June 16, 1888 Vol. III, No. 24Whole No. 76

CONTENTS.

Chancellor Bird’s Decision. Over Population. Home Life Disappearing. “Dehoofing” in France. Queries and Answers. The Boulanger Boom and Its Causes. Pen, Paste and Scissors. The Law of Labor Strikes. The Tariff Debate. Limitation of Fortunes. St. Louis Sidewalks. Plain Free Trade Talk. Society Notes. Men and Things. Electricity in Production and Exchange. The Beating of the Drums. Louisiana Farmers. Turned Off (poem). A Mormon’s Story. A Scrap of Railway Talk. Song of the High Protectionist (poem). To Workingmen. Current Thought. A Fresh Air Dream. Free Trade and the Single Tax. Straws Which Show the Wind.

Governor Hill, as was expected from the first, has vetoed the ballot reform bill. He has filed with it a memorandum giving his reasons, which are of the most trivial character. His real reason evidently is that the bill would accomplish just what its friends expect from it—it would kill the political machines.

What the men who are bent upon carrying this great reform have now to do is to show that they propose to vote for it—that they propose, irrespective of party lines, to vote against those who oppose it, and in favor of those who support it. We cannot expect to obtain such a measure from politicians unless we prove to them that we are in earnest. The Central labor union, and its sections acting independently, have clearly shown what a hold the desire for this reform has taken upon the working masses of New York. They know from experience that under the present electoral system our politics must create bosses and develop machines, and that the first step to making our government really a government by the people is to take the power of money out of elections, put an end to bribery and intimidation. and give the voter the means of really expressing his will.

But the passage of this bill by the legislature is in itself a great triumph, and what is still more, a similar bill has, in Massachussetts^sic, become law by the signature of Governor Ames, who has the honor which Governor Hill has refused. The workingmen of Boston propose to celebrate the auspicious event. The workingmen of New York can at least show how they regard the temporary defeat of the measure in this state.

The following resolutions adopted by land and labor club No. 1 of Chicago, at its last meeting on June 7, are likely to commend themselves to the sober second thought of all who had intended taking part in the proposed single tax conference in that city on the Fourth of July:

In view of the fact that the date of the single tax national conference, July 4, 1888, will be a time of great political excitement, being in the midst of the most important presidential campaign that has occurred in twenty years, when the calm judgment of the conference may possibly be interfered with by the dictates of prejudice:

And in view of the fact that the probable success of the plan upon which our friends in Texas are now working, will, at a later date, be more apparent, and that, therefore, the conference, if postponed to a proper time, will have much greater light on an important line of action, than will be possible at the date named in the call;

And in view of the fact that certain gentlemen, claiming to represent the political power of the single tax movement, have, against the advice of the leaders of our reform, and against the wishes of a majority of the rank and file, held a convention and placed a candidate before the people, thereby forestalling the action of the conference, and removing from the arena of discussion the only factor whose immediate settlement is of importance:

Therefore, be it resolved, That land and labor club No. 1 of Illinois hereby requests Warren W. Bailey to postpone the date of the conference to some time subsequent to the November election.

There can be no question that the Chicago men take a wise and conservative view of the matter. Their action meets the approbation of our friends in this vicinity from whom I have heard, and will, I think, commend itself to our friends in all parts of the country.

When, in February, Mr. Samuel W. Williams of Vincennes proposed, through THE STANDARD, that Mr. Warren Worth Bailey should be authorized by the individual requests of a hundred or more single tax men to call a conference on the Fourth of July, there was much uncertainty as to the development of the political situation and much perplexity and uncertainty among our friends; and there was a general feeling that we ought

p. 1, col. 2 to meet together and take counsel as to what we should do. But time has made clear much that was then uncertain. The issue on which the two great parties are to join battle is now settled, and there has been among single tax men a crystallization of opinion as to what course they should pursue. The small minority who are determined on going through the forms of independent political action have met at Cinciunati^sic and named candidates. The great majority have come to the conclusion that their part in this campaign is to support the democratic national ticket as representing the free trade side of the struggle. And some—for there are some who, though single tax men in the field of state action, are yet protectionists in the field of national action—have made up their minds to support the republican candidates.

Under these conditions there is now nothing of immediate importance or utility that such a conference could determine. It would be manifestly unwise, so long as there is the slightest difference of opinion among us, for such a gathering to formally indorse either of the old parties or to commend or condemn independent political action. The only purpose the conference could serve would be to make acquainted with each other those of our friends who might meet at Chicago and to enable them to consult as to propaganda work in the future. But, as the Chicago club intimates, there could be no worse time for such meeting and consultation than the present. Not merely shall we be able after November to see with much greater clearness what measures it would be best to take for the future, but it is hopeless to bring together in the beginning of a most exciting political campaign men whose minds are full of politics, and expect them to confine themselves, in discussion at least, to matters which have no reference to politics.

If there prevailed anywhere an impression that the gathering at Cincinnati represented the single tax sentiment and that the vote for its nominees would show our strength, then there would be some useful purpose for the conference to serve in counteracting that impression. But it is so clear that the Cincinnati action represented only a small minority—it having been repudiated even by the Chicago club, of which the Cincinnati nominee is president—that no further repudiation is needed. There is no fear of any one mistaking the failure of Mr. Cowdrey to poll a respectable vote for the weakness of the cause which his supporters assume him to represent. But such a gathering as was proposed to be held at Chicago could hardly take place without the matter being at least discussed. And “the least said, the soonest mended.” It is not easy for men who have strong feelings with regard to the impending campaign to now view as dispassionately the attitude of those who differ with them, and to talk as coolly about it, as they will be able to do after November. And as whatever may be our present diversities, we should all hope to be together then, it is certainly the part of prudence to do as our Chicago friends suggest and postpone our meeting until that time. We can then certainly have a larger and more useful meeting, and may perhaps be able to make it an international conference, at least to the extent of securing the presence of some of our friends from other countries.

The Chicago land and labor club No. 1 that has adopted these resolutions is the club of which Mr. Cowdrey is president, but which has by a large majority adopted resolutions disclaiming any responsibility for putting him in the field and repudiating the Cincinnati action. In this they undoubtedly represent the general feeling of our friends in Chicago and throughout the country, and as representing the majority their opinion that the conference ought to be postponed is of more weight. It is also of more weight as coming from men resident in the place where the conference is to meet, and who could therefore attend it without the expense of time and money which would be required of those who came from a distance. Mr. Bailey, however, in calling the conference, has acted upon the written request of a considerable number of single tax men in all parts of the country. To relieve him of embarrassment it will be well for those who in the beginning authorized him to call this conference to now write withdrawing the authority. Mr. Bailey, who went into this matter at the request of others and with a view of providing a mode for harmonizing differences, has had much labor and anxiety, for which he deserves the thanks of all.

R. Frank Sylvester of Peekskill, N. Y., puts to me four questions, which I give and answer in their order:

p. 1, col. 3 (1) Do you advise the single tax men to support the candidates of the democratic party for congress, state offices and members of the legislature? and if not, what would you advise them to do?

I do not.

I advise them in voting for a member of congress to vote for the candidate that will go furthest for free trade, and when both candidates are protectionists, as is likely to be the case in many districts, I advise them to vote in preference for the republican, because to beat democratic protectionists will help make the democratic party a free trade party.

As to state officers and members of the legislature, I advise them to vote for those who have voted for the Australian ballot bill, or will pledge themselves to do so; and to give their support to those who come furthest our way, especially in the exemption of personal property from taxation.

Where there is a doubt, I would advise them to give the benefit of it to the republican party, for the reason that the Australian ballot bill was passed through both houses mainly by the votes of the republican members, was opposed by the majority of the democrats, and has been refused his signature by a democratic governor. I would advise our friends everywhere, between now and election, organizing for that purpose where they can, to address letters to all candidates asking their position on such measures as the ballot bill, the exemption of personal property from taxation, the separation in assessment of land and improvements, and such other measures as may lead in our direction. I would advise them, too, where they can, to push single tax men quietly to the front.

2. Have you not said, in effect, that free trade without the “single tax” would not be a complete remedy for poverty?

I have said that free trade, as it is commonly understood, would not be a remedy for poverty; I have said this over and over again, and repeat it now. The free trade that will alone do that, is that full free trade which can only be secured by the single tax. But I regard what is commonly called free trade, or even any reduction in our protective tariff, as a step toward the single tax, and I look upon the delusion that labor can be benefited by protection as the greatest of the obstacles that prevent workingmen from [seeing?] what alone can largely and permanently benefit labor.

3. If Grover Cleveland is re-elected president, how much nearer will we be to the attainment of the object for which we organized the united labor party at Syracuse, viz.: the single tax?

The great object for which I declared my intention to support Grover Cleveland has already been secured by bringing the economic question into political discussion. What it is now certain will be discussed this year in every newspaper, on every stump, and wherever throughout the country men talk politics, is the question of taxation as related to wages. Even if Mr. Cleveland is defeated and the protectionists win, we will be nearer the object for which we organized the united labor party in Syracuse than of our own efforts^sic we could have been in many years. A great popular education will have taken place. The masses of men will be in much better condition to listen to us and to understand us, and a political struggle will have commenced that will continue to dominate our national politics and arouse the thought of the people. If Mr. Cleveland is re-elected, as, with courage, I believe he will be, all this will have been done, and more. Protection will have received its death blow. Timid tariff tinkerers will become free traders, and an impulse will have been given to the struggle against all forms of monopoly. Whoever has read the speeches of the democratic members made in the tariff debate will see that the leading men among them without exception took radical ground against the protective principle. It only needs the prestige of success, the consciousness that free trade is the winning side, to bring the most active and influential of rising democrats to advocating the abolition of all tariffs and the resorting to direct taxation for the federal revenue. When we get to this point our work will be well nigh done.

4. Is there any hope that in the event of democratic success at the polls next fall, the members of that party, or any considerable number of them, will favor the measures we advocate, viz.: the single tax, governmental control of railroad and telegraph lines, and the Australian system of voting?

There is. And we ought to address ourselves to the work of making it sure.

The free trade fight is the single tax fight in the national field. If we single tax men had entered the national field as an independent party, the only practical thing we could have done would have been what the democratic party is now committed to do—attack protection. For we must get rid of protection before we can get at the

p. 1, col. 4 revenue tariff; and we must get rid of the revenue tariff before we can get to direct national taxation; and we must get to direct national taxation before we can get to the point of imposing that taxation on land values. And we must make a break in the line of linked monopolies before we get at the railway monopoly and the telegraph monopoly and our wasteful and absurd monetary and financial system. The issue in this national campaign between free trade and protection is the issue between the interests of the masses and the interests of those who grow rich by taxing them. If monopoly is beaten at this one vital point, the result will show such strength of anti-monopoly feeling that the fight against monopoly will begin all along the line.

Even so far as the tariff discussion has already gone, it has shown a strong tendency to bring out the real democratic feeling in the democratic ranks. The effect of the campaign in this direction must be still greater—it must be to bring to the front democrats who understand the democratic philosophy and to imbue that party with more of the ideas of Thomas Jefferson than it has known for years. I also expect much from the republicans. Their speakers and papers will do great good by putting protection doctrines in the most ultra form, and by compelling the democrats to make some effort to show what is the real reason why wages are higher in the United States than in Europe. Further than this the republicans, in defense of the tariff, will be obliged to attack the internal revenue system, which in itself is as repugnant to our principles as is the tariff system.

But the great mass of the people are only nominally either democrats or republicans. It is on this great mass that I expect the campaign to tell most strongly and most hopefully. For the first time in more than a generation they will hear a large economic question discussed, and be compelled to think upon it. This will dispose them to think, and will lead them to think, upon all economic questions. That is what we want. As I said in every speech I made in the last campaign, what we are most concerned about is, not how people vote, but how they think. The great obstacle we have had in our way has been the indisposition to think upon economic questions.

It must be remembered that while we have a dual government we are but one people; and that the men who vote in a presidential election are also the men who vote in state elections. A great presidential election—and this is certain to be the most intense and exciting that we have had for many years—is the most powerful means of popular education, because the discussion goes on over the whole Union at the same time and arouses more interest than all the state elections put together. But the work of education that is thus done will tell afterward in the state elections. After this campaign, and especially if protection is defeated, we will find the people of all the states more alive to measures of real reform than they ever have been before.

Another question may arise out of what I have said. Why, it may be asked, if I think the internal revenue system as much opposed to the principle of the single tax as the tariff system, do I side with democrats against the tariff rather than with republicans against the internal revenue?

Because the tariff is far more important. Because it is supported by a theory which justifies taxation for the sake of taxation, which inevitably corrupts government, and blinds the people to the real causes and true remedies of the evils they feel—a theory that must be overthrown before we can hope for real reform. The internal revenue system, on the other hand, has no excuse but that of raising revenue, and the monopolies which it fosters stand comparatively alone. The internal revenue system is, so to speak, an isolated fortress. The protective tariff is the key of the enemy’s position.

Here is a model campaign platform. It is the platform of the Cleveland free trade club, reported by L. A. Russell and unanimously adopted. If the democracy in New York and throughout the country will make their fight on these lines they will surely win:

We hold that universal freedom of trade is a natural right.

A protective tax falls unequally. It has a purpose apart from needful revenue and it is unwise, unjust and not warranted by the constitution.

A tariff, delusively called protective, raises the profits of the home producer and such increased profits come solely from the home consumer, who is thereby shut out from the benefit of free competition.

An import duty on goods operates as an export tax on the goods and agricultural products given in exchange.

We deprecate a system which compels us

p. 1, col. 5 > to surrender the trade in manufactured goods with the 1,500,000,000 of the people on the earth to the nations of Europe in order to enable a few protected monopolies to extort double prices for their products from 60,000,000 of American taxpayers. > > A protective tariff in our country has been productive of a long list of evils. It has tended to centralize and unify, not to diversify national industries. It has raised prices and thereby limited the ability of the common people to get and enjoy the necessaries of life. It has affected unequal and unjust distribution^sic of the fruits of labor. It has made the few very rich at the expense of the many. It has crushed small fortunes and industries, multiplied millionaires and created tramps and trusts. It has bred strikes and discontent among the people and encouraged speculation and waste. It has corrupted legislatures and fed a corrupt lobby to the general demoralization and discouragement of the people. It has lowered wages and diminished their purchasing power. It has made business unstable and employment irregular, subjected both to dread of congressional action, and taught the people to distrust and fear their representatives. It has inflicted its grossest wrong upon agricultural industry, an industry in which almost one-half of the people are employed. It has destroyed the finest merchant marine the world has seen, and made our flag a stranger to the open seas. > > We approve the American system of interstate free trade and insist upon its application by the United States in their relations to the world. > > With a firm and patriotic faith in the justice and wisdom of free trade, we associate together and invite to co-operate with us all who want no special privileges themselves or are unwilling to labor that a favored few may be protected.

President Cleveland can be re-elected, and re-elected triumphantly, if he will face the situation boldly and continue to show the same courage of his convictions that was exhibited in his message and has been shown in his attitude up to this time. But this is indispensable. It will be fatal to him to let his friends, or pretended friends, put the party which he leads in any equivocal attitude. And of this there is some appearance of danger—at least, here in New York, which in this election, as in the last, is likely to be the pivotal state.

The democratic machine in New York—owing necessarily to the elective system, a bill for the amendment of which Governor Hill has just vetoed—is rotten to the core. It has no devotion to principle and no enthusiasm for principle. Nor has it any friendship for Mr. Cleveland, although seeing that he was demanded by the great mass of the party in terms that would admit of no denial, it formally supported his nomination. It contains among its “bosses” many men whose greatest desire it is to “knife him.” This they can do most effectually, under a pretense of conservatism, by decrying and disclaiming the position which the president and his party have taken before the country, and by which they must now stand or fall. It was one of the bosses of the county democracy, himself a protected manufacturer, mistakenly placed on the committee on resolutions at St. Louis, who gave Henry Watterson a good deal of the trouble he had in securing a platform up to the standard of the nominee’s attitude. And the ratification meeting held by Tammany hall on Tuesday night, at which Governor Hill declared he would not have been present had the platform favored free trade, was another of many indications that the local leaders of the democratic machine intend to enter the presidential canvass making apologies for, and explanations of, their party’s policy instead of boldly supporting it as sound and just.

That this policy meets the enthusiastic support of the Sun, whose dearest wish is to defeat Mr. Cleveland, is sufficient evidence of what it means, and what it is intended to accomplish. It is vitally important that President Cleveland, the members of his cabinet who are really in accord with him, and his sincere well wishers here, should understand clearly that any such policy of cowardly evasion and treachery will cause the democratic party to lose the electoral vote of the state of New York.

If the party in New York begins to run at the very opening of the campaign, the retreat will turn into a stampede under the onslaught which the republicans are certain to make, in all probability under the lead of their strongest man—Mr. Blaine. A campaign of explanation and apology is sure to end as the Hancock campaign ended. Mr. Cleveland has burned his ships; he stands before the country as the champion of free trade against protection, and he must make, as he has ample power to do, the weak and treacherous politicians of New York and other doubtful states accept that position or go into opposition. Else, in spite of the splendid courage he has heretofore shown, they will involve him in the fate that in affairs of great moment befalls the timid.

It is utterly hopeless to attempt to gain votes by evasion. In the president’s own phrase, he is facing “a situation, not a theory.” We now have a tariff with protection as its object and revenue as its

p. 1, col. 6 incident. If the protective theory is right, congress ought to solve the surplus diffidifficulty either by making duties still higher, and therefore less productive, or else by abolishing the internal revenue taxes on whisky and tobacco. Instead of advising either of these courses, the president in his message recommended that the duties on imports should be reduced, and he supported this proposition with a free trade argument. The democrats in congress have, with substantial unanimity, given their support to a tariff bill that, in the main, follows the lines thus laid down, and their speeches have rung with denunciations of the whole protective theory; while the convention at St. Louis has declared the president’s message to be the proper interpretation of the otherwise ambiguous tariff plank of 1884. This, then, is the situation that the democratic party must face.

The democratic leaders may rest assured of one thing, and that is that they cannot blind anybody else by shutting their own eyes to this situation. Above all they cannot fool workingmen. Republican papers and speakers can be depended on to prevent the success of any such attempt. If protection is a good thing for labor then the reduction of protective duties is a bad thing for labor. If protection keeps up wages, then the democratic party has attempted to deliver a blow at wage workers, and it must expect the wage workers to hit back. Let there be no mistake about the strength of the protective delusion among workingmen. Even among the members of the once united labor party of New York who freely confess that the levying of all taxes on land values, to which they are committed, must necessarily lead to absolute free trade, there are many who still fear to make the first plunge in tariff reduotion^sic, and who if not convinced that a tariff does not even temporarily assist in maintaining wages, will vote to perpetuate the war tariff. These men are perhaps not very wise, but they are not fools; and they certainly will not under existing circumstances turn to the democratic party to preserve that tariff. All concerned may as well accept it as certain that this year the believers in protection are going to vote for the party that proposes to give them protection, to give them plenty of it, and to give it continuously. If there are democrats who honestly imagine that they are going to catch any considerable “labor” vote by pretending that they are just as good protectionists as the republicans, and only want to cut down unnecessary protection, they will, by next November, find their mistake.

There is but one road to success for the democratic party in this canvass and that is the courageous and straightforward one. If Mr. Cleveland wishes to remain four more years in the White house let him again advise his friends to “tell the truth,” and clearly repudiate those who would put him in an equivocal position. The democratic party is not the friend of the protective policy. It never has been, and it has by word and deed, and most convincingly by the enthusiasm with which its masses have rallied to the support of Mr. Cleveland, confessed this within the past year. It has declared itself as opposed to protection because protection taxes the whole people to give to a favored few the advantages of monopoly. In assuming this position the democratic party really entitles itself to the support of the workingmen, and it ought to tell them so and show them the fallacy of protectionist claims. The wage earners of the United States are more ready to be convinced of the utter humbug of protection than ever before. Had it not been for the cowardice of democratic leaders in the past the great body of workmen would long ere this have been supporting the democratic party because it is a party opposed to a high tariff. Even in the protected industries it is already apparent to workmen that a tariff which brings large profits to their bosses gives no assurance of high wages to the employes. The last remaining bugaboo before which they tremble is the fear that tariff reduction may bring to an end the particular industry in which they are employed, and thus cause them to be thrown out of work until they can find other employment. Our country’s experience under the revenue tariff of 1846 demonstrated how groundless is this fear. And it will be easy for capable writers and speakers to show how the expansion of trade and industry that will be brought about by a reduction of duties will make the demand for labor keener and more continuous than it has been for many years.

American workingmen have been deluded into a belief in the protective theory as much by democratic cowardice as by the interested advocacy of the protected monopolists. It is now “good politics,” even if nothing else, to put an end to this ruinous policy. Let the democratic party now set about showing workingmen that protection does not protect them, or cease to expect their votes. The way to win is to silence apologists, send skulkers and cowards to the rear, and face the music.

HENRY GEORGE.

A New Jersey Lawyer on Some of the Books It Would Prohibit.

The following is from a private letter of an eminent New Jersey lawyer:

I have read the full text of Vice-Chancellor Bird’s opinion in the Hutchins case, declaring invalid the bequest for the circulation of Henry George’s books.

I do not believe that this doctrine is law in the state of New Jersey. I am satisfied it cannot be. It is completely at variance with that right of free speech, which it was the crowning glory of Erskine to have impressed upon the minds of his countrymen, and of Fox to have established as a part of the law by act of parliament. Aside from its conflict with the broad doctrine of law it is, I feel, certainly not sustained by the precedents; but on the contrary, in the face of the doctrine of the decided cases.

Such a doctrine would certainly make a charitable bequest to distribute gratuitously the works of Thomas Jefferson invalid. You doubtless remember Jefferson’s letter to James Madison, in which he says: “I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living; that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. The portion occupied by any individual ceases to be his, when himself ceases to be, and reverts to society.” He then proceeds to say: “That no man can, by natural right, oblige the land he occupies, or the person who succeds^sic him in that occupation, to the payment of debts contracted by him. For if he could, he might during his own life eat up the usufruct of lands for several generations to come, and then the lands would belong to the dead and not to the living, which is the reverse of our principle.” He then goes on to hold as to national debt, as follows: “The conclusion then is, that neither the representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself assembled, can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay within their own time, that is to say, within thirty-four years of the date of the engagement.” Mr. Jefferson considered thirty-four years the period, practically, of a generation.

I suppose you also remember the view that Carlyle expresses in “Past and Present,” written at the time of the corn law agitation (upon the subject of selling land). It is as follows:

Men talk of “selling” land. Land, it is true, like epic poems and even higher things, in such a trading world, has to be presented in the market for what it will bring, and we say be “sold;” but the notion of “selling” for certain bits of metal, the Iliad of Homer, how much more the land of the world creator, is a ridiculous impossibility! We buy what is saleable of it; nothing more was ever buyable. Who can or could sell it to us? Properly speaking, the land belongs to these two—to the Almighty God, and to all his children of men that have ever worked well on it or that shall ever work well on it. No question of men can or could, with never such solemnity and effort, sell land on any other principle. It is not the property of any generation, we say, but that of all the past generations that are worked on it^sic, and of all the future ones that shall work on it.

And I suppose you also know of the view expressed by John Ruskin on the subject of private ownership in land. In his criticism of Professor Fawcett’s discussion of the subject of rent, in his “Manual of Political Economy,” he says, as follows:

These principles the professor goes on contentedly to investigate, never appearing to contemplate for an instant the possibility of the first principle in the whole business—the maintenance by force of the possession of land obtained by force being ever called in question by any human mind. It is, nevertheless, the nearest task of our day to discover how far original theft may be justly encountered by reactionary theft, or whether reactionary theft is indeed theft at all, and further, what, excluding either original or corrective theft, are the just conditions of the possession of land.

I do not know of anything that more strongly and graphicly pictures the genesis of European war debts than the following paragraph from Ruskin:

Capitalists, when they do not know what to do with their money, persuade the peasants, in various countries, that the said peasants want guns to shoot each other with. The peasants accordingly borrow guns, out of the manufacture of which the capitalists get a percentage, and men of science much amusement and credit. Then the peasants shoot a certain number of each other, until they get tired; and burn each other’s homes down in various places. Then they put the guns back into towers, arsenals, etc., in ornamental patterns (and the victorious party put also the same ragged flags^sic in churches). And then the capitalists tax both, annually, ever afterward, to pay interest on the loan of the guns and gunpowder. And that is what capitalists call “knowing what to do with their money;” and what commercial men in general call “practical” as opposed to “sentimental” political economy.

Now, it seems to me that one and all of these quotations are within the doctrine of the vice-chancellor’s opinion—the Jefferson, the Carlyle and second Ruskin quotations—because they hold up to ridicule the one, the idea of absolute ownership of land, and the other, the obligation of a national debt, and the first Ruskin quotation, because it speaks of ownership of land as “theft.” Of course, under the vice-chancellor’s doctrine it would be impossible to make the subject of a charitable bequest the distribution of a work condemning capital punishment and advocating the abrogation of the laws now enforcing it. The list of the works that would thus be condemned would certainly be a significant argument to present to the court on review.

Explanation of the Anomaly—The Possibility of Plenty for All.

The following short, concise oration was delivered by Arthur P. Davis of Washington, D. C., at the Columbian university of that city, on Wednesday, June 13:

The principle of population, as expounded by Malthus, is that population tends to increase faster than subsistence. In other words, that in all conditions of society certain checks to population have always been, and must always be, in operation, having over population as their cause. This law may have had limited application to isolated parts of the earth’s surface among a few savage tribes, but the general statement is controverted by the obvious fact that neither the whole earth, nor any considerable part of it, has ever been over populated. That all the checks to population enumerated by Malthus and his followers, under the heads of “Moral Restraint,” “Vice and Misery,” have been at various times, and are now in operation, and that they are sometimes due to actual scarcity of subsistence, is true. But it is equally true that over population has never been the cause.

. . . . . . .

Many writers assume to controvert the theory of over population by denying the existence of the checks; and by pointing to the fact that nearly all the natural opportunities for production are unused; that light and air are inexhaustible, and that therefore the lack of subsistence cannot be a check upon population.

These persons ignore the fact that starvation does figure largely in mortuary statistics, and that poverty does operate as a strong check to marriage. They seem to be oblivious to the reports of metropolitan boards of health that thousands of children die annually from want of light and air in over crowded tenement houses, from which their parents are unable to rescue them. Of what avail are millions of square miles of natural opportunities to those who are denied the use of them. As far as they are concerned, such natural blessings might as well be in the moon, or beyond the stars; for as long as they are unused, they afford no relief whatever to the hungry, the homeless and the unemployed.

By denying men the right to employ themselves on the material so abundantly furnished by nature, we force laborers to bid against each other for permission to work, and in that way to reduce wages, which, in turn, reduces consumption and production, and the strike, the boycott and the tramp are the inevitable results.

The market value of land is an approximate criterion of its relative value in production. Land of high value by reason of its fertility or situation is superior to cheap land in the same sense that the reaper is superior to the sickle in the production of wheat. The most casual thought will convince any one that the present land system encourages and causes men to hold valuable land out of use in the hope of a rise in price, and thus drives capital and labor to cheaper land. This, besides its injustice to the disinherited class, occasions great losses to society as a whole, just as it would to prohibit the use of steam and electricity, and compel the continuance of the freight wagon and pony express. It is as great a detriment to the prosperity of the people of Washington to compel a part of them to live at Tacoma park and waste their time and money riding back and forth past vacant land, as it would be to deny those in the city the uses of horses and street cars, and compel them to waste their time and money riding in sedan chairs.

By the same force that drives clerks and business men to the outlying country, poor people are crowded into stifling tenement houses, and agriculture is banished to the bleak plains of Dakota, and the burning deserts of Arizona. The attempt to bind them together again with railroad and telegraph increases land values, and tends to still further crowd some and unnaturally scatter others.

Private monopoly of land stands convicted of causing untold misery and injustice to a large class and of depriving society of the major portion of its best means of subsistence. But this is by no means all. It is a powerful check to the development of productive forces.

In Russia the cheapness of common labor prevents the introduction of agricultural and other labor saving machines, and the sickle and flail are still in general use. In America machinery is more extensively used than in any other country except Belgium. Yet more than half our production is carried on without the use of the latest and most effective machinery, because of the cheapness of labor, and the inability of those wanting the products to purchase them. Who can doubt that if the wages of stenographers were three or four times as great, the phonograph would have been long ago perfected and in general use. The same is true of type setting machines, electric motors, cotton pickers; and almost every occupation illustrates how low wages and the consequent inability of the masses of the people to purchase act as powerful checks to the use of known methods of production, and still more powerful checks to the invention of new ones.

This powerful and tireless monster is pressing the brakes to the wheels of progress with ever increasing force, and unless destroyed must ultimately stop them, and “failure” will be written on the tomb of our civilization as it was written on the Roman, the Persian and the Egyptian.

To remedy this cruel and destructive condition of things, we have only to abolish those taxes which burden production and distribution. To cease fining men for their industry. To cease punishing them for beautifying their homes. To withhold legal condemnation of improvement. To stop offering rewards for indolence and perjury, and to recognize the fact that he who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before is not a public malefactor. In short, to abolish all taxes on useful industry, and concentrate them on land values, and thus make rent common property. Then will the children of God share equally in his munificent gifts. Then can man go freely to nature and employ himself, unfined for his industry. Then will prosperity reward the industrious and intelligent, instead of the lucky, the greedy and the cruel.

The abolition of those vices consequent on excessive wealth, idleness, poverty and wretchedness, will decimate the ranks of dishonesty and intemperance, and we will hail the destruction of that fatal pessimism that attributes all human woes to the laws of nature and pronounces them incurable.

Population will then be limited only by the capacities of man and nature, and not by the whims of the so-called owners of nature’s bounties.

Then will moral and material progress be free to roll onward at an ever accelerating speed, and man will proceed to assume that exalted position for which he is destined—that of monarch of the universe.

Marriage and the Bringing Up of a Family an Impossibility in Many Cases—The Cause and the Remedy.

Professor Geo. S. Robbins in Denver Republican.

Some men remain bachelors, some women old maids, from choice, or because nobody who is good enough or rich enough for them happens to come their way; but how many so ever the maidens and young men that prefer a single life, I think that, could the actual truth be known, most of them would give up even the state of so-called single blessedness and all the alleged advantages of its alleged independence if there did not loom up extraneous conditions of vital import and moment in the shape of landlords, who not only appropriate much of the share that should go to the wages, but consume the lion’s share of the already truncated wages after they are earned, so that instead of wedlock and homes being encouraged under the present system, we find young men and young women competing against each other in the labor market, and passing an unnatural and lonesome existence in single cussedness in boarding houses.

The married man, too, the head of the family, the father of children, how is he affected by our present social, commercial and taxation arrangements? He, too, is more often homeless than otherwise—he, with all the grave responsibilities of his position, with human lives and human hopes and human happiness dependent on him. Can he look to his fellow man for sympathy or aid? Oh, no, not as long as a system endures which encourages such greed, selfishness and necessary enmity among men.

He, too, and his wife and all their children and their fortune are at the mercy of this lord of the land. Is this a republic? Is it a government of the people, for the people and by the people? How, then, did we happen to take our land system from a monarchy? When we have discarded the intolerance of interference with our religious ideas and abolished the slavery which made chattel property of the blacks, how is it that we adopted our system of land tenures from the royalty and nobility of England, and still cling to this absurd and tyrannical system which makes industrial and social slaves of whites and blacks alike?

Call you him a free man whose bread and butter and the bread and butter of whose wife and children are at the mercy of a system which permits a few men to control the natural elements on which and the natural opportunities from which all must live? Do you know you wear a ball and chain and that the landlord holds the key that locks them on? Rise, O man, and strike the fetters from your limbs and help your fellow men to strike, by rousing to the thought of your condition! First, shake off the link of fatal ignorance and apathy. Then educate yourself to think, and study out and act on the problem. Your remedy is an intelligent, honest ballot. Strive to bring about the Australian system of voting, which prevents corruption at elections. Then break the heavy links of all monopolies by cleaving off the ball which holds them all in place—the monopoly which is the root of all—monopoly of land.

The adoption of the single tax on land according to its value, and irrespective of improvements, would make it unprofitable to hold land out of use. It would therefore have the effect to free unimproved land to those who would use it by cultivating or building on it.

Such a system of taxation would thus encourage agriculture, mining, manufacturing and the development of all our natural resources, and the investment of capital in productive enterprises, giving employment to labor, and all kinds of improvements. It would largely increase the general wealth. It would increase the purchasing power of the community at large, and thus benefit the merchant by giving him more customers, and the people by giving them more goods.

All could be free and all have a home.

We would not all of us be working for the landlord and slaves to the man who monopolizes the natural opportunities and the raw materials which were the free and munificent gift of nature to all, and which all must have access to or be slaves. The adoption of this system of taxation would give us a boom, but a different kind of a boom from the one we have now. It would be a healthier and more substantial boom. It would be a boom in buildings and improvements, instead of a boom in vacant lots.

Labor can never raise its wages by strikes so long as the supply in the labor market exceeds the demand. But open up natural opportunities so that labor can employ itself, and you will thus, at one stroke, emancipate labor, relieve the glut in the labor market, and thus, and thus only, will the man who has only his labor to sell be able to dictate the price of that labor, instead of the employer making the price, as now.

And when I ask the support of the workingmen for this change in taxation, I simply ask each man to support and assist the most important movement that has ever been started for his own direct and personal interest, as well as for the general prosperity of the community at large.

And when I ask the support of the professional and business men of the state to this reform, I simply ask them to consider whether it is not a matter of the greatest importance to them that the people of moderate means—who we all know are the class that circulate the money, and so benefit the community at large—should not be placed in a position where they will have more money with which to engage professional services when needed, and to swell the number of customers for the manufacturer and merchant.

The Agonies that Fashionable Women Endure for the Sake of High Heels and Pointed Toes.

Paris Letter to London Truth.

Since the high heel and pointed toe have had time to do their work the chiropodist is rising to as money making a position as the American dentist. The women who operate in the public baths for ladies have more work than they can attend to, and are raising their fees according to the state of the pairs of feet which they are asked to attend to. The ordinary old fashioned treatment, requiring only the sharp knife and the pumice stone, is still a franc and a half. But for the operation known as “dehoofing” the foot, you may, with extras, get up from 10f. to 30f. There are women who are able when the fine world is in Paris to make from £3 to £5 a day. The seaside season is even more lucrative, because feet are so much in view on the sands of marine bathing places, where it is permissible to paddle about in salt water long after the teens have been cleared.

Be it remembered that the high heeled boot or shoe, by throwing the whole weight of the body on the tightened-up toes, deadens them and the rest of the foot, and brings the whole member, so far as the distribution of muscular force and nervous vitality go, into much the same state as a horse’s hoof. The dehoofing process begins with a warm bran or potato-starch foot bath, followed by a quick plunge in cold water, after which there is shampooing with eau de Cologne, or something else, to help a reaction. Then there is a gymnastic pulling out and moving up and down and from side to side of individual toes, which reminds one of the piggy-wiggy game which nurses play with the pedal extremities of babies The nurse, beginning with the great toe and going on with the four others, says: “This pig went to the market, and this pig stayed at home, and this pig ate bread and butter, and this pig ate none, and this little pig cried, take me to mammy at home.” The toes are manipulated and exercised separately, until each is limber and lively. The sole of the foot is also enlivened thus: The patient leans with both hands on a pair of props, and places the foot on a broad horse hair band which works from side to side; then comes more hand rubbing, this time with glycerine, followed by friction with small brushes and instruments like drawing stumps. The nails are carefully attended to. All dead and hard skin is carefully removed, and finally the ankle and insteps are put into gymnastic training. At the end of, say an hour, a pair of feet which have been martyrized with high heels and pointed toes feel equal to dancing, jumping, or taking a long walk. They also look shapely and quite young. One wonders why they should be hidden with shoes and stockings, and whether skilled chiropody will not lead to a revival of sandals.

Hard Times and Machinery.

PHILADELPHIA, Pa.—As the consideration of “hard times” interests the laborer, mechanic, merchant, manufacturer, and capitalist, I wish to give you a few thoughts upon the subject.

The question is often asked, “What is the cause of our dull times?” This has various answers. One says “it is the result of the contraction of the currency.” This cannot be, since all industries suffer from dull times when there has been neither expansion nor contraction of the currency, in England, France, and Germany, in fact, all over the civilized world; besides there is more money now in the country per capita than there was during flush times. Another answer is, “we are too extravagant, we must economize.” A long editorial was published in one of our city dailies a few weeks ago urging upon its readers the duty of every one to economize. Will this bear analyzing?

Suppose we have been in the habit of wearing two silk hats and one Panama each year, but now we have concluded to economize and wear one of a cheaper kind; you see at once we hurt the hat trade. Suppose instead of buying two pairs of boots one year we make one pair do us two years, and, again, we make one suit of clothes last as long as three did in good times. Do we not injure the shoe and clothing manufacturers and dealers? Economy if persistently practised would break up half the merchants of the country. If we would economize we must stop buying books, music, paintings, and every thing that makes our homes beautiful, we must sell our pianos and carriages, and then we hurt the dealers in all of these luxuries. No, the demand is not for greater economy; it would bankrupt the country.

In my opinion we are using too much “labor saving machinery.” We make a combination of wood and iron—and that is what a machine is—do the work of brain and muscle. Brain and muscle must suffer.

It is all very nice to grow eloquent over the wonderful achievements of the human intellect; to enlarge on the splendid mechanical inventions of man; but what is the result? That man is out of work; he is a tramp. Not the dogs, but the machines, are after him. He is driven from one occupation to another by the little machines. Perhaps when he was a young man he spent the necessary number of years to learn shoe making. After a while along comes a genius, a fellow who lives by his wits, who has invented a machine that will make as many shoes in one hour as he can make in a week—well, what can Mr. Shoemaker do? He has to learn some other trade; perhaps cabinet making; he masters that after a few years (as it does not take a Yankee long to learn a trade); so he goes to work at cabinet making; soon another genius comes along and sells the boss a machine that will do his work many times cheaper. Mr. Cabinet Maker is discharged, and the machine takes his place. He would not permit a Chinaman to do this without a protest, but being a machine, it is all right; he packs up his ’kit” and goes^sic. He is driven from one city of refuge to another, and finally takes to the road and becomes a tramp.

If 200,000 Chinamen were to land here to-morrow and were to go to work for fifty cents a day, how long do you suppose it would take to raise an army of laborers, mechanics, and merchants, too, sufficient to drive the Chinamen into the river? Now, we allow these machines to work every day for less than fifty cents and we never open our mouths about it. Again, Chinamen would consume something. Society would make them dress and nature would make them eat; machines do neither. They never buy a hat, coat or pair of boots, never want meat, potatoes or anything else that man must have, and yet one machine often does the work of twenty and perhaps fifty men.

Now, if we could discard enough machinery to absorb the surplus labor we could give the mechanic a chance for his life. If the argu- ment that to cheapen the things we must have to administer to our wants is a blessing, then the Chinaman must be a blessing. They will work for twenty-five cents a day and they are almost as handy as a mechanic. If we had plenty of Chinamen laborers employed the mercantile trade would be good, and as the manufacturer depends upon the merchant, of course his business would be good also.

It benefits no one to be able to manufacture goods cheaply. We are all in the same boat. If I am a manufacturer of shoes and can get my shoes made cheaper than any one else, of course I have an advantage, but that is not the case. If I can get my shoes made for six cents a pair it does me no good; other manufacturers can do the same. I have no market for them after they are made. I had better pay twenty-five cents or even a dollar a pair, make fewer and find a market for all I can make and at a profit.

We must have our railroad, steamboat and other improvements of a kindred nature. They are not labor saving to a great extent, except they save the labor of horses, and men will not raise horses unless it pays. But men do have families and they must have something to do, for the fiat has gone forth: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” We can’t get around it. We have been trying and our country is in a sorry state—not only our country, but all other civilized countries are in the same condition. In the hope of solving this problem, many say “we must open new markets.” Our merchants and manufacturers are considerably exercised about the Brazilian trade. What would the Brazilians be likely to buy of us? For about fifty miles back from the coast, they will want some jewelry and a few crucifixes; in the interior, a shot gun nad of a jug of^sic whisky. These are the luxuries and necessities desired by North American Indians. Others say, we must ship our goods to England, France and Germany. If we do that, will we not injure our brother laborers there? We wouldn’t like them to treat us in that way, and the golden rule, “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you do ye even so unto them,” like the other, must be obeyed.

The prosperity of this nation does not depend upon the millionaires, because they are in the minority, but upon the millions, and the millions are idle; men and women buy when they have money; they have no money because they have no work. They have no work because all over the land we hear the rattle of machinery. The skillful combinations of iron and wood are doing their work for them. Do they eat and drink, or dress? They consume no bread, but their rattle drowns the cry of hungry children, the rush of shuttles stifles the wail of their shivering mother, and the thud of their hearts of steam is louder than the complainings of afflicted humanity.

There must be a revolution. I hope it may be a peaceable one, but if we persist in the use of “labor saving machinery” as we have for the last twenty-five years the whirlwind must come, and “woe unto him by whom the offense cometh.”

W. C. STRICKLER.

If you are not a protectionist, you have all the symptoms, except figures.

Your reference to the interests of the “laborer, merchant, mechanic manufacturer and capitalist” is paralleled by the advertisement of the quack doctor who cured “sickness, consumption, smallpox, measles and [diseases?].” Are not mer-

p. 3, col. 2 chants, mechanics and manufacturers laborers? And how many merchants or manufacturers do you know who are not capitalists? Before attempting an inquiry into the causes of “hard times,” it would be well for you to get a rational idea of the factors and the distinguishing characteristics of the factors, the relations of which you must consider.

You are quite right in questioning the miser theory of hard times. Hard times are not to be cured by economizing. If one man economizes when others do not, he may relieve his hard times; but when all economize, all must experience harder and harder times. Last summer a young man, while traveling in the interior of this state, fell into discussion with a commercial traveler on the subject of abolishing poverty.

“Well,” said the commercial traveler, “I believe that the way to abolish poverty is to save—to be economical; the more economical men are the more certainly will poverty be abolished.”

“You are a drummer, are you not?” inquired the young man.

“Yes,” said the commercial traveler, “I am a drummer for a dry goods house.”

“Well now,” the young man again inquired, “if everybody should be as economical as possible, how long would you be on the road?”

The commercial traveler hesitated, combed his hair with his fingers, stared at the floor, and with a “give-it-up” grin responded: “Sure enough! I wouldn’t be on the road a week!”

The economical doctrine had lost an advocate.

Of course economy is not a remedy for hard times. Trading is essential to prosperity, and the more active the trading the greater the prosperity. If men did not buy they could not sell. That is the reason that protection is a bad thing. It forces people to economize more than they want to. The farmer buys one hat when he wants two, or a poor hat when he wants a good one; and that helps to make hard times for hatters. Hatters in their turn suffering from hard times buy a pound of flour when they want two; and that makes hard times for the farmer. And so it goes, until every one complains of hard times, and denies himself to relieve them, when what is really needed is that every one shall be free to buy whatever he wants in exchange for whatever he can make.

But after giving your common sense full swing in showing the absurdity of this theory, you fall a victim to the fallacy of fallacies that underlies the doctrine of protection. We make a machine do the work of brain and muscle, you say, and therefore brain and muscle must suffer. How could you write such stuff and not see its absurdity^sic. You might as well have said that electricity carries our messages, and therefore our legs must suffer. If brain and muscle suffer because their drudgery is done by machinery, brain might find relief in libraries and muscle in ball matches. We are not compelled to do without exercise because machines work for us. You may ride in a drawing room car to Albany, but if your legs are shriveled for want of exercise there is nothing to prevent your walking to Albany. What you have in mind when you say that brain and muscle must suffer because machinery does their work, is that a great many people are able to live only as a few others give them opportunity to work for a living, and that these few give less work to men when machines will do the same work cheaper. There is a truth in this, the pith of which you ignore. The evil is not in machinery which relieves us of labor, but in the use of machinery under a system that makes some men dependent upon others for the right to work; and the true remedy is not to restrict the use of machinery, but to remove restrictions from opportunities to work.

That the tramp is a result of the introduction of machinery is true; but machinery is only a secondary and innocent cause. So long as any man wants anything which labor can produce, there is work to do; and so long as standing room on the earth remains there is natural opportunity for work. If, therefore, machinery causes idleness, it is not because it does all the work that is needed, but all that the forestallers of mother earth will permit.

You are wrong in supposing that men cannot readily shift from one employment to another. Between one extreme and another of diversified employment there is, indeed, a gulf which few workmen can cross and which none can cross without great effort and expenditure of time; but between one employment and a great number of employments nearly related to it, there is so little difference that any intelligent man can readily adapt himself to a change. Hence, to introduce machinery into any of these employments, even though the machine does all the work, is not naturally to deprive workmen in that employment of work; it is to invite them into other fields of industry to which they are quite as well adapted, and where in consequence of the machinery that has relieved them of the work they once did, they can get with less labor more of the comforts of life than they got before. This is the natural result. But since greater power of production consequent on the in- troduction of machinery makes greater demands for land which is privately owned, the value of land rises, so that on the one hand the machine does not produce as cheaply as it otherwise would, and on the other the workman finds it more difficult to get access to land, without which he cannot work at all. Machinery is to a mechanic what a vacation is to the man who works by the day; in itself desirable, but dreaded because it closes the only source of income open to him.

A machine that will make as many shoes in an hour as a shoemaker can make in a week should be a good thing for the shoemaker, just as a washing machine is a good thing for the farmer’s wife; the reason it not is because^sic when the shoemaker turns to the vast fields of employment that invite his labor, he finds the fields fenced off into narrow lanes with a toll gate at the head of each lane and a new and higher schedule of tolls at every gate.

If machines were the evil things you

p. 3, col. 3 think them, why discard only enough to absorb surplus labor? If surplus labor were absorbed merely, that would only keep wages where they were for a time; increase of population would soon make a new surplus of labor. Why not discard all machinery at once and prohibit its introduction again?

You are mistaken in saying that it benefits no one to manufacture goods cheaply. It benefits every one. You are thinking of money when you speak of cheapness. Cheapness in money really makes no difference in the long run to any one; but cheapness in labor expenditure does. To get the most with the least labor is the natural and legitimate desire of all; and when production and exchange are unfettered every device by which anything can be produced with less labor than before is a good thing for everybody. It tends to diminish the labor of everybody, and if it does not do so in fact, the fault is not with the improvement, but with laws that operate to make laborers pay for the right to produce and idlers to live in luxury on the labor of their fellows. One of these laws is the protective tariff, which taxes the multitude for the special benefit of a few; another, and the chief devil of its kind, is the institution of private property in land, under which planet owners levy tribute on planet users for the right to work here, to breathe here, to be here.

The fiat, “in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,” has indeed gone forth. But never, save from mortal lips, has yet gone forth the fiat, “in the sweat of thy face shalt thy brother eat bread!” Yet it is under this human gospel of plunder, and not the decree you quote, that we are living. The man who sets out to obey the command of his maker to eat bread in the sweat of his face finds all the avenues to work which his maker provided, closed by force of human law. If he would eat bread in the sweat of his face he must agree to share it with a loafer, not only before eating it, but before he will be permitted to make it. And naturally enough. when the loafer^sic discovers a machine that will make bread without sweating or eating, he has no use for the man who is willing to sweat provided he may eat.

Mr. Shearman’s Speech.

BOSTON.—(1) Is the Standard oil monopoly due to the tariff?

2. In Thomas Shearman’s article in THE STANDARD of the 19th on the tariff, it is stated that the surplus in the treasury induced excessive speculation in land which brought about the panic of 1857. In what manner does a surplus in the treasury operate to do this?

3. In another part of the same article he states that the average production of each English workmen^sic in the metal and textile industries for the year 1880 was [$789?], and that of the American workman in the same industries was $1,684. Were these values English or American? Ought they not to have been calculated either in American or English values to make a fair comparison, as the same amount of production in England would have a great deal higher value in the United States owing to the tariff?

E. LUCAS.

(1) The Standard oil monopoly is due mainly to private control and manipulation of transportation facilities—to interference with freedom of trade. Public highways are essential to trade, and if they are obstructed in the interest of individuals or corporations, monopolies result. In a similar way, when free intercourse between nations is obstructed by a tariff, monopolies result. The same principle operates in each case, though one monopoly may be due to one form of protection and another to another form.

2. The manner in which excessive speculation in land operates to cause a panic is explained in Chapter I, Book V, of “Progress and Poverty.” Mr. Shearman explains the way in which a national treasury surplus induces excessive speculation, as follows: The panic of 1837 was brought about by excessive speculation in land, which was largely induced by the surplus in the treasury at that time. The panic of 1857 was also brought about by speculation in land; but the treasury surplus was not by any means so important an element at that time as it was in 1837. In 1835 the last of the United States debt was paid off, and, in consequence of the maintenance of an exorbitant tariff, a surplus which was greater relatively for that period in our national history than the present surplus rapidly accumulated. This money was distributed by the government among the state banks, with urgent directions to lend it out freely and make money easy and business active. But as our natural development of industry was choked by the obstruction of the tariff, and as this money was forced out of natural channels in order to be lent to those men who had most influence with banks, it inevitably followed that the banks fell into the hands of speculators, who borrowed the money for speculative purposes. In this manner the amount of money which the banks would have to lend for such purposes was suddenly doubled. As a matter of course, there being in those days very few railways, and speculation in railway stocks being insignificant and confined to three or four eastern cities, there were, practically, only two channels for speculation, land and cotton. The cotton speculation naturally ran into and encouraged the land speculation. The banks, being under political management, lent their money under political influence, and pressed loans upon politicians all over the United States. There are fifty men who are disposed to speculate in land for one who will speculate in anything else on a large scale. When this amount of money, which was vast, considering the smallness of our population and the limited experience which our people had had in the use of money, was forced upon speculators in every part of the country, nine-tenths of the borrowers naturally began to buy land. Land rose rapidly in price; and, the more it rose the greater was the number and enthusiasm of the speculators. This brought about the crash of 1837. But notwithstanding that disaster, the government still had a large surplus; and congress forced it among the people by distributing it among the states, most of which wasted it, scattering it either in loans upon land or in digging canals which never paid for a quarter of their cost. The result of this was a revival of speculation in 1838 and 1839, ending with

p. 3, col. 4 another crash in December, 1839. Both of these panics were directly traceable to the treasury surplus.

So, at the present time, the enormous treasury surplus must either be locked up in government vaults or be loaned out to the banks. Some time ago it was locked up; and then we were driven to the verge of a financial crash, because it was evident that within a few weeks the government would lock up nearly all the floating gold of the country, unless its policy was changed. Accordingly, financiers implored the government to save them from ruin; and in order to do this, the govern- ment deposited its surplus freely with the banks, requiring them, however, to repay it on call. The banks have therefore many millions of government money, which, since they must repay it on call, they can only lend on call. But loans on call are invariably made to speculators, as no one else will borrow money in that way. The consequence is that the treasury surplus is now lent out to speculators, in order to enable them to keep up prices. The result of this process must inevitably be further speculation, ending in a crash, the losses of which the common people must pay. If the surplus were not thus lent to speculators, it would have to be locked up; and then, the country being deprived of its floating gold, not merely all speculation, but all enterprise, would feel the effect as one of strangulation, and the crash would come at once. Meanwhile, any one who reads the daily papers, especially the western papers, can see that a wild land speculation has been going on in the west; and this happens now, as it happened in 1836, 1856 and 1872, simultaneously with the piling up of a surplus in the treasury.

In 1857 the government locked up its surplus and only let out that which it spent in the gradual increase of extravagance. But as it became more extravagant it excited speculation, which, of course, ran into land, as it always does when it becomes general, and then, when the first sign of trouble among speculators occurred, the government locked its money tightly up, and so the panic came almost like lightning, just as it would do now, if the government should do the same thing. Before the middle of 1858 the government surplus had all been paid out, but not paid to speculators, while the tariff, being reduced, no further surplus accrued; in fact, the government complained of being poor, but that meant that the people were growing rich. The consequence was that business revived very rapidly, and 1859 was the most prosperous year which had ever, up to that time, been known in American history.

3. Mr. Shearman, of course, calculated values in England and America respectively, according to the value of the articles produced in the country of production; and this is the only fair method of comparison. Seven hundred and eighty dollars was the value of the English workman’s product to the English employers; while^sic $1,684 was the value of the American workman’s product to the American employer; showing that, although the American employer got 120 per cent more value from his workman than the English employer, he paid less than 45 per cent more wages to get it. Mr. Lucas must remember that, according to the unanimous testimony of the protectionist advocates in congress, metals and textiles cost no more to the consumer in this country than they do in England. Of course, there is not a word of truth in this; but then that is what the protectionists all say. If it is true, then the American employer makes an enormous profit off the American workman in excess of that which the English employer makes. But if it is not true, still this is the only fair basis of comparison; because the same Americans who produce metals and textiles have to use them; and if the articles which they have to buy cost them 120 per cent more than the same goods cost the English workman, it is very clear that they gain no advantage by getting only 45 per cent higher wages than the Englishman. But even if we were to allow for the utmost difference in price which any one will claim, this will not be more than 40 per cent, and therefore, adding 40 per cent to the price of the English product would bring it up to $1,092 against the American workman’s $1,684. This shows that the production of American workmen averages more than 50 per cent in excess of the production of English workmen, quite irrespective of the price; that is to say, for each yard of cloth or ton of metals which the English workman produces, the American workman produces in the same time more than a yard and a half, or a ton and a half.

But we repeat that the fictitious value added to the American product by the tariff ought not to be noticed for the purpose of comparison, since that fictitious value goes into the pockets of the employer and is paid out of the pockets of the workman. It would, indeed, be a fine plea for protection to boast that workmen were paid fifty per cent more wages and then compelled to pay one hundred per cent more for everything in which they spend their wages.

LOUIS F. POST.

AUGUSTA, Ga., June 4, 1888.

MR. HENRY GEORGE.—Dear Sir: In a recent discussion upon you and your books, A contended that you were: First and foremost a free trader; second, for a single tax; third, in favor of making it a tax on land. B on the contrary contended that your convictions followed a reverse order. First, that you thought justice, expediency and morality demanded that land should sustain the burden of taxation; second, that you favored this single tax; third, that you were for free trade as a means to the above end.

HENRY B. KING.

In point of time I was a free trader before I saw the necessity of appropriating land values in order to secure natural rights and the economic beauty of thus securing public revenues. But I never have been in favor of a tax on land, and did not come to the idea of taxing land values through the idea of imposing but one tax.

Neither A nor B have stated my present views as I would state them; but of the two B more clearly represents the relative importance the propositions have in my mind,

HENRY GEORGE.

p. 3, col. 5

St. Louis Landlords Assert an Ownership of Them and Collect Rent for Their Uso^sic in Defiance of Law.

ST. LOUIS, June 4.—The often heard cry is: “Oh, the people are not being imposed on very much; if they were they wouldn’t tolerate it.” This is a stock argument of the conservatives. Let them consider the way St. Louis people are robbed of sidewalk privileges if they want to change their minds.

If there is anything about which people are thought to be jealous, it is the sidewalk: and yet to-day there are land owners who are deriving a snug sum every year for the use of the public sidewalks. In St. Louis, as in every large city, there are hundreds of fruit stands, book stalls, etc., occupying portions of the sidewalk, and I have yet to hear of a single one paying a cent to the city. I inquired about this and was told that the house owner had the right to the use of a certain number of inches of the sidewalk. I then went to City Comptroller Campbell, who said: “These stalls have no right to occupy the public sidewalk.” But I ventured to suggest that the people could not have tolerated this imposition all these years, especially since the sidewalks are only narrow at the best. Possibly the land owners or store owners had a right to the sidewalk? To this Mr. Campbell replied: “The building owners have no right to use the sidewalk for the purpose of exacting rent. That was not the intent or purpose of the law, giving them the use of so many inches. The practice has simply grown up in St. Louis unopposed, and that is all the basis there is to it. I do not think another large city in the country allows such renting.”

I investigated still further and found that one fruit stall man on Broadway, near Pine street, pays an annual rental equal to $600. Another, near Sixth and Olive streets, pays $25 a month for his privilege. He showed the receipt for his last payment. It was signed by a well known firm of real estate dealers. The last mentioned stall is on one of the busiest corners in St. Louis, and where the travel is the thickest and the sidewalk the narrowest. Figuring at a rough guess, there are a thousand of these sidewalk selling places; and a policeman told me that that number was not too large; and placing the annual rent of each at $50, we have $50,000 a year that goes into the pockets of private persons for the use of public ground.

Yea, verily, it is hard to impose on the great American public!

As I stood thinking of this, I said to a police officer: “It’s a shame, isn’t it?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he replied, “it don’t affect me.”

“It doesn’t? Why, all you have been asking for is $50,000 to give the needed increase in the police force. How about this $50,000 that is going to waste?”

And then he scratched his head and admitted it seriously affected him.

CITIZEN.

Hot Shot Against Protection at a Democratic Mass Meeting in Brooklyn.

An illustration of the way in which free trade doctrine comes to the front whenever a few men engage in tariff talk, was to be seen at a mass meeting held last Monday evening by the Seventeenth ward Cleveland club of Brooklyn, to ratify the nominations made at St. Louis. The meeting was a very large one, all the representative men of the party in the district being present. The first speaker, United States Marshal Stafford, declared that the democratic party did not advocate free trade, and that it was dishonest in any one to say to the contrary. The party had for its its^sic aim democratic protection—protection against trusts and monopolies.

Martin D. Wilbur, however, who was the next speaker, thought differently. He started out with the declaration that he himself was a free trader, and he talked along in this fashion:

The tariff question is the real issue of the campaign. The campaign is to be a campaign of reason and facts against old prejudices. He could not understand how Irishmen, driven out of their country by the tyranny of landlordism, could in this country cast their ballots in the interest of great monopolies and a landlord class just as tyrannous and grinding as those in the old country.

Senator Frye had stated before a New England audience that were the tariff on hatchets removed that industry would be destroyed. How, then, was it that these New England hatchets were being sold in London markets? How could the abolition of the tariff hurt this industry? The same condition of things was to be found all through the protected industries.

American workmen have nothing to fear from the extinction of the tariff. They, with their superior intelligence, coupled with their skill and superior inventive genius, could, were the barriers to free exchange thrown down, command the markets of the world. As it is, for one man benefited by the tariff sixteen men have to suffer. He said that the labor required to manufacture a five-pound blanket costs thirty-three cents, but that the tariff on blankets amounted to $1.98. He asserted that, taking all things into consideration, in the industries most highly protected by the tariff the lowest wages prevailed, and he instanced the iron, steel, glass and coal industries. Reversely, he said, wages are highest in unprotected industries.

The speech, bristling throughout with facts and terse arguments, told on the audience, who cheered enthusiastically, and when the speaker sat down he was roundly applauded.

Denouncing the Tariff and Working Along Toward the Single Tax.

VILLE PLATTE, La., June 2—The following resolutions, passed at a meeting of the Farmers’ union here, will show how we stand on the tariff issue, and how we are edging toward direct taxation—the single tax.

Whereas, one of the avowed objects of the organization is to demand equal rights for all, special privileges for none. For years we have been heavily taxed for the benefit of the favored few till it has come to pass that we are on the verge of ruin. Under the guise which this imposition on the people has assumed, we enumerate,

1. The protective tariff by which we are made to pay from twenty-five to seventy-five per cent more than the natural market price of nearly every article of the merchandise which we buy.

2. The national banking system by which we are forced to furnish money to corporations to do business on, free of interest, while we are obliged to pay as high as forty per cent for the money we borrow of these banks.

3. Millions of acres of the public domain have been donated to railroad companies without consideration, while these corporations have been empowered to tax at their pleasure the people in the sections traversed by these roads, given to the Pacific railroad, for instance, and a hundred million dollars in money; therefore, be it

Resolved by the Ville Plate^sic farmers’ union, That we are opposed to a protective tariff, because a restricted market reduces the price of what we sell and increases the price of what we buy; and, second, because it can by no possibility increase the wages of American workmen, as claimed, because it does not restrict the importation of underpaid European laborers, the only importation which affects the wages of American workmen.

Resolved, That we are opposed to the duties on imports for revenue purposes, because it is an insidious mode of taxation under which the average buyer cannot tell how much of the price of merchandise is a tax and how much is the market price of the goods; because, second, it is a system which gives rise to fraudulent importations, false swearing and the kindred evils; and because, third, the necessity of guarding many thousand miles of sea coast and frontier gives rise to the employment of an army of officers by land and a navy of revenue cutters by sea.

Resolved, That banking forms no part of the real functions of government and that we demand the early cancellation of all outstanding bonds, the retirement of bank notes passed thereon, and the issuing of non-interest bearing notes in amounts to suit the legitimate demands of trade and no more.

Resolved, That the public domain belongs of right to the American people, and the granting any portion thereof to corporations in preference to the working farmer, thereby enabling the non-worker to rack rent the worker, who has at least as good a claim on his country, is contrary to natural right and justice, and to the spirit of American institutions.

Resolved, That according to majority and minority reports of the senate, the people’s money paid for the building of the Pacific railroad[,?] and the power to tax at pleasure the people of the section traversed by the roads, ruthlessly exercised for years, amply compensate the incorporators for any possible services rendered, they can well afford to forego further exactions on an indulgent public by surrendering the roads and franchises to the proper owners.

As illustrating the way in which tariff discussion leads toward the single tax, it is worth mentioning that when these resolutions had been debated and the conclusion reached that taxation of imports was the most objectionable method of raising revenue, the question, “Upon what shall taxes be levied?” arose, and I was invited to address the meeting on the subject of “direct taxation.”

When men get this far along the road it is an easy matter to show them the way to the logical end.

D. C. DAVID, Secretary V. P. Farmers’ Union.

Reorganizing for Active Work in Memphis.

MEMPHIS, Tenn., June 1.—Our land and labor club No. 2 is about to surrender its charter and disband, as our pledge of membership does not allow us to affiliate and work with either of the old parties. The majority of the club are free traders, and some of us, recognizing that the political feature was a stumbling block in the way of many who would like to study the question of the single tax, on Monday, May 27^sic, organized a “single tax league,” with a membership of fifteen, four of whom are ladies. Our platform is contained in the following resolution:

We, the undersigned, do hereby declare that we favor the abolition of all taxes now resting upon personal property and improvements made upon real estate, and the raising of the revenue requisite for national, state, county and municipal purposes by a tax placed upon land values alone.

We favor the formation of a league for the dissemination of this doctrine, and we hereby associate ourselves into a league for this purpose.

The meeting was called to order in the hall of the St. Mary’s cathedral gymnasium, by M. H. McDowell, president of the gymnasium, who was elected president of the league. Short speeches were also made by Messrs. McDowell, Johnstone, Cohn, Delaney and Brown. The subject of free trade afforded a topic for discussion between Mr. Isador Katzenberger and Mr. Brown, which the audience followed with close attention.

It was resolved to hold meetings in Gymnasium hall, which has been kindly tendered by the president every second and fourth Monday in the month. All those interested in the political questions of the day, tariff and free trade, as well as those seeking information about the single tax, are cordially invited to attend. The hall is at No. 265 Alabama street.

R. G. BROWN, Sec.

The Outgrowth of a System of Legalized Robbery on a Grand Scale.

Philadelphia Star.

The tramp nuisance is under full head once more. The country is full of them, and naturally thefts and outrages of various kinds are frequent. They have now, in many places, formed camps, from which they forage for provender upon the neighboring hencoops and spring houses, not unfrequently going still further, by plundering houses and loaded railway cars.

p. 6, col. 6

GERMAN TRACTS.

No. 41. The Syracuse Platform. 2 pages.

No. 42. “First Principles.” Henry George. 4 pages.

No. 43. “Socialism—Its Truth and Its Error.” Henry George. 4 pages.

No. 46. “Taxing Land Values.” Henry George. 8 pages.

No. 47. “It is the Law of Christ.” Rev. S. H. Spencer of Henry, Ill. 4 pages.

No. 48. “The Case Plainly Stated.” H. F. Ring. 8 pages.

No. 50. “Progress and Poverty.” Henry George.

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

No. 53. “Sailors’ Snug Harbor.” Wm. T. Croasdale. 12 pages.

SWEDISH.

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

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Address HENRY GEORGE,

12 Union square, New York city.

WHAT IS PROTECTION?

Now what is “protection?” It is a system of taxes levied on imports for the purpose of increasing the price of certain commodities in our own country so that the home producers of such commodities can get higher prices for what they sell to their own fellow countrymen.

This is all there is to “protection.” Protection can’t enable any American producer to get higher prices for what he sells to people of other countries, and no duty is protective unless it so increases prices as to enable some one to get more from his fellow citizens than he could without protection. How “protection” may thus benefit some people is perfectly clear. But how can it benefit the whole people? That it may increase the profits of the manufacturer, or the income of the owner of timber or mineral land, is plain. But how can it increase wages? “Protection” raises the price of commodities. That may be to the advantage of those who buy labor and sell commodities. But how can it be to the advantage of those who sell labor and buy commodities?

Never mind the confused and confusing claims that are put forth for protection until you can see how it can do what is claimed for it.

Ask yourselves what protection is and how it operates, and you will see that the only way it can benefit any one, or by “encouraging” him [giving?] him power to encourage or benefit any one else, is by enabling him to get from [his?] fellow citizens more than he could otherwise get. This is the essence of protection; and if it has any stimulating or beneficial effect it must be through this. The protective effect of any protective duty is precisely that of a subsidy paid by the government to some people out of taxes levied on the whole people. The only difference is that in what is called the subsidy system the government tax gatherers would collect the tax from the whole people and pay it over to some people, and in what is called the protective system the government tax gatherers only collect a tax on foreign goods so as to “protect” the favored people, while they for themselves collect taxes on their fellow citizens in increased prices.

WHAT PROTECTION DOES FOR WORKINGMEN.

Now if workmen get any benefit from what is thus called protection, it can only be through the protected employers and by their favor. The protective system gives nothing whatever to labor. It gives only to the employers of labor, and only to some of them. And these some are necessarily comparatively few. It is utterly impossible that p. 7, col. 2 any protective tariff can “protect” the largest industries of any country, for a duty can only have a protective effect when levied upon goods some of which are produced in the country and some of which are imported or would be imported if it were not for the duty. Import duties cannot be levied upon things of which we produce enough for ourselves and consequently do not import, or of which we produce more than enough for ourselves and consequently export; and if levied upon things we do not produce and must import or go without, they can have no protective effect. In every country, therefore, the protected industries can only be those in which but a small part of the labor of that country is employed. In this country, out of over twenty millions of laborers of one sort or another, those employed in the protected industries do not amount to more than 1,500,000, and these industries, it is to be observed, are those in which large capital is required and it is impossible for the mere laborer to employ himself.

Now, would it be possible by levying a general tax (especially a tax which, like all protective taxes, bears on the poor far more heavily than on the rich, on the laborer far more heavily than on the capitalist) and paying out the proceeds directly to the laborers engaged in certain industries, to raise wages, or even to raise wages in those industries? Every one who thinks a moment will say no! If we were to levy such a tax and pay out the proceeds directly to glass workers or iron ore miners or the hands in cotton or woolen factories, in addition to what they get from their employers, the consequence would simply be that labor would be attracted from the unsubsidized to the subsidized employments, and wages would go down to a point that would give the subsidized laborers no more than they got without the subsidy!

But if such a plan of raising wages is utterly hopeless, what should we say of a plan to raise wages by levying a tax upon all laborers and giving the proceeds, not to all laborers, or even to some laborers, but only to some employers? This is the plan of protection. If protection can increase or maintain wages, it must be in this way. What protective duties actually do is to increase the profits of certain employers—to allow them to collect a tax from their fellow citizens without any stipulation as to how they shall spend it. To suppose that wages can be increased in this way is to suppose, in the first place, that these protected employers voluntarily give up their increased profits to their workmen, and to suppose, in the second place, that the increase of wages which the benevolence of the protected employers thus causes in industries which at the best employ not more than 1,500,000 people can raise wages in occupations that employ 20,000,000 people!

PRODUCTION REDUCES WAGES^sic.

Observe also that the first step in this precious scheme of plunder which is called protection to American labor is really to reduce wages. Wages do not really consist of money. Money is the mere flux and counter of exchanges. What the man who works for wages really works for are commodities and services for which he pays with the money he receives in wages. Necessarily, therefore, to increase the price of the commodities he must buy with his money wages is to decrease his real wages. For instance, a good many of the highly protected American laborers in the state of Pennsylvania (as in some other states) are compelled by their benevolent protectionist employers to make their purchases in what the highly protected American laborers call “pluck-me stores.” In fact, it is through these pluck-me stores that these highly protected and prosperous American workingmen get their wages, as the pluck-me bill is deducted from what is coming to them as wages before any money is turned over to them on pay days; and many of them being kept constantly in debt, hardly see a dollar from one year’s end to another. Now, it is evident that if one of these employers adds a dollar to the prices his men have to pay for the goods they must buy in his “pluck-me,” he just effectually cuts down^sic their real earnings as though he reduced their wages by a dollar. And so it is evident that the protective taxes which we impose for the purpose of increasing the prices of commodities must in the same way operate to reduce the real wages of labor. Therefore the protective scheme for raising wages fully stated is simply this: Wages generally are in the first place reduced by taxes which increase the price of certain commodities, in order that a comparatively few employers who profit by this increase in the price of what they have to sell may benevolently increase the wages of their employes, and that this benevolent raising of wages in some occupations may cause the raising of wages in all occupations!

Is it not time that American workingmen were done with such a preposterous scheme as this? There is one sense, and one sense alone, in which protection may raise wages. When real wages are low enough, it may to some extent raise nominal wages. If the protected Pennsylvania employer were to keep on raising the prices in his workmen’s “protected home market,” the pluck-me store, he would come to a point where their nominal wages would not enable them to get enough food and clothing to support life, and where, consequently, he would be forced to increase their nominal wages in order to prevent their removal or starvation. In this way protection, like a depreciation of currency, may sometimes increase nominal wages. But it can never increase real wages. Whomsoever protection may benefit—an analysis will show, that it cannot even benefit the employing capitalists whom it assumes to benefit, unless they are also protected from home competition by some sort of a monopoly—it cannot benefit the laborer. It is to the laborer a delusion and a fraud—a scheme of barefaced plunder that adds insult to injury; that first robs him, and then tells him to get down on his knees and thank his robber!

AN UN-AMERICAN SYSTEM.

The impudent pretense that what is called protection is protection to labor is peculiar to the United States, and an afterthought here. When this utterly un-American system of robbing the many for the benefit of the few was introduced into this country, it was not pretended that it was to protect labor or to compensate for high wages. It was asked for the protection of capital—to give capitalists a bonus—so that here, where interest was high, they could engage in the same sort of manufacturing businesses as in Europe, where interest was low. It was asked for the “protection of infant industries”—to give them artificial support for a few years, when, it was then claimed, they could stand alone without any more protection.

But men who once secure the enactment of laws to enable them to take the earnings of others never want an excuse for demanding the continuance of the privilege. Now that United States three per cent bonds are at a premium, and the great protected industries have become very industrial giants, it would be only ridiculous to talk of protecting “infant industries.” So we are now told that protection is “protection for labor,” and is made necessary by our higher wages. In fact, we are now told that it is because of protection that wages are so high and the country so prosperous.

LABOR NEEDS NO PROTECTION.

The pretense is as hollow and insulting as p. 7, col. 3 the pretense of the slave owners that slavery was for the protection of the slave. Special privilege needs protection, and monopoly needs protection, and all legalized systems of robbery that enable men who do no labor to grow rich by appropriating the earnings of those who do labor need protection. But what is labor, that it should need protection? What is labor, that votes should have to be bought and coerced, and lobbyists maintained, and congressmen interested, and newspapers subsidized, and our coasts and borders lined with seizers and searchers and spies and informers and tax gatherers, to keep it from falling to pauperism? Is not labor the producer of all wealth? Is it not labor that feeds all, clothes all, shelters all, and pays for all? Is not labor the one thing that can take care of itself; that requires but access to the raw materials of nature to bring forth all that man’s needs require? What benevolent capitalist drew a tariff wall around Adam to enable him to get a living and bring up a family? Whatever else may need protection, labor needs no protection. What labor needs is freedom! Not the keeping up of restrictions and the perpetuation of monopolies, but the tearing of them down.

Who are these benevolent individuals, so anxious to protect the poor, helpless workingman, so fearful lest American labor may fall to the level of “the pauper labor of Europe?” The coal barons and the factory lords, the iron and steel combinations, the lumber ring, and the thousand trusts that, having secured the imposition of duties to keep out foreign productions, band themselves together to limit home production and to screw down the wages of their workmen. And are not these men who are so anxious, as they say, to protect you from the competition of “foreign pauper labor” the very men who are most ready to avail themselves of foreign labor?

Do you know of any protected employer, no matter how many millions he may have made out of the tariff, who pays any higher wages to labor than he has to? Is it not true that in all the protected industries wages are, if anything, lower than in the unprotected industries? Is it not true that in all the protected industries workmen have been compelled to band themselves together to protect themselves; and that these protected industries are the industries notable above all others for their strikes, their lock outs, the bitter and ofttimes disastrous industrial wars that labor is compelled to wage to prevent being crowded to starvation rates? Are these the men whose protection you need?

It is impossible for me in a brief article like this to go over all the claims and expose all the fallacies of protection. That I have already done, in anticipation of the coming before the people of this question, in a little book entitled “Protection or Free Trade?” in which I have shown the full relations of the tariff question to the labor question. All I want here to do is to urge every American workingman to think over the matter for himself, and to decide whether what is called “protection” is or is not in the interests of the men who earn their daily bread by their daily labor.

IF PROTECTION IS GOOD, WE SHOULD HAVE MORE OF IT.

For if, as protectionists tell us, our country is so prosperous and wages are so high because of the protection we already have, then we certainly ought to bend all our efforts to get more protection. However prosperous this country may be when viewed through the rose colored spectacles ot^sicsicsic the millionaire, and however high wages may be from the standpoint of those who think that the natural wages of labor are only enough to keep soul and body together, there will be no dispute among workingmen that this country is not prosperous enough and wages not high enough. Whoever may be satisfied with things as they are, the great mass of American citizens who work for a living are not satisfied and ought not to be satisfied. Monstrous fortunes are rolling up here faster than they ever did in the world before; but the great body of the American people get but a poor hand-to-mouth living, and find year after year passing without anything laid by for a rainy day. Our rich men astonish the rich men of Europe by their lavish expenditure, and the daughters of our millionaires are sought in marriage by European aristocrats of the bluest blood; but the tramp is known from the Atlantic to the Pacific; the proportion of our people who are maintained by charity, the proportion who are confined in prisons and lunatic asylumns, the proportion ot our women and children who must go to work, is steadily increasing. And the proportion of men who, starting with nothing but their ability to labor, can become their own employers, or can hope out of the earnings of their labor to maintain a family and put by a competence for old age, is steadily diminishing. “Statisticians” may pile up figures to prove to the American workingman how much better off he is than he used to be, and the editors of protection papers may picture the poverty of European workingmen in the darkest colors to show him how proud and happy and contented he ought to be. But the labor organizations, the strikes, the bitter unrest with which the whole industrial mass is seething, show that he is not contented. If protection gives prosperity, if protection raises wages, then in heaven’s name let us demand more protection, even though we utterly destroy all foreign commerce and put a line of custom houses between every state, and shut in our rich men so that they cannot go to Europe and spend their money on foreign paupers as Mr. Blaine is doing. But if it does not—then let us sweep away what protection we have. Let us raise the banner of equal rights, and try the way of freedom!

WHY WAGES ARE HIGHER IN AMERICA.

It is not protection that has made wages higher here than in Europe. If protection could make wages high, why has it not made wages high in Germany and Italy and Spain and Mexico? Why did it not make wages high in England when it was in full force there? Wages were higher in the United States than in Europe before we had any protection; and if they have on the whole remained higher, it is in spite of protection. Our higher wages are because of our cheaper land—because labor can more readily obtain access to the natural materials and opportunities of labor. The secret of our prosperity, our rapid growth, our better conditions of labor, is simply that we have had the temperate zone of a vast and virgin continent to overrun, and that it has taken a long while for monopoly to fence it in. As it is gradually fenced in, as the tribute that labor must pay to monopoly for the use of land becomes higher and higher, so must our social conditions, tariff or no tariff, approximate to the social conditions of Europe.

WHAT LABOR NEEDS.

To give labor full freedom; to make wages what they ought to be, the full earnings of labor; to secure work for all, and leisure for all, and abundance for all; to enable all to enjoy the advantages and blessings of an advancing civilization—we must break down all monopolies and destroy all special privileges.

The rejection of protection and the abolition of the tariff will not of itself accomplish this, but it will be a long step toward it—a step that must necessarily be taken if labor is to be emancipated and industrial slavery p. 7, col. 4 abolished. Until the workingmen of the United States get over the degrading superstition of protection they must be divided and helpless. But when they once realize the true dignity of labor, once see that the good of all can only be gained by securing the equal rights of each, then they can unite, and then they will be irresistible.

And this is the question that you will be asked this year to answer by your votes. Are you for restriction or are you for freedom? Are you in favor of taxing the whole people for the benefit of a few capitalists, in the hope that they will give to their workmen some of the crumbs? or are you against all special privileges and in favor of equal rights to all?

To the man who thinks the matter over there can be no question as to what answer best accords with the interests of workingmen. It is possible for the few to become rich by taxing the many. But it is not possible for the many to become rich by taxing themselves to put the proceeds in the hands of the few.

Labor cannot be hurt by freedom. The only thing that can be hurt by freedom is monopoly. And monopoly means the robbery of labor. What labor needs is freedom, not protection; justice, not charity; equal rights for all, not special privileges for some.

HENRY GEORGE.

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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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 advooate^sic 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, JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY, SOULE SMITH (“Falcon”), GERTRUDE GARRISON,

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.

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p. 7, col. 5

PROGRESS AND POVERTY,

An Inquiry Into the Cause of Industrial Depression and of Increase of Want With Increase ot 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 Maithusian^sic 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.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS.

BY HENRY GEORGE.

342 pages.

CONTENTS:

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

PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE?

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

BY HENRY GEORGE.

CONTENTS:

I. Introductory. II. Clearing ground. III. Of method. IV. Protection as a 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 XV. Of advantages and disadvantages as reasons for protection. XVI. The Development of manufactures. XVII. Protection and producers. XVIII. Effect of protection on American industry. XIX. Protection and wages. XX. The abolition of protection. XXI. Inadequacy of the free trade argument. XXII. The Real Weakness of Free Trade. XXIII. The Real Strength of Protection. XXIV. The Paradox. XXV. The Robber that Takes All that is Left. XXVI. True Free Trade. XXVII. The Lion in the Way. XXVIII. Free Trade and Socialism. XXIX. Practical Politics. XXX. Conclusion.

THE LAND QUESTION.

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

BY HENRY GEORGE.

87 pages.

PROPERTY IN LAND.

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

77 pages.

FORTSCHRITT AND ARMUTH^sic.

(Progress and Poverty in German.) TRANSLATION OF C. D. F. GUTSCHOW.

430 pages.

PRICE LIST.

Progress and Poverty, paper ………. $ 35 ” ” cloth ………. 1 00^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? 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. 6

THE TRUTH ABOUT TRISTREM VARICK.

By Edgar Saltus, author of “Mr. Incoul’s Misadventure,” etc.

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In this novel Mr. Saltus has treated a subject hitherto unexploited in fiction. The scene is Fifth avenue, the action emotional, the plot a surprise. “There is,” some one has said, “as much mud in the upper classes as in the lower; only in the former it is gilded.” This aphorism might serve as epigraph to “Tristrem Varick.”

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By Mrs. Miles H. McNamara.

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THE QUESTION OF THE DAY.

ANTI-POVERTY AND PROGRESS.

By Sister M. Frances Clare (The Nun of Kenmare.)

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By W. E. Curtis.

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CURRENT THOUGHT.

In August last Dr. Howard Crosby published in the Forum an article under the title, “The Forgotten Cause of Poverty,” in which he asserted “that the tap root of poverty among us is improvidence,” and stated, after careful calculation, that a citizen of New York ought to be able to pay house rent and support a wife and family on a total expenditure of $350 a year.

Apparently Dr. Crosby has of late seen a new light on the poverty question, since he now announces that a man with a capital of $100,000 “needs all his income to live with the ordinary comforts of life.” He makes this statement in an article entitled “The Haste to be Rich,” which appears in the June issue of the Forum.

The object of Dr. Crosby’s earlier essay, referred to above, was to inculcate the duty of accumulating wealth by the practice of the strictest abstinence—an abstinence which should involve the repression of all impulses. however natural and praiseworthy, whose gratification might entail the spending of money. The American citizen beginning life with no other heritage than the equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, was advised for the first thirty years of his manhood to subordinate everything else to the saving of money, in order that by the time he reached the threshold of old age, he might be able, out of his savings, to purchase that which, in ruder and less wealthy communities, is considered the first essential of existence—a decent dwelling place for himself and family. The present essay, on the contrary, sets forth the evils of too keen seeking after wealth, and warns the reader of the inevitable moral degradation which results from making money getting the chief object of existence.

Dr. Crosby begins his article with an eloquent definition of happiness:

Happiness is contentment with surroundings, not the creature of surroundings. Its root is in the mind, not without. So all that my neighbor and half the world, who began by differentiating palace happiness from cottage happiness, and then stepped down to making the palace rather than the cottage the creator of happiness, now can say is that contentment has a better soil to flourish in when in a palace than when in a cottage. They have to grant that cottage happiness is as good as palace happiness, and that in each case there is contentment with surroundings; but they affirm that this contentment is better nurtured in a palace, and is more stable there. But are kings and dukes the happiest of men? History seems rather to make their woes conspicuous. Responsibilities produce risks. The higher you mount, a slip brings the greater fall. Moreover, where cares multiply anxieties intrude. We must not ignore all this because we see the prince pass by with a crown on his head and a retinue at his heels. It is an ignorant proletariat that looks up to royalty, and fails to see the human soul with its weakness under the velvet robes.

Punch printed a picture a year or so ago which was thought very funny. A prosperous looking rector of the church of England, taking his walks abroad, encounters a blear eyed, palsied, half naked wretch of a parishioner, who pours into his ears a dismal tale of poverty and suffering. “Yes, my poor fellow,” says the rector, sympathizingly; “you have a great deal to bear. But remember, the rich have their troubles, too. Now, I daresay you have no idea of the difficulty of finding an investment which combines adequate security with a decent rate of interest.” Dr. Crosby reminds us somewhat of that rector. All that he says about the misery that riches entail on their possessor is perfectly true—so is what he says about the virtue of contentment. But to the vast majority of American citizens his words convey no more meaning than would the statement of a proposition in the higher mathematics. Men whose lives are passed. as are the lives of most Americans, in a constant struggle with actual or possible poverty, are of necessity deaf to arguments of this description. They listen, and they simply don’t believe. They cannot believe. As soon expect a boat load of starving sailors to have a realizing sense of the evil results of over eating.

Another evil in the gold hunt is that which is produced on the community. We have seen how it shrivels the man who hunts. Now let us see how it harms the public. The healthiest form of human society is where the many are equally independent in their management of their affairs, where professions and trades are represented by individual thinking minds, and where those engaged in any one branch of industry stand on a level with one another. This condition of things promotes invention, activity, interest, manliness, and good citizenship. Now, the gold hunt system is directly antagonistic to all this. It seeks to destroy the many independent tradesmen, and to make them servants in a gigantic monopoly. The happy homes of freemen become the pinched quarters of serfs. The lords of trade have their hundreds and thousands of humble subordinates, over whom they rule, often with a rod of iron. They may be turned away from work and wages at any moment, from any whim of the selfish employer. Hence, through fear of this they lose their manhood, and dare not assert even a decision of their conscience. There is no more melancholy sight to my eyes than that which I so often see nowadays, the former happy possessor of a shop or store, who has lived comfortably and with the true nobility of a citizen, and whose family has felt the dignity of the home, now made a clerk and drudge in a huge establishment, that by its relentless use of millions has undermined and overthrown all the independent stores of a large district, while his family are thrust into the unsavory communism of a tenement house, and lose all the delicate refinements of a quiet home. It is easy to say that this is but the natural law of trade. So to devour men is the natural law of tigers. But this truth will not reconcile us to the process. If we are to stop men from stealing directly, we can stop them from stealing indirectly. If natural law works evil to the community, we are to make statute law, which will act as supernatural law, and control the offensive principle.

What amazing proposition is this? If natural law—that is, the law of God—works evil we poor finite creatures must improve on the work of the All Wise and make laws which shall counteract His evil ordinances! Truly the Rev. Howard Crosby doesn’t lack confidence in his own wisdom, small as is his faith in the deity whose altar he serves! Does Dr. Crosby believe that God meant men to live in tenement houses—that He meant “the happy homes of freemen” to become “the pinched quarters of serfs?”—that He meant men to “lose their manhood” and become so cowed that they “dare not assert even a decision of their consciences?” Surely not. If he will but think a moment he will acknowledge that all the misery he so deplores must spring from disobedience to natural law, and cannot possibly have formed part of the scheme of creation. And once seeing this he will see that what we have to do is, not to try to frame better laws than

p. 8, col. 2 God’s, but to discover wherein we have already contravened them. And once started on that line of investigation Dr. Crosby will not have far to go.

Indeed, how close to his vision lies the truth, if he would but raise his eyes and look toward it, is evident when Dr. Crosby tells us what remedy he proposes:

Unless we wish our old social equality destroyed and a system of practical serfdom to take its place, we must put a limit to the acts of greed, and so preserve the independence of our citizens. If the liberties of the multitude are to be guarded, the liberty of one man to buy up all the land or all the dry goods in the market must be checked. Capital must be circumscribed, except under special circumstances, when special conditions should be made for the protection of the community.

Is there no difference between buying up all the land and buying up all the dry goods?—no difference between owning all the wheat and owning all the farms!—no difference between owning all the fish in the market and owning all the seas and rivers from which alone fish can be produced? Dr. Crosby does not see any. But that is only because he will not look.

Such homilies as Dr. Crosby’s are as old as history. How long is it since Solomon exclaimed: ’Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me; lest I be full and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor and steal?” It is the poverty that causes the stealing—the dread of remaining poor, or becoming poor, that induces “the haste to be rich” which Dr. Crosby objurgates. If poverty be, as we believe, a social disease to be eradicated, the lust for wealth will vanish with it. But if it be, as Dr. Crosby seems to think, a divine ordinance, we must just make the best of it, and submit to see the “gold hunt” go on unintermittently. Dr. Crosby’s socialistic remedies can do nothing to help us.

Thomas A. Edison gives in the North American Review for June an account of his now perfected phonograph, which is well worth reading. Referring to an article in the North American of May-June, 1878, in which the possibilities of the then crude invention were foreshadowed, he says:

In my article ten years ago, I enumerated among the uses to which the phonograph would be applied: 1. Letter writing and all kinds of dictation without the aid of a stenographer. 2. Phonographic books, which would speak to blind people without effort on their part. 3. The teaching of elocution. 4. Reproduction of music. 5. The “family record”—a registry of sayings, reminiscences, etc., by members of a family, in their own voices, and of the last words of dying persons. 6. Music boxes and toys. 7. Clocks that should announce in articulate speech the time for going home, going to meals, etc. 8. The preservation of languages, by exact reproduction of the manner of pronouncing. 9. Educational purposes; such as preserving the explanations made by a teacher, so that the pupil can refer to them at any moment, and spelling or other lessons placed upon the phonograph for convenience in committing to memory. 10. Connection with the telephone, so as to make that invention an auxiliary in the transmission of permanent and invaluable records, instead of being the recipient of momentary and fleeting communications.

Every one of these uses the perfected phonograph is now ready to carry out. I may add that, through the facility with which it stores up and reproduces music of all sorts, or whistling and recitations, it can be employed to furnish constant amusement to invalids, or to social assemblies, at receptions, dinners, etc. Any one sitting in his room alone may order an assorted supply of wax cylinders inscribed with songs, poems, piano or violin music, short stories, anecdotes, or direct pieces, and, by putting them on his phonograph, he can listen to them as orginally^sic sung or recited by authors, vocalists and actors, or elocutionists. The variety of entertainment he thus commands, at trifling expense and without moving from his chair, is practically unlimited. Music by a band, in fact whole operas, can be stored up on the cylinders, and the voice of Patti singing in England can thus be heard again on this side the ocean, or preserved for future generations. On four cylinders eight inches long, with a diameter of five, I can put the whole of “Nicholas Nickleby” in phonogram form. In teaching the correct pronunciation of English, and especially of foreign languages, the phonograph as it stands seems to be beyond comparison, for no system of phonetic spelling can convey to the pupil the pronunciation of a good English, French, German or Spanish speaker so well as a machine that reproduces his utterances even more exactly than a human imitator could.

. . Authors can register their fleeting ideas and brief notes on the phonograph at any hour of the day or night, without waiting to find pen, ink, or paper, and in much less time than it would take to write out even the shortest memoranda. They can also publish their novels or essays exclusively in phonogram form, so as to talk to their readers personally; and in this way they can protect their works from being stolen by means of defective copyright laws. Musical composers, in improvising compositions, will be able to have them recorded instantaneously on the phonograph.

. . Two business men, conferring together, can talk into the recorder by means of a double transmitting tube, with perfect privacy and yet obtain upon the cylinder an unimpeachable transcript of their conversation in their own voices, with every break and pause, every hesitation or confident affirmation, every partial suggestion or particular explanation, infallibly set down in the wax. They can then have this conversation written out or typed by a secretary, for future reference; or can, if they prefer, have it multiple copied by our mechanical process. In this way, many misunderstandings may be avoided. Interesting philosophic or literary discussions and dialogues may be recorded in the same way. In fact, the phonograph will do, and does at this moment accomplish, the same thing in respect of conversation which instantaneous photography does for moving objects; that is, it will present whatever it records with a minute accuracy unattained by any other means.

The most skillful observers, listeners and realistic novelists, or even stenographers, cannot reproduce a conversation exactly as it occurred. The account they give is more or less generalized. But the phonograph receives, and then transmits to our ears again, every thing that was said—exactly as it was said—with the faultless fidelity of an instantaneous photograph. We shall now for the first time know what conversation really is; just as we have learned, only within a few years, through the instantaneous photograph, what attitudes are taken by the horse in motion.

Letters of introduction may be spoken on to a phonograph blank, without any of the formality of address and phraseology now customary, or the trouble of folding, enveloping and addressing a written communication. In fact, all correspondence will be greatly simplified and wisely abbreviated by the use of phonograms. A telephone subscriber can place at his telephone a phonogram which will announce to the exchange, whenever he is called up, that he has left the office and will return at a certain time. Similarly, one man calling at the office of another and not finding him, will talk into the phonograph anything he wishes to say. This saves the trouble of writing a note, and obviates the uncertainty of giving to clerk; office boy^sic or servant an oral message that may be forgotten or incorrectly delivered. Hotels and clubs will, naturally, find this function of the phonograph extremely serviceable; and their guests, or patrons, will avail themselves of phonograms constantly. The accuracy of interviews with newspaper reporters will also be determined, no doubt, by phonographic

p. 8, col. 3 > record. And travelers in vestibule trains will be glad to use phonograph blanks in place of letter paper and telegraph blanks, owing to the difficulty of writing while on a rapidly moving train. > > It must be borne in mind that I am not talking now of things which may be made possible in the future. I did my predicting ten years ago; and the functions above mentioned are those which the present perfected phonograph is able to fulfill at this moment.

So we move along, in this century of the centuries. Year by year the mist that marks and shrouds the limits of our knowledge is rolled farther back, and the impossibility of yesterday becomes the matter of course of to-day. With the marvelous forces of nature working obediently and tirelessly at our command—with a planet whose inexhaustible wealth of raw material we are but beginning to discover—what should hinder mankind from becoming indeed but a little lower than the angels, and banishing poverty and crime, like evil visions of the night? Nothing, save the permitting individuals to assert a right of exclusive control over the forces and materials which providence has so bounteously provided for the use of all our race.

A FRESH AIR DREAM.

Toronto Grip.

Billy Ragtag, a little boy who lives in a stuffy alleyway in one of our crowded districts, was told about the fresh air fund by the Kind Lady who distributes tracts in that vicinity. She explained how all the good people of Toronto are contributing money to send the poor little girls and boys who live in the midst of squalor to the beautiful green fields of the country for some holidays when the hot weather comes on. Need it be said little Billy was delighted—enraptured? He couldn’t think of anything else all that day, and when at night he crept into his miserable and dirty bed he kept thinking of it, and when he fell asleep he had a queer dream about it. He dreamed that, along with a great crowd of little pale faced children like himself, he was carried off in the grand railway train to a wonderful place, the like of which he had never seen. He thought it must be a fairy land, with its trees, and flowers, and green field, and bright blue sky.

“This,” said the Kind Lady who was in charge of the party, “is where you are to spend your holiday. Now, my little dears, take your fill of the delicious fresh air—it is free, free!” But just then a terrible voice bellowed out, “Not much it ain’t!” and a great big Demon came forth and stood in their path. “Where did you pick up such a cranky notion as that?” he went on, glaring fiercely at the Kind Lady. “The air free! ho, ho, ho!” and he laughed horribly. “Why,” said the Kind Lady, “do you mean to say it isn’t free? I never heard of such a thing before.” “Didn’t, hey? Where did you come from—the earth I’ll bet.” “Why, isn’t this the earth?” asked the Kind Lady, still more astonished. “I thought so,” mused the Demon. “No, ma’am, this is Saturn. The earth is off there,” and he pointed up at the sky. “I see how it is, and I’ll excuse you under the circumstances,” he proceeded, “but the sooner you go back the better it will be for you, as at present you are trespassing.” “But we’re on the public road, aren’t we?” the Kind Lady asked with alarm. “Yes, but you’re breathing air that belongs to Bungaloo Bugaloop, Esq. He owns thirty-six acres of it just here. Got it in a straight deed from the king, and I’m his overseer. Take my advice, now, and get on.” “But—but, I don’t understand it at all!” sighed the Kind Lady, looking very much puzzled, while all the frightened little boys and girls put their hands over their mouths, so that they shouldn’t steal the air. “No; coming from the earth, you wouldn’t,” said the Demon; “they’re a little slow on this planet, I believe. But what is there strange about it?” “Why, it seems such a queer place that anybody should claim to own the air, which the creator made for all,” said the Kind Lady. “But why not air as well as water?” queried the Demon. “Or water either,” she replied. “I never heard of anybody claiming to own water.” “Didn’t, hey?” said he, “why Mr. Bugaloop owns 2,380 acres of that ocean there,” and he pointed to the sea. “Dear, dear! I never heard of such a thing!” said the Kind Lady. “Air and water we regard as two elements of divine creation which are essential to human life, and not for a moment to be looked upon as private property. It is simply monstrous, sir!” and the Kind Lady looked indignant. “Well, what do you say about land; do you permit private property in that, which is just as much an essential element as air or water?” “Oh, land is different,” said the Kind Lady with some hesitation. “Not at all,” said the Demon. “Your landlords, what do they do? Simply charge you rent for using land. Here, our air lords charge us for the use of air, and our water lords for the use of water. Where’s the difference? But my time is precious. Air in this vicinity is at present bringing $25 per foot. If you like to buy enough for your picnic, you can go ahead; or I’ll rent you enough for the day at fifty cents per breath, counting sixty breaths to the minute.”

Just then little Billy woke up in a cold sweat, and began thinking out his dream. We hope some bigger people will think it out, too.

FREE TRADE AND THE SINGLE TAX.

STRAWS WHICH SHOW THE WIND.

No free franchises to anybody.—[Indianapolis News.

The Standard oil company is now making only $10.400,000^sic a year. The question then naturally arises, how much are the men who produce the oil making?—[Pittsburg Commercial-Gazette (protectionist).

Nothing that the last legislature has done will redound more certainly to its credit than will the passage of the Australian ballot bill, says the Lowell Citizen. It may have its weak spots, its deficiencies and its drawbacks, but it is infinitely superior to the plan it succeeds. The present plan is anything but satisfactory, and we hail the innovation as a change in the right direction.—[Lynn, Mass., Bee.

Our country, with unequaled natural opportunities and millions of willing toilers, during the last twenty years has produced an aggregate amount of wealth that is without a parallel in the history of mankind. If an equitable proportion of that wealth had remained in the possession of those who created it, our land would now hold the happiest and most prosperous commonalty the world ever saw.—[Farmers’ Voice, Chicago.

If the council acts wisely Indianapolis can secure a good round revenue and have greatly improved street car service at the same time. Three several companies are asking franchises. The people should impress the fact upon their agents in council that the franchises of the city belong to the citizens thereof, and are not to be given to any one, but only to be leased or rented on a good business basis for a right and reasonable return.—[Indianapolis News.

The single land tax of Henry George may never be accepted in this country as the correct system of taxation, but there is one thing certain, that when the people come to understand the land tax question better the speculator and land monopolist will have to let go. No man should be allowed to hold more land than he can use, and when all land now held for speculative purposes is taxed to its full value land syndicates will find it more profitable to invest their money in something else.—[Dayton, Ohio, Workman.

The workingmen of Detroit are beginning to take an interest in the street car franchises that a number of enterprising gentlemen are soliciting the board of aldermen for. This is a good sign. They are the ones most immediately interested, for not only will their money sustain the roads, but it is their privileges that the board of aldermen must grant. Now, what are the workingmen most interested in? Is it not cheap fares? Then why not give these franchises to those companies furnishing the best accommodations at the lowest rates?—[Detroit Evening News.

Agitators for ballot reform have scored another victory in the passage by the Massachusetts legislature of a bill embodying the Australian system of voting. This, it is hoped, will react so favorably to the advantage of the honest electors of Michigan that the next legislature will hasten to engraft in our laws the features of those bills to purify elections that have been before them the past two sessions. Michigan has been the pioneer in this movement, and it will be a pity for her not to have the benefit of her own efforts to abolish bribery, intimidation and corruption at the polls.—[Detroit Evening News.

[Advertisement] Mrs. Agatha Munier Atkins

MRS. AGATHA MUNIER[?] ATKINS WILL continue to receive pupils in solo singing and vocal sight reading at her residence. 223 E. [33d?] street, New York.

[Advertisement] Coogan Bros. 

[Illustration: engraving of the multi-storey Coogan Bros. store building, with horse-drawn wagons and pedestrians in the street in front. Signs on the building: “COOGAN BROTHERS” across the upper floor; further lettered bands on the facade [illegible]; shop-front sign: “125 COOGAN BRO’S 121”]

COOGAN BROS.,

CARPET AND FURNITURE DEALERS,

COR. BOWERY AND GRAND STS.

[Advertisement] Piso’s Remedy for Catarrh

[Display advertisement: the word CATARRH in large white letters on a black cross-shaped panel]

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

CATARRH

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

[Advertisement] Holland’s

HOLLAND’S COFFEE AND DINING ROOMS,

[135?] Fourth avenue,

Bet. 13th and 14th sts.

[Advertisement] James Rogan

JAMES ROGAN, PRINCIPAL AGENT for James Means’ $3 and $4 shoes. 226 BOWERY, near Prince street.

[Advertisement] The Single Tax (Union Printing Co.)

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

[Advertisement] Printing. Concord Co-operative Printing Company

PRINTING.

CONCORD CO-OPERATIVE PRINTING COMPANY (Ld.)

104 Elm street, cor. Canal, N. Y.

BOOK, JOB AND NEWSPAPER PRINTING.

p. 8, col. 6

[Advertisement] Unity Congregation

UNITY CONGREGATION.—MASONIC TEMPLE, Sixth avenue and Twenty-third street.

HUGH O. PENTOCOST^sic,

MINISTER.

SERVICES:

Sunday Morning, 11 o’clock.

Sermons published weekly in the Twentieth Century. 3c. a number. $1.00 a year. “What I Believe.” By Hugh O. Pentecost. 200 pages. Elegantly printed. Large type. Wide margin. Price 25c. Address, 56 Oriental st., Newark, N. J.

[Advertisement] George Wilson, Merchant Tailor

“THE APPAREL OFT PROCLAIMS THE MAN.”—Shakespeare.

Spoken three hundred years ago, is no less a fact to-day!

GEORGE WILSON,

MERCHANT TAILOR,

Formerly with Henry Poole, London,

Importer of Leading Novelties,

ENGLISH AND FRENCH CASSIMERES,

206 East Fourteenth street, New York.

P. S.—Send postal card and you will be waited on with samples at office or residence.

MISCELLANEOUS.

[Advertisement] The Keystone Watch Club Co.

[Illustrated advertisement in an ornamental border of ribbons bearing city names and agency addresses (top band: “NEW YORK … PHILADELPHIA …”; the rest [illegible]); engraving of an open-face pocket watch, the dial lettered “KEYSTONE WATCH CLUB CO. … NEW YORK PHILADA.” around a keystone emblem]

A Gold Watch For $38. That tells the TRUTH.

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

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

Keystone Dust-proof Watch

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

The Keystone Watch Club Co

926 Chestnut St., PHILADA., PA.

REFERENCES—Any Commercial Agency.

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

[Display advertisement: round stamp/trade-mark lettered “HAND MADE” and “C. M. M. P. A.”, beside display lettering]

Canned Goods WITH THIS STAMP [ON?] THE BOTTOM OF CANS ARE Free from Poison, AND ARE MADE BY ORGANIZED LABOR.

Trade-Mark.—Registered.

[Advertisement] The Great American Tea Company

[Display advertisement: T-shaped black panel lettered “THE GREAT AMERICAN T E A COMPANY”]

GOOD NEWS TO LADIES.

Greatest offer. Now’s your time to get orders for our celebrated Teas, Coffees and Baking Powder, and secure a beautiful Gold Band or Moss Rose China Tea Set, Dinner Set, Gold Band Moss Rose Toilet Set, Watch, Brass Lamp, Castor, or Webster’s Dictionary. For particulars address THE GREAT AMERICAN TEA CO., P. O. Box [289?]. 31 and 33 Vesey St., New York.

[Advertisement] Charles B. Schaidner, Photographer

CHARLES B. SCHAIDNER,

PHOTOGRAPHER.

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

Children’s Photographs by instantaneous process a specialty

[Notice] Harlem Single Tax Club

HARLEM SINGLE TAX CLUB.—The Harlem Single Tax Club has a vigorous organization, and holds weekly meetings at 347 West 125th street, on Tuesday evening, at 8:30 p. m.

[Notice] Chicago, Ill., April 6, 1888.—To Single Tax Advocates, Greeting

CHICAGO, ILL.. APRIL 6^sic, 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.

[Notice] Kansas State Lecturer

KANSAS STATE LECTURER.—THE undersigned state lecturer and member of the state central committee is now ready to respond to calls for work anywhere in the state of Kansas. Address Rev. W. M. GOODNER, box 353, Larned, Kan.

[Notice] Cleveland Land and Labor Club

REGULAR MEETINGS OF THE CLEVELAND land and labor club are held on Monday evenings at 8 o’clock, room 6, No. 56 Public square. Everyone is cordially invited to attend our meetings.

[Advertisement] Briggs’ Pianos

[Illustrated advertisement: engraving of an upright piano with a leaf spray beneath it; a ribbon/arrow lettered “SEND FOR CATALOGUE” pointing to the display lettering]

BRIGGS’ PIANOS

C. C. BRIGGS & Co.

5 APPLETON ST. BOSTON MASS.

MANUFACTURERS OF GRAND · SQUARE · & · UPRIGHT

PIANO FORTES

GRACEFUL DESIGNS · · SOLID CONSTRUCTION

MATCHLESS TONE · · BEAUTIFUL FINISH.