity wood yard to look for them.

Of course there is another way out of the difficulty. We might relieve distress by widening the field of employment—throwing down the tariff wall, and the landlord wall, and letting men out of work p. 5, col. 4 go direct to the raw material of nature and transform it into wealth by applying their labor to it. But we doubt if the members of the Wood yard association would be willing to accept this alternative.

The bridge over the Arthur kill, between Staten island and the mainland of New Jersey, is being energetically pushed toward completion. Before the summer ends not only will a new highway be opened between New York and the southwest, but a vast area of land hitherto utilized to but the very slightest extent will be rendered available for commerce. The foundations will be laid of a new city upon the shores of New York bay.

The evils of the system which permits private individuals to control the opportunities of nature and the great highways of transportation have rarely been more forcibly illustrated than they will be in this case. For it is undeniable that Erastus Wiman and those connected with him in this enterprise will be able, simply by virtue of knowing positively what was about to be done—by reason of their ability to control the work and direct the course of improvement in this direction or in that—not only to recoup the cost of building the Arthur Kill bridge and the expense of lobbying in congress for permission to build it, but to make themselves immensely rich besides. There is scarcely a limit to the money they will gain, if they have been wise enough to buy sufficient Staten island land, and to avail themselves sufficiently of the condemnation privilege which the railroad corporation they control enjoys.

Every once in a while a war scare thrills the country, and we are told of the tremendous ransom tax an enemy’s fleet could lay upon our seacoast cities. Yet here is a single foreigner, without a ship, or a gun, or an armed man to back him, comes quietly forward and lays a tax upon the commerce of New York for all time to come. Capitalize the increased yearly rental which Staten island lands will bring by reason of these improvements, and see to what a vast tribute in ready cash it is equivalent.

We are to have a line of steamers to the Argentine republic after all, and notwithstanding the fact that congress continues to refuse the subsidy so often asked for. A set of unprincipled free trade Englishmen are going to run it, and the vessels are reported to be now building in the ship yards of Britain.

There are few things more comic about the protection foolishness than the zeal of its advocates for foreign trade. They want to run with the elusive hare and hunt with the pursuing hounds at one and the same time. They build a tariff wall around us to prevent foreigners sending us anything in exchange for our products, and at the same time they howl for foreigners to come and buy. They pass elaborate laws to prevent ships having anything to do, and then urge that we build up an American marine by paying bounties to it out of our own pockets.

If we really want a line of steamers between New York and Buenos Ayres there need be no trouble about getting it. All that is needed is to provide something for it to do. The Argentines have been ready and anxious to trade with us for years past. They want our manufactures—our cloths, and agricultural tools, and books, and organs, and carpets, and pianos. And they have plenty of wool to pay for them with—wool that they can afford to give us more cheaply than we can raise it, and that we can manufacture into cloth more cheaply than they can. But we refuse their wool with scorn, and the consequence is that we don’t sell them any pianos and other things to speak of, and when we do get the wool it comes to us in the shape of English cloth, on which we have lost the profit of manufacture,

Now that the British government, by its county government bill, is proposing to amend the system of public house licenses, some remarkable facts are being unearthed with regard to the value which a license confers upon the premises for which it is granted. For it is to be remembered that the license is part of the house, and is charged for in the rent as much as are the location and the use of land or house. An English statistician has collected some hundreds of examples of the value of public houses, before and after being licensed, from which it appears that the rental values are never less than trebled, and often increased by 700 per cent and more. Mr. Caine estimates that if the principle of vested interests embodied in the new law be allowed to stand, the capitalized value of the public house licenses in England and Wales alone will be found to be at least $1,000,000,000. Such figures almost take away one’s breath.

There is a lesson in all this that some of our vehement temperance reformers might study to advantage. The English public houses, under this system, are practically subjected to a high license tax, imposed, not by the state, but by the landlords. An English liquor dealer when he begins business must pay either a bonus of $10,000 to $50,000 for the lease of a licensed house, or a rental increased in proportion. Moreover, if he is for any reason—police complaint or otherwise—compelled to abandon the business, it generally rests with the landlord to say whether he shall be allowed to sell the lease he has bought and paid for. His rent-license tax is, in fact, a heavy security for good behavior. Yet the only result is that in the cities the liquor dealers carefully avoid offending the police; while in the villages they avoid offending the local magistrates. There is neither any marked diminution of drunkenness, nor any improvement in the quality of the liquor sold. Indeed, in the last respect, it is evident that the high license encourages the sale of poorer liquor by diminishing the risk of competition.

Archbishop Corrigan Has Not Denounced “Progress and Poverty” at Rome.

A dispatch dated Rome, states that it is semi officially denied that Archbishop Corrigan of New York has referred the works of Henry George to the congregation of the holy office.

p. 5, col. 5

CHARITY ORGANIZATION.

He Sees the Light.

TRENTON, N. J.—I can now say that I fully and heartily approve of the course pursued by you since Grover Cleveland brought the labor question into politics by issuing his now famous message. For four years I have been a believer in the “single tax” and at the same time an ardent protectionist, never for a moment thinking that it would be impossible to have a “single” and “double” tax at the same time; and when you first came out for Cleveland and free trade I was not ready to follow you. But the hot shot poured into the camp of the protectionists by THE STANDARD was more than I could stand. I at once set out to study the tariff question. I first read the president’s message and the answer sent by Mr. Blaine to the New York Tribune. I also read THE STANDARD every week, and by the time I read Mr. Shearman’s admirable address before the Nineteenth century club, and Mr. Mills’s speech opening the debate in congress, which the New York Sun published in full, I was thoroughly conscious of the sham of “protection.”

THE STANDARD is doing splendid work, and I can now see the motives which prompted you to leave the men who wished to make us a tail to Mr. Blaine’s kite. I am now an unqualified free trader, and so I find are all the men who have accepted your politico-economic teachings. Just so soon as men see that the tariff is unjust, just so soon will they accept the single tax on land values—the only tax that cannot be shifted from the one on whom it should justly fall. When once the masses see that they cannot get rich by taxing themselves they will soon see the justice of the tax on the value of land, which, created by the community, belongs by right to its creator.

JOHN MCAULIFFE.

The Science of Legislation.

The evil you so well portrayed in your leader of last week—the evil of laws flagrantly violated by every authority in the state, even by those who are called upon to expound and enforce them, is but part of an evil far deeper seated than is generally known. The utter incapacity of all our law makers to formulate and keep constantly in view the proper objects of legislation, and, those objects determined, to provide means adapted to secure them, lies at the root of so much evil legislation. The very measure you so strongly and wisely advocated as a step in the line of reform is made necessary because of the mass of evil legislation which, though the outcome of the civilization (or barbarism?) of its enactors, has reacted most injuriously on our civilization.

Ignorance of the science of legislation is a cause of this evil legislation, an ignorance not only common to all our law makers, but so universal that were we to search the land through for the fittest men for that office how many could be found able even to recognize that such a science exists?

You may search the curricula of all our schools and colleges, not omitting our law schools and schools of political science (so called) and nowhere will you find any attempt at supplying this ignorance, thus demonstrating, on the part of those who organized and of those who direct those institutions, the like lack of knowledge of this most important science.

MONTAGUE R. LEVERSON.

Not Naturally Brilliant.

Lewiston Journal.

Mr. Cutting of Lewiston remarked to his friend Slyboy, in the Calumet club, the other night, “What a dull fellow Lankins is!”

Mr. Slyboy—“But he’s getting up in the world. Look at him tilted back there with his feet on the table.”

“Oh, I didn’t refer to his feet. They’re bright enough; but the bookblack^sic, unfortunately, can’t make the rest of him shine.”

A Blighting Little Monster.

Louisville Courier-Journal.

But from the standpoint of capital, one plain, little tariff bred monster blights it all—$19.55 invested to the spindle in the United States and $9.48 to the spindle in England; under that handicap foreign competition in cotton products is wholly impossible, and so we shall continue to ship our annual 2,200,000,000 pounds of raw cotton for $200,000,000, instead of its product for $840,000,000.

The Souls of the Children.

[Charles?] Mackay.

“Who bids for the little children— Body and soul, and brain— Who bids for the little children— Young, and without stain! Will no one bid,” said England, “For their souls so pure and white, And fit for all good or evil, The world on their page may write?”

“We bid,” said Pest and Famine, “We bid for life and limb; Fever and pain and squalor Their bright young eyes shall dim. When the children grow too many, We’ll nurse them as our own, And hide them in secret places, Where none may hear their moan.”

“I bid,” said Beggary, howling, “I bid for them, one and all! I’ll teach them a thousand lessons— To lie, to skulk, to crawl! They shall sleep in my lair, like maggots, They shall rot in the fair sunshine; And if they serve my purpose, I hope they’ll answer thine.”

“And I’ll bid higher and higher,” Said Crime, with wolfish grin, “For I love to lead the children Through the pleasant paths of sin. They shall swarm in the streets to pilfer, They shall plague the broad highway, Till they grow too old for pity, And ripe for the law to slay.

“Prison and hulk and gallows, Are many in the land, ’Twere folly not to use them, So proudly as they stand. Give me the little children— I’ll take them as they’re born, And feed their evil passions With misery and scorn.

“Give me the little children, Ye good, ye rich, ye wise, And let the busy world spin round, While ye shut your idle eyes: And your judges shall have work, And your lawyers wag the tongue, And your gaolers and policemen Shall be fathers to the young.

“I and the Law, for pastime, Shall struggle day and night; And the Law shall gain, but I shall win, And we’ll still renew the fight; And ever and aye we’ll wrestle, Till Law grow sick and sad, And kill, in its desperation, The incorrigibly bad.

“I, and the Law, and Justice, Shall thwart each other still; And hearts shall break to see it; And innocent blood shall spill! So leave—oh, leave the children To ignorance and woe— And I’ll come in and teach them The way that they should go.”

“Oh, shame!” said true religion, “Oh, shame that this should be! I’ll take the little children, I’ll take them all to me; I’ll raise them up with kindness From the mire in which they’re trod; I’ll teach them words of blessing; I’ll lead them up to God.”

“You’re not the true religion,” Said a sect with flashing eyes; “Nor thou.” said another, scowling, “But heresy and lies^sic,” “You shall not have the children,” Said a third, with shout and yell; “You’re Antichrist and bigot— You’ll train them up for hell.”

And England, sorely puzzled, To see such battle strong, Exclaim’d, with voice of pity, “Oh, friends, you do me wrong! Oh, cease your bitter wrangling; For, till you all agree, I fear the little children Will plague both you and me.”

But all refused to listen; Quoth they—“We’ll bide our time: And the bidders seized the children— Beggary, filth, and crime: And the prisons teem’d with victims, And the gallows rock’d on high; And the thick abomination Spread reeking to the sky.

TWO SELF MADE MEN.

They came here early in the sixties—two broad faced, red cheeked, stolid looking Saxons, with plenty of health and strength, but with a somewhat scanty allowance of brains and an ignorance of the world’s ways that was phenomenal. How could it be otherwise? Until they started for the United States they had never been twenty miles away from their little native village in Saxony. A pair of simple minded agriculturists, their lives had been passed in steadily going round and round in the same track, ending up on the 31st of each December at the self same point whence they had started on the New Year’s day preceding. Somebody hired them to work and paid them so much, or, rather, so little, every month for working. Out of what mysterious fund their wages came; by what rule the rate of wages was settled; what their employer did with the products of their labor; these were questions that they never thought of asking, much less of answering. It seemed to them a very wise provision of providence that one man should live in a castle on the hill and others in the little houses in the valley. The man on the hill gave the dwellers in the valley work to do; were it not for this benevolence the valley dwellers would be apt to starve.

One day there was an immense excitement in the little village where Carl Hensen and Adam Schmidt lived. The man on the hill sent for George Krause and read him a wonderful letter from the consul in New York, announcing that Krause’s uncle Emil, who had disappeared from the village fifty years before, and had long since been forgotten, was dead in New York and had left all his property to George. How much was the property? Ach, himmel! it was beyond computation; thalers by the million! The master had given George a double pocketful of gold, had addressed him as Herr Krause, had with his own well-born hand poured out wine for him to drink and had advised him to depart for New York immediately. There was George to tell the story, and the gold spoke for itself. The villagers could talk of nothing else. That night everybody dreamed about America and rich uncles dying there.

And who was Emil Krause, this wonderful testator, who had gone away a poor boy and died worth millions? The younger villagers had never even heard of him. But the gray headed old men remembered him, or thought they did. A good for nothing—a lazy, shiftless ne’er-do-well, whom everybody had been glad to get rid of when he left the village. How was it possible that such a fellow should have made so great a fortune? The old men

p. 6, col. 2 wagged their heads sagely. “It is nothing. In America gold lies in the streets!” The simple peasants heard and marveled as they drank their beer. Then George Krause went away to claim his fortune, and gradually the village settled back into its normal condition of tranquillity.

But Carl Hensen and Adam Schmidt began thinking. The exercise was novel and somewhat difficult at first, but they encouraged each other at it, by comparing notes and discussing ideas, so that after a time their thoughts took definite shape, somewhat after this fashion: Emil Krause had evidently been a very inferior sort of man, yet by simply going to America he had become rich. What could be clearer than that if two hard working, steady, honest young fellows like Carl and Adam should go to America, they must infallibly become rich even more quickly than Emil had done. It took the two simple Saxons some months to get all this reduced to a syllogism; and even then, though they understood it themselves, they had no confidence in their ability to state it to other people. So they said nothing about it to anybody, but made up their minds to emigrate as soon as they could save money enough to pay their passages, and on this they shook hands and swore to be true partners to each other in their venture after fortune. And this was how it happened that on that bright spring morning, early in the sixties, they stood together in Castle garden, answering the questions of the registering clerk and eager to rush out upon the gold paved streets.

Carl Hensen and Adam Schmidt were not long in discovering that, whatever might have been Emil Krause’s experience, they themselves were not likely to get rich by picking up gold in the streets. In America, as in Saxony, they found society divided into men on the hill and men in the valley; the former beneficently giving the latter work to do, and the latter doing it with more or less thankfulness and straining after better wages. The valley was rather crowded, too, and they found it a somewhat hard matter to keep soul and body together, especially as they couldn’t speak the language of the country. If they could have raised the money probably they would have gone back to Saxony repentant. As it was they had nothing to do but to make the best of things. They got work, one in a beer saloon, the other in a little grocery store, and wished themselves back in Saxony with all their hearts.

But before Carl and Adam had been in the country many months, a new industry began to develop with great rapidity—the industry of killing and getting killed. The war had been going on for some time; the first enthusiasm of volunteering had abated, and the bounty system had come into being. One day the two Saxons were accosted by a fellow countryman, a native of a village near their own. He was recruiting for a new regiment, in which his zeal was to be rewarded by a commission, and he left no argument unused that might induce Carl and Adam to enlist. They listened attentively, but without emotion, while their new friend spoke of patriotism, of the evils of slavery, and of the duty they owed to the government of their adopted country; it was only when he stated the rate of pay and the amount of state and federal bounties that their interest was keenly excited. Thirteen dollars a month, rations, clothing, blankets, shelter, state bounty, government bounty—their devotion to their adopted country grew apace as they listened to the list. And so, before they had hardly more than shaken the dust of Castle garden from their feet, before they could speak a dozen words of English, or had any idea of the institutions of the country they were living in, Carl Hensen and Adam Schmidt had taken the oath of enlistment without understanding a word of it, and become full fledged soldiers of the republic, out of pure love of bounty, pay and rations.

The two Saxons had a hard time of it at first. In the quarters of the company to which they were assigned they were as isolated as they might have been in a desert. Nobody could speak their language, or had anything in common with them. The drill corporal could do nothing with them. The company officers cursed their stupidity and awkwardness; and the upshot was that after a vain attempt to learn the first rudiments of the manual of arms, Carl and Adam were put to duty in the cook house, where they did scullions’ work for the company. But after a time, when they had got accustomed to their work and commenced to feel at home amid their new surroundings, somebody overheard them singing among the pots and pans; and it was discovered that “those confounded Dutchmen” had fine voices. A cross examination followed, and it appeared that they were instrumentalists as well as vocalists. This opened a new career to them. When a regimental band was formed they were among the first to be enrolled in it; and after that they found their lines cast in pleasant places enough. They served their term with credit, reenlisted, and after the close of the war were discharged, and found themselves in the little city of A——, in Texas, with nearly a thousand dollars each in their pockets.

A thousand dollars wasn’t much of a fortune in the United States, but in their native village it would mean a life long independence. So Carl and Adam at once made up their minds to tramp down to Galveston and take the first ship that sailed for any German port. Unfortunately for this resolution, however, they couldn’t resist the temptation to celebrate their new found freedom from military restraint. The consequence was that in company with a few choice citizens of A——, they went on a howling spree, from which they wakened at the end of three days to find themselves penniless, but possessed somehow of a small collection of legal looking documents, which they were utterly unable to read. These they took to a German saloon keeper of their acquaintance, who first became indignant, then roared with laughter, then got indignant again, and finally explained to them that they had been shamelessly robbed, though in a perfectly legal manner. A real estate sharper had got their money, and had given them in exchange the title deeds to a worthless block of land outside the city limits that

p. 6, col. 3 would have been dear at $200. A cute trick. the saloon keeper called it^sic; if he’d stolen the money outright he might have been arrested and made to refund, but as it was, it would be impossible to get anything out of him; still they might try. They did try. The saloon keeper and some other Germans went with them, and with threats and prayers they first demanded and then entreated the return of the money. The real estate man declined to yield to threats, and when threats were changed to wailings and entreaties he simply said that for him to yield would be to acknowledge that he had done wrong. Evidently he meant to keep the money. Their friend the saloon keeper advised them to resign themselves to the inevitable and make the best of it. They took his advice, because they couldn’t help themselves, and with many a sigh and groan over their hard luck, recommenced their struggle with the world. They had to stop in A—— simply because they couldn’t get away; it was seventy-five miles to the nearest railway station, and many miles more to the coast.

Well, they got work to do from people to whom their friend, the saloon keeper, told their story—not much at first, but enough to keep them going. Their musical talents were noised abroad, too, and they began to pick up stray dollars playing for dances and at other gatherings. Gradually they became identified with the town, and though they had no prospect of ever getting rich again, still they made a comfortable living. As the war days receded, and commerce began to revive, the little city began to grow. New stores were opened, new houses were built—it was clear that A—— was a city with a future.

One day a small theatrical troupe, who were barn storming their way through Texas, came to A—— to test the patience of the people. They lacked an orchestra, and Carl and Adam got the job. Somehow the little troupe made a big success. Either their acting had real merit, or the appetite of the citizens of A—— for theatricals was strong. The season that had been intended to last six nights only, lengthened into a month; the month became three months; when they left it was with a full treasury and under the promise to return the following year. A scheme was set on foot to build a little theater; the necessary funds were easily raised by subscription, and a committee, of which, because of their position in the orchestra, Messrs. Hensen and Schmidt were both made members, was appointed to arrange for the erection and fitting up of the building. A happy inspiration induced Carl and Adam to tender the committee the free use of a portion of their land; and when the troupe returned for the next season, they opened in the new theater amid a perfect blaze of popular enthusiasm.

The city of A—— kept on growing, and by degrees the little theater became a sort of center round which other buildings gathered. A saloon first, of course. The saloon keeper didn’t have money enough to pay the very moderate price that the two Saxons asked for one of their lots, so he rented one on a five years’ lease, and thus taught them a valuable lesson in the management of landed property. Next a hotel man negotiated for the privilege of putting up a building. The Saxons meditated, wouldn’t sell, but gave a favorable lease, with the privilege of renewal on a revaluation of the land. Then a merchant put up a store on the same terms; and after that the dwelling houses rose thick and fast. All this time the railway was creeping toward A——, and as it came nearer the value of city lots rose higher and higher. The surveyors reached the town at last, and located the depot within a stone’s throw of the Hensen-Schmidt tract. Then the working parties came along; the track was laid; and one bright day, amid blare of music, booming of cannon, waving of flags and shouting of people, the first train rolled into A——, and the railway officials were welcomed to the city in a short but pithy speech by Mayor Carl Hensen, with Alderman Schmidt standing by his side and sharing in his glory.

Last year Congressman Hensen and State Senator Schmidt paid a visit to their little native village in Saxony. Of course they had an ovation. The town council assembled to welcome them. The man on the hill came down into the valley to increase the glory of their reception. Speeches were made in laudation of German thrift and enterprise. Herren Member-of-United-States-Congress Hensen and Senator-of-State-of-Texas Schmidt made speeches descriptive of their career in their adopted country. They had landed there with nothing but their good strong arms and stout German hearts. They had had a struggle. But frugality, and temperance, and hard work had triumphed in the end, and they had achieved wealth and social standing. (Deafening applause.) Were there any there who felt stirring in them the wander fever—the old Germanic instinct to go forth and conquer the world? Let them be of good heart, gird up their loins and go forth in the name of God! To a true German nothing was impossible! The audience went wild with cheering.

“And my son, Herr United States congress member? You advise then that he should forth go, his fortune to try in the new world of which you have told us?”

It was a middle aged peasant who was speaking. He and Congressman Hensen had been playmates in their boyhood. Now he stood bareheaded and humble as in the presence of a superior, while the congressman sat and talked patronizingly to him.

“Look you, Max. Can he make a living here, this son of thine?”

“Surely! Such a living as it is.”

“Let him then remain. The time is not propitious for migration. America is getting crowded overmuch.”

“But in this city of Texas, where you have yourself, Herr Congressman, so hard worked and so greatly prospered? Is there no chance for him there?”

The congressman laughed out. “No, no, Max. Not unless you have money. If there are chances there, think you that I

p. 6, col. 4 and other men of substance will not take them?”

“Yet you began there without means?”

“Ahem—yes—but it was different. The place was smaller. There were fewer people.”

“I see. One succeeds best in smaller towns, then? Yet that seems strange. There should be less work to do in such.”

“My poor Max,” said the congressman, “you will never understand. It isn’t work altogether that brings riches. It is foresight; the getting control in advance of what other people——”

But at this moment the state senator was announced to be waiting for the congressman, and the peasant’s audience was abruptly terminated. To this day poor Max is wondering what it is one must get hold of to insure success in life.

WILLIAM MCCABE.

THE PARABLE OF THE UNJUST BROTHERS.

A REMINISCENCE.

I had a “real good time” last summer up at a hotel on a mountain in Sullivan county, New York. The hotel wasn’t much, but the mountain was glorious. It was 2,400 feet above sea level, the southerly end of a ridge, commanding a very extensive view of mountains, hills, valleys, lakes, villages and farms, and the air was exhilarating and delightful. There was good company, too; most of it of the highly respectable, conventional pattern of people with whom I felt “bottled up,” and so uncorked my conversation to them only on the trifling topics of the hour, the weather, the scenery, the fishing parties, the amusements, who were coming and who were going. But there were a few people to whom I felt it safe to broach the one great topic that lay nearest my heart—the necessity to make free to men the natural opportunities which the Creator has bestowed upon all as a means of evolving not only a complete natural life, but a higher mental and moral life as well, to all His human creatures. At the time Henry George and Hugh O. Pentecost and Louis F. Post and Dr. McGlynn and others were stirring up the dust of the centuries with a mighty breeze, and making the dry bones of old political, social and religious creeds rattle at a great rate, at the anti-poverty society meetings at the Academy of Music, in New York city, and I had the opportunity to mingle a little of this mental atmosphere with the salubrious air of the mountains by letting copies of THE STANDARD, containing reports of those meetings, lie around, loose like, that any one might pick them up in blissful ignorance but that they might be as soporific as the non-irritating, mild and harmless sheets which seemed to beguile the time of most of the boarders. It came to be known that I was a Henry George crank. Most people were extremely courteous and polite in not offending me by an opposing remark, but I occasionally heard an expression not intended for my ears, indicating that the speaker thought that these “new fangled notions” were all bosh, and that the agitators who taught them were communists or anarchists who ought to be suppressed. Some spoke openly to me, however, wanted to know what the new theory was, and entertained my explanations courteously.

One evening I was discussing the subject with a gentleman on the broad veranda of the hotel when another joined in and upheld my argument with much ability. I let him do most of the talking, and he did it well. I afterward asked whether he had read “Progress and Poverty.” He replied that he had never had an idea on the subject until he heard my statement in the conversation. But he no sooner heard it than he “caught on.” My few words happened to be the key that opened the door of a new philosophy to him, and his logical mind saw the scheme and many of its bearings at a single glance.

Out toward the point of the mountain top, looking to the west, were some smooth jutting rocks upon which a small party of us generally reclined after supper to enjoy the sunset skies. We called them the “sunset rocks.” Here the mountain fell off by a steep descent to the average level of country some thousand feet below. Its side was grassy, with massive bowlders and trees interspersed, upon the tops of many of which we looked down; and quite far below was an orchard, the trees of which seemed to us like little shrubs. There was a farm house there next door, alongside a field with haycocks in rows. And we could see the farmer let the cows into the barn and then go in himself, and after awhile come out with a pail of milk in each hand, which he carried to the spring house. Then he let the cows out into the field and went back for his horses, which he led to drink at a spring under a tree in the edge of a piece of woods. We saw this routine repeated many evenings. And after it children came out of the house into the road, boys and girls to romp and play, and their singing and shouting reached us faintly.

I noticed that from this high point of view we looked down upon the birds. They seemed to live mostly below, and their highest flight was seldom above our elevation. I became greatly interested in them, in their happy freedom, graceful movements and their songs and chirpings. I found that one could almost distinguish—not a language, but a means of conveying—not thought, but feeling in their voices. Mostly they expressed simply a joyous happiness, but sometimes enticement, and sometimes scolding. One evening I lay on the grass just below these rocks, a party of ladies and gentlemen sitting near by conversing. The red sun was just passing behind the distant Delaware county hills, a long shaft of cloud above blazed along its lower edges with golden light, while the sky was suffused with a tint as delicate as the blush on a maiden’s cheek. A soft air fanned our faces and gently stirred the grass blades and the leaves. Faint on the ear came the sound of a cow bell from far below in a meadow.

The quiet and the beauty sinking into me, I was falling into a very nirvana of revery, when I observed a bird rise from midway of the height of the mountain’s slope in a way in which I never saw bird rise or fly before—in almost straight perpendicular. Fluttering his wings and tilting from side to side, he rose straight upward, and as he rose he sang, as it were to call attention to his strange gymnastics, a song which seemed to me to say:

See! see! see! Look at me! look at me! Can you do this? Can you do this?

And then, having reached the height of his desire, he swooped down in an undulating, curving motion to the top of a small tree near where he started from, and after a little rose again and repeated his performance. This episode, trifling as it was, did not seem out of place or unfitting to the lovely quietude and beauty of the scene, indeed, rather enhancing the charm, but it diverted my thoughts and started a current of philosophic speculation flowing through my mind.

How happy are the birds, I thought. What a round of joyous life they live. Busy all the merry hours; no idleness, no unfilled moments, and yet really no labor; their occupations a delight, all thoughts of toil lost in a realization and enjoyment of the fruits of it. And what a glorious, what a beneficent mother nature is to them. They seem to follow her outstretched hand as she casts their food before them, her beckoning finger now leading them southward, anon northward, to follow the course of the all propitious sun. The sun! oh, it must be a god to them! How their notes begin to twitter from the boughs as the first streaks of dawn illume the eastern sky, how the chorus swells as the light increases; how vocal seems the very air as his rays gleam through the tree tops; and then how the choristers disperse to enjoy their daily occupations, only breaking the silence with an occasional note of satisfied gladness until the evening comes; and as the light wanes, how they will meet to sing a vesper hymn and watch their deity sink below the western hills before retiring to their nests, their eyes heavy with sleep; the last to go, the sentinel robin, like that one there on the topmost twig, who sings in the gloaming:

Farewell! farewell! He is gone; he is gone, To-morrow! to-morrow! Good night!

But is it all so gladsome as it seems? Ah, there in the grass lies the jewel-eyed serpent.

p. 6, col. 6 And hark, that hoot, the plundering owl! And far away there, sailing and balancing in the now amber sky, see the sharp-beaked, needle-taloned hawk. Why do these enemies not disturb your tranquil souls, ye birds? Is it sport to you to avoid by keen-eyed watchfulness and agile movements their attacks? Does joy in your self-reliance compensate the danger? Give me the secret of your happiness amid such vicissitudes. Tell me, that I may carry to human kind the knowledge that they lack. How different seems their lot from yours. With you no high, no low; all on a par of absolute equality. Not one of you rests in idleness, while many toil for him. Not one of you sits in gorgeous plumage in fancied ease and security while many of his brothers gather for him the choicest seeds and add them to his store, hungering themselves or partaking of poorer food. Not one of you ceases labor while others build a nest for him of rarest fabrics, they sleeping on hard twigs that ache their bones. Not a few of you seize the field^sic of life and compel your brothers to pay you tribute ere you permit them to live. Not some of you, when summer heats grow strong, flit away at will to mountain top or shore of sea while others slave in darksome mine, or toil in heated piles, or burn their feet in the hot soil to gather the best of all earth yields to send to you, they languishing in poverty. With you no mitred priest gathers in the sad eyed multitudes, to condone the ills of life with dreams of bliss beyond the grave. Not some of you beguile the weary lot of others with fancied knowledge, false as hell, of evil mortal lot the wish of heavenly power. Not some of you gather in ease the “spoils of time” from history’s page, from book of song, or tale of chivalry, or scroll of science, to ease their souls of guilt in human wrong by telling all that justice is a dream, that some must grind in toil that others by that toil may scale the battlements of knowledge.

Much wiser ye than men, ye birds. Though equally to them as you our common mother opes her bounteous hand, though more to them than you the father has imparted intellect and power, yet more to you than them is wisdom given to lead your happy lives unfraught with care. No thought of greed in you to shut your brother from the bounteous store. No doubt in you that nature’s benisons will constant fall. No crying to you from the ground the voice of brother’s blood or wrong. No spur of conscious guilt to bar by stores^sic from seasons past against the anger of offended heaven because its laws of love ye’ve scorned. Oh, happy birds!—

Now, whether I should have lain there dreaming until the sounds from the distant parlor told that the evening games and music had begun I know not, for just then a peal of laughter from the rocks disturbed me and a lady’s voice said, “What a pretty pair.” I had been dimly conscious of something soft and furry rubbing against my back for some time, and now I felt behind me and there I found the playful pet donkey baby some four weeks old, that had the run of the place, snugly lying on the grass against my back with his nose ensconced in my pocket.

BOB WHITE.

PEN, PASTE AND SCISSORS.

Fifty thousand tons of soot are taken annually from the chimneys of London. It is used for fertilizing.

At Argentine, Mo., a billy goat broke into the council chamber and devoured all the city ordinances and records.

London Society says that in five or six years 18,000 Irish girls who had been assisted to emigrate sent home £250,000 sterling, “a great part of which has gone in payment of impossible rents to absentee landlords.”

A queer flower which grows in Yucatan is the manito (little hand) of the guarumo. It is in the exact shape of the human hand, with four fingers, thumb, nails and knuckles all complete.

In India the finest grades of cigars can be bought for half a cent apiece, and cigars are considered a rather expensive luxury at that. In that country a man who has ten cents in cash is looked upon as comparatively well-to-do.

Both in China and Japan, soapstone has long been largely used for protecting structures built of soft stone and other materials specially liable to atmospheric influences. It has been found that powdered soapstone in the form of paint has preserved obelisks formed of stone for hundreds of years which would, unprotected, have long ago crumbled away. For the inside painting of steel and iron ships it is found to be excellent. It has no anti-fouling quality, but is anti-corrosive.

John Aitken, a well known investigator of the atmosphere, has recently made a series of experiments on the number of dust particles in ordinary air. So far his results show that outside air, after a wet night, contained 521,000 dust particles per cubic inch; outside air in fair weather contained 2,119,000 particles in the same space, showing that rain is a great purifier of the atmosphere. The air of a room was found to contain over thirty million particles in the same space; that near the ceiling containing over eighty-eight million particles per cubic inch. The numbers for a room were got with gas burning in the room, and at a height of four feet from the floor.

The manager of a tool company in Vineland, N. J., claims that wood shavings and sweepings if moist and piled in heaps or kept in barrels are liable to grow very hot and char and even take fire by spontaneous combustion. He says that one day last year they removed a box of oiled wood, chips and shav- from beneath the saw^sic, and, noticing that it was very hot, placed it outside the building. A light rain set in during the night, and in the morning the wood was burning. It was extinguished, but, the rain increasing, it was burning again by noon. In another case the shavings were placed under an iron boiler top. When the top was removed the shavings were charred and on being disturbed they burst out into flames.

A society with $1,000,000 capital has been formed in New York city which proposes to do a business similar to that of the pawnbrokers, offering to the poor who have to resort to such institutions a safe, fair and reasonable accommodation. The intention is to establish about twenty offices in New York and ten in Brooklyn. It will be operated upon the plan of the “Mont de Piete,” which is conducted by the French government. Interest upon loans will be ten per cent per annum. The society will also aid poor people who are known to the managers, or when unredeemed goods are sold, if the price realized is more than the loan and interest amount to, the amount received in excess will be paid over to the pledger.

Glasgow has a system of automatic telephone call boxes. There are seventy-six of the boxes scattered about the city, and every subscriber has a key to them. A non-subscriber wanting to use them must first ring up the exchange and ask if the connection he desires can be made. If it can, he drops the fee, which is either three pennies or six, according to the distance he wants to talk, into a hole in the box. The pennies as they fall break a circuit and ring a bell at the central office. When the bell has rung the required number of times the central office makes the connection. At the end of the three minutes allowed for conversation the connection is broken automatically. The average time taken to put two persons in telephonic communication in Glasgow is thirty-five seconds, in Birmingham forty, in Liverpool thirty-two, and in Dundee twenty. This was ascertained from the results of ten calls in each town.

A VISIT TO A RAJAH.

An Old London Inn.

London Echo.

When Barnard’s inn falls under the hammer—as it will do in the course of next month—another link between London of the past and London of to-day will be broken. It is perhaps the least known—on account of its out of the way situation—of all the old inns of court. None but the most observant of pedestrians would notice the narrow archway close by the far more picturesque exterior of Staples’ inn in Holborn. But at the end of the tiny passage is one of those spots which seem surprisingly quiet after the bustle of the great thoroughfare. In the quadrangle of the inn are some charming fragments of architecture, and some fine old trees, on which, in the warm spring days, the London sparrow hops and chirps merrily, while the rooks from the greater range of Gray’s inn just pay flying visits to them. [Its?] other frontage is into the narrow gloom of Fetter lane, and its whole superficial area is 28,000 square feet. Not the least interesting feature about it is the fact that it constitutes an ecclesiastical parish in itself, though to what purpose the funds formerly available for this distinction were diverted even the omniscient “Old and New London” does not say. In 1874 its annual value was assessed at £1,031.

The legal description of Barnard’s inn is that “It is an inn of chancery appertaining to Gray’s inn.” Among its earliest records are that it belonged in the days of Henry VI to Dr. John Mackworth, dean of Lincoln. But when it became an inn of chancery, it was held by a man named Barnard, whose designation it has since retained. In the time of Elizabeth it was a popular inn, and had 136 students, but in 1855 these had dwindled down to eighteen, including the principal and companions. The hall is the smallest of any belonging to either of the inns, and is only thirty-six feet long. It still contains one or two fragments of good old stained glass, but all the pictures have been removed. During the “no popery” riots of 1780, Barnard’s inn had a very narrow escape from being wrecked by the infuriated populace. It stood next to Langdale’s distillery, the burning of which Dickens has described so vividly. Among the documents regarding its management one remains which shows something of the drinking habits of our forefathers. An order referring to the ceremony of “initiation,” dated 1706, names two quarts of wine to every four men as an extra privilege for the occasion, in addition to the usual amount of wine and beer allowed with the meals.

Barnard’s inn was the home of the last man who made alchemy a serious study. He was a Mr. Woulfe, and a fellow of the royal society. Judging from the records preserved of him in Timbs’s “Century of Anecdote,” he was a curious character. The walls of his room were decorated with written prayers and recommendations of his processes to providence, and the chamber itself was so filled with furnaces and apparatus that it was difficult to reach the fireside. His breakfast hour was four in the morning, to which he occasionally invited a few friends, whom he admitted after they had used a code of signals he had taught them. He attributed his failures to discover the elixir to the want of due preparation by charitable and pious acts. Whenever he wished to break with an acquaintance he used to send the person a handsome present and refuse to see him again. His medicine in illness was a journey to Edinburgh and back by the stage coach. He had one friend and contemporary—who was, by the way, the editor of an evening paper of the period—who felt certain of evolving the elixir if he could only keep his materials digested in a lamp furnace for the space of seven years. He succeeded in keeping it alight for six years, eleven months and some odd days, and then, for some wholly inexplicable cause, it went out. However, he had the pleasure of imagining that his experiment would have been successful could he only have fulfilled his septenary period of cooking. Thus Barnard’s inn has played its part in the social life of London of the past, and deserves a word of remembrance ere, perhaps, it be destroyed.

A Goodly Collection of Industries Not Afraid of the Mills Bill.

Philadelphia Record.

Among the industries just started and to be established in Alabama are a stove factory at Anniston, trunk factory at Birmingham, saw mill at Decatur, ice factory and electric light plant at Tuskaloosa. In Arkansas an iron foundry has been established at Camden. In Florida there are a new shingle mill and brick yard at Bridgeport, saw mill at Hampton, broom factory at Jacksonville, and cigar factory at Quitman. In Georgia there are a new furniture and coffin mill at Cartersville, planing mill at Cedartown, saw and planing mill at Dowdy, oil mill and guano factory at Monroe, packing factory, planing mill and mattress factory at Rome, ice mill at Savannah, guano works at Senoia, and a candy mill at Washington. In Kentucky there are a stave factory at Fordsville, coffin factory at Louisville, and a flour mill at Sturgis. In Maryland an envelope factory and a clothing factory at Baltimore, electric plant at Hagerstown, cigar works at Jefferson, canning and can mill at Sharon Station, and canning works at Wilna. A cotton mill will be established at Holly Springs, Miss. The following operations are reported from North Carolina: Asheville, candy factory; New Berne, furniture works; Tarboro, cotton mill, and the Fries cotton factory at Salem will add 720 spindles, 14 cards and 15 plaid looms. These from South Carolina: At Baldock timber lands will be cleared, the gold mine at Brewer worked, and an eighty stamp mill erected. At Charleston a creosoting factory and box factory are new. In Tennesee^sic there have just been built, at Crossville, a saw mill; Knoxville, cracker works, and at McMinnville a jean clothing mill. In Texas these industries are projected; Dallas, small oil works; Galveston, canning mill; McKinney, cotton compress; Seymour, flour mill, and a cotton compress at Terrell. In Virginia they propose a canning mill at Brugh’s Mills, wood pulp mill at Green Forest, artificial ice works at Norfolk, canning factory at Staunton. Scale works will be put up at Charleston, W. Va., and a bung factory at Elizabeth, in the same state.

Thinking is Working.

A. L. M. in New Church Messenger.

It is not so much the visible and tangible deed that sets the current of progress forward, as it is the undertow of earnest, fervent love which is irresistible in its force. Therefore the world may count it nothing when an effort at reform fails. So long as the spirit of the reformer lives, so long will his work go on. I tell you, what a man thinks, that is his profoundest work; and we who weigh and measure his influence will find that his love inspired thought is the deep under current which swings the real life force of him. He may vote this way or that, and he will count one; but over and beyond these surface reokonings^sic he is exercising a power much more subtle and far reaching than the boasted power of the ballot.

Land Speculation an Enemy of Improvements.

Milwaukee Journal.

“One trouble with our town,” said a business man yesterday, “is that a few old fogies own so much good business property on the best streets of the city which they will neither

p. 7, col. 3 improve nor sell to others who would improve it. Take Wisconsin street, for example. There have been but three buildings—business blocks, I mean—erected on that street in fifteen years and more.” “A few years ago,” continued the speaker, “Colonel Brodhead wanted to buy the northwest corner of Wisconsin street and Broadway, where that old dead colored building used as a railroad ticket office now stands. It was about the time the Northwestern built the new insurance building, and Colonel Brodhead wanted to put up a fine business block adjoining it and extending it to the corner. He offered $150,000 for it, but was refused. The owner will not sell or build himself. Colonel Brodhead also wanted the two little buildings adjoining the store of T. L. Kelly & Co., which are owned by Chicago parties, but was unable to get them.”

How Many Acres Can be Had in Portland for the Trouble of Coming to Get Them?

Portland Oregonian.

You of the east who are bawling “land monopoly,” just look this way. Here are millions of acres you can have just for the trouble of coming to get them. Come right along. No sense in squatting down in the eastern cities and yelling “land monopoly.” Come out here and become “monopolists” yourselves. (Henry George’s paper please copy).

The Actual Surplus.

National Republican (Rep).

There is now in the United States treasury $201,976,866, held for the redemption of legal tender and national bank notes which no one wants redeemed. In addition to this there is also in the treasury $355,672,817 in gold, silver, and legal tender notes, and $25,898,388 in fractional and minor coin, making a total of $583,548,071 withdrawn from circulation and crippling the business of the country to an extent never before known. This represents the actual “surplus.”

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A limited number of bound volumes of THE STANDARD, in heavy boards, are offered for sale at the following prices:

Volumes 1 and 2, bound in a single volume, $5.00.

(Postage 75 cents extra.)

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Address THE STANDARD,

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[Advertisement] CURRENT LITERATURE.

CURRENT LITERATURE.

A MAGAZINE OF RECORD AND REVIEW.

On the 7th of July, 1888, an eclectic monthly publication of the above title and purpose will be issued and placed on sale with the news companies and dealers throughout the country.

The new magazine is intended to so cover the field of home and foreign literature—book, newspaper, and periodical—that at the end of a year the work will be practically an encyclopedia of the entire subject, in two volumes, issued in monthly parts.

CURRENT LITERATURE will be made a necessity to every reader and thinker in the language. It will be edited in a popular and not a pedantic manner. It will keep close step with progress, faithfully reflect prevailing sentiment and literary style, compass more research, and give a greater variety of interesting and valuable reading matter than any periodical now published.

Among the original features will be a department of book reviews, dealing with current publications in an analytical instead of a severely critical style. A considerable space will be devoted to live news and gossip of authors, publishers and new writers, and a general record, or reference, made of everything of interest in poetry, fiction, science, art, invention and adventure.

The work will be printed from large and handsome type on toned paper, and will in every way be arranged for the comfort of the reader and the preservation of the magazine as a permanent work of reference. Twenty-five cents a number—$2.50 a year.

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[Advertisement] ANNOUNCEMENT. BELFORD’S MAGAZINE.

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 manipulators 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.

The department of fiction will be exceptionally full. Instead of a serial story, dragging its slow length through several months, and exhausting the patience of the reader, a complete novel will be published in each number; and each issue will also contain one or more short stories complete.

In these departments of politics and fiction, and also in those of general literature, science, and art, the very best talent of the country will be enlisted.

As the publishers are convinced that the illustration of magazines has been greatly overdone in this country, they have decided to dispense with illustrations altogether. They intend that their magazine shall be read, not that its pages shall be merely turned over for the purpose of looking at pictures.

As editor-in-chief, the publishers are glad to be able to announce that they have secured the services of Col. Donn Piatt, a gentleman of long and varied literary experience, both as a journalist and as a litterateur, and also a patriot well known throughout the land by reason of his connection with the history and politics of the country during the past twenty-five years.

He will be assisted by a staff of sub-editors, and also by a large number of able contributors, among whom will be:

DAVID A. WELLS, HON. FRANK HURD, PROF. W. G. SUMNER, J. S. MOORE (Parsee Merchant), HON. JOHN G. CARLISLE, HENRY WATTERSON, HENRY GEORGE, JULIAN HAWTHORNE, EDGAR SALTUS, JOHN JAMES PIATT, THOS. G. SHEARMAN, GEN. H. V. BOYNTON, SARAH B. M. PIATT, EDGAR FAWCETT, JOEL BENTON, ELLA WHEELER WILCOX, REV. GEORGE LORIMER, E. HERON-ALLEN, COATES-KINNEY^sic, JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY, SOULE SMITH (“Falcon”), GERTRUDE GARRISON^sic,

BELFORD’S MONTHLY will be a first-class medium for advertising, as the publishers guarantee a bona fide circulation during the first six months of at least 70,000 copies per month.

Price, $2.50 a year; or 25 cents per number.

N. B.—All business communications should be addressed to the publishers, 384 and 336 Broadway, New York city. Contributions and editorial correspondence should be sent to the editor at the same address.

BELFORD, CLARKE & CO., Publishers, New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

p. 7, col. 4

[Advertisement] HENRY GEORGE’S WORKS: PROGRESS AND POVERTY.

PROGRESS AND POVERTY.

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

BY HENRY GEORGE.

[250?] pages.

CONTENTS:

Introductory.—THE PROBLEM.

Book I.—WAGES AND CAPITAL.

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

Book II.—POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE.

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

Book III.—THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION.

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

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

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

Book V.—THE PROBLEM SOLVED.

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

Book VI.—THE REMEDY.

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

Book VII.—JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY.

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

Book VIII.—APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY.

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

Book IX.—EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY.

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

Book X.—THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS.

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

Conclusion.—THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE.

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

[Advertisement] SOCIAL PROBLEMS.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS.

BY HENRY GEORGE.

342 pages.

CONTENTS:

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

[Advertisement] PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE?

PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE?

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

BY HENRY GEORGE.

CONTENTS:

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

[Advertisement] THE LAND QUESTION.

THE LAND QUESTION.

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

BY HENRY GEORGE.

87 pages.

[Advertisement] PROPERTY IN LAND.

PROPERTY IN LAND.

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

77 pages.

[Advertisement] FORTSCHRITT AND ARMUTH^sic.

FORTSCHRITT AND ARMUTH.

(Progress and Poverty in German.)

TRANSLATION OF C. D. F. GUTSCHOW.

430 pages.

PRICE LIST.

Progress and Poverty, paper ………. $ 35 ” ” cloth ………. 1 00^sic ” ” half calf or half morocco …. 2 50 Social Problems, paper ………. 20 ” ” cloth ………. 1 00 ” ” half calf or half morocco ………. 2 50 Protection or Free Trade^sic? paper ………. 35 ” ” cloth ………. 1 50 ” ” half calf or half morocco 3 00 Property in Land, paper ………. 15 The Land Question, paper ………. 10 Progress and Poverty, German, paper ………. 35

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

HENRY GEORGE, 12 Union square, New York.

p. 7, col. 5

[Advertisement] BELFORD, CLARKE & CO.’S NEW PUBLICATIONS.

BELFORD, CLARKE & CO.’S

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

A Novel with a Plot:

[Advertisement] THE LAND AND LABOR LIBRARY.

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:

No. 1. “First Principles.” By Henry George. 4 pages. No. 2. “Land and Taxation.” A conversation between David Dudley Field and Henry George. 4 pages. No. 3. “The Right to the Use of the Earth.” By Herbert Spencer. 4 pages. No. 4. “A Christian Minister on the Remedy for Poverty.” A sermon by the Rev. Hugh O. Pentecost of Newark, N. J. 2 pages. No. 5. “A Sum in Proportion.” By T. L. McCready. 3 pages. No. 6. “The Settler’s Nightmare.” By Louis F. Post. 4 pages. No. 7. “New York’s Docks; The True Mode of Raising Revenue.” By J. W. Sullivan. 4 pages. No. 8. “Unemployed Labor.” By Henry George. 4 pages. No. 9. “Voices for Reform.” 2 pages. No. 10. “A Mysterious Disappearance.” By Lewis Freeland. 6 pages. No. 11. “How to Increase Profits.” By A. J. Steers. 2 pages. No. 12. “The American Farmer.” By Henry George. 4 pages. No. 13. “Sailors’ Snug Harbor and the Randall Farm.” By W. T. Croasdale. 12 pages. No. 14. “The Collegiate Church and the Shoemaker’s Field.” By W. T. 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^sic. 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^sic 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. [4?] 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^sic.) Henry George. 4 pages. No. 44.”How John’s Father Saw the Light.” W. C. Woods, M. D. 2 pages. 45. Platform of the United Labor Party^sic. 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. No. 52. “The Case Plainly Stated.” (Swedish). H. F. Ring. 8 pages. No. 53. “Sailors’ Snug Harbor.” (German.) Wm. T. Croasdale. 12 pages. No. 54. “What the United Labor Party Want.” Henry George. 2 pages. No. 55. “Stories for Farmers.” 4 pages. No. 56. “Electoral Reform.” A. T. Rice. 4 pages. No. 57. “Protection as a Universal Need.” Henry George. 4 pages. No. 58. “To a College Professor.” Bartholomew Appleby. 4 pages. No. 59. “Before a Royal Commission.” W. A. Douglass. 4 pages. No. 60. “The Tariff Question.” Henry George. [4?] pages. No. 61, “A Practical Illustration.” Hugh B. Brown. 2 pages. No. 62. “Progress and Poverty.” Henry George. Price, 35 cents. No. 63, “American Protection and British Free Trade.” Henry George. 4 pages. No. 64. “Hints as to What You Can Do.” Henry George. 4 pages. No. 65. “To a Bookkeeper.” Bartholomew Appleby. 2 pages. No. 66. “A Lawyer’s Reply to Criticisms.” Samuel B. Clarke. 16 pages. No. 67. “A Piece of Land” By the late^sic Francis G. Shaw. 2 pages. No. 68. “The Tax on Buildings.” William T. Croasdale. 8 pages. No. 69. “Protection and Wages.” Henry George. 8 pages. No. 70. “The Common Sense of the Tariff Question.” Thomas G. Shearman. 8 pages. No. 71. “My Butcher Woman and My Grocery Man.” William McCabe. 4 pages. No. 72. “Protection the Friend of Labor?” Thomas G. Shearman. 8 pages.

GERMAN TRACTS.

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

SWEDISH.

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

Prices, free by mail: 2-page tracts—50 copies, 10 cents; 100 copies, 15 cents; 1,000 copies, $1; 5,000 copies, $4.25.

Four-page tracts—25 copies, 10 cents; 100 copies, [25?] cents; 1,000 copies, $2; 5,000 copies, $8.50.

Six-page tracts—25 copies, 15 cents; 100 copies, 37 cents; 1,000 copies, $3; 5,000 copies, $12.75.

Eight-page tracts—25 copies, 20 cents; 100 copies, 50 cents; 1,000 copies, $4; 5,000 copies, $17.

Twelve-page tract^sic—25 copies, 30 cents; 100 copies, 75 cents; 1,000 copies, $6; 5,000 copies, $22.50.

Sixteen-page tracts—25 copies, 40 cents; 100 copies, [illegible]; 1,000 copies, $8; 5,000 copies, [$34?].

A special selection, comprising thirty or more of the most popular tracts, will be sent for 20 cents.

Other numbers in preparation.

Address HENRY GEORGE,

12 Union square, New York city.

[Advertisement] THE NEW CHRISTIANITY.

THE NEW CHRISTIANITY.—A bi-weekly independent journal, recognizing the fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man as the essentials of religion, and Emanuel Swedenborg as the illumined instrument of the new dispensation and era now so manifestly beginning.

In sympathy with every movement toward the realization of the Lord’s kingdom on earth, and having no desire to build up a sect or to interfere with any one’s church relation, it opens its columns to all religious, moral and social questions, guided by one principle alone—the thought and love of USE.

Editors, B. F. Barrett and S. H. Spencer. Price, $2 a year. Sample copies free. Address NEW CHRISTIANITY, Germantown, Pa.

[Advertisement] ANTI-POVERTY DOCTRINES IN A NUTSHELL.

ANTI-POVERTY DOCTRINES IN A NUTSHELL.

Thirty pamphlets on various phases of the social problem. The question of the hour. All should understand it. Will be sent post paid on receipt of fifteen cents in stamps, or will be sent free to any one sending twenty-five cents for six months’ subscription to the Tax Reformer, a sixteen page journal. Address, ANTI-POVERTY PRESS, 1791 Lexington ave., N. Y.

[Advertisement] THE DEMOCRAT.

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 19 months to any address in the United States or Canada.

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

CURRENT THOUGHT.

Belford’s Magazine for June opens with an article by Thomas G. Shearman, entitled, “Protection the Enemy of Wages,” of which it is scarcely too much to say that it is the most concise and at the same time the most destructive expose of the fallacies of protection that has yet appeared. The writer takes the Pennsylvania idol by the throat and so shakes and belabors it—so smites it with indisputable fact, so rends it with unanswerable logic—that the wretched thing, when he finally flings it contemptuously to the ground, lies exposed in all its emptiness, a miserable bundle of rags of long worn out notions, deformed with darns and patches, smelling aloud to heaven, and fit only to be buried and forgotten. Could there be, for instance, a more complete annihilation of the fallacy that protection maintains wages than this:

Nature built a protective wall between the eastern and western states of the Union, in a range of mountains and a broad expanse of forests. Sixty years ago. Pittsburg was protected against Philadelphia pig iron by a cost of $80 per ton for transportation, and Chicago by a like cost of $150. By that abominable invention of British free trade, known as Bessemer steel rails, these protective duties have been reduced almost to nothing, say to $2 or $3 a ton. The west had ten times more reason to dread the competition of the east than either east or west had to dread the competition of Great Britain. The east had all the capital, all the experience, low rates of interest, cheaper labor, and every other advantage which makes our chicken hearted manufacturers turn pale when they look across the Atlantic. If ever an infant industry needed protection against pauper labor and superior capital, it was the iron manufacture of the west as against that of the east. It did not get it; on the contrary, the protection which it had has been ruthlessly destroyed. Within the last twenty years the last shred has been taken away. Railroad rates have been so greatly reduced that the actual cost of sending Scotch iron to Chicago, including the duty, which has been trebled since 1860, is now less than half what it was under the low tariff of 1860. The poor west has been thrown open to the piratical incursions of both Great Britain and the Atlantic states.

Well, what has ensued? Has the western iron manufacture been crushed, as Judge Kelley and Mr. Randall would have predicted that it must be? Have western wages been cut down to meet the pauper labor of the east? Nothing of the sort. “Westward the star of iron bends its way.” At least two-thirds of all American iron is made in the west. Pittsburg has crushed out Philadelphia and New York; and Chicago is threatening to crush Pittsburg. With every reduction of its natural “protection,” the west has gained enormously, and even in 1880 the greater part of American iron was made west of the Allegheny mountains. The eastern miners are being ruined by the competition of the west, and the western mine owners now declare publicly and arrogantly that eastern men have no business to make iron at all! Has this result been attained by paying lower wages than in the east? No; the western wages have been continuously one-third higher than those paid in the east. Indeed, in 1886 we heard the owners of eastern iron mines state, before congress, that they paid only eighty to ninety cents a day, while the owners of western mines reluctantly admitted that they had “cut down” their wages to $1.75 a day.

In view of these facts we are ready for a theory which will fit the facts. A tariff is simply a barrier to exchange, and every such barrier directly reduces wages. If a flood of goods comes in from foreign countries, a flood of our goods must go out to pay for them, and a flood of wages must go to the workman to pay him for producing those goods. When the tariff stops the foreign goods from coming in, it necessarily stops an equal amount of our goods from going out and so throws out of employment all the men engaged in making these goods. The things which we were importing were things which we did not want and could not use. The whole country is poorer, because we have refused bread and keep a stone^sic. It will be said, “The men thrown out of employment on onr exports^sic will be employed in making the things which we used to import.” Suppose they are? still they are no better off. They only change one employment for another. But they are worse off. They cannot produce as much value in a business to which they are unused as they could at their old trade; and therefore they cannot earn as much wages. The very reason why a tariff has been put upon the imported goods is that our country is not yet ready to make them as well and as cheaply as other countries. So long as this is the case, workmen employed in making such things cannot earn as much as they would at another trade, because they cannot produce as much value; and the value of the product necessarily limits wages. Moreover, years pass before the new industry is fairly settled here, and can give employment to as many workmen as the tariff has thrown out. Just as long, therefore, as a tariff has any protective effect at all, it cuts down wages.

Not less strong than this forceful demonstration of the depressing effect of the tariff upon wages, is Mr. Shearman’s showing of the manner in which protection hinders production by imposing a tax which, practically, falls exclusively upon the material of manufacture:

Now the nature of things, which is too strong even for an all-wise congress, makes it practically impossible that really finished manufactures should ever be very largely imported. Under absolute free trade it would be utterly impossible. The best proof of the inherent difficulty in the way is the fact that, under our present tariff, which seems as if it were framed for the very purpose of encouraging the importation of finished goods rather than of materials for manufacture, they still do not come in. Thus, in 1881, out of [$33,000,000?] of iron imported, $28,000,000 worth was used exclusively in manufacturing, and only $75,000 worth for family purposes; $24,000,000 worth was used in the iron manufacture itself! Reckoning railroad building as a branch of manufacture—and why not?—ninety-nine per cent of the duties on iron fell upon manufacturers in the first instance. Tin was taxed $4,195,000, of which $4,148,000 fell upon tin manufacturers. Wood was taxed [$1,536,000?], of which $1,145,000 were paid by wood workers. Wool and woolens paid taxes to the amount of $27,285,000, of which tailors and other manufacturers paid $24,612,000, or over nine-tenths of the whole. Excluding food, drink, and tobacco, the whole amount of articles imported in a state ready for family or personal use amounted to less than one-sixteenth part of all the imports. The proportion remains much the same now, and has varied but little ever since statistics have been kept which enable the facts to be ascertained.

Now how can a tariff, which thus spends its whole force in adding to the cost of manufacturing materials, help to raise the wages of men engaged in working up those materials? How can it fail to reduce those wages? It deprives the manufacturer of ability to pay natural wages, by making the cost of his materials so high that the margin between the cost and the price which he can get for his goods is too small to leave him the power of paying high wages. If he raises the price of his productions to correspond with the cost of his materials, his market shrinks; and he cannot sell as many articles as he could at a lower price. The man who would have bought two suits of clothes in a year, at $10 each, must be content with one, if it costs $20. The result is, obviously, that his tailor employs only half as many workmen as he would do if prices were lower. And no one needs to be told that, if the tailor could make the goods at half the price and thus employ twice as many [workmen?], he would have to pay higher wages

p. 8, col. 2 > whether he wanted to or not. It is never to the interest of workmen that prices should be high. Low prices, in the long run, mean a much greater sale of goods, and the wider sale the more numerous the articles made, and therefore the greater demand for men to make them.

Mr. Shearman’s article should be studied by every advocate of freedom, It is a perfect^sic armory of argument and illustration. Its effect upon protectionist readers will depend upon whether they happen to be victims or professional defenders of the protectionist delusion.

To the June issue of the Forum, Mr. W. H. Mallock contributes a characteristic essay under the title “Poverty, Sympathy and Economics,” the apparent object of which is to demonstrate the duty of every man to study statistics until he reaches conclusions agreeable to W. H. Mallock.

Mr. Mallock’s method of essay construction is peculiar. He demonstrates with well balanced, albeit somewhat trite, argument, some principle which few persons would feel inclined to dispute; and from the scaffolding thus erected, he bounds, in curious non sequitur fashion, to some airy fallacy, on top of which he balances himself, and triumphantly invites attention to it as a demonstrated truth. Or, to change the metaphor, he argues as a magician juggles; ostentatiously drawing attention to one part of his performance, in order to divert it from another; striving by sheer sleight of hand to make his audience believe that a ball is flung into the air, when in reality it has been safely palmed into his coat sleeve. It is a tribute to Mr. Mallock’s intellectual dexterity that his literary prestidigitation is still received with favor, and even regarded by many who agree with his notions, as genuine and convincing argument.

Mr. Mallock begins his discourse on “Poverty, Sympathy and Economics” with a somewhat diffuse assertion of the not altogether novel truth that a knowledge of political and social science is essential to the consideration of political and social phenomena:

Many see that economic knowledge is a desirable thing, but they do not see how desirable. They do not see that it is desirable before all other things, and at the present moment beyond all other things. That it is so, and why it is so, is what I shall now endeavor to show.

And he does “endeavor to show” accordingly, through nearly seven pages of the Forum, reaching the conclusion that in regard to the truths of political economy, men’s minds are in a woful condition of indetermination:

Of what is settled in this science and what is debatable, there is no general, efficient, practical knowledge. Consequently every kind of speculation is able to put itself before the public with sufficient plausibility to wear an air of science to those whose sympathies may dispose them to assent to it. I said just now that with many of the intellectual leaders of the labor movement philanthropy and moral emotion come first, and science, though they recognize its authority, comes second; and such being the case, emotion becomes the judge of what scientific theory is reasonable, not scientific theory the judge of what emotion is reasonable. Everything is topsy-turvy, and why? I answered the question a moment ago. I answer it now again. Because general knowledge with regard to this particular subject is far behind general knowledge with regard to any other subject of equal general importance.

Here is the scaffolding erected—the truth which nobody thinks of disputing elaborately stated and defended—the ball flung into the air to attract the eyes of the audience. Now observe with what agility Mr. Mallock does the trick:

Let me give instances, and I will take them not from any theories (properly so called) of the economists, but from the ascertainable facts of industrial life, by which all theories must be tested. One of the most specious and widely read works on political economy which has appeared for many years is Mr. Henry George’s “Progress and Poverty.” Now this work, as many of its readers may remember, endeavored to explain the existence of poverty by the constant increase of rent, which, according to Mr. George’s demonstrations, not only was always increasing absolutely, but was always having a greater and greater proportion of the total income of the community; so much so that Mr. George declared that its ultimate tendency was to absorb the whole of that income, except such a portion of it as would yield a bare subsistence to those who were not land owners. And nowhere was this doctrine received with greater favor than in England. Now, had the thinking classes in England possessed, as a body, the commonest knowledge of statistics, and had Mr. George himself thought it worth his while to consult authorities as accessible as parliamentary blue books, it would have been utterly impossible for such a work as “Progress and Poverty” ever to have been written, or, if written, to have commanded a moment’s attention. For its whole main assumption with regard to the increase of rent is not only not true, but is the absolute reverse of the truth; nor is there, when once the statistics of the subject are studied, the smallest room for dispute or doubt about the question. Rent in England, as the country has grown in wealth, though it has, of course, grown greater absolutely, has been growing constantly smaller relatively; and instead of rent tending to absorb all other sources of income, the other sources of income are tending to outstrip rent and to dwarf it into comparative insignificance. Nor is this tendency due to any recent depression in agriculture. It has steadily shown itself through the whole period for which we possess any exact records of our industrial progress.

Again, what statement can be commoner than that “the rich are getting richer, the poor poorer, and the middle classes are being crushed out?” . . . And yet when once statistics are consulted—and they are ample and unimpeachable—the whole of this statement is found to be, just like Mr. George’s, not only wide of the truth, but literally and absolutely an inversion of it. . . . Yet again, how constantly are we presented with appalling pictures of the destitution of the poor! . . . But let us apply to this dark picture the test of authoritative statistics, and what do we find then? We do not find that the details of the picture are false; on the contrary, we find that we could go on adding to them; but we do find this: that the extent of this disheartening and alarming misery, though vast in itself, is small when compared with the extent of the community. In England the darker pictures of distress and poverty do not apply to more than one-eighth of the population. It is true that the eighth of the population would people the whole of Scotland, people it from end to end with want and misery; but, appalling as this fact is, it should not blind our eyes to the other fact, that for one miserable population there are seven populations progressively prosperous, and that misery of the kind spoken of is, in spite of the millions of the miserable, not the rule, but the exception. But of this fact our philanthropic economists seem for the most part in utter ignorance. They go on taking the exception for the rule. and by their very way^sic of approaching the problem disqualify themselves for explaining it.

So! Here we have the nub and point of Mr. Mallock’s essay. The labored argument in support of a proposition which nobody disputes—that economic science ought to be more generally and more thoughtfully studied—has been built up for no other purpose than to trick the reader into accepting

p. 8, col. 3 as facts a few utterly unsupported assertions of Mr. W. H. Mallock—namely, that the economic doctrines advanced in “Progress and Poverty” are unworthy of serious attention; that land values in England have “for the whole period for which we possess any exact records” been growing smaller in proportion to “other sources of income” (one becomes curious to know what proportion they started with); that the rich are growing poorer and the poor richer, and mankind tending toward a general level of wealth; and that since in England only one family in every eight is in daily danger of starvation, therefore there really isn’t anything very serious the matter. Mr. Mallack’s demonstration^sic that two and two make four is as complete as it is unnecessary. But he will find some difficulty in persuading men that because two and two make four, therefore twelve and twelve are twenty-five.

That stanch upholder of toryism and believer in “things as they are,” the London Spectator, has been considering the problem of the sweaters and their victims which is now agitating Britain and disturbing the noble placidity of the house of lords. For it is the peers of England, the dukes, and earls, and marquises, and viscounts, the lofty creatures who toil not neither do they spin, but are selected by a wise providence and a discerning sovereign to make laws for the people who support them in idleness—it is these ermined and coroneted beings who are looking into things, and trying by stenographically reported question and answer to find out how the rank and file of the London industrial army really live.

That the lords will succeed in finding a cure for the evils into which they are inquiring, the Spectator thinks, is “not probable, though we believe that it will not be impossible to suggest a palliative:”

But even if it should prove impossible, the appointment of the committee would still be justified. Whatever else the report may do, it will furnish us with a great body of information. We shall know much more about the kind of lives that are led by the lowest class of the London poor than we did before the inquiry began. We shall see what are the obstacles that lie in the way of any attempt to make these lives tolerable. We shall have some notion of the directions in which it is useless to look for improvement, and therefore of those in which it is best to go on seeking.

And then the Spectator goes on to apply this method of exclusion to the remedies that are being urged for the “sweating” evil, and to show how little is to be hoped from any of them. It takes up the oft repeated proposal so often echoed by philanthropists on this side of the Atlantic, that consumers should solve the problem by refusing to purchase low priced goods made at starvation wages, and thus explodes it:

The first remark that presents itself on this aspect of the question is that this very attack has been made already, and made without result. Where Maurice and Kingsley failed, who are we that we should expect to succeed? We are not likely to get hold of a more effective weapon than “Alton Locke.” If “cheap clothes and nasty” proved a useless war cry when it was first uttered, it is not likely to be more effectual after it has been addressed to deaf ears for more than a generation. The mistake of “Parson Lot” and his fellow workers lay in this—they expected people who, as regards their business lives, at all events, were not Christians, to be influenced by Christian motives. No doubt if you could make them Christians they would behave like Christians to the laborers they directly or indirectly employ. But you do not propose to do this; on the contrary, you propose to make them behave like Christians to the laborers they employ, while leaving them what they are in all other respects. You detach a single motive from the group to which it belongs, and expect it to retain, when standing alone, the efficacy which it had when associated with others.

What a confession is involved in these sentences! “People who, as regards their business lives, at all events, are not Christians.” Can a man be a Christian in his family and at church and a non-Christian in his business hours? Most believers would indignantly deny it. Yet to whomsoever will, as this writer in the Spectator has done, attentively consider our social system, it will be evident that a man must do that very thing, if he would be anything of a Christian at all. Men can’t obey Christ and earn a living for themselves and their families. They must worship mammon as well as God, or starve. Not because of any inherent impossibility of serving God and getting food and shelter at the same time, but simply because, having allowed their rightful privilege of access to the raw material of wealth to be filched away from them, the vast majority of men can only regain any share of their birthright by cunning and device.

But, as the Spectator points out, were it even possible to induce every purchaser in the country to refuse to buy abnormally low priced products, so as to leave no excuse for the sweater’s industry, still nothing would be accomplished. For the sweater flourishes, not in the least because the public insist on having cheap goods, but because the disinherited poor are flogged by starvation into a competition for employment which forces wages down to the level of the barest subsistence:

No doubt customers who proclaimed their wish to pay a fair price for everything they buy, would find no lack of dear goods. The tradesmen who now rival each other at the lower end of the scale, would then rival each other at the higher end. But what security would the conscientious buyer have that the additional money he laid out went into the pockets for which it was intended? The evidence taken by this very committee shows that sweating is not an incident only of the lowest class of shops. On the contrary, it breaks out in quite unexpected places, and in businesses which have earned social position as well as wealth for those who reap the ultimate profits. A smart appearance, high pretensions to quality, extensive advertising—all, in short, that is calculated to impress the average purchaser with the sense that here at least the best price is paid for the best labor, are no proofs at all that the sweating system is not in full force.

There is a lesson in this for those among us who foolishly imagine that it is possible to secure high wages for labor by artificially increasing the prices of products.

Henry Ward Beecher on Free Trade.

Bolton Smith of Memphis, Tenn., sends the following extracts from speeches delivered by Henry Ward Beecher in Great Britain in 1863:

The things required for prosperous labor, prosperous manufactures, and prosperous commerce are three: First, liberty; second, liberty; third, liberty—though these are not merely the same liberty, as I shall show you. First, there must be liberty to follow those laws of business without imposts or restrictions, or governmental intrusions. Business simply wants to be let alone. Then, secondly, there must be liberty to distribute and exchange products of industry in any market

p. 8, col. 4 > without burdensome tariffs, without imposts, and without vexatious regulations. There must be these two liberties—liberty to create wealth as the makers of it think best according to the light and experience which business has given them; and their liberty to distribute what they have created without unnecessary vexatious burdens. The comprehensive law of the ideal industrial condition of the world is free manufacture and free trade. I have said there were three elements of liberty. The third is the necessity of an intelligent and free race of customers. . . . Here, then, are the three liberties—liberty of the producer, liberty of the distributor and liberty of the consumer. The first two need no discussion, they have been long thoroughly and brilliantly illustrated by the political economists of Great Britain. . . .

I have lived to see the time when, just before the war broke out, it might be said that the thinking men of America were ready for free trade. There has been a steady progress throughout America for free trade ideas. . . . Just as soon as we begin to have peace again . . . the same cause that worked before will begin to work again, and there is nothing more certain in the future than that the American is bound to join with Great Britain in the world wide doctrine of free trade.

A WORKINGMAN ON FOREIGN PAUPER LABOR.

Indirect Taxation Robs Consumers Without Their Knowing It.

Chicago Tribune.

Nothing could be more absurd than the assertion of ultra protectionists that the present tariff cannot levy a heavy tax on consumers since they “never feel it” or “don’t know it.” For the reason that excessive tariff robbery is so insidious and masked that the consumer is fleeced without his knowledge it ought to be specially guarded against and the public kept alive to the abuses of high tariffism. If the tariff operated like the special internal revenue war taxes and the purchaser of manufactured goods was required to spend as much for government stamps as for the articles he bought, or if a tax collector stood ready demanding a tribute of forty-seven per cent on the purchase, there would be no claim that the people did not know what was being taken from them and did not feel their loss. When, however, the tax is incorporated into the cost of the article and the people have been long accustomed to excessive prices it is possible to rob consumers without their knowledge, and a powerful instrumentality is provided for spoliation under the forms of law.

Like the bat of Indian lakes, Whose pinions fan the wound she makes, And, soothing thus the dreamer’s pain, Drinks out the life blood from his vein.

The Republican Party Away Off Its Base.

Boston Herald (Rep.)

There is not the least reason why a republican should favor protection rather than a democrat, or vice versa. It is not only arbitrary but unnatural for the republican party to be committed to Bourbonism on this subject. The republican party is, in its normal condition, a progressive party, and its instincts are all toward freedom, rather than privilege and monopoly. Get politics away from the consideration, and let the tariff rest on its merits, and we have no doubt that the large majority of the republicans would be for a liberal tariff to-day, just as Henry Wilson and Charles Sumner were when the party was founded. As it is, the republican party of Massachusetts is honeycombed with liberal tariff sentiment, and among those who believe in it are nearly every man who has read and thought upon the subject. Only the iron rule of party makes them untrue to their convictions here.

p. 8, col. 5

THE BEATING OF THE DRUMS.

It makes little difference what either party, in congress or in their platforms do upon the tariff question, its revision will be the issue during the coming campaign.—[Allerton, Iowa, News.

Don’t agitate the tariff. No, don’t! It injures the Edgar Thompson steel works^sic, whose profits are only five million dollars a year. Of course the proprietors are satisfied with the tariff just as it is, and their cry is, don’t even agitate the tariff!—[Mauch Chunk, Pa., Democrat.

No presidential year since 1856, when Fremont, the first republican candidate, was put forward, has witnessed such a letting-go and taking hold of political parties and opinions—such a disposition to break away from old leading strings and put influence and votes where they will do the most good—as has begun and will continue this year.

Over fifty high tariff congressmen have spoken elaborately, but no explanation is yet offered why a forty-seven per cent war tariff, which is much more than double the total percentage of labor cost in American manufactures is necessary to “protect” American wages from English competition. This is the great unexplained congressional cryptogram—forty-seven per cent of tariff to secure nine per cent of wages.—[Chicago Tribune (rep.)

The labor cost of producing a dollar’s worth of goods in Britain averages thirty-three per cent; in America it averages seventeen per cent. Why do we need a tariff to shut out a dollar’s worth of goods from abroad where they pay more to produce it, by about one-half than we do here? We have better resources, machinery and skill in the mechanical arts than can be found in any other country. Just give us a show and we can ruin England’s commerce in less than five years.—[Grand Rapids Workman.

The drift of public sentiment on the leading issue is witnessed by the organization of a tariff reform club in Cleveland, Ohio, composed of members from each political party. The president of the club is a prominent republican. In asserting that he represents the sentiments of his constituents in opposing the Mills tariff bill Martin A. Foran was evidently much mistaken. It is probable that the Mills bill lags far behind the real sentiment of the people of the Cleveland district in favor of tariff reform.—[Philadelphia Record.

With the moderate Tom Browne of Indiana on the one hand objecting to added duties on wool, and the extreme Judge Kelley on the other refusing to admit the taking of duties from sugar, poor Mr. McKinley of the ways and means committee is in a bad way in his attempt to formulate a tariff bill. Not the least significant feature of the tariff discussion in its present state is the number of republicans who refuse to be Bourbons at the behest of Pennsylvania and Ohio. And they are increasing.—[Boston Herald (Rep.)

Wilkins’s district has more sheep than any other in Ohio, and Wilkins himself was a follower of Sam Randall and a strong advocate of high duties on wool and clothing. He repudiated Cleveland’s recommendations and the provisions of the Mills bill. and is^sic now knocked out by his wool growing constituents, who have determined to send a free wool man to represent them in congress! Why shouldn’t they? Fine Ohio wool now sells for thirty cents a pound—the lowest price ever known in this country, and but little more than half what was received before the high wool tariff was enacted.—[Chicago Tribune (Rep.)

The attempt of some democratic members of congress to amend the Mills bill, so as to make it conform to every local prejudice, is a most disheartening exhibition of political folly and insincerity. It is to be supposed that the democrats will lose control of some congressional districts on the issue as presented in the Mills bill; but that issue must be made so clear, so intelligent, so intelligible that taxpayers everywhere may understand that it is not a juggle, not a net, not a trap, but an honest attempt to reform the tariff. Stand by the Mills bill; it is the limit of wise concession.—[Louisville Courier-Journal.

California takes a high rank as a wool producing state, but it is a noteworthy fact despite a high protectine tariff^sic the clip has steadily decreased since 1876, the period of highest production. The wool crop of 1876 was 56,550,970 pounds; for 1887, thirteen years later^sic it was 31,564,231 pounds—a decrease of 24,986,749 pounds^sic. It is clear that there are economic causes at work to produce this result outside the tariff. The explanation is that land has become valuable for other purposes, and the unfenced area over which the sheep ranged has been greatly diminished.—[San Francisco Examiner.

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HARLEM SINGLE TAX CLUB.—The Harlem Single Tax Club has a vigorous organization, and holds weekly meetings at 247 West 125th street, on Tuesday evening, at 8:30 p. m.

[Notice] Call for a National Conference of Single Tax Advocates

CHICAGO, ILL., APRIL 6, 1888.—To Single Tax Advocates, Greeting—By virtue of the authority invested in me 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.

Treasurer, Robert H. Cowdrey, 160 Quincy street, Chicago.

Judge James G. Maguire, San Francisco, Cal.

H. F. Ring, Houston, Tex.

H. Martin Williams, St. Louis, Mo.

L. P. Custer, Indianapolis, Ind.

Benjamin Adams, Charleston, S. C.

Freeman Knowles, Ceresco, Neb.

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 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.

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