June 23, 1888 Vol. III, No. 25Whole No. 77

THE STANDARD

NO. 77—VOL. III, N[O. 25?] | NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JUNE 23, 1888. | PRICE FIVE CENTS

[Note: a printed subscriber mailing label, set at an angle, is pasted over the masthead rule, partly hiding the issue number at the end of “NO. 77—VOL. III, N…” and the first words of column 2. Label text: “104 Dr Walter / Mendelson 767[?] / 179 w 74th st”.]

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THE SINGLE TAX IN CHICAGO.

CHARITY ORGANIZATION.

OUTSPOKEN AGAINST INDIRECT TAXATION.

THE CHICAGO CONFERENCE.

PEN, PASTE AND SCISSORS.

The largest flour mill in the world will be established at Duluth. The capacity will be 6,000 barrels a day.

Word comes from Salt Lake City that the saints have bought 400,000 acres of land in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, and propose to establish there a polygamous colony of great proportions.

London has eight homes for poor working girls, at which breakfast, dinner and tea cost only a dollar a week, and a room not over a dollar more. They are said to be well managed and liberally supported by charitable people.

The lower classes of the Italian people continue to emigrate in enormous numbers, and the government is much alarmed. The number which left Genoa last year was 101.200^sic as against [52,852?] the previous year. Most of them go to South America.

A writer in a recent book about traveling in the east, telling of the slow pace and multitude of animals required in caravan traveling, makes the calculation that the Israelities^sic, when they went from Egypt under Moses, must have had a caravan at least two hundred leagues long and must have employed 6,000,000 camels.

Leprosy is said to be spreading rapidly. Since the extension of the French colonial possessions, soldiers, sailors, traders and missionaries have fallen victims to it in large numbers. Physicians in all countries are exhorted to study closely the fell disease, in order to find means of counteracting its ravages, for it has active focuses of infection in every part of the globe.

Telegraph poles are preserved in Norway by making an auger hole about two feet from the ground, in which four or five ounces of sulphate of copper in coarse crystals are placed and plugged in. The chemical is gradually absorbed by the wood until its whole outer surface turns of a greenish hue. The sulphate requires an occasional renewal and is said to be a perfect preservative.

Several of the French railway companies and other public bodies have resolved to have their printing done on green instead of white paper. The reason for the change is that they believe the combination of white paper with black characters endangers the eyesight of their work people. Black on green has always been recognized as a good combination, and many railway tickets are so printed.

The inspector for the Oppeln district reports that out of 24,818 persons employed in mines, furnaces, salt works and turf digging, 20,517 were males and 4,301 females, thirty-two per cent of the latter being employed by the zinc furnaces. Girls are employed day and night in bringing up iron ore, and the inspector thinks it unlikely that they will be replaced by machinery, because the girls are cheaper than machines.

The two sides of the face are not alike. As a rule, says a German professor, the want of symmetry is confined to the upper part of the face. The left half of the brain overweighs the right half; the nose leans a little to the right or to the left. The region of the right eye is usually slightly higher than that of the left eye, while the left eye is nearer the middle line of the countenance. The right ear is also higher, as a rule, than the left ear.

It is stated that there are more ducks in China than in all the world outside of it. They are kept on every farm, on the private roads and on all the lakes, rivers and smaller streams. There are many boats on each of which as many as 2.000^sic are kept. Their eggs constitute one of the most important articles of food. They are hatched in establishments fitted up for the purpose. Some of them turn out as many as 50,000 young ducks every year. Salted and smoked ducks are sold in all the towns, and many of them are exported to countries where Chinamen reside.

African teak wood is said to be so indestructible by wear or decay that vessels built of it have lasted one hundred years, to be then only broken up because of their poor sailing qualities, from faulty models. The wood, in fact, is one of the most remarkable known, on account of its very great weight, hardness and durability, its weight varying from forty-two to fifty-two pounds per cubic foot. It works easily, but on account of the large quantity of silex contained in it, the tools employed are quickly worn away. It also contains oil, which prevents spikes and other ironwork with which it comes in contact from rusting.

Mr. Arpad Haraszthy, in his opening address at the recent state-viticultural convention, estimated that there are now 150,000 acres planted in vines in California, and that 90 per cent of these are planted with the finest foreign varieties of grapes. They will not all be in full bearing for two years, when he places the product at 1,500,000 boxes of raisins, 40,000 tons of table grapes, 1,500,000 gallons of brandy, and 50,000,000 gallons of wine, the total value of the crop being, in his opinion, $16,300,000. He figures the value of the wine at 20 cents per gallon, of raisins at $2 per box, and of brandy at $1.40 per gallon, tax paid. The value of the land planted in vines^sic. Mr. Haraszthy considers to be $300 per acre, or $45,000,000. Improvements he places at $20,000,000 thus making a total capital of $65,000,000 invested in viticulture in California, which is an increase of $50,000,000 in the past seven years, when only 35,000 acres of land were supposed to be planted in vines.

Dynamite consists of some porus^sic absorbent mineral saturated with nitro-glycerine. Several substances have been tried as absorbents of the glycerine, but the most satisfactory is the kieselguhr,—an infusorial earth, composed of the silicious shells of extremely small vegetable organisms, and it is of this that Nobel’s dynamite is made. It absorbs about three times its weight of the glycerine, and resembles putty in appearance. Thus, a given quantity will contain seventy-five per cent of the real explosive, and its blasting power, compared with pure nitro-glycerine, is, of course, represented by the same ratio. In order to explode it, it is necessary to obtain the temperature of 360 degrees Fahrenheit. It freezes in the same way as glycerine, and when in this state must be carefully handled. Nitro glycerine^sic has an expansive force ten times that of an equal weight of powder.

WHERE ARE THOSE ACRES?

NEW YORK.—THE STANDARD of June 9 has this excerpt from the Portland, Ore., Oregonian;

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

The Oregonian is a reputable journal. It is the oldest paper in Portland. It has a reputation for truth and veracity. When I lived in Portland it was the leading daily, and earned a considerable reputation for the gallant fights it waged against the aggressions of monopoly—especially railroad monopoly. It was prudently managed by Henry L. Pittock, and ably edited by W. Lair Hill, assisted by the Moreland brothers and others. It is to be hoped that these gentlemen still conduct its affairs, for, if they do, they will be able to prove in detail the general assertion they have made. I first visited Oregon nineteen years ago, and again visited it ten years ago. On each visit I searched long and earnestly for some of the acres which the Oregonian now asserts can be had “just for the trouble of coming to get them.” I could not find them then, and I want to know where they are to be found now.

Where are those acres? Are they any where near Portland? Are they in any of the counties back of Portland? Are they any where near East Portland? That land was all taken up long enough before I ever saw Oregon. Are they to be found east of the Willamette river? That land was set aside until the railroad should be built, when the company would receive each alternate section of land twenty miles each side of the track, and the balance was to be sold to in tending^sic settlers at two dollars and a half an acre. Meantime all who settled on those government sections would do so at their own risk. But the land speculators were on hand, and somehow they got that land—that is, they got all that the railroad company didn’t get.

Are they to be found west of the Willamette river? Nearly all that land was taken out of the market, for the same reason as was that on the east side, and what was left got into the same hands.

Are they to be found in the Willamette valley at all? No! Then where are they to be found? Perhaps the Oregonian knows.

Are they to be found along the upper Columbia river, between the mouth of the Willamette and the Dalles, or the mouth of the Snake? I ask the Oregonian if all that land is not virtually in the hands of the great monopoly which controls all the means of transportation in that section of country.

Are they to be found in the Walla Walla country? Remember, now, the Oregonian says these acres are to be had “just for the trouble of coming to get them.”

Let us retrace our steps, for if we are not careful we will be crossing the line into British territory.

Are they to be found between the mouth of the Willamette and the mouth of the Columbia? The Northern Pacific railroad has a line of road running along the Washington territory bank of the Columbia for nearly the whole distance, and the alternate sections for forty miles each side of the track now belong to that corporation—forty miles back into Washington territory and forty miles back into the state of Oregon, while most of the odd sections have been grabbed by God only knows who—and the balance is hard indeed to find.

Are they to be found in what is known as the Lewis river country? I explored that section, and found it good; but when I went to the land office at Vancouver I found the plats had been taken away to Washington. “Reserved for the Northern Pacific,” the clerk told me.

Are they to be found in the Grand Ronde valley? That was an Indian reservation in my time; but I understand that lately the Indians have been removed and the valley opened for settlement. If that is true, it would be safe to wager that the same old gang of land grabbers got it and doled, or are doling, it out to victims of misplaced confidence at so much an acre.

Are they to be found along Puget sound—that magnificent inland sea, whose banks should be lined with teeming cities? That land was grabbed long ago by the lumber lords, and no man can set his foot on either bank without paying tribute.

Are they to be found east of the Cascade mountains? The cattle lords own that land.

Where are these acres that can be had “just for the trouble of coming to get them?”

I have it. There is the Columbia river bar—a long, narrow expanse of sand, twenty miles or more long, and some five miles wide, over which the white capped waters of old ocean break year in and year out. I know the place well. I have crossed it a number of times, and spent the best part of a day and night on a portion of it, called Sand island. It is studded with wrecks, including the bones of the steamship on which I made my involuntary stay. That must be the place. The land speculator and the corporate monopolies have passed that bar by in their search for new territory to grab.

Oregon and Washington territory is a garden spot. In the beautiful Willamette valley, and in the Columbia river region, and under the shadows of old Mount Hood, Rainer^sic and St. Helens, and along the magnificent Puget sound, is room for millions; but at all the entrances to this paradise stand the land grabber and monopolist. No free tickets there, despite the assertion of the Oregonian. Let any person whose eyes are turned to that country put money in his purse, for he will need it if he wants to get a foothold there; and despite what the Oregonian has said, there is no more use for a moneyless man in Oregon or Washington territory than there is right here in New York.

WM. McCABE.

A Democratic Candidate of the Right Sort.

The democrats of the Second district of Maine have nominated for congress Charles E. Allen of Cedar Grove. Mr. Allen was originally a printer, but is now a farmer and is a thorough free trader. In a letter on another matter to the editor of THE STANDARD he says of himself and his prospects:

I am a free trader, having first got the idea from William Lloyd Garrison, with whom I was acquainted. In Maine, the home of Blaine, free traders have up hill work. I have written much on the subject, and it has attracted attention and abuse. Of course it is a labor of love, and at times an expensive luxury. But I have made an impression.

Usually I have acted with the republicans, although no republican paper would publish my free trade articles, while the democratic ones did. When Cleveland’s last message appeared I avowed myself very strongly a Cleveland man, although as a Knight of Labor I had hoped for a new party. The largest democratic convention ever assembled in Maine nominated me—an avowed free trader—as candidate for congress from the Second district, now represented by Nelson Dingly^sic, jr. I at first regarded it as a forlorn hope, but now think I have a good fighting chance and shall work for it. Many

p. 3, col. 2 > of the farmers hereabouts have been frightened by such demagogic sheets as the New York Tribune into the idea that your land tax theory will take away their farms. As opportunity may offer I shall endeavor to correct this impression by the use, for instance, of such illustrations as the fact that a wild traet^sic of land is held at Bar Harbor for speculative purposes, taxed at a nominal rate, and valued at $60,000, while farms not far distant, worth not a tenth part of that amount, are taxed for all they will bear, with the buildings and stock taxed additionally.

I am circulating “Progress and Poverty,” “Social Problems,” and THE STANDARD, and hope to make people see just what you do say, even if they do not fully agree with you.

He Just Began to See the Light.

SAMARIA, Mich.—I find the following by Dr. David Livingstone, the African explorer and missionary, in an article entitled “The South African Boers and Slavery,” written somewhere between 1840 and 1845:

“The primitive charter contained the conditions that we should subdue and replenish the soil. The earth is the original inheritance of the entire species, for it is written, ‘The earth hath he given to the children of men.’ Such being the charter on which all primitive lands may be held, it seems plain that a man who subdues or cultivates a portion of the earth has a better right to it than he who only hunts over it. He bestows his labor upon it, and that is his property, viewed in the light of the divine and primitive charter. . . . No man has a right to perpetuate a wilderness in any part of the world if his brother man needs it for subsistence. The most humdrum predicant will admit our orthodoxy up to this point. But the doctrine has rather a wide application. It would strip Earl Grey of his broad acres around Alnwich^sic castle as well as Sandillah of the gorges and blood stained valleys of the Amatola. It would place in the very same category English and Irish landlords who evict their tenants in order to form deer parks, and the bushmen who endeavor to perpetuate a wilderness with their poisoned arrows.”

If Dr. Livingstone had spent as much time among the disinherited of his own country as he did among the disinherited of Africa he might now be held as an authority in the great cause for equal rights.

A. F. OSBORN.

A Word to the “Tribune.”

NEW YORK.—The Tribune has hit upon another of the many “facts” which have no sort of bearing on the tariff question, but which it declares ought to be an effective warning to this country against free trade. It says the average wages of the Dutch laborer are $3 for six days’ work of twelve hours each, and for “skilled labor of a very high class” not more than $4.50 to $5—scarcely more than carpenters and bricklayers receive here for one day’s work. “Holland,” says the Tribune, “enjoys the blessings of free trade,” and then it exclaims: “Do American workingmen hanker after blessings of this sort?”

The American workingmen do and will continue to hanker after better wages than they now enjoy under a high protective tariff, and a constantly increasing number of them hanker after satisfactory proof that it is possible to increase wages by a protective tariff or that a transition from a restricted to a free trade basis can possibly lower wages.

Concerning the Tribune’s “fact,” it should produce in the mind of every thoughtful American workingman an intense hankering after an explanation as to how the English workingmen manage to compete with their next door pauper neighbors, the Dutch, and still command the highest wages paid in Europe, without the aid of protection?

ONE OF THOSE HANKERERS.

Spreading the Free Trade Doctrine.

CALMAR, Iowa, June 9.—I have for four or five years learned a good deal about the tariff, but until I read THE STANDARD I had no clear understanding of the subject. I now believe in absolute free trade, and since I have become convinced of this I have convinced a number of other people by the use of THE STANDARD.

Thomas G. Shearman’s speech, published in the issue of May 18^sic, was the most effective tariff speech I have ever read. I have gained more sound information through your STANDARD during the short time I have read it in regard to true principles than from all I have read during the past ten years.

The men who have been fighting so long against monopoly should cast their votes for the man who is going in their direction. But if they stand aloof and go to pulling and hauling in various directions, they will certainly not do any good to themselves, while the two old parties would remain with the same relative strength as before.

O. J. KALLSTED.

Dr. Mendelson Approves the Postponement of the Chicago Conference.

NEW YORK, June 14.—Your remarks upon the inadvisability of holding the proposed conference in Chicago on July 4 breathe sound common sense, and ought, I think, to commend themselves to all; and as one who joined in urging Warren Worth Bailey to call the conference, I hereby as emphatically urge him to declare it postponed.

The eve of a great and bitter contest is indeed no time for calm and thoughtful and dispassionate deliberation, which is the only kind we ought to have, and the only kind which can ever accomplish any good. The air even now is highly charged with political electricity, and by July 4, when the republican politicians will have made their nominations, the tension will be so great that I venture to say no conference, let alone a political one, could be held without ending in a storm, which must necessarily generate more or less personal ill feeling—a consummation we are all devoutly anxious to avoid.

WALTER MENDELSON.

They Are Fast Learning How to Get the Grass.

NEW YORK.—When a boy I lived near a farm yard, which in summer was often used by drovers. I often noticed that cattle on being driven in would fight, and I wondered why it was. It seemed to me that they ought to be glad to get a chance to rest. I asked the drover why this was. He said they acted in that way because they were hungry, and that if they knew enough to open the gate and get into the pasture they would have become quiet.

I can’t help thinking sometimes that my comrades are something like those unfortunate cattle. I would that they could see the grass and open the gate.

GEO. SEWARD.

Carlyle’s Remark Related to Great Britain, but Would Fit America Just as Well.

Omaha World.

First Political Boss (lighting a fifty cent cigar)—Ha! ha! ha! ho! ho! ho! I heard terday of a feller named Carlyle what said America was composed of 60,000,000 people, mostly fools.

Second Political Boss (cracking a $5 bottle of champagne)—Ya! ya! ya! he! he! he! That’s so.

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THE “MAGIC CITY.”

Oregon and the Tariff Fight.

MONMOUTH, Ore., June 10.—The unusual republican majority given by Oregon in the late state election may to some appear to have been a repudiation of free trade ideas; but a careful attention to the discussion both public and private which engaged the entire voting population of the state prior to the election has convinced me that it was no free trade defeat, but that rather in so far as the debate involved honest free trade discussion we can claim to have made material advance. The argument which we free traders found ourselves beaten in was when we attempted to defend the half truth contained in the Mills tariff bill. Here we had to attempt the feat of making right and wrong form a harmonious whole. Especially did we find this to be the case when we endeavored to explain to the wool growers why they should give up their place in the national hot house, when the production of wool is being yearly made more expensive by increasing land values, while the manufacturer of woolen fabrics is still protected from the chill of the normal out door air of competition, even while he is the beneficiary of cheaper labor, mechanical inventions and a widening market.

Then again, the Mills bill unfortuunately^sic offers grounds for sectional prejudice which, once aroused, precludes further argument. These two ideas were kept so assiduously before the people that they in a great measure lost sight of any of the numerous beneficial results to come from the proposed tariff reform.

I think it is safe to say that almost all of us who voted the democratic ticket did so because we were able to see beyond the present incongruities of the proposed reform to the time when all inequalities should be removed by free trade, while I am certain that there were many who voted against us who did so simply because they were unable to see that there would be any result beyond what the bill carried on its face.

For these reasons I feel that the truth we are working for has suffered no rebuke, but that the defeat of the democrats in Oregon was but another evidence that the political cowardice of trying to make a half truth do better than the whole truth is always more certain to be defeated than even a brave advocacy of an entirely wrong position. The lesson has come early in the canvass, and I trust may not be lost on our friends who shall occupy the most important places in the contest.

To all who are at heart free traders I would say, try to defend no compromise measure. If you are a democrat and believe in free trade, say so unequivocally, and claim, as you are safe in claiming, that the rank and file of the democratic party are

p. 3, col. 4 free traders, regardless of any effort that may be made by a few of our office holders to stand on “safe ground.” Assume this position and give the young men of our country a truth inspired doctrine to defend, and you will find that all enthusiastic manhood did not die with the Lincoln campaigns. You will find that such a campaign, even if it results in one defeat, will be worth more to the permanent vitality of the democratic party than any victory gained by compromise of what all know are our real sentiments. You have but to read the inscription on the monument erected by the whig party to political cowardice to guide you in this emergency. Let Oregon’s defeat be the guide to the much more important victory in November.

NATHAN YOCUM.

Greetings From Australia.

CONDOBOLIN, Australia, April 14.—Although separated a long way from our brothers of the United States we in the colonies watch your work with anxious eyes and sympathetic hearts, and though we are unknown to you yet we know that however the battle goes it will not be lost for want of manly and thorough advocacy.

HUDSON C. SHAW.

BYROCK, N. S. W., April 18.—We here are deeply interested in every phase and development of the single tax movement in America. The recent split on the question of nominating a president will, I feel sure, do good. People will be started discussing the two lines of action. This will add zest to the discussion of the fiscal question and lead many to see the immense superiority of thorough free trade.

The plan I as an individual am adopting out here is to present all phases of the question in series of letters to as many papers as possible. Among others we have an able exponent of the single tax doctrine in Mr. John Farrell of Lithgow, the editor of the Australian Land Nationalizer, which has recently been formed into a company. It is the organ of the Land nationalization society of New South Wales. Numbers of other papers are taking up the question, which is also meeting with general discussion.

The progress of thought here is very fast. To illustrate:

At Wagga Wagga the other day the Murrumbridge^sic land tax association sent a deputation consisting of Messrs. Hunter, Halloran and Craven to wait upon the premier, Sir Henry Parks^sic, who said he always had been in favor of a land tax and promised to ask parliament to enact a measure embodying the principle.

W. GILFORD.

WELLINGTON, N. S. W., May.—Our newspaper, The Lithgow Enterprise, is doing very important work and will be published in Sydney ere long. Lithgow is a coal and iron town ’twixt Sydney and Wellington. Many provincial journals are now with us.

Our premier, Sir Henry Parkes, has crossed the Rubicon and has told parliament that he is going to place a tax on land values, which declaration was greeted with great cheering in the house.

THOMAS J. V. CAMPBEL^sic.

The Truth Stealing Upon Them Unperceived.

FORT DAVIS, Texas, June 9.—The condition of affairs out here is very encouraging. The majority of the voters of this county call themselves tariff reform democrats, but a surprising number of them are in reality free traders and advocates of the “single tax system.” Most of these people have caught the infection of reform.

As a rule, however, they do not understand that they hold the same opinions as Henry George, and for that matter scout that name. For instance. not long since^sic I was discussing some political question with a number of gentlemen in our town, and by chance I mentioned the name of Henry George. They were filled with astonishment. One influential gentleman remarked, “I thought you were too smart a man to be raked in by that crank.” I turned the subject in as pleasant way as possible, and then drew the crowd out into a general discussion of social and political questions. And to my surprise in that assemblage I found free traders, advocates of free land and “single tax” advocates, and nearly all of them were in favor of the government managing all businesses which are in their nature monopolies. These men had never read “Progress and Poverty,” but had often heard its author denounced.

THE STANDARD is awakening thought, and in that one word lies the poor man’s hope.

W. P. OVERBEY^sic.,

An Honor to Work in the Cause.

LONDON, Ontario, June 10.—Accept my thanks for the tracts you sent me. I feel it an honor to do what I can to help along the noble work for the emancipation of the masses from the thralldom of existing institutions, especially of private land ownership. The work is great, the opposition to the work great, but the truth contained in your works is greater and must prevail.

I have distributed a large number of tracts and they are creating a lively interest. I have joined sets of them in paper covers, six in each cover, and put them in our labor hall for the use of all the members of the organizations, which meet every night. By this means they will be read by all the members. Whatever you send I shall do my utmost to make them as effective as possible. In doing so I feel I am working for the good of humanity and doing what I can to hasten righteousness.

JOSEPH BRENT, 557 Bathurst street.

Let Us March On, One Step at a Time.

SAN FRANCISCO, June 10.—Allow me to say as an humble member, a high private in the army of the new crusade, that the stand taken by THE STANDARD as to the pending election meets with my cordial approval. We are for the abolition of all taxes upon industry, and especially of all taxes levied for the benefit of individuals or classes, not for that of the whole people. Let us then support for the present that party which proposes to reduce that most infamously unjust of all our taxes. the tariff^sic, which robs all who live under it. The only way we can ever reach the promised land of justice and equal rights is by patiently, persistently marching along one step at a time. If we wait until we can go all the way at one jump we will never get there.

W. G. SELLERS.

Reorganized in Memphis for Political Work.

MEMPHIS, Tenn., June 13.—Our land and labor club has returned its charter and has reorganized into a tariff reform club to advocate the abolition of the present ruinous war tariff and to support Cleveland and Thurman during the coming campaign. It is composed almost entirely of artisans, and we propose to devote our efforts mainly among the workingmen in this city and county. God speed the cause! Our motto is: “We have set our face toward the rising, pot^sic the setting, sun.”

R. G. BROWN.

Then Whom Does Our Tariff Benefit?

Philadelphia Textile Record (Protectionist).

Is not the American workman superior in acquired skill? It is a well known fact that the superior positions in American textile mills are largely held by men of foreign birth. This is so notorious that it will hardly be disputed.

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THE FIRST ESSENTIAL REFORM.

The action of the democratic party in the state of New York, in reference to the election reform bill lately passed by the New York legislature, ought to effectually damn it in that state and result in their defeat in the coming election. Especially if the party indorses Governor Hill.—[Marinette, Wis., Eagle.

Governor Hill has done what he was expected to do—vetoed the electoral reform bill. The people are getting quite well acquainted with him. His stated objections are trivial and such as amendments after a brief trial could easily remedy. His real objections need not be outlined.—[Springfield, Mass., Republican.

Carlyle was right. The “60,000,000 people, mostly fools,” are those who allow existing election methods, which create and support political bosses. If these “60,000,000 people, mostly fools,” would keep out of place and power those who perpetuate these methods they would not be called “mostly fools.”—[Albany Press and Knickerbocker.

The Spinola shirt collar is unusually high, but it was not high enough to conceal the general’s confusion yesterday when called on to explain why the governor vetoed the bill to prevent fraud at elections if it were true that Cleveland’s majority of 192,000 for governor had dwindled down to 1,200 for president because of the fraud practiced by republicans at the polls.—[Brooklyn Standard-Union.

The veto of the electoral reform bill will be severely criticised. It is so desirable to protect the ballot box from the frauds of both political parties and to limit the assessment of candidates that some faults in a law promising to accomplish such reforms would be cheerfully overlooked. While the governor forcibly sustains the unconstitutionality of the bill, it will be generally regretted that he did not leave the question to be tested in the courts.—[New York World.

Governor Hill seems determined, before relinquishing his office, to earn the detestation of all the honest people of his state. He is either bound to make his continuance in politics an absolute impossibility, or he puts an alarmingly low estimate on the intelligence and character of the New York democracy. His veto of the electoral reform bill makes him the obedient vassal of the professional election thieves of the slums of the metropolis. On the saloonists and the election thieves he must henceforth depend for his support; he has alienated more honorable citizens for good and all.—[Boston Journal.

Governor Hill’s veto of the Saxton electoral bill is in perfect accord with his course in the past, and is therefore not surprising. The measure provided for the printing and distribution of ballots at the public expense, and for other reforms of a non-partisan nature. Such a bill does not suit Hill’s crowd, and it had to die. The New York democracy wants no electoral reform. This will count in November, but not the way Hill hopes. He has done more to make New York republican than any other man or set of men in the state.—[Philadelphia North American.

The Massachusetts legislature has adjourned after the shortest session held for years, and the most important result of the session was the enactment of a reform ballot law, by which the Australian system of voting is established in Massachusetts. By this act old Massachusetts takes the lead in one of the greatest reforms of our day. Vote buying and intimidation at the polls has received a clip between the eyes in that state, and we hope to see Maine wake up to the importance of such a move in our next legislature. No one can object to a secret ballot, unless he wants the privilege of buying or intimidating voters.—[Lewiston, Me., Labor Advocate.

It is not worth while to spend time refuting Governor Hill’s reasons for vetoing the ballot reform bill. Nobody believes for a moment that these reasons furnish the true cause for his action. He has vetoed the bill because it was in the interest of honest and fair elections, free from the taint of bribery and political machine manipulation. If the governor had not been able to find a basis for the reasons he has given, he would have been equal to the emergency of finding others upon which to base a veto. We trust that the state is nearing the end of its experience with this cheap political trickster.—[New York Evening Post.

Governor Hill rounds out a discreditable year’s work by vetoing, for reasons that are no reasons, the Saxton electoral reform bill. This measure, as every intelligent man understands, was drawn solely with a view of conserving the public good at a point where, as experience had abundantly proved, there was pressing need of improvement. It provided for the printing and distribution of ballots at the public expense, for booths in which voters, with none to molest, could prepare their ballots, for the preservation of order about polling places, and for related reforms of a public spirited and non-partisan nature.—[New York Tribune.

First in importance of the bills which Governor Hill has vetoed is the ballot reform bill, and the governor has worked up a formidable array of objections, most of which we believe to be without substantial basis. The governor’s objections on the score of the power given to ballot clerks and the possibility of its abuse are utterly flimsy. The idea that these poll clerks would naturally be rascals, and that they would be able to vitiate the election through the simple powers and duties assigned to them is a bugbear conjured up to support a determination to defeat this reform. The governor’s other objections, and there are many of them, consist of a similar magnifying of imaginary difficulties.—[New York Times.

There is nothing in the governor’s objections clever enough to cover up the true motive of this shameful veto. He betrays his hypocrisy when he objects to the “formal recognition” which the bill gives “only to candidates nominated by the prescribed methods.” The boys will laugh when they read this sanctimonious prattle, and the governor will join them in the retirement of the executive mansion. The effect of the veto is to give to such politicians as Mr. Hill just one more year of prominence, for the bill will be passed again by the next legislature, and we cannot fancy another governor so friendly to the worst elements of the community as to withhold his signature from such salutary legislation.—[New York Mail and Express.

Everybody knows that Hill is not in favor of electoral reform, nor does the crowd that he trains with favor it. It is to their interest to open the doors as wide as possible to election frauds, and to make underhand tricks for the defeat of candidates who are objectionable to them, as easy as possible. It is to their interest to keep up the system of campaign assessments for the benefit of political strikers and blackmailers and unscrupulous bosses. It is to their interest to make politics expensive, so that only rich men of easy political virtue can accept nominations. They want money scattered around among the “boys,” and plenty of it, all the time. Hill is their tool, and, of course, he does their will.—[New York Press.

Governor Hill has now wiped up the calendar of good acts by vetoing the Saxton electoral reform bill and the Fassett bill to punish bribery at elections. Both these bills were for the purpose of guarding more securely the sacredness of the ballot box. The electoral reform bill aimed to purify elections by securing to the elector absolute privacy in voting, freedom from importunate solicitors of his franchise and corruptors of his citizenship. It provides for the printing and circulation of ballots at the public expense, so that it would be possible for the poor man as well as the rich to aspire to office; so that it need not, necessarily, cost a man a cent to be elected to any position to which his fellow citizens might call him. It was, in fact, a bill to protect American citizenship, American institutions, to carry out the American idea which has been corrupted by the heelers, bribers, and hangers-on about the polls; in short it was to insure a repre

p. 3, col. 6 sentative government in this state, a thing which exists too often only in form.—[Watertown Daily Times.

Of course, Governor Hill has refused to sign the electoral reform bill passed by the republican legislature of New York. Mr. Hill is the kind of governor who is loved by the democratic party for the sound and wholesome legislation which he defeats.—[St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

The excuses offered for the veto are lame and frivolous. By this act Governor Hill has confirmed his reputation as a professional politician and dispelled any notion that he might at the same time be a statesman. It is understood that he is slated for a renomination. Let the workers veto his election.—[Amsterdam, N. Y., Labor’s Stage.

The democratic organization of the state, by its delegates assembled in convention for the purpose of selecting delegates to the St. Louis convention to nominate Cleveland for president, emphatically denounced this measure and, as Herodias of old demanded the head of John the Baptist in a charger, so they demanded the killing of this measure at the hands of Governor Hill. Hill obeyed the demand and has thus driven another nail in Grover’s as well as in his own political coffin.—[Marinette, Wis., Eagle.

The Saxton bill aimed to purify elections; to make it possible for the poor man as well as the rich to aspire to offices of trust and profit; to enable the electors to express their preference by their votes, uninfluenced and unterrified by solicitors, strikers and heelers; to put an end to vote buying and make the count of the votes disclose the exact wishes of the voters. The untutored vote was protected^sic from imposition by the presence of a sworn clerk of his political faith to guide him in preparing his ticket. The demagogue tries to turn this provision of the bill into a violation of the secresy^sic of the ballot. He is the one who will not hesitate to deceive the voter who cannot read by putting into his hand a ticket which is not the one he wants.—[Utica Herald.

Governor Hill, as was probably anticipated, yesterday allowed the Saxton electoral reform bill to die by withholding his signature. The late democratic convention in New York city went out of its way to denounce the Saxton bill and to call on Governor Hill not to approve the measure. No democrat with so few tendencies toward independence as the governor possesses could be expected to withstand such a call, even conceding that he might be personally predisposed in favor of the measure—which he was not. Eleven of the best democrats in the assembly and two in the senate broke away from their party and acted with the republican majority; but their voices were not heard in the movement of the baser influences that controlled the New York convention.—[Albany Express.

Governor Hill of New York has placed himself squarely in opposition to reformed methods in the conduct of elections by his veto of the ballot bill passed by the late legislature, which was in effect the same as that which has become law in Massachusetts. The memorandum of objections filed with the disapproved bill can best be described as pettifogging. By this veto Governor Hill has perpetuated a system which in New York has become a scandal and a disgrace, and which threatens worse demoralization every year. There is no other place in which the chief reform proposed by this bill—the printing and distribution of ballots at public expense—is so urgently needed as in New York city, and the action of the governor in refusing the relief asked by friends of an honest ballot among all political parties can be regarded as nothing less than a calamity.—[Boston Post.

Governor Hill has vetoed the secret ballot bill at the demand of the democratic machine, as nearly every one supposed he would. The reason he gave was that it was unconstitutional, which was a question for the courts and not for him; but his real reason was that it opposed and would have rendered ineffective the work of the bosses and ruffians of his party, whom he has always been especially careful to please. There are hundreds of men in New York whose party work during campaign times are their chief source of income and these are the very ones upon whom the party of Governor Hill depends for its majority in that city. To have sanctioned this bill would have mortally offended these rogues and Hill would no longer have been the favorite of the machine. We wish we had confidence enough in the intelligence of New York workingmen to think that the veto would damn both the man and the party that forced him to take this action.—[Naugatuck, Conn., Agitator.

Single Tax Petitions.

Dear Sir: It is encouraging to see such a petition as the one in Texas with the names running up so rapidly.

Is there any reason that a petition like it would not make as good progress in New York, or even better?

I would like to have some of the blanks, and will forward $1 for the purpose of printing, etc.

JAMES HAMILTON, 638 Kosciusko street, Brooklyn, E. D.

There is no dout^sic that the Texas people have hit upon what is probably the very best means of extending single tax principles. Whether so much could be done in this way during the pending campaign as after it may be doubted, but it will do no harm and much good for our friends who can to work away^sic. The Single tax league, of which Benjamin Urner, 6 Harrison street, New York, is clerk, will furnish petitions to those who desire them.—ED. STANDARD.

Professor Garland’s Western Trip.

If in Madison, LaCrosse, Winona or any other town along the line of the Milwaukee and St. Paul route there is a single tax league, or a land and labor club, I shall be glad to stop off and help them as I go to Minneapolis.

I should like to hear from single tax men in LaCrosse especially, as I shall stop there for several days.

I would suggest to our friends everywhere that out-of-door meetings be held through the summer. Our organization at Boston, under the leadership of President Roche and our indefatigable Secretary Edwin M. White, has already begun a remarkable series of outdoor meetings on the common and in surrounding towns. Let friends everywhere hold weekly meetings in the public squares and they will not lack for eager listeners.

Organizations west of Chicago writing to me should address

HAMLIN GARLAND, 828 Opera House block, Chicago.

But the “Press” Says All Such Things Are Just as Cheap Here! How’s This?

Philadelphia Textile Record (Protectionist).

Attention has recently been called to the fact that the war department, desiring to purchase blankets for the army, placed the contract in England. By bringing in the foreign blankets free of duty (because the government was the importer) the department saved about sixty cents on each blanket. Now, this case appears to us to represent nearly the whole of the question at issue between the protectionists and the free traders.

Teaching the Editors.

The Junction City, Kan., Tribune, recently addressed a series of questions on the land tax doctrine to Rev. W. M. Goodner, who is the leading spirit in the single tax movement in that state. The answers which Mr. Goodner makes are published in full in a recent issue of the paper and the editors promise to give their opinions later. The discussion will doubtless do much good.

THE STANDARD.

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IT IS A FREE TRADE FIGHT.

When Governor Hill spoke for Tammany hall in ratification of the platform and nominations made at St. Louis, he said: “If it had been a free trade platform I would not be here!” In a few days the county democracy will hold their ratification meeting, and it remains to be seen whether the spokesmen of that branch of the local democracy will likewise endeavor to discredit the work of the party at large. But despite the effort of Tammany hall to face both ways, and the possibility that the county democracy may attempt the same hazardous feat, every day makes it more clear that the real leaders of the democratic party are irrevocably enlisted in the struggle against protection. Neither President Cleveland, nor the party platform, nor the party itself, is committed to the doctrine of free trade, and Daniel Dougherty might truly say even now that whoever asserts the contrary insults the intelligence of the party; but president, party, and platform are committed to opposition to the doctrine of protection, and whoever asserts the contrary insults the intelligence of all intelligent men.

Without referring to the president’s message, or to its indorsement by the democratic platform, or to the Mills bill, which was prepared to give effect to the recommendations of the message, or to the galaxy of democratic statesmen, who on economic rather than fiscal grounds have defended that bill in congress, or to the tide of opinion in the democratic party so obviously rising against the notion of protection by tariffs, it is safe to say that men like Congressmen Mills, McMillen, Breckinridge and Wilson are better exponents of the dominating thought of the party than is Governor Hill or the district managers and wire pulling statesmen of Tammany hall. And from the lips of these men comes no uncertain sound. All of them spoke at the Reform club dinner last Saturday, and none of them said either directly or by innuendo that if the platform were a free trade platform they would not have been there. The question of surplus and all tariff tinkering notions they subordinated or entirely ignored in favor of the one sentiment, that all unnecessary burdens between producer and consumer should be removed.

Said Mr. Mills: “If there is a higher plane where capital can be more securely invested, where it will yield better returns, where labor will be more largely employed and receive higher wages, then it is your duty to advance and occupy that higher altitude.” Referring to the contention of protectionists, “that only good results can be obtained from restricting commerce—building a sort of Chinese wall around the country,” he asked why we should not stimulate commerce by carrying out this principle “to the greatest point of protection and build it around every man,” so there could be no competition from foreign labor and “every man would be a Robinson Crusoe, monarch of all he surveys.” He left no room to infer that the party policy stops short of abolishing protective tariffs by declaring that “the policy of Mr. Cleveland and his administration is to relieve all unnecessary burdens which exist between the producer and the consumer;” and after laughing at the republican notion that America can send her products to Europe and expect cash in return he concluded in these words:

Here is the issue before you. We have got to teach our people the true position on this matter and show them that protection, instead of helping labor, destroys it. We must enlighten the minds of our laboring people on this question and show them that they should receive the [full?] value of their wages, instead of having it diverted to the extent of forty-seven per cent to swell the enormous surplus in the treasury. When we get them to understand this question as our fathers understood it when they broke down the barriers between our states, then there will be no difficulty in handling this matter and reducing taxation to a basis sufficient for the support of the government.

Mr. McMillen of Tennessee spoke to the same effect, and C. R. Beckinridge^sic of Arkansas cut off all suspicion that he might not have been present if the platform had been a free trade platform, when he said:

Only in the last five or six years have we seen the revival of a mediæval school of thinkers, backed now for the first time in modern times by a political party, who hold that war and the attendants and consequences of war do not retard the growth and prosperity of a country, that taxation is a good thing of itself, that exchange between nations is hurtful and bad, and that the higher the p. 4, col. 2 taxes and the more restrictive the embargoes upon trade the better it is for the people.

Mr. Wilson of West Virginia was no less emphatic than his associates. He described the efforts of the protectionists to make laborers believe that protection protects as the falsest of all the false pretenses that any system ever made for the purpose of blinding its followers, and pertinently asked whether the “protected” iron worker turns to the tariff to find out what wages he shall be paid, or is forced upon the labor market to get what that fixes the value of his work at, tariff or no tariff.

There can no longer be a doubt; and these speeches at the Reform club dinner are only one of many reasons for the belief that the democracy under its present leadership is bent upon destroying the system of protection that has so long fettered our commerce, fattened our monopolies, and promoted the impoverishment of our labor. It is so plain that all free traders, whatever may have been their party affiliations and however intense their hatred of the democratic machine and their contempt for its colorless policy in the past, are confronted with the imperative duty of lending to the national democratic party their hearty support in the approaching campaign. Republican success will be a temporary but disheartening defeat cf^sic the free trade principle, while democratic success will be a free trade victory, as full of promise to the white slave of to-day^sic as was the election of Lincoln to the black slave of a generation ago. On the result of this election may depend the leadership of one of the two established parties—whether it shall be guided by doctrinaires like Randall, whose policy of protection is in accord with the republican party and leads to state socialism, or by statesmen like Cleveland and Mills, whose policy antagonizes that of the republicans and leads to equality of rights and individual liberty. The free trader, especially the single tax free trader, who would cast aside such an opportunity of dividing the two great parties on issues relating to labor and wages, and of saturating the politics of the future with economic thought, is more an enemy of the principles he professes than is the avowed protectionist.

THE TARIFF REDUCTION BILL.

The committee of the whole of the house of representatives made some progress last week with the tariff bill as it came from the committee of ways and means. As the republicans insist on debating each line, and take a wide range in discussion, the progress is necessarily slow. The same old assertions are made about the influence of the tariff on the wages of labor, and there is practically little new in the discussion. It becomes clearer from day to day that the minority has no other object than to delay the final vote on the measure. The debate has thus far been confined to the clauses putting certain articles on the free list^sic, and the expectation remains that after the tariff articles are reached the work will go on more rapidly. As the political campaign will practically be opened by the placing of the republican candidates for president and vice-president in the field, it is probable that the republican members of congress will soon find other opportunities for political activity, and cease their dilatory tactics.

One feature of the debate during last week was the reading of letters from protected manufacturers protesting against putting articles in which they are pecuniarily interested on the free list. These letters abounded in wailing predictions of disaster to follow the cheapening of the prices of commodities to those engaged in other industries or to the people generally, and on the republican side of the house no voice was raised in behalf of the large number of industries and individuals to be benefited by the proposed changes. The democrats are making fewer speeches and steadily pressing each line of the bill to a vote, and on each vote they are successful by a fair and almost unvarying majority. Probably the most important contribution to the debate last week was the admission of Mr. Bayne, republican, of Pennsylvania, who said:

It is perfectly evident to the members of this house, and it must now be evident to the people of the country, that this bill as reported from the committee will pass the house of representatives if the democratic party can muster the votes to put it through. It must be perfectly evident to the people of the country that they are to have this bill substantially in its present form. I believe that the only modifications proposed and agreed upon by the committee of ways and means are certain inconsequential amendments.

This admission, coming from a prominent protectionist, will be reassuring to those friends of tariff reduction who felt some natural alarm lest the concessions made by the committee for the purpose of gaining additional votes for the bill had materially weakened it as a measure looking toward free trade. If the amendments are, as Mr. Bayne declares, “inconsequential,” free traders will not be disposed to severely criticise the committee of ways and means for its concessions.

The most remarkable feature of the proceedings last week was the determined effort of the protectionists to prevent the placing of tin plates on the free list., No such exhibition of irrational bigotry has been made before by the republicans. They admitted that no tin plates are now manufactured in this country, and that they are, to a numerous body of manufacturers, practically raw material, and yet they insisted that all the fruit and meat preservers, tinware manufacturers and tin roofers should be subjected to a senseless duty of thirty-five per cent on these plates for apparently no other reason than to protect the tinning of plates in this country, provided some persons yet p. 4, col. 3 unknown should decide to engage in that industry. in^sic the event of the Dakota tin mines turning out better than there is at present any reason to expect. The preposterous declaration was also made that the free admission of tin plates would ruin the sheet iron rolling mills, apparently by injuring the business of a smaller number of people engaged in making a poor iron roof that is only substituted for the tin because of the high price put on the latter by the tariff.

The whole discussion on this subject shows that the high tariff delusion has become a mere unreasoning superstition, founded on neither fact nor argument, and as unassailable by argument as a savage’s belief in his fetich. The republican attitude on this question shows that there is no real desire to correct the most stupid inequalities and absurdities in the existing tariff, and that despite the declaration in their platform of four years ago, they are determined that no change shall be made that will lower duties on any article, no matter how great the surplus in the treasury may grow. This, at least, is the attitude of the great majority of the eastern republicans, and if their western brethren desire a different policy, they will have to get outside of the republican party in order to carry out their views. Those western congressmen who have not already broken loose from the policy of their party in the house are now being swept along into senseless opposition to all tariff reduction.

COLORADO “OVERCROWDED.”

The Denver Evening Times devotes nearly two columns to a report on the condition of labor in Colorado, which shows that that youthful state is already “overcrowded.” One employment agency tells the reporter that they have found work for about 150 men recently and turned away from six to seven hundred. The manager of another agency says that the rate of wages there is now lower than it is in New York, and he advises outsiders to stay away unless they have money to invest in real estate. Another complains that some unprincipled persons in the east are circulating a report that teamsters can get three dollars a day in Colorado, whereas the fact is that they cannot get more than twenty dollars a month. Complaint is also made by the citizens generally that they are overrun by tramps, and a local report shows that on one day thirty and on the next day forty of these walking monuments to the efficacy of the protection of American industry were arrested for vagrancy in the city of Denver. The reporter testifies that many of these men are really willing to work, but that they can find nothing to do.

Eastern people, accustomed to what we call “overcrowding” here, may not at first take in the full significance of this statement. In 1880 the population of Colorado was less than two to the square mile, and its population has probably not doubled since that date. Think of it! A fertile state with great agricultural and mineral resources “overcrowded with a population of four or five^sic persons to the square mile! Migration to such a state ought to be the natural remedy for low wages in the east, and it ought to have the effect of securing good wages to those who migrate, but the land monopoly that shuts out men from natural opportunities for self employment, and the tariff that smothers and strangles agriculture, have done their perfect work and Colorado is”overcrowded.”

Yet Colorado is represented in congress by men who uphold the party that so eagerly gave away the public domain to railway corporations and who insist on maintaining the tariff to further burden Colorado farmers. What a farce it is to talk of protection to American industry by a system that crowds the workman of the older settled portions of the country to the wall and refuses him escape to the industries of the sea while it closes against him the fertile plains of the west, “overcrowded” by a population of four or five to the square mile.

NOTHING TO DO.

The Western steel works at St. Louis have ceased operations. This announcement is made by the Pittsburg Chronicle-Telegraph with the ominous statement that the works are not to begin operations again “until the fate of the Mills bill is decided,” and that meantime the 1,500 employes whom the stoppage throws out of work will remain idle; all of which is due to “the disturbing effects of this bill.” What an opportunity was lost to the protectionists when that sturdy and luxurious exemplar of the benefits of protection, Mr. Carnegie, closed his works before the Mills bill had an opportunity to get in its “disturbing effects!” Why did he not wait?

The Chicago fire was a godsend to many a bankrupt, who, after tottering for months on the slippery edge of insolvency, was able to point his creditors to the lurid flames and smoldering ruins of Chicago as the cause of his downfall. So manufacturers whose business falls a victim to the long era of protection which has made of them catspaws for landlords, are held up as awful examples of the effect of the Mills bill. The point of the argument is in its suggestion that free trade would throw men out of employment and keep them in idleness. The mere introduction of a partial free trade measure closes a big factory and deprives 1,500 men of work. Its passage would make less work still. The introduction of an outright free trade measure would cause more factories to close, and its passage would leave no work at all to be done. It would be like a self constructing, self operating, self repairing, universal wealth producing machine.

If protectionists take the American people p. 4, col. 4 for fools, they are not to be blamed; the assumption is justified, since that kind of stuff has been made to do duty for argument all these years, and to walk without limping and stare without winking through all the literature with which protection leagues have deluged us. But if any of these fools prima facie will stop long enough to think, he will know—it will not be an inference, he will know it—that free trade, instead of diminishing demand for products, will increase it, and that less manufacturing in the face of higher demand is a simple impossibility.

Free trade makes less work necessary to produce a given result, just as machinery does; but when that is followed by the impoverishment of any one it is not because free trade engenders poverty, but because natural opportunities for work are dearer—because another and more fundamental form of protection asserts itself.

Mr. George F. Elliott of Stamford, Conn., is the Press’s latest witness for protection. Mr. Elliott has met a man—an English tourist—and having obtained his views on the great tariff question hastens to give them to the world through the tariff talker of the Press. Here is the testimony:

“What wages did you earn in England?”

“From $7 to $9 per week. While here I could earn for the same work from $15 to $18.”

“Is there much difference in the condition of the workingmen here and those in your country?”

“A vast deal of difference. You have better homes, better food and better clothing. In fact you people here in America don’t want free trade or anything like it. I am not very well posted in your political affairs, but I am sure that what you do want here is a protective tariff.”

Unfortunately, however, the honesty of the tariff talker is greater than his discretion. He not only gives us these opinions of the tourist, but he also communicates some facts regarding his personal history and condition, which, in a measure, detract from the value of his evidence. It appears that he was a cotton presser by trade, had been in the country for seven weeks without being able to get work at his trade or anything else, and described himself as being “not exactly on the tramp, but looking for work.”

“I landed at Boston with about $60 in my pocket, and have spent my time here at Pawtucket, Lowell, Providence and several other places where they have mills, but could get no work.”

“What is the reason they gave for not employing you?”

“They one and all said that the tariff agitation was causing a great depression in business, and they further say that if the no tariff bill passes your congress they will have to shut down entirely.”

Perhaps, on the whole, the tariff talker had better call the next witness.

The Philadelphia Times claims that “we have too much of mineral raw material to make it judicious for us to build a wall around this country.” So we have. Coal, iron, gold, silver, petroleum, copper, lime, salt, stone, natural gas, and so on through a long list, our land is full of them. They require but labor to bring them forth, labor to make the machinery to aid in bringing them forth, labor to transport them, and freedom to exchange them for raw material that our country does not offer, or finished products which we do not wish to make. To build a tariff wall around the country is to diminish the output of these minerals and to contract opportunities for employment in producing and transporting them and working them up. But a tariff wall around the mines is just as bad as a tariff wall around the country. There can be no real free trade in raw materials so long as the source of raw materials, the earth itself, is private property.

Every now and again we hear manufacturers complain that free trade would destroy their business. Manufacturers are pretty good calculators. They note the cost of materials, interest on capital, rent, wages, and so forth and so on, omitting not the smallest item, when considering the details of their business. But when considering the abolition of tariff they think only of the removal of duties from their own product, giving no thought to the fact that free trade abolishes duties on materials as well as on products. Every manufacturer can judge the effect of free trade on his business with fair accuracy, if he will take into the computation, first, the reduced prices at which he can sell at a profit if he gets his materials free, and, second, the greater number of sales he could make if he sold at the lower prices which free trade would permit.

The Pittsburg Chronicle-Telegraph thinks “the best thing the democrats can do is to repeal the internal revenue taxes and let everything else alone,” and it does not believe that Congressman Dougherty will live to see the enactment of his proposed law taxing all personal and corporate incomes above $5.000 a year. To repeal the internal revenue laws is not the best thing the democratic party can do, but it is a good thing to do, all the same. The internal revenue laws, like the protective tariff laws, are burdens upon industry, promoting monopolies, subjugating labor, and forcing down wages; but the internal revenue laws are to the protective tariff laws as a Liliputian to a Brobdingnagian. The best thing the democratic party can do just now, therefore, is to repeal the tariff laws, and not let everything else alone, but go right along from point to point until the whole system of protection, internal and external, is done away with. And in doing this Mr. Dougherty’s plan of taxing incomes need not and should not be adopted. That method is in line with the protection idea. It is part of the socialistic fungus of which protective tariffs are roots and suckers. The unqualified p. 4, col. 5 right of enjoying private property must be secured and maintained, and that right is not and never will be secured while whatever any man honestly earns is confiscated by taxation.

The Evening News of Detroit finds in the nomination of Thurman reason to believe that the democrats may carry Michigan. Thurman is in principle a “greenbacker,” though he never belonged to the greenback party. He was one of the many leading men of the country whose influence in favor of the greenback idea was destroyed by third party men who persisted in making fealty to a mere organization the test of loyalty to a principle. It is from the gratification which Thurman’s nomination gives to the greenback contingent of Michigan that the News expects democratic success in that state. It prophecies^sic that the forty odd Thurman votes cast there for^sic Butler in 1884 will now be cast for Thurman. In this it is probably mistaken. Some of those votes were partisan votes which this year will be cast for Streeter, the union labor candidate, and some were those of protectionists that this year will be cast for the republican ticket. But respecting the greater proportion of them the News is no doubt right. And besides this proportion of Butler’s vote which will go to Thurman because he is a greenbacker, the Thurman ticket will receive a large greenback vote which did not go to Butler. In Michigan, as in all other states of the Union, very much the larger part of the greenback vote was not cast for Butler in 1884, nor for the greenback ticket in any year. This fact the News overlooks in putting the New York greenback vote at less than a thousand. That was what was cast in 1886, but it was cast by men who take pride “in standing up to be counted,” very much as raw soldiers take pride in useless exposure, to their own discomfiture and the possible ruin of their cause. That “greenbackers” who understand the principle which that term designates and its relations in practical politics, and who are not mere tin pan drummers and builders of toy parties, will support Thurman in this contest, there is good reason to believe. Those of them who are free traders—and it is difficult to understand how an intelligent greenbacker can be a protectionist—will certainly support him. This campaign is one of economic issues, and as it goes on will draw the line between fallacious doctrines and sound principles with greater and greater clearness.

In his excellent speech at the Reform club dinner, Mr. Stokes, the president of the club, illustrating the truth that whatever makes things scarce and dear must injure workingmen, said: “If the skies rained down bread and clothing and groceries, this would benefit the poor.”

This illustration shows how close to the tariff question lies the still greater land question, and may give Mr. Stokes, if he thinks of it, an idea of what the real root of^sic the protective fallacy. In a country like this the raining down of food, clothing and groceries might for awhile be of some benefit to the poor. But not so in a country such as this is rapidly getting to be, where land is all monopolized. How long in such a country would even the raining down of food, clothing and groceries benefit the poor man? He might have a chance for a scramble on the highway, provided adjacent property owners did not claim the privilege, and he might have the benefit of the parks until the city closed the gates and sold the fee. But wherever else the bread and clothing and groceries fell they would belong to the owner of the land. If the workingman wanted to buy land he would find the speculative price very high before a shower and the real price very high after a shower.

It ought to be a good thing for all men if bread, clothing and groceries were rained down from the sky, and it would be so if our laws did not make the surface of the planet the private and exclusive property of only some of the people who live upon it, so that the whole benefit of the shower must accrue to the owners of the places where it fell. But the remedy for this does not consist in praying against such rainfalls; it consists in letting the skies rain as much bread, clothing and groceries as they will, and abolishing the unjust laws which give to the few what nature provides for all. So with free trade. When Mr. Stokes gets to the point of realizing this, then will he become a free trader in a fuller, truer sense than he ever was before, and be able to point out to workingmen the real cause of evils, to check which they vainly turn to protection.

Bread, clothing, and groceries will never be rained from the sky, but the same thing occurs in principle when minerals are discovered in the earth; when labor saving machinery is invented, when cities cheapen production by focusing exchanges. If these things do not benefit workingmen and raise wages, it is only because land is monopolized.

Censuring a Rochester Assemblyman for Voting Against the Electoral Reform Bill.

At the last meeting of the Rochester united labor club, the following resolutions condemning the local assemblyman and approving of Assemblyman McNaughton for their actions regarding the electoral reform bill were passed:

Resolved, That we, the members of the united labor club, unreservedly condemn the action of our assemblyman, the Hon. P. A. Sullivan, and that we hereby pledge ourselves to use every means in our power to secure the election next fall of any man who will stand squarely upon the plank of electoral reform; further,

Resolved, That we rejoice to find the Hon. p. 4, col. 6 D. McNaughton, almost alone in his party, rise above the level of the politician and place himself on record as favoring a change in our electoral system which will insure pure government and honest politics, both state and national.

THE BEATING OF THE DRUMS.

The platform adopted by the democratic national convention to day means free trade without a syllable of qualification.—[Minneapolis Evening Journal.

The modern “trust” is simply a monopolistic tariff or tax levied upon the people by the power and insolence of combined capital, and enforced by life’s necessities, for the benefit of greedy human sharks.—[Rhode Island Democrat.

As the Herald has many times repeated, the parties—go as they may, retreat as they may, harmonize as they may—cannot keep the issue of high tax or low tax from the polls. On that line the battle will be fought.—[Chicago Herald.

The democratic platform, as was expected, has a big free trade plank “indorsing the views expressed by President Cleveland in his last annual message as the correct interpretation of that platform upon the question of tariff reduction.” Could anything be plainer? Assuredly not.—[Philadelphia News (Rep.)

How little of protection and how much of free trade the democratic platform contains can easily be gathered from the debates in congress and the comments in the press of the country. What protection is there in it for wool, lumber and other articles placed upon the free list?—[Pittsburg Commercial-Gazette.

Every poor man should rejoice that Pennsylvania has never taken attar of roses off the free list. There is no tariff duty on attar of roses. A poor man may buy a bucketful of attar of roses every day if he desires it. He may have to put his children in coffee sacks, but he cannot complain that his perfumery is taxed.—[Courier-Journal.

The Herald is for that protection which gives the people cheap clothes, cheap shoes, cheap hats, cheap blankets and the necessaries of life cheap. We will ever be opposed to a party that stands for the old war tariff, which continually grinds down the masses for the benefit of the rich monopolists of the country.—[Mascontah, Ill., Herald^sic.

Upon the merits of the tariff issue the democratic party will either stand or fall in the coming battle. For once in its history the party finds itself face to face with that momentous problem, and henceforth will stand before the American people as the champion of tariff reform and ultimate free trade.—[Richmond County, N. Y., Advance.

Where’s the difference? Puddlers were paid $3.50 per ton under what was called the “free trade” tariff of 1846. They are now paid $3.50 per ton under the blessed protective tariff of sixty per cent. Yes there is a difference. Under tariff of 1846 the cost of living to the puddler was at least a third less than it is now.—[Mauch Chunk, Pa., Democrat.

We believe that this year will see such a revolt among American workingmen against the idea of “protection” as has never been seen before. Those who argue that the sensible workingmen of this country are blindly enslaved to protected masters and are incapable of seeing the truth grossly insult their intelligence.—[Richmond, Va., State.

Labor needs to be protected in the enjoyment of its wages; but its right to invest these wages in accordance with its wishes, without paying tribute to organized capital, is systematically denied under a war tariff; and as the most practical method of protecting labor, democrats propose to reduce war taxation and deliver labor from the oppression of capital.—[Louisville Courier-Journal.

Protection does not make food cheap. The farmers are the food producers, and protection adds to the cost of nearly everything the farmer has to buy. Protection does not increase wages, because the laborer contends with all comers in the open market in the sale of his labor. He gets higher wages because he earns them by better, more rapid and more efficient work.—[Sandusky, O., Journal and Local.

The rank and file of all parties also demand and will vote for a judicious revision of the present unjust, unwarranted and destructive tariff, while the class who live by other people’s work only are buying and driving all that money can control, or other influence swerve from supporting their own interests and that of the great west generally. But the masses are organizing more thoroughly and the would be lords will be buried with their paid minions in the slough of political degradation so deep that no resurrection will be attempted.—[West La Crosse, Minn., Co-operator.

The fact that was most clearly and emphatically made manifest to all observers at St. Louis was that the popular demand for a material reduction in the tariff taxes upon the necessaries of life and the raw materials of manufacture is the strongest demand of the time. The conviction of this necessity is shared alike by those who are free traders in doctrine and by those who hold firmly to the protectionist principle; by those who represent agricultural constituencies and those whose constituents are mainly engaged in manufacturing industries; by men of the east, the west, the north and the south.—[New York Commercial Advertiser (Rep.).

MEN AND THINGS.

A hundred years ago Count Mirabeau epigrammatically said that there were but three ways of acquiring wealth,—by work, by gift, or by theft. A man who wants a thing must either make it, buy it, beg it, or steal it.

Modern ingenuity, however, has found another way of getting hold of property—at least, when the property desired is a railway, or a mine, or anything else belonging to a stock corporation. Like most other great discoveries, it’s a very simple matter—when you understand it.

For example, here is the Richmond terminal company, a corporation owning in its own right a short and valueless piece of railroad, but controlling a large extent of connecting roads under lease. The problem is to get possession of the Richmond terminal property. The uninitiated would say that the only thing to be done is to buy at least a majority of the stock of the company from those who own it. The initiated, however, laugh that method to scorn, and adopt an easier plan. They wait until the time draws near when the transfer books of the company will be closed, previous to the annual election of directors. Then they hie them to Wall street, borrow a sufficient quantity of the stock for a day or two, have it registered in their own names, return it to the owner, with a bonus for its use, and when the day of election comes, vote themselves into control of a property in which they have, it may be, not a dollar of actual interest. It goes without saying that this method is not always absolutely sure of success, since when two or more parties want to get control of the same property the owners of stock may demand an exorbitant price for the lending of it; but that it has been practiced, and to an alarmingly great extent, is matter of common fame in Wall street.

How to put an end to this sort of thing is a question which the governing committee of the stock exchange are now considering. The matter was brought to their attention by a letter from one firm of brokers, complaining that another firm of brokers had borrowed from them a thousand shares of Richmond terminal stock, and used it in the manner described, at the recent annual election of directors. When the lenders of the stock received it back they found it had been registered in the name of the borrowers, and when they applied to the latter for a proxy to enable them to vote at the election, they were informed that “according to usage on the stock exchange no proxy is due on stock borrowed over the closing of the books.”

It seems by no means certain that the stock exchange committee can do anything to remedy this, for any regulation they may make will be easily evaded if both parties are willing to evade it. It is already a statutory crime, punishable by fine or imprisonment, or both, for any person to vote on stock of which he is not either the actual owner or the representative of the owner; and any inspector of election, at the annual meeting of any New York corporation, may require any proxy voter to swear, under penalty of perjury, that the person he represents is, to the best of his knowledge, the bona fide owner of the stock voted on. It would be difficult for the stock exchange to pass a more stringent law than this, or to enforce it with a severer penalty.

The simple truth is that neither a legislature nor a governing committee can make men virtuous by mere prohibitory enactments. If public sentiment attaches no stigma of disgrace to the doing of something which men find it profitable to do, that thing will continue to be done, all the laws on the statute book to the contrary notwithstanding; and the only effect of the most stringent law will be to make men skillful in concealment. Thus usury laws become dead letters, excise laws are openly violated, and men, who in all ordinary relations of life are absolutely truthful, calmly perjure themselves to evade the robbery of the protective tariff. If the stock exchange people want to put an end to such questionable methods of acquiring property as that we have described, they must make it scandalous for men to use them. And that they can never do so long as the greed of gain is fostered and men are urged to the pursuit of wealth by that social injustice which decrees that out of every thousand American citizens born into this country a certain number must, of necessity, pass their lives in poverty.

Who was it that invented, years ago, the fiction of the lawyer who, being consulted by a client who had embezzled a comparatively trifling sum, advised him to take as much as he could lay hands on, compromise matters by returning a portion, and keep the balance? The story used to be thought ingenious, but absurd. Yet it is what has actually happened in the case of the defaulting paying teller of the Manhattan company and his counsel. The former having pilfered from the bank sums aggregating about $10,000, went to Lawyer Dunn for advice. Dunn examined authorities, thought the matter over, and then advised Mr. Scott to take a million and flee—“take enough to cripple the bank, so that they’ll be glad to compromise,” was Dunn’s expression. Scott took the advice in part, stole $160,000, gave the most of it to Dunn to take care of for him, and vanished into Canada, whence he shortly went to London.

Then a curious situation developed itself. The defaulter in London was urgently trying to get some money out of Lawyer Dunn, who was, after a fashion, trustee for all concerned. The Manhattan company also wanted money, and showed a charitable disposition to condone Scott’s offense if only he would pay some reasonable sum, say, $50,000 to $60,000. And Lawyer Dunn, rising to the possibilities of the occasion, announced that he had lost the money, and defied everybody. This was shortsighted of Mr. Dunn, and illustrated the truth of the proverb about the man who tries to be his own lawyer. For the bank, finding it impossible to get any money out of anybody, was eager for revenge; and Mr. Scott, finding it impossible for him to get any money, became rather anxious than otherwise to

p. 5, col. 2 sacrifice Mr. Dunn upon the altar of justice. And so the end of it all is that ex-teller Scott is free but penniless, lawyer Dunn is a convict but comparatively rich, and the Manhattan eompany^sic has had the satisfaction of getting square to a certain extent. It is a very pretty episode of modern commercial life.

For observe, that the Manhattan officials are only less guilty than the other criminals. They have deliberately attempted to compound a felony. Had Dunn been willing to surrender $50,000 of the money in his hands he might be a free man to-day. And indeed it seems not at all unlikely that he has deliberately chosen to serve his term in prison rather than give up any of the cash. That he should have had the option is the fault of the Manhattan company.

Chauncey M. Depew, while on his way to the Chicago convention, stopped over at Syracuse to deliver an address before the graduating class of the medical college of that city. Mr. Depew’s speeches are always pleasant to read, if only for the shrewd humor in them; but this particular address is especially interesting, because in it the speaker turned the serious side of his nature outward, and showed the world how the life problems of this nineteenth century present themselves to a man who in his own person has achieved a marked success—who has not only conquered fortune and become rich, but has also managed to acquire the respect and esteem of his fellow citizens in a marked degree.

In the very beginning of his address, Mr. Depew compressed into a single paragraph a whole cyclopedia of economics:

The vocation chosen by a young man is governed oftener by accident than inclination. But the manner in which it is pursued is controlled neither by luck nor chance. The liberal professions are crowded with incompetents. I know ministers who should be palace car conductors, poor lawyers who would have been good drummers or clerks, and medical men who are more dangerous to their patients than the disease they treat, who were designed by nature for the farm or the factory. The world is a workshop full of misfits, and misfits are always cheap. It requires both faculty and courage when you have discovered your mistake to drop your tools and start again. But if all the doctors, lawyers and ministers who never can get on in their professions would get out and find other fields of labor, it would be infinitely better for themselves and the country. A living stream of new applicants for public favor and support pours through the portals of the schools of medicine, law and theology. It is estimated that doctors are thus manufactured in such large numbers that they form one to every three hundred inhabitants. At first view this seems very discouraging, but the situation has many compensations. So many are wholly unfit or badly prepared, that while they increase the miseries of mankind, they add to the business and profits of those who are capable. The competitions of modern life have become so keen that there are no opportunities for the lame and the lazy. The first must find their proper pursuits, and the second must work or go to the wall.

This is all very fine; but it tempts one to ask what the lame man is to do who can find no room in his proper pursuit, and what the lazy man is to do when nobody will furnish him with work. Mr. Depew must know full well that there are myriads of men who would gladly be palace car conductors, or drummers, or clerks, or farmers, or factory hands, and are sufficiently well qualified for those callings, but who are absolutely shut out from them by a decree as inexorable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. And why should a young man, in choosing his vocation, be governed by accident rather than inclination? Why should the boy beginning life be compelled to ask, What can I get to do? rather than, What can I do best? These are questions^sic which apparently find no place in Mr. Depew’s economic philosophy. But they are ques tions that demand an answer all the same.

This little anecdote and the comment on it which Mr. Depew interjected into his address show how clearly he understands the bottom principle of protection:

In no state or country has the progress of your profession been more remarkable than in New York. While searching the records of this Dutch colony for another purpose, I found this historically valuable entry under date of February 5, [1652?]:

“The colonial council order that ship’s doctors arriving at the port of New Amsterdam shall not be permitted to practice medicine or surgery without the consent of Dr. La Montaigne.” The good doctor was the only physician on Manhattan island. Orders of the council were equivalent to statutes, and this was the first law for the protection of American industry ever passed on this continent. In the midst of the heated controversies of the hour on this great question, you gentlemen may congratulate yourselves that the father of American medicine was also the founder of our protective system. One hundred years after, in 1765, King’s college, in New York, had a medical department, and Dr. John Jones, its professor of surgery, published a work upon field hospitals and the treatment of the wounded, which was the text book of the staff during the revolutionary war, and its suggestions were adopted by the army surgeons of the veteran armies of Europe. Now it is the just pride of our state that its medical colleges in equipment and instruction compare favorably with the world famed schools of Vienna, London and Paris.

Evidently Mr. Depew is satisfied that Dr. John Jones’s text book would never have been written, and still less would our medical colleges have been comparable with those of Europe, had not Dr. La Montaigne been protected in his monopoly of practice on Manhattan island. This opens up a whole vista of possibilities. If our medical profession will only have the good sense to cut loose from the rest of the world altogether—to forbid the importation of foreign doctors, foreign drugs and foreign medical works and periodicals, absolutely, to what dizzy heights of healing may they not attain? Indeed, on this principle, Podunk Four Corners, with its single doctor, may become a center of medical science, by the simple process of forbidding any other physician to settle within its limits.

St. Louis is to have a charity organization society of its own—a central bureau to which kindly disposed citizens can refer cases of distress and applicants for alms. Registry books are to be opened, in which the names of applicants for relief will be entered with the report of the association’s inspectors on each case. In this way it is p. 5, col. 3 expected that the pauper class will be thoroughly sifted, the undeserving left to starve, and the meritorious poor relieved to just that moderate extent that will keep them from perishing, without making life too pleasant for them. Several clergymen, two or three local missionaries and a few philanthropic ladies are among the organizers, and the wealthy citizens of St. Louis are being actively canvassed for members.

It is a queer comment on modern christianity that the ministers of Him who bade his followers do their alms in secret, not letting their right hands know the gifts bestowed with their left, should find it necessary to uphold and even to join such an organization as this. It makes one wonder whether the character of the alms-seeking class has changed in the last eighteen hundred years, or whether this precept of the Master, like his utterances from the Mount, is to be accepted with the reservation that He didn’t mean what He said. The teaching that the poor we have always with us is accepted as a sufficiently explicit condemnation of any effort to abolish poverty; but when it comes to relieving the distresses of the poor it appears that modern wisdom must supplement the new testament, and that to obey the letter of the scripture would be to strike a blow at the foundations of society.

This, however, is a matter which the charity organizers must settle with their own consciences. If the modern good Samaritan, instead of oil and wine, chooses to give the sufferer by the wayside a ticket on the Samaritan organization society, he has a perfect right to do so. But it may be suggested to the advocates of charity organization that their methods are very apt to be self defeating; and that in endeavoring to separate the deserving from the undeserving they may be really placing a premium upon deception, just as a custom house offers a reward for successful per jury. To an adroit and calculating swindler, system in charity may be a help rather than a hindrance. He knows just what dangers he has to provide against or avoid, and can lay his plans accordingly. It is, in fact, an application of the competitive examination principle, in which the reward is an easy living at other people’s cost.

And yet the organizers of the St. Louis society are, most of them at least, no doubt sincerely good and earnest men and women. The distress they see about them troubles them, and will not let them rest. They feel they must do something; they know by experience that indiscriminate alms giving is the fruitful parent of pauperism; and they organize their charity because that seems the only thing left for them to do. To tell them that no amount of alms giving, no efficiency of organization, can do more than to lift some men out of poverty at the cost of thrusting other men into poverty, would seem to them like blasphemy. For in spite of all their misinterpretations of economic and religious principles, they instinctively revolt against the pretense that God, or nature, or the fitness of things, demands that men shall live in poverty whether they will or no. Confronted with the grim social paradox, they turn away their faces, and muttering that it cannot be, refuse to gaze upon the horrid thing. But it is not by such avoiding of the question that the problem of poverty is to be solved.

If these good men and women would but have the courage to question their own experience they would soon discover the uselessness of mere alms giving, whether organized or sporadic. What the poor need is not to have their wants relieved by charity, but to have the restrictions removed that prevent them relieving themselves. Robbed of their heritage of the right of access to natural opportunities, they lack wealth simply because they are not allowed to produce it. The way to make them self dependent is to undo the social crime that forces them to depend on others for the privilege of work, or the gratuity of food and clothing and shelter if work cannot be given them. Let the organizers of charity tear down he walls^sic of monopoly and give men the privilege of applying their labor to the raw materials of nature and of enjoying the full reward of their toil, and the whole system of charity registers, patrons, visitors and detectives will vanish for want of occupation.

The citizens of Bangor, Maine, are worried over the arrival in their city of several hundred Italians who have been swindled by some clever sharper in New York into paying a double fare to Bangor on the promise of steady work and good pay when they should arrive there. The steady work is a myth, the good pay is not forthcoming, and the people of Bangor find themselves burdened with a lot of foreigners who are, indeed, quite willing to work, but who show unmistakably by their actions that if they can’t get work they will steal before they’ll starve.

Of course, it is a sad thing that men should be swindled in this way; and it is pity of the Bangor people, too, who find themselves thus confronted with a social problem in very concrete form. But after all, the wrong inflicted on these poor Italians is only a type of the wrong which society inflicts on the vast majority of American citizens. There is no lack of room for these men in the state of Maine—no lack of natural opportunities to which they could apply their labor for the production of wealth. But the people who own the natural opportunities don’t want them transmuted into wealth just at present; and so these hundreds of willing hands must remain idle, or find occupation in stealing. And as it is in Maine, so is it in New York and everywhere else where the blight of private ownership of natural resources has fallen on the land.

The Paris papers tell a queer story of the development of a new industry in France. This is nothing less than an express system for the transportation of goods from Paris to Italy without the payment of duties. The association charges according to the value of the goods transported, and guarantees safe delivery, having its own methods of avoiding custom house complications. In a single day packages to the value of $100,000 were received and forwarded, the charges on which were $7,500. The enterprise has so far been p. 5, col. 4 completely successful, not a single package having been lost by seizure.

At the recent annual meeting of the Land nationalization society of Great Britain, the president, Alfred Russell Wallace^sic, epitomised the British industrial situation as follows:

It is about fifty years since Hood’s famous “Song of the Shirt” startled the world with its revelation of hopeless misery. But what would Hood have said if he could have heard the revelations now being made—of shirts made at 1d. each, the worker, by continuous hard work, making twelve shirts a day, and earning 6s. a week, and with the rent of an attic at least double what it was in his time! Five years ago we had the “bitter cry” excitement, and a commission of inquiry, and a huge report. Then another commission on depression of trade and another report—and now another commission or committee on the “sweating system^sic—to be followed no doubt by another report, which, like the preceding reports, will be simply so much waste paper. The reason why commissions and reports do no good is because our politicians and our philanthropists will never search for real causes, will never go to the root of the matter, which is, in one word, landlordism, that system of land monopoly which treats the land of the country as a means of profit for landlord and farmer, that profit being got with the minimum of labor on the land. An attempt is now being made to put the public on a wrong scent by imputing all the misery of our city workers to the competition of foreigners. I do not say this has no effect; it is no doubt an aggravating cause, and so long as we cannot keep our own people from starving it should be stopped; but it is as nothing compared with the real fundamental cause—the driving of the rural population from the country to the great towns. Year after year farmers, under the pressure of the exorbitant rents of the period of commercial prosperity which culminated in 1872, are becoming first impoverished, then bankrupt; and landlords are turning their arable land into pasture, so as to get the maximum of profit with the minimum of outlay and risk, and thus a constant stream of laborers, and with them village mechanics and shop keepers, are forced to migrate to the towns. The consequence is that we have at this moment two-thirds of our whole population—more than twenty million people—concentrated in the great cities and towns, while millions of acres of our land all over the country are less populated and less effectively cultivated than fifty years ago. Yet when this fact was brought before them last week by Mr. Bradlaugh, our legislators, men who profess to be our representatives, walked out of the house of commons till, there being only fifteen members present, the debate collapsed in a count out! In the course of the debate we had the usual statement that the land was uncultivated because it could not be cultivated at a profit. No doubt the landlord, having ruined the farmers by making them pay exorbitant rents, cannot find tenants for his farms, but this very same land could be cultivated at a profit by laborers and their families, even paying the same rent as the farmers paid, if they had the land in such quantities as they required, and with absolute security of tenure. That they can and do this—cultivate it and live comfortably on it—has been shown again and again, though the fact is always denied in parliament. The reports of the agricultural commission prove it. The landlord apologist, the Hon. Mr. Broderick, proves it in his book on”English Lands and English Landlords^sic.” I myself have collected ample evidence of it in my books on “Land Nationalization” and “Bad Times,” as has Mr. Impey in his “Three Acres and a Cow” and his “Housed Beggars.” In this last pamphlet he shows that on a farm taken by a workingmen’s allotment association in Northamptonshire, forty men are employed where only four men were employed by the farmer, the result being that wheat produced forty-eight bushels an acre, nearly double the farmer’s average! And this land is cultivated, not by men who have been farm laborers only, but by small tradesmen, green grocers, dairymen, mechanics, etc., showing that men brought up in the country in the midst of agriculture have both a love of it and a knowledge of it sufficient to enable them to cultivate land at a profit. Now if we could take a census of the unemployed and struggling workers in London and other great cities, we should find that perhaps one-third, perhaps half of them, were country born, and would go back to their native villages if they had a fair chance. Once throw the land open to workers, giving them the choice of a place to live in, with absolute security of tenure, and not only would the immigration to our cities be stopped, but an outflow would begin from them to the country which would have the most beneficial effects, both on the production of food, the decrease of poverty, and the progress of trade. Now this I hold to be the great purpose and use of land nationalization, to get the people back on to the land, to check the growth of great cities, and to produce on our own soil the many millions sterling worth of eggs, poultry, butter, cheese, bacon, and fruit now imported, but which we can easily grow ourselves. Even the importation of wheat would be greatly diminished, for when laborers grow wheat by choice, as they frequently do, we may be sure that it pays them to grow it, the reason being that they grow from 40 to 50 bushels an acre, while the farmer under a landlord grows from 20 to 30 only.

By some strange perversion of intelligence, Dr. Wallace, after thus clearly tracing the cause of poverty to the monopolization of the natural opportunities, proposes by way of remedy that the landlords, without reducing their claims for rent, should simply be required to let their agricultural land in smaller parcels! This, he thinks—or at all events, he says—would be far better than to abolish landlordism altogether by taxing land values; because, in the latter case, land would still be cultivated by farmers, who would employ as few laborers as possible, and avail themselves of the competition among laborers to keep down wages. “On the other hand, if laborers of all kinds had free access to land on the most favorable terms and conditions, they would get almost all they could get by the most thorough land nationalization, since it would not matter to them to whom they paid their rents.” This is certainly the most amazing piece of logic that was ever heard outside a lunatic asylum.

Dr. Wallace need only have turned his eyes from the fields to the cities to discover how, as men are driven from the country to the city, land values fall in the former and rise in the latter. Here, for instance, is an account, extracted from the London Star, of the system on which the recently expired leases on the Portman estate in London are being renewed:

For a forty years’ lease a house worth £200 a year would be let for £80 and a premium of £1,400, the tenant putting on an extra story and modernizing the house—i. e., p. 5, col. 5 putting in plate glass windows, raising the ceilings, draining and repairing.

For a twenty-five years’ lease, rent and premium are the same, and the tenant only modernizes and repairs, the “extra story” being omitted.

For a seven, fourteen or twenty-one years’ lease the tenant repairs at a rack rent.

In addition to these conditions, a fee of two guineas has to be paid by the tenant before he can even know on what terms he may renew! How completely the system confiscates every farthing of improvement may be judged by the experience of a certain Mrs. Weatherley, who in 1880 took a shop on a lease, with eight years to run, spent £300 on it straightway, and then—thinking, foolish creature, that she had made a special claim on the consideration of her landlord—sounded his agent as to the terms of renewal. She had made such a claim. She had improved his property. She was accordingly informed that she could have the lease renewed in 1888 by paying £80 ground rent in place of £10, and by paying down at once a premium of £1,000, or interest on that sum at five per cent, which of course amounted a fresh rent^sic in addition to that which was demanded. Those who are interested in the history of torture may, if they please, follow the record of Mrs. Weatherley’s struggles on the rack on which Viscount Portman and his agent stretched her during the eight years of her occupancy. It is enough to say that on the principle of getting £8,000 for every £1,000 of rent formerly paid by his tenants, Lord Portman may now fairly reckon that he draws a million and a quarter in premiums from the industry of the traders of Baker street and the neighborhood.

And, be it remembered, every one of these houses as it now exists has been built by a previous tenant—the owner of the “Portman estate” has never done anything but simply to allow other people to improve his land, and dutifully present him with the improvements at the expiration of their leases.

If Dr. Wallace could succeed in transplanting a third of the city dwellers to agricultural lands now disused, the only effect would be to diminish city rental values, and raise those of agricultural lands; to lessen the incomes of city landlords, and increase the incomes of rural landlords. For wherever men may be congregated, they must obtain the use of natural opportunities or die. And as “all that a man hath, will he give for his life,” the monopolizers of God’s life supporting bounty can squeeze from their helpless victims, whether in city or country, all they have or earn, save only bare subsistence.

MR. CARNEGIE’S HOLIDAY.

Very Bad Politics Not to Fuse With a Great Party that Has Adopted Your Principles.

Grand Rapids, Mich., Workman.

> The greenbackers of Michigan should refuse to run an independent ticket this fall. The democrats of Michigan have adopted the same platform as the greenbackers, and representatives of both parties are working harmoniously in congress. General Weaver, the smartest greenbacker of them all, is acknowledged by the democratic congressmen as the soundest representative man in America on the financial question. Parties are only a means to an end, and it is a question of doubt whether the greenbackers can do as much to advance their doctrines by acting independently as by fusing with the democrats.

Water at a Dollar a Gallon.

Sir Oracle in Real Estate Record and Guide.

> We ought to have state if not national care of all our health resorts. Private persons should not be permitted to monopolize health giving waters. Take the case of the Bethesda spring at Waukesha, Wis. It is useful in kidney troubles, especially in diabetes. Time was when a barrel of it could be bought for $5; the company who own it now charge $5 for six gallons—a monstrous price, dearer than the famous Zinfandel wine of California. There are other springs at Waukesha, no doubt quite as healthful if they were to be analyzed and their curative properties known, as they would be if in Europe. p. 5, col. 6

SOCIETY NOTES.

Thirty-two girls working in a shingle mill at Bay City, Mich., struck last week for an advance of wages. They were getting 75 cents per day and wanted $1. In Pittsburg girls are fast taking the place of men in the hinge and various other iron manufactories.

It is said that forty years ago the fortune of the Astors in New York was $40,000,000. It is now estimated at [$300,000,000?], and is said to increase at the rate of $20,000,000 a year.

John Schaedle, a shoemaker, at No. 125 Seventh street, disappeared a few days ago. His door was locked, and last night a man who had a mortgage on his furniture, becoming anxious, asked the police to let him in. An officer broke in and found the shoemaker hanging dead. Schaedle had tied a clothes line to the gas pipe, made a noose for his neck, and stepped off his counter. He was a popular man in the neighborhood, and the treasurer of the Schaedle club, which was called after him. For the last two years he had been partly disabled by rheumatism, and his business had been falling away.

Ex-Senator Fair is somewhat noted for his humanity to animals. An old sorrel [horse?] was carried a long distance in California recently in a special car. The animal, now twenty-eight years of age, is the property of Mr. Fair, who grants the ancient steed every comfort.

Mrs. Mary Oberman of San Francisco, being very poor, but of good character, as her neighbors will testify, has supported herself and her little daughter by [working?] in a laundry. This, of course, prevents her from being with her child in the day time. Three months ago the child, while on the street, was captured by an officer, who put her in charge of the Boys’ and girls’ aid society, and for these three months Mrs. Oberman, being, as before mentioned, very poor, has not been permitted to even see her child. She has applied to the court for aid.

Judge Harry E. Parker of Mauch Chunk, Pa., has a sideboard built by Herts Brothers, for which he paid [$17,000?]. It is said to be a marvel of elaborate and beautiful carving.

Julia Cargile, a well educated and pretty girl of nineteen, coming of good family and living with her widowed mother at [29?] East Washington square, New York, committed suicide Sunday morning by jumping from the roof of her dwelling into the street. Mother and daughter had long suffered the torments of poverty, and the latter had vainly sought for employment, offering at the last place at which she applied to distribute patent medicine circulars for [$3?] a week. All the evidence points to show that she at length became desperate and sought release from her trouble in death. The mother is an excellent musician and the daughter was an artist. They came of an excellent family in the south, and Mrs. Cargile was the granddaughter of the Rev. Dr. Rhoades of Georgia.

H. G. Marquand of New York has a piano which cost $46,000. The works were made by Messrs. Steinway & Sons, and the case, which was built in London, was designed and painted by Alma Tadema. Mr. Marquand also possesses a billiard table for which he paid $26,000.

Lillie Smith, a pretty girl from Smithfield, L. I., a month ago attempted suicide in Brooklyn by taking a dose of belladonna. She was taken to St. Mary’s hospital, from which institution she tried to escape on Wednesday night, when she was transferred to Myrtle avenue police station. Yesterday she was sent to jail to await examination on a charge of attempted suicide. These entries were found in a note book taken from her: “To whom it may concern: I have tired of poverty^sic. I have tried and tried to keep up my courage, but it has failed me. I have no one to live for, and I am so tired of being poor, I have taken poison. May God forgive my sinful soul.”

There has been a week during the last seven days, but it was not “in society.” Society has scattered, and New York is comparatively empty of the fashionable people whose going to and fro^sic are of importance enough to be talked about. Early last week up town neighborhoods assumed their melancholy summer aspect of deserted streets and closed houses. This week will be most entirely devoid^sic of incidents of social interest in town.—[New York Tribune.

On the day the City handicap was run the center of social attraction of course was Jerome park, the lawn presenting a very gay and pretty appearance. The dark green of the fir trees makes a pretty background for the coaches, though those on the grand stand are not generally supposed to be there for beautiful effects, but for horse racing, and do not appreciate the beauty of the scene. Four coaches were in line, that of Mr. Fairman Rogers being the first, then that of Mr. Prescott Lawrence, then Colonel Jay’s and then Mr. Bowdoin’s. Each was filled with merry parties who ate, drank and made merry on the tops of the coaches, with due decorum but plenty of laughter. Some of the costumes on the lawn were very becoming. Miss May Brady wore a dress of pale gray and silver gray striped mohair. Mrs. Prescott Lawrence wore a plaid dress that looked very well; Miss Tissie Hall, pale gray and white; Mrs. Delancey Kane, pink gingham and straw hat; Mrs. Harry McVickar, a very pretty dress of resada blue^sic India, with bonnet to match; Mrs. Lindley H. Chapin, white gold embroidered serge; Mrs. Arthur Dodge, pale mauve.—[Mail and Express.

In the Brooklyn Eagle was an account of an eviction in that city of churches, entitled “A Shanty Siege,” wherein the ejectment of Michael Cooney and his wife from their home was described at length. Michael, industrious man that he was, had, through his energy and patience, reclaimed an apparently worthless portion of mud flats, and reared his hut thereon, and after six years of residence upon it he was ruthlessly cast out upon the street.

J. W. Mackay furnished about $75,000 in weight of silver, and paid Tiffany & Co. $120,000 for the work on his dinner service, which thus represents [$195,000?].

Thomas Ansell, aged eighty-three, and his wife, aged seventy-seven, were poor and proud at Deptford, England. They wouldn’t go to the work house, and the parish wouldn’t give them but eighty cents a week to support them outside. Of this, fifty cents went for rent. Thomas has just died of starvation, and the poor law officials say it served him right for being so proud.

No Americans have ever created so great a social sensation in England as the Vanderbilts. All the Mackay splendors sink into insignificance beside them, and their siege of London was short, since the whole social world promptly surrendered to these monarchs of millions. Of course a presentation at court was an important part of that success. Mrs. Vanderbilt wore a dress made with a demi-train of heavy crevette pink satin brocade with scattered bouquets of wild roses in gold and silver. The long court train was of cream white velvet, lined throughout with [pale yellow?] satin, and bordered with a wide band of cream white curled ostrich feathers. The pink bodice was long and pointed and draped with silver tissue, which was held in position with pale pink enamel wild roses, whose foliage was crusted with diamonds. The silver tissue draperies were held at their juncture with the train by large diamond ornaments finished with pendant chains of diamonds and pearls. Her fan was of cream white ostrich feathers, and the same sort were in her hair, held by a superb diamond aigrette. Her necklace of solitaires was estimated at $150,000, and those in her ears were said to represent $15,000 more. She wore bracelets and rings of the same precious stones, and even the gold handle of her fan was thickly encrusted with these jewels. She fairly blazed with these myriad gems, and even royalty, which usually regards every one with equal indifference, opened its eyes and stared at the American woman’s diamonds.—[New York Star.

LOUIS PRANG.

Spreading the Light.

Louis Lesaulnier of Red Bud, Illinois, has been for some years one of the most active of our workers, and has circulated hundreds of books, thousands of tracts and many copies of THE STANDARD—all of which he keeps constantly in his store—to sell to those who will buy, and to give or lend to those who, though they will not buy, will read. That he is not afraid to avow his principles, his business card shows. Here it is:

LOUIS LESAULNIER,

DRUGGIST,

RED BUD (Randolph County), ILLINOIS.

Keeps Free Circulating Library of all of Henry George’s Publications,

See Other Side.

(Other Side.)

Equal right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness includes equal rights to all natural opportunities. When these possess a rent value, justice demands that we pay it in full as a tax for the privilege to monopolize them against the equal rights of our fellow men.

Our present land and tax laws bring about industrial slavery, etc., in proportion to the increase of population and the difficulty of access to free, desirable lands.

Henry George’s single tax will free labor and capital from all other taxes, it will induce the best use of desirable land, it will secure to labor and capital its proper reward, it will make noble and free men out of communities and nations now blindly and foolishly legislating and fighting against each other.

The best government grants its people the fullest amount of liberty compatible with justice and safety.

p. 6, col. 3

FREE TRADE THE AMERICAN IDEA.

F. M. Holland in the Freethinker’s Magazine.

One of the first results of independence was the abolition of the British system of restrictions on commerce between the colonies and establishment of free trade throughout an area which long ago became larger than all Europe, and now extends from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Pitt’s attempt to open similar traffic between Great Britain and Ireland failed in 1785, when the demands of English manufacturers to be protected against Irish cheap labor were supported by Burke, Fox and Sheridan.

Among the very few who wished, a hundred years ago, to enable all nations to trade freely were Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson Albert Gallatin^sic and Pelatiah Webster. In 1774, two years earlier than Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” appeared the “Principles of Trade,” which was largely due to Franklin’s pen, and was recommended by him for circulation here in 1784. The wish is expressed, “that commerce wera as free between all nations of the world as it is between the several counties of England.” “No nation was ever ruined by trade, even seemingly the most disadvantageous.”

In a letter of 1788 Franklin expressed his expectation that American tariffs would be for revenue only. Jefferson was then advocating free trade, as minister to France, and in 1793 he recommended, as secretary of the treasury, that commerce “be relieved of its shackles in all parts of the world.” “Would even a single nation begin with the United States this system of free exchange, it would be advisable to begin it with that nation.” Gallatin appeared soon after as an opponent of protection in congress. Pelatiah Webster, a graduate of Yale, who was imprisoned for patriotism by the British in 1778, published the next year an essay, saying, “Take off every restraint and limitation from our commerce. Let trade be as free as air. Let every man make the most of his goods, and in his own way.” In 1783 he suggested that revenue should be raised mainly by duties on luxuries, for instance, high priced tea and cloth, while necessaries should be taxed but five per cent; and the tariff of 1789 was in much closer harmony with his principles than is that now in force, especially as the average rate of duties was less than one-fifth of the present amount.

Heavy duties for revenue only were kept upon coffee until 1832, and upon tea until 1842, while the attempts of what was called the British faction to increase the imposts on manufactures were resisted by northerners as well as southerners, on the ground that no taxes for the benefit of the few should be imposed on the many. Daniel Webster helped defeat the efforts to high duties^sic on cotton and woolen goods in 1816, when a protectionist member of congress named Gold, sought to justify himself by quoting Brougham, Sir James Stewart and the “Parliamentary History.” The example of Great Britain was appealed to in 1820, together with that of France, Prussia, Holland, Italy and Russia, by protectionists, who admitted that they were asking for a radical change in the tariff, and that it had thus far been levied “more to aid the treasury than to protect industry.” They were opposed by representatives from Massachussetts^sic and Connecticut, who not only showed the danger of losing foreign markets and diverting capital into unprofitable industries, but urged that if the channel of trade were left free it would find its proper level with mutual benefit. The Salem merchants sent in a memorial, drawn by Judge Story, and protesting against the proposed duties as “repugnant to those maxims of free trade, which the United States have hitherto so forcibly and perseveringly contended for as the sure foundation of national prosperity.”

Protection was only a secondary object of legislation before 1824, when it was made paramount by close votes. Clay’s assertion that the (protective) bill would “lay the foundation of a genuine American policy” was answered by Webster thus: “This, sirs, is an assumption which I take the liberty most directly to deny. Since he speaks of the proposed measure as a new era in our legislation, since he professes to invite us to depart from our accustomed course, to instruct ourselves by the wisdom of others and to adopt the policy of the most distinguished foreign states, one is a little anxious to know with what propriety of speech this invention of other nations is denominated an ‘American policy,’ while on the contrary, a preference for our own established system, as it now actually exists, and always has existed, is called a foreign policy.” Mr. Webster wished “freedom of trade to be the general principle, and restriction the exception;” and added: “There is a country, not undistinguished^sic among the nations, in which the progress of manufactures has been far more rapid than in any other, and yet unaided by prohibitions or unnatural restrictions. That country, the happiest which the sun shines on, is our own.”

The majority of New England’s representatives opposed the protective tariff of 1824 and also that of 1828. The latter gave rise to the free trade convention in Philadelphia in 1831 on a call first published in the Evening Post, then edited by Bryant. Prominent among the delegates from fifteen states was Gallatin, who had been secretary of the treasury from 1801 to 1813. Chief Justice Marshall was also present. The surplus of our revenue, in consequence of the reduction of 1846, was found to be a sufficient reason for a still greater reduction in 1857. At the presidential election the year previous not one of the four principal candidates stood on a protectionist platform. The democrats repeated for the fourth time their pledge in 1840 against fostering one branch of industry to the detriment of another, or raising more revenue “than is required to defray the necessary expenses.” The latter position had been taken by the free soilers also in 1852.

Even in 1862 Emerson spoke at Washington, in Lincoln’s presence, of “Free trade, certainly the interest of nations, but by no means the interest of certain towns and districts which tariff feeds fat, and the eager interest of the few overpowers the apathetic general conviction of the many.” Bryant was able for more than fifty years to teach the truth that “Free trade is a part of the grand movement of mankind toward a nobler condition of social existence.”

These examples, with those of Franklin, Jefferson, Story, and Webster, when at his best, should encourage us to make all our commercial relations as freely and fully American as those between our states.

A Unionist’s View of the Irish Situation.

BALTINGLASS, Ireland, June 16.—As a single tax man and unionist, will you kindly allow me a few words in reply to Mr. J. Davison?

With his first letter I agree. The leaders of the nationalist party seem to have gone altogether astray. Ireland wants her land question settled, and the majority of her representatives want to make the confusion existing on that question worse confounded. They would, if they had the power, land us into peasant proprietary to-morrow. The great hope for Ireland is the growth of

p. 6, col. 4 sound ideas of taxation among the British democracy. Therefore (and here I evidently part company with Mr. Davison), I am a unionist. When we have our land in our own hands it will be time enough to see about home rule.

At present the average Irish farmer identifies home rule with cheap land. I find the strongest advocates of home rule per se are the artisan class in towns, publicans and their assistants.

As to the papal rescript, I have not seen the general white heat indignation mentioned. True, a splutter here and there takes place, but I believe many are sincerely glad of the veto on boycotting. The plan of campaign is condemned by Mr. Davison in his first letter as an admission of the right of landlords to exact rent, and consequently of the right to devastate the country and “spread havoc and destruction on every hand.” I strongly object to the “plan” on these grounds; but once admit the ownership of the land, and it becomes robbery to hold both the land and the rent; therefore, the Roman Catholic church is bound to oppose it, or (from its own point of view) connive at fraud. Papal interference in such a matter is the natural outcome of the papal office.

THE STANDARD is invaluable. I generally send it on when read, and it is bound to make people think.

A. W. WARING.

NEW IDEAS, METHODS AND INVENTIONS.

It is well known that one of the reasons why locomotive engines are made so heavy is to increase the friction between the driving wheels and the rails; the wheels are then less liable to merely slip round without moving the train as they often do. It is now proposed by the use of an electric current to make the driving wheels take a stronger grip on the rails. This will save in power and in wear and tear and permit the use of very light engines.

Basswood may be enormously compressed, after which it may be steamed and expanded to its original volume. Advantage has been taken of this principle in the manufacture of certain kinds of moldings. The portions of the wood to be left in relief are first compressed or pushed down by suitable dies below the general level of the board, then the board is planed down to a level surface, and afterward steamed. The compressed portions of the board are expanded by the steam so that they stand out in relief.

According to Kuhlow’s, recent experiments at Hamburg have proved it possible to make a gunpowder which will produce little or no smoke when fired and still be as serviceable in all other respects as the present smoke producing gunpowder. By substituting cork for wood charcoal, it is further stated, trouble arising from powder absorbing moisture readily will be avoided. If the above statements prove to be borne out by the facts, the importance of the two discoveries, both in a military and in a civil way, can hardly be overrated.

It is announced that five patents were recently issued to a Baltimore electrician covering methods and apparatus for heating by electricity. The inventor, it is claimed, has made a radically new departure in the art of converting electricity into heat, whereby the losses incident to all previous efforts in that direction have been practically overcome. By this system dwellings and other buildings can be supplied with heat from central generators by the same conductors which now supply them with incandescent electric lights, and at a cost considerable less^sic than the methods of heating now in vogue.

An interesting experiment has been tried with the great artesian well which spouts up in the grounds of the Ponce de Leon hotel, at St. Augustine, Fla. Directly over the well, which throws a solid column of water, twelve inches in diameter, thirty-five feet into the air, a huge turbine wheel has been placed. Bolted direct to the shaft of this wheel is an Edison dynamo capable of supplying 375 16-candle lamps. Several hundred Edison incandescent lamps have been placed on the walls of the building over the well, and together with the indicating and regulating apparatus connected with the dynamo. The trials in generating electricity in this way by power derived directly from the earth have proved eminently satisfactory, as far as the steadiness and constancy of the light are concerned.

The corporation of Birmingham, England, is about to institute an entirely new departure in the sale of gas, by the use of “pay before delivery” meters^sic.” A number of prepayment meters constructed after the principle of the common automatic supply machines, have been offered by inventors; and a trial of one devised by Mr. Brownbills is to be made in a court of small houses. One or more pennies are dropped into an opening, and the regulating apparatus of the meter liberates a quantity of gas of corresponding value, after which it stops, awaiting the advent of fresh pence. The coins accumulate in a locked receptacle, and are removed by the collector at intervals. The mechanical arrangements of the meter will, it is believed, render fraud difficult; and they can be manufactured for about $5 each.

The Gas engine and power company of New York have perfected an engine in which both the fuel and the power are obtained from naphtha. It has been applied to many boats of from sixteen to thirty feet in length and works admirably. The beauty of it is that while it is cheap, clean and always ready, it can be managed by anybody. The owners of many well known steam yachts have had naphtha launches made for them and express the greatest satisfaction with them. The engine is started by lighting an alcohol lamp and blowing some naphtha vapor over the flame with a little hand pump. This makes a hot flame and heats the naphtha in a retort. This heated naphtha generates the gas which drives the engine. After the engine is going, which is in about two minutes, some of the gas in the retort can be used as fuel and the alcohol lamp and pumping are no longer necessary. The engines can be instantly reversed when at the highest speed. Only six per cent of the fluid in the retort is used, the remainder being returned to the tank and used over again. A two-horse power engine runs a twenty-foot launch and uses three or four quarts of naphtha an hour.

The Gilbert car manufacturing company of Troy, N. Y., has completed an electric motor car for the Sprague company, and it will soon be seen on the Ninth avenue elevated. The car is quite novel, and the outside appearance is similar to the passenger cars now in use on the Brooklyn bridge. There are doors in the center, as well as in each end, which will facilitate the ingress and egress of passengers. The motor attachment is situated over the trucks, and the current is managed from the platform by means of a switch. The motor does not encroach upon the seating capacity of the car, and is a very simple contrivance. The motor car is forty-six feet long, and has eight forty-two inch wheels that are worked by the electric current, and are called driving wheels. The wheels on the axle have a [300?] horse power. The motor will give a drawbar strain of 15,000 pounds, fully double that developed by the present puffy little elevated locomotives. The motor, it is claimed, will pull four cars at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour.

Yes, It is Land that Attracts People, After All—Free Land.

Boston Herald.

There will be curiosity to watch the growth of Texas under the coming census. This southwestern state demonstrates that emigration may take place on southern lines as well as northern ones. Nevada is rather worse than stationary, if anything. Colorado advances only as long as her mines attract, while Kansas grows rapidly, and Dakota makes an increase which is almost phenomenal. The southern people who suffered from the war have probably done a good deal to swell the population of Texas.

p. 6, col. 5

ENGLAND AND AMERICA.

OVERSHOT RECIPROCITY.

A Song of Protection.

Air—“Little Brown Jug.”

My friends, I’m growing very stout; I really fear I’ll have the gout, And it all comes from protection pap I caught in our high tariff trap.

Chorus—

Ha! ha! ha! you and me, Jolly good pap, don’t I love thee! Ha! ha! ha! you and me, Protection pap, don’t I love thee!

I’m acres broad and mountains steep^sic; In which I graze protected sheep; I’ve forests whence I gather toll, And mines of copper, iron and coal.

I love the laboring man, I vow, And all who toil, and spin and plow, And over their eyes I’ll surely pull, As long as I can, protected wool.

Protection pap’s the whole, sole cause, Of freedom and of freedom’s laws. Without it how could labor live, And still to me my profits give?

While I have a cow that gives such milk, I’ll dress her in protected silk; I’ll feed her on sweet taffy hay, And milk her forty times a day.

The laboring man’s good friend am I; I’ll live on him until I die; I give him work, I give him pay At the rate of sixty cents a day.

W. G. SELLERS.

San Francisco, June 7, 1888.

STRAWS WHICH SHOW THE WIND.

Man is a land animal, and when denied the free use of land is just like a fish denied the free use of water.—[Cedar Rapids, Ia., New Era.

The legislature of Massachusetts passed a bill similar to the electoral bill passed in New York, called the Australian bill. It will be passed by other states.—[Nickerson, Kan., Argosy.

We rejoice that a square issue has been found by the two old parties on a question which is essentially a great labor question, one that concerns the whole people. On with the fight, even if it takes all summer.—[New Jersey Unionist.

There are other places in this great nation of ours where votes are bought on election day, and we are of the opinion that even in Kansas the adoption of the Australian system would have a salutary effect.—[Kirwin, Kan., Independent.

A monopolist is just as much of an enemy to orderly society as an anarchist. The latter blows us to smithereens by a single explosion; the former lays us under tribute and compels every man, woman and child to add to his bank account.—[Hartford, Conn., American Toiler.

The millers, in national convention assembled, have taken preliminary steps to form a flour trust. The millers should beware of flour trusts. There are already too many combinations to control the necessaries of life, and the people will not tolerate further additions to their number.—[Philadelphia Record.

All over the world, in one shape or another, the land question comes up at every turn as the great difficulty of the hour. The divorce of the great mass of the people from the soil is coming to be more and more seen to be too injurious to the general well being to be tolerated very much longer.—[Toronto Globe.

The bill for the Australian system of voting, which was so actively championed by the labor party of New York, was passed by the legislature and left in the hands of Governor Hill. The start given this measure by the New York legislature, and by the labor party before, will yet result in its adoption by many of the states.—[Brockwayville, Pa., Record.

A number of so-called editors who, it is safe to say, never read one of Henry George’s works, or read an editorial of his, are denouncing his theories as vagaries and the vaporings of a crank, etc. George is in advance of his day, and we not believe^sic it possible for a man to read his works without becoming convinced that his theories are not vagaries.—[Cedar County, Neb., Nonpareil.

Mr. George has struck the vein that will eventually lead to old time simplicity, viz., a gradual reduction of taxation on imports, exports, and personal property not representing unnecessary capital. By this reduction all round, except on real estate, we approach the cherished hope of Mr. Henry George and all true friends of the single land tax.—[Long Island City Tribune.

The importance of labor and the necessity of listening to its demands will receive the first and foremost recognition in the platforms of both the great political parties; and upon every stump throughout the campaign votes will be asked for this or that party on the ground that the policy which it represents is the best calculated to improve the condition of labor.—[Reading, Pa., Herald.

Austin Corbin, the Reading railroad king, has just succeeded in placing a mortgage of $56,000,000 on that company, which controls the Pennsylvania coal fields. The mortgage is taken by European bankers, and now the American people must pay these European money bags a tribute of over $2,000,000 a year for the privilege of mining coal from their own coal fields. Another declaration of independence is needed.—[Louisville Labor Record.

An Ohio man has just made the discovery that he is the “legal heir” to nearly all the land on which an Illinois city stands. It appears that in transferring the land some flaw was made which renders the titles of all who owned it since worthless. So well has the new found heir put his claim, and so impressed are his victims with its soundness, that he has been offered nearly two million dollars for a settlement. We refer to this simply to show on what a flimsy basis the theory of private ownership of land hangs.—[Naugatuck, Conn., Agitator.

A High Protection Paper Shows How the Protective Tariff Works.

Philadelphia Press.

A gang of Italians labored hard yesterday with pick and shovel breaking ground on the lot recently purchased by Claus Spreckels as the site of his great sugar refinery. A morose looking Neapolitan overlooked the men, but they worked too vigorously to need any urging on. A hundred or more idlers hung around the men at work during the day, and regarded them with anything but friendly eyes. The onlookers were the disappointed ones who, on applying for work in the early hours of the morning, had learned from the contractors, Peoples & Bros. of Twenty-fifth and Callowhill streets, that only Italians would be employed upon the work. At 6 o’clock yesterday morning there were nearly 500 men on the ground, all seeking work. When the contractor’s decision was made known angry murmurs and threats arose from the crowd, and the attitude of the men became so bellicose that Andrew Peoples sent to the police station at Moyamensing avenue and Dickinson street for aid. The appearance of the officers speedily restored order, and the crowd fell back from the railroad tracks and contented themselves with anathematizing the sons of sunny Italy and angrily protesting against the preference shown in favor of foreign as against native labor.

CHRISTIANITY—SPIRIT AND PRACTICE.

The Farmer and the Mortgage Again.

William E Bear^sic in Bradstreet’s.

I notice an article extracted the other day from the Chicago Tribune, entitled, “Where are the Farmers’ Savings?” in which it is stated that the following estimate of farm mortgages in the western states was made “a year or so ago by Banker Harris” of Chicago, for use in the banking business:

“According to this moderate, careful estimate,” says the Tribune, “the farm mortgages in the ten western states mentioned amount to the tremendous sum of over $1,200,000,000, and the interest charged cannot be less than $90,000,000 per annum.” Further on the writer says: “The farmers of the west can never get free from under the load that oppresses them without help. Under present conditions it is preposterous to suppose that they can ever meet their mortgages and free their lands. They are virtually to-day only tenants on their own farms, and with the prospects of becoming tenants in name as well as fact in the near future.”

In an article on “Western Farm Mortgages” in the Farmer’s Review of February 29, summarizing a great number of reports from ten states, the estimates of the percentage of farms mortgaged vary from twenty-three to fifty-nine per cent, and in five of the states the reports stating that mortgages are increasing are more numerous than those giving the opposite verdict.

But After Abolishing the Tariff, to Abolish the Monopoly of Timber Lands Would Benefit You Much.

The Los Angeles (Cal.) Times, a republican protectionist paper, says:

As a fact, the removal of the small duty of $2 per thousand feet on lumber would benefit us very little. The ring could buy up all the mills there, and will probably do so if necessary. That, however, does not make it any more fitting for congress to be concerning itself with the protection of these men who are engaged in bleeding the people to the extent only limited by the amount of blood in the people’s veins. Whatever action be taken by congress in the matter of the duty on lumber should be taken altogether irrespective of the wishes of the Pacific coast lumbermen.

The East Africans Have Nothing to Say in the Matter.

Chicago Herald.

A new state is about to be admitted to the sisterhood of nations. Letters patent have been granted to “The British East African Company,” giving them full power to erect and maintain a government, with taxes and army. It lies north of the German East African society, near Zanzibar, and includes some of the finest land in Central Africa.

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[Illustration: circular trade-mark stamp lettered “HAND MADE” around the center and “C.M.M.P.A.” below; the top arc of the ring is [illegible]]

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[Advertisement] PROGRESS AND POVERTY.

[Advertisement] SOCIAL PROBLEMS.

BY HENRY GEORGE.

34[2?] 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.
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21. City and country.
22. Conclusion.

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The following have already appeared:

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

CURRENT THOUGHT.

“The Coming Reign of Plenty” is the title of an essay by Prince Kropotkin in the Nineteenth Century for June, in which the capacity of the earth to support an indefinitely increased population is discussed, if not exhaustively, at least very fully, and with marked ability.

The prince begins by pointing out—as he has done more fully in an article in the Nineteenth Century for April—the steadily growing and irresistible tendency of modern civilization toward decentralization. The time is passed, or nearly so, when the various nations of the earth occupied each a special field of industry; when one set of countries furnished food and raw materials, while another set were chiefly occupied in manufacturing. Though America still sends cotton to Europe, she manufactures for her own use more and more of it every year. India has become an exporter of jute fabrics, where, less than a generation ago, she sent her jute fiber round the cape to England, to be returned to her in finished manufactures. Similar industrial changes may be observed in Prussia, Germany and other countries of continental Europe.

Knowledge and invention, boldness of thought and enterprise, conquests of genius and improvements of social organization have become international growths; and no kind of progress—intellectual, industrial, or social—can be kept within political boundaries; it crosses the seas, it pierces the mountains; steppes are no obstacle to it. Knowledge and inventive powers are now so thoroughly international that if a simple newspaper paragraph announces to-morrow that the problem of storing force, of printing without inking, or of aerial navigation, has received a practical solution in this country or elsewhere, we may feel sure that within a few weeks the same problem will be solved, almost in the same way, by a score of inventors of all nationalities. Continually we learn that the same scientific discovery, or technical invention, has been made within a few days’ distance, in countries a thousand miles apart; as if there were a kind of atmosphere which favors the germination of a given idea at a given moment. And such an atmosphere exists—steam, print, and the common stock of knowledge have created it. Those who dream of monopolizing technical genius are therefore fifty years behind the times; they are dreamers like Napoleon the Third, who fancied he could destroy the German armies by keeping secret his mitrailleuses, but saw the Germans also come with mitrailleuses—of Russian invention and American make—and something more powerful than mechanical guns: new military tactics. The world—the wide, wide world—is now the true domain of knowledge; and if each nation displays some special capacities in some special branch, the various capacities of different nations compensate one another, and the advantages which could be derived from them would be only temporary. The fine British workmanship in mechanical arts, the Yankee boldness for gigantic enterprise, the French systematic mind, and the German pedagogy, are becoming international capacities. William Armstrong in his Italian workshop communicates to Italians those capacities for managing huge iron masses which have been nurtured on the Tyne; the uproarious Yankee spirit of enterprise pervades the old world; the French taste for harmony becomes European taste; and German pedagogy—improved, I dare say—is at home in Russia. So, instead of trying to keep life in the old channels, it would be better to see what the new conditions are, what duties they impose on our generation.

Clearly, for the great manufacturing nations, the question of the future is the food supply. If the food producing countries become also great manufacturing countries; if, striking the protectionist shackles from her commerce, the United States should not only produce what manufactures she needs herself, but also compete in foreign markets with the great manufacturing countries of Europe; then, beyond a doubt, these latter will find themselves compelled to rely upon their own resources for bread and meat. Great Britain now buys from foreign countries one-half the food she eats, and pays for it in manufactures. What will she do when other nations decline to buy the produce of her looms and mills? Must half her people starve? This is the question Prince Kropotkin discusses:

Is it possible that the soil of the United Kingdom, which at present yields food for one-half of its inhabitants, could provide all the necessary amount and variety of food for 35,000,000 human beings, when it covers only 78,000,000 acres all told—forests and rocks, marshes and peat bogs, cities, railways and fields? The current opinion is, that it by no means can: and that opinion is so inveterate that we even see a scientist, like Mr. Huxley, who is always so cautious when dealing with current opinions in science, indorse that opinion without even taking the trouble of verifying it. It is accepted as an axiom. And yet, as soon as we try to find out any argument in its favor, we discover that it has not the slightest foundation, either in facts, or in judgment upon well known facts.

Prince Kropotkin begins his demonstration by pointing out that the soil of Great Britain supports fewer inhabitants to-day than it did thirty years ago. Since 1860 the area under wheat has been reduced by 1,590,000 acres, and the crop by 40,000,000 bushels. Cultivated crops of every kind have been reduced and pasture land increased. The chief cause of the short food supply is not the increase of population.

It is chiefly the destruction, the abandonment of agriculture. Each crop requiring human labor has had its area reduced: and one third of the agricultural laborers have been sent away since 1861 to reinforce the ranks of the unemployed in the cities, so that, far from being over populated, the fields of Britain are starved of human labor, as James Caird used to say. The British nation does not work on her own soil; she is prevented from doing so; and the would-be economists complain that the soil will not nourish its inhabitants! Tel seigneur, telle terre would be the answer of the French peasants.

The prince thus compares the agriculture of Great Britain with that of Belgium:

Belgium also grows an average of 27 8-10 bushels of wheat per acre, but her wheat area is relatively twice as large as that of the United Kingdom; it covers one-eleventh part of the cultivated area, one-twelfth of the aggregate territory. Besides, Belgium cultivates on a larger scale industrial plants, and although she keeps the same amount of cattle on the acre as the United Kingdom, her aggregate crops of cereals are five times larger with regard to the cultivated area, and seven times larger with regard to the aggregate territory. As to those who will not fail to say that the soil of Belgium is certainly more fertile than that of this country, let me answer, in the words of Laveleye, that “only one-half, or less, of the territory offers natural conditions which are favorable for agriculture;” the other half consists of a gravelly soil, or sands, “the natural sterility of which could be overpowered only by heavy manuring.” Man—not nature—has given to the Belgian soil its present productivity. With this soil and labor, Belgium succeeds in supplying nearly all the food of a population which is denser than that of England and Wales, and numbers 514 inhabitants to the square mile. If the exports of agricultural produce from Belgium be taken into account, we can say that Laveleye’s figures are still good, and that only one inhabitant out of each twenty requires imported food. But even if we double his figures, we still find that the soil of Belgium supplies with home grown food no less than [460?] inhabitants per square mile.

p. 8, col. 2 > And Belgium is, moreover, a manufacturing country which exports home made goods to the value of 64s. per head of population (I take Neumann Spellart^sic’s figures). As to separate parts of the Belgian territory, the small and naturally unfertile province of West Flanders not only grows the food of its 580 inhabitants on the square mile, but exports agricultural produce to the value of 25s. per head of population. And yet no one can read Laveleye’s masterly work without coming to the conclusion that the Flemish agriculture would have realized still better results were it not hampered in its growth by the steady and heavy increase of rent. In face of the rent being increased each nine years, most of the farmers have abstained from further improvements.

I might quote like examples from elsewhere, especially from Lombardy, without even going as far as China. But the above will be enough to caution the reader against hasty conclusions as to the impossibility of feeding 35,000,000 people from 78,000,000 acres. They also will enable me to draw the following conclusions: (1) If the soil of the United Kingdom were cultivated only as it was thirty years ago, 24,000,000 people, instead of 17,000,000, could live on home grown food; and that culture, while giving occupation to at least 750,000 men, would give nearly 3,000,000 wealthy home customers to the British manufactures. (2) If the 1,590,000 acres on which wheat was grown thirty years ago—only these, and not more—were cultivated as the fields are cultivated now in England under the allotment system, which gives on the average forty bushels per acre, the united kingdom would grow food for 27,000,000 inhabitants out of 35,000,000. (3) If the now cultivated area of the united kingdom (80,000 square miles) were cultivated as the soil is cultivated on the average in Belgium, the united kingdom would have food for 37,000,000 inhabitants; and it might export agricultural produce, without ceasing to manufacture, so as freely to supply all the needs of a wealthy population. And finally (4), if the population of this country came to be doubled, all that would be required for producing the food for 70,000,000 inhabitants would be to cultivate the soil as it is cultivated in the best farms of this country, in Lombardy, and in Flanders, and to cultivate the meadows which at present lie almost unproductive around the big cities in the same way as the neighborhood of Paris is cultivated by the Paris maraichers. All these are not fancy dreams, but mere realities; nothing but modest conclusions from what we see round about us, without any allusion to the agriculture of the future.

But Prince Kropotkin is not satisfied with thus demonstrating that Great Britian^sic could easily raise food sufficient for double her present population, without adopting any methods of agriculture not now thoroughly understood and largely practiced. He goes farther, and shows how, as population increases in density, the command of man over the productive power of the soil becomes proportionately greater, until it really seems impossible to set a limit to it. Here is his description of a single marais, or “orchard,” near Paris:

His orchard covers only 2 7-10 acres. The outlay for the establishment, including a steam engine for watering purposes, reached £1,136. Eight persons, M. Ponce included, cultivate the orchard and carry the vegetables to the market, for which purpose one horse is kept; when returning from Paris they bring in manure, for which £100 is spent every year. Another £100 is spent in rent and taxes. But how to enumerate all that is gathered every year on this plot of less than three acres, without filling two pages or more with the most wonderful figures! One must read them in M. Ponce’s work, but here are the chief items: More than 20,000 pounds of carrots, more than 20,000 pounds of onions, radishes and other vegetables sold by weight, 6,000 heads of cabbage, 3,000 of cauliflower, 5,000 baskets of tomatoes, 5,000 dozen of choice fruit, and 154,000 heads of salad—in short, a total of 250,000 pounds of vegetables. This soil is made to such an amount that every year 250 cubic yards of loam have to be sold. The gross income is estimated at £800, which pays the £100 of rent and taxes and £570 of working expenses. But like examples could be given by the dozen, and the best evidence against any possible exaggeration of the results is the very high rent paid by the gardeners, which reaches, on the average, £32 per acre. No less than 2,125 acres are cultivated under Paris in that way by 5,000 persons, and thus not only the 2,000,000 Parisians are supplied with vegetables, but the surplus is also sent to London.

Nor is this by any means the best that can be done. The system of marais culture is only thirty years old, and is yet in its infancy. The next forward step will be the heating of the soil, so as to set the seasons at defiance. Already, Prince Kropotkin tells us, a certain M. Lemaitre at Asnieres, has covered with a glass roof half an acre of soil for the culture of asparagus:

He thus has a winter garden, where man freely moves and works, heated at the cost of only one ton of coal every day. But he crops every day, during ten consecutive months, no less than from 1,000 to 1,200 big bundles of asparagus, which are sold in the market at an average of 7½d. to 8d. each. And the Revue Horticole, quoted by M. Loubeau, maintains that no less than sixty acres would be necessary to crop the same amount of asparagus if it were grown in the open air. The productive powers of a given area of land are thus increased more than a hundred times.

So it is. As man’s wants increase, so does his capacity for supplying them. Like a good genius, kindly nature stands ready at our call, and answers every draft we make upon her resources. She knows no barriers of subsistence, such as foolish men erect in her despite. Her stores are limitless, her bounty inexhaustible, her forces equal to any call. All man needs is freedom of access to her.

If we take all into consideration; if we realize the progress made of late in the gardening culture, and the tendency toward spreading its methods to the broad field; if we watch the cultural experiments which are being made now—experiments to-day and realities to-morrow—and ponder over the resources kept in store by science, we are bound to say that it is utterly impossible to foresee at the present moment the limits as to the maximum number of human beings who could live and enjoy life upon a given area of land, nor as to what a variety of produce they could advantageously grow in any latitude. Each day widens former limits and opens new and wide horizons. All we can say now is that six hundred persons could easily live on a square mile; and that, with cultural methods already used on a large scale, a thousand human beings—not idlers—living on a square mile (that is, on 640 acres) could easily, without any kind of overwork, obtain from that area a luxurious vegetable and animal food, as well as the flax, wool, silk and hides necessary for their clothing. As to what may be obtained under still more perfect methods—also known but not yet tested on a large scale—it is better to abstain from any forecast; so unexpected are the recent achievements of intensive culture.

We thus see that the over population fallacy does not stand the very first attempt at submitting it to a closer examination. Those only can be horror stricken at seeing the population of this country increase by one individual every thousand seconds who think of a human being as a mere claimant upon the stock of material wealth of humanity, without being at the same time a contributor to that stock. But we, who see in each new-born babe a future worker capable of producing much more than his own share of the common stock—we greet his appearance. We know that a crowded population is a necessary condition for permitting man to increase the productive powers of his labor. We know that highly productive labor is impossible as long as men are scattered, few in number, p. 8, col. 3 over wide territories, and are thus unable to combine together for the higher achievements of civilization. We know what an amount of labor must be spent to scratch the soil with a primitive plow, to spin and weave by hand; and we know also how much less labor it costs to grow the same amount of food, weave the same cloth, with the help of modern machinery. And we see that it is infinitely easier to grow two hundred thousand pounds of food on one acre than to grow them on a hundred acres. It is all very well to imagine that wheat grows by itself on the Russian steppes; but those who have seen how the peasant toils in the “fertile” black earth region will have one desire: that the increase of population may permit the use of the steam digger and gardening culture in the steppes; that it may permit those who are now the beasts of burden of humanity to raise their backs and to become at last men.

Prince Kropotkin writes as a socialist. He abhors the capitalist and the middleman. But he sees clearly and acknowledges that the chief reason why men stand idle and starving in England while broad fields remain untilled is because the system of private land ownership has raised a wall between men and nature’s bounty. And he well deserves our thanks and our applause for the skillful manner in which he has massed facts and figures on the side of truth.

Mr. W. H. S. Aubrey, LL.D., contributes to the Fortnightly Review for June, an article on “Social Problems in America,” which is interesting, not as a contribution to economic literature, but as illustrating of what crudity of thought and carelessness as to fact men of reputation and education can be guilty. Among the social problems which he discusses is the silver question, of which he speaks as follows:

Ten years ago certain United States senators interested in the prolific silver mines of Nevada, secured the enactment of a measure for the coining of two millions of silver dollars monthly, and for the issue of certificates for silver deposited in bulk. A market was thus found for part of their products, but the result is that the treasury and the mint are filled to repletion with silver dollars for which there is no demand, besides thousands of tons of silver ingots waiting to be coined. The loss to the public for coining and in interest has been enormous, and, in addition, the relative value of the silver dollar to the gold is only as 78 to 100. Of course, the silver kings, who foisted the measure upon the country for their own purposes, have long since been paid for the great mass of the metal, and they strenuously oppose any scheme for the repeal or the modification of a scheme whereby they have made millions at the public expense. Successive secretaries of the treasury and banking authorities have avowed their conviction that unless the silver coinage be suspended, commerce will be disturbed and the public credit impaired. Seeing that silver has been for some time at a discount, the practical effect is that the country at large has to suffer from the depreciation, for any one can obtain at the mint, in exchange for gold or United States bonds, silver coinage at the full discount, which he can use at the par value. Many large employers and storekeepers have been in the habit of purchasing silver in this way, so as to make a profit upon their payments for wages or commodities. The system is convenient for debtors and for all who have to pay money, but it is the reverse for creditors and for all who have money to receive. There has been the usual talk about a bi-metallic currency and a legalized uniformity of standard between gold and silver, which all practical persons know to be utterly impossible.

It is to be presumed that Mr. Aubrey really believes this nonsense, and it is certain that some, at least, of the readers of the Fortnightly will accept it as fact upon his testimony. It does not seem to have occurred to him that if anybody who wished could get one hundred silver dollars from the treasury in exchange for seventy-eight gold dollars every gold coin in the country would be swept into the treasury vaults within less than a month.

The produce exchanges are another of Mr. Aubrey’s “social problems.” It seems to him a terrible and unnatural thing that any man should buy a bushel of wheat, or a barrel of petroleum, with intent to sell it again.

In the New York produce exchange alone the members buy and sell (of course, not for delivery) two bushels of wheat for every one that is grown in the country. They deal in five times the cotton crop of the entire south. Pennsylvania yields about 24,000,000 barrels of oil in a year, but in New York city as much nominally exchanges hands in a week, and the various petroleum exchanges sold last year 2,000,000,000 barrels, or fifty times the total yield.

Mr. Aubrey need not have visited this country to learn that the constant reselling of the same goods on the floor of an exchange is the surest preventive of that “cornering of the market” which in a previous sentence he deplores. Any English mercantile man could have told him that the corn merchants of Mark lane in London buy and sell the grain product of the world half a dozen times over every year—and lucky for the bread eaters of England that they do.

Mr. Aubrey assures us that he does not write in any spirit of “mere criticism or of cynicism,” and begs that his transatlantic friends will not resent “what is intended as a kind and sympathetic treatment of the subject.” He need not worry himself.

Will England retain India? This is a question which Meredith Townsend asks and answers in the June issue of the Fortnightly Review. He does not think she will, or can; though he evidently sincerely wishes that she could. And he states the reasons for his belief in a clear, straightforward style that is very convincing.

Mr. Meredith begins^sic with a description of the British empire in India that perhaps conveys a clearer idea of what the British domination really means than has ever before been given.

It is customary with Englishmen, and especially with Englishmen who have seen India, to speak of the British domination there as “a miracle,” but they seldom realize fully the import of their words. The Indian empire is not a miracle in the rhetorician’s sense, but in the theologian’s sense. It is a thing which exists and is alive, but cannot be accounted for by any process of reasoning founded on experience. It is a miracle as a floating island of granite would be a miracle, or a bird of brass which flew and sung and lived on in midair. It is a structure built on nothing, without foundations, without buttresses, held in its place by some force the origin of which is undiscoverable and the nature of which has never been explained. For eighty years at least writers by the score have endeavored to bring home to Englishmen the vastness of India, but, so far as can be perceived, they have all failed. The Briton reads what they say, learns up their figures, tries to understand their descriptions, but fails, for all his labor, to realize what India is—a continent large as Europe west of the Vistula, and with 30,000,000 more people, fuller of ancient nations, of great cities, of varieties of civilization, of armies, nobilities, priesthoods, organizations for every conceivable purpose from the spreading of great religions down to systematic murder. There are twice as many Bengalees as there are Frenchmen; the Hindostanees, properly so called, outnumber the whites in the United States; the Mahrattas would fill Spain, the people of the p. 8, col. 4 Punjab with Scinde are double the population of Turkey, and I have named but four of the more salient divisions. Everything is on the same bewildering scale. The fighting peoples of India, whose males are as big as ourselves, as brave as ourselves, and more regardless of death than ourselves, number at least a hundred and twenty millions, equal to Gibbon’s calculation of the population of the Roman empire. There are four hundred thousand trained brown soldiers in native service, of whom we hear perhaps once in ten years, and at least two millions of men who think their proper profession is arms, who would live by arms if they could, and of whom we in England never hear a word. If the Prussian conscription were applied in India, we should, without counting reserves or landwehr or any force not summoned in time of peace, have two and a half millions of soldiers actually in barracks, with eight hundred thousand recruits coming up every year—a force with which not only Asia, but the world, might be subdued. There are tens of millions of prosperous peasants whose hoardings make of India the grand absorbent of the precious metals; tens of millions of peasants beside whose poverty fellahs or Sicilians or Connaught men are rich; millions ot artisans^sic, ranging from the men who build palaces to the men who, nearly naked and almost without tools, do the humblest work of the potter. Every occupation which exists in Europe exists also in India. The industry of the vast continent never ceases, for India, with all her teeming multitudes, with a population in places packed beyond European precedent, imports nothing either to eat or drink, and, but for the Europeans, would import nothing whatever. She is sufficient to herself for everything save silver. Amid these varied masses, these two hundred and fifty millions, whose mere descriptions would fill volumes, the tide of life flows as vigorously as in Europe. There is as much labor, as much contention, as much ambition, as much crime, as much variety of careers, hopes, fears and hatreds. It is still possible to a moneyless Indian to become vizier of a dynasty older than history, or finance minister of a new prince whose personal fortune in hard cash is double that ot the late Emperor William, or abbot of a monastery richer than Glastonbury ever was, owner of an estate that covers a county, head of a firm whose transactions may vie with those of the Barings or Bleichroders. One man, Jutee Pershad^sic by name, fed and transported the army which conquered the Punjab.

I have failed like the rest, I see. Well, see for a moment in imagination a Europe even fuller of people, but full only of brown men, and then see also this. Above this inconceivable mass of humanity, governing all, protecting all, taxing all, rises what we call here “the empire,” a corporation of less than fifteen hundred men, part chosen by examination, part by co-optation, who are set to govern, and who protect themselves in governing by finding pay for a minute white garrison of 65,000 men, one fifth of the Roman legions—though the masses to be controlled are double the subjects of Rome—less than the army of Sweden, or Belgium, or Holland. That corporation and that garrison constitute the “Indian empire.” There is nothing else. Banish those fifteen hundred men in black, defeat that slender garrison in red, and the empire has ended, the structure disappears, and brown India emerges unchanged and unchangeable. To support the official world and its garrison—both, recollect, smaller than those of Belgium—there is, except Indian opinion, absolutely nothing. Not only is there no white race in India, not only is there no white colony, but there is no white man who purposes to remain. Lord Dufferin, whom we scarcely think of as middle aged, is possibly the oldest, certainly among the oldest, of white men in India. No ruler stays there to help, or criticise, or moderate his successor. No successful white soldier founds a family. No white man who makes a fortune builds a house or buys an estate for his descendants. The very planter, the very engine driver, the very foreman of works, departs before he is sixty, leaving no child, or house, or trace of himself behind. No white man takes root in India, and the number even of sojourners is among those masses imperceptible. The whites in our own three capitals could hardly garrison them, and outside those capitals are, except in government employ, only a few planters, traders and professional men, far fewer than the black men in London. In a city like Benares, a stone city whose buildings rival those of Venice, a city of temples and palaces beautiful enough and original enough to be a world’s wonder, yet in which no white man’s brain or hand has designed or executed anything, a traveler might live a year talking only with the learned or the rich, and, unless he had official business to do, might never see a white face. And away from the “stations” planted outside the native cities it is so everywhere. There are no white servants, not even grooms, no white policemen, no white postmen, no white anything. If the brown men struck for a week, the “empire” would collapse like a house of cards, and every ruling man would be a starving prisoner in his own house. He could not move or feed himself or get water. I shall not soon forget the observation of one of the keenest and most experienced of all observers who arrived in India during the mutiny. He had just landed, and had consented to drive with me to a house sixteen miles out of Calcutta. On the road, as usual, he noted everything, but at last turned to me with the question: “Where, then, are the white men?” “Nowhere,” was the only possible reply; and it is true of the entire continent. This absence of white men is said to be due to climate, but even in “the hills” no one settles. Englishmen live on the sultry plains of New South Wales; Americans, who are only Englishmen a little desiccated, are filling up the steamy plains of Florida; Spaniards have settled as a governing caste throughout the tropical sections of the two Americas; Dutchmen dwell on in Java; but the English, whatever the temptation, will not stay in India. No matter what the sacrifice, whether in money, or dignity, or pleasant occupation, an uncontrollable disgust, an overpowering sense of being aliens inexorably divided from the people of the land, comes upon them, and they glide silently away. It follows that even in the minute official world and the minute garrison nothing is permanent. The viceroy rules for five years, and departs. The councilor advises for five years, and departs. The general commands for five years, and departs. The official serves thirty years, probably in ten separate countries, and departs. There is not in India one ruling man whom two generations of Indians have known as ruling man. Of all that in Europe comes of continuousness, heredity, accumulated personal experience, or the wisdom of old age, there is in India not one trace, nor can there ever be. Imagine if in Europe no sovereign or premier or commander-in-chief ever lived six years! Yet these men, thus shifting, thus changing, do the whole work of legislating, governing, and adminstering^sic, all that is done in the whole of Europe by all the sovereigns, all the statesmen, all the parliaments, all the judges, revenue boards, prefects, magistrates, tax gatherers and police officers. They are “the empire,” and there is no other.

Nor is this the whole truth. The imperial service—I use the expression recommended by the civil service commissioners because it covers both the civilians and the administering soldiers—have displayed for a century a rigid respect for promises and perfect pecuniary honor. Consequently, aided by the rooted Indian idea, that, power being of God, any one, however hostile, may honorably serve a de facto ruler, they have always been able to hire Indian agents of all kinds—soldiers, policemen and minor officials—in any numbers required. That power, however, gives them no foothold. As 1857 showed, they have not secured even the loyalty of the Indian soldiers bound to them by oath, and while actually in the service, and outside the ranks of their paid servants, they have nothing to depend on. There is no nation or tribe or caste in India which is certain in the hour of trial to stand by the white man’s side; which has, so to speak, elected him as ruler; which, were the garrison defeated or withdrawn, could be trusted to die rather than the empire should fail. There is no native army that the imperial service—which is, I repeat, the empire—could summon with confidence; no tribe whom they could arm en masse; no native city whose inhabitants would risk a storm to p. 8, col. 5 protect them from being slain. A strange offer which as I believe was once made to Lord Canning by the Sikhs to become on certain conditions the janissaries of the empire was rejected; a constantly repeated proposal to import a negro army which would be in as much danger from insurrection as we are, has been—very rightly, for moral reasons—put aside; the device, in which Sir Henry Maine said he believed, of creating a caste whose single caste rule should be obedience to the queen has never been tried; and the empire hangs in air, supported by nothing but the minute white garrison and the unproved assumption that the people of India desire it to continue to exist.

Such a description of India as this renders the rest of Mr. Townsend’s somewhat lengthy article almost unnecessary. English domination is simply a dead weight imposed upon a social system which it has done much indeed to repress, but nothing to modify. Over all India England has enforced what Mr. Townsend terms the pax Brittanica^sic—the universal peace. No native ruler may make war upon his neighbor; organized brigandage and organized murder have been put down, and kept down, with the strong hand; civil justice is open to all—who can afford to pay for it; the crushingly heavy taxes are impartially collected; and there is absolute freedom of religion. And yet Mr. Townsend, who writes as though he knew, believes that these blessings are utterly unappreciated by the people on whom they have been conferred:

Personal liberty, religious liberty, equal justice, perfect security—these things the empire gives; but, then, are these so valued as to overcome the inherent and incurable dull distaste felt by the brown men to the white men who give them? I doubt it greatly. The immense mass of the peasantry, who benefit most directly by the British ways of ruling, are, it must be remembered, an inert mass. They are the stakes in the game, not the players. It is for the right of taxing them that all Indian revolutions, wars, invasions, movements of all kinds, have occurred. Lost in the peaceful monotony of their village life, which, unless all evidence from history is worthless, they most heartily love, they hardly notice dynastic changes, and will accept any ruler if only he leaves their customs alone, and takes no more of their produce than they have been accustomed from time immemorial to pay as tribute to the strong. Even, therefore, if they approved the British government, their approval would be of little political value; but there is no evidence that they do approve it. . . .

Of all the active classes of India, the one which the English treated best were the Sepoys, the Hindostanee and Benaree peasants who for a hundred years had followed the British standard in a career of victory broken only once. Alone among the soldiers of the world, these men not only entered the service of their own free will, but were authorized to quit it at their own discretion. They could not be sent abroad without their own consent—a consent not infrequently refused. Their discipline was so mild that it rather resembled that of policemen than that of soldiers, and was, in particular, wholly devoid of that element of worry which is the true grievance of English soldiers when not in the field. They were paid wages just double those obtainable in civil life, had many prizes in the shape of promotion, and received their pensions as regularly as dividends on state bonds. Their farms, even in native states, were specially protected, and the magistrates made it their duty to see that a complainant who had been a Sepoy received a speedy and, if possible, a favorable award. Even the customary hauteur of the European disappeared in favor of the Sepoys. Their officers liked and petted them, and so resented any aspersion on them as to impair, sometimes seriously, the necessary freedom of inspecting generals. The Sepoys never pretended to have grievances, for the greased cartridge story was an invention, dropped when the mutiny exploded, and the intercepted letters spoke only of the fewness of the whites. Yet these men not only mutinied, but slaughtered our officers, whom individually they liked, and even in many instances massacred our women and children, and fought us for two years with a fury of hate which made compromise impossible. Why? Because they were Asiatics, filled with the dull, unconquerable, unmitigable distaste of Asiatics for white men, and thought they saw a chance of getting rid of them. The white grains, they said, were few and the black grains many, and they shook the sieve that the white grains might disappear. The great mutiny was not a mutiny, but a revolt, in which the armed classes, as was natural, took the leading share. The proclamation of the effete dynasty at Delhi—a proclamation accepted by Hindoos as well as Mussulmen—showed its true object, which was to restore the India which had been before the arrival of Europeans. In every emancipated province the old authority was replaced, and it is the specialty of the mutiny among revolts that no new sovereign, or commander in chief, or general leader was so much as named. The history of the mutiny, carefully studied, is, to my mind, irresistible evidence of Indian dislike to white rule^sic,

As for the higher classes, it would be a wonder indeed if they endured the British yoke with patience. For British domination reduces them to insignificance and inaction, and makes them followers, when they feel that of right they should be leaders. They have their great possessions still—their treasures and their troops; but the heavy restraining hand of the empire is on them, and forces them to sit in idleness, when they would fain be up and doing.

To such a state of things there can be but one end, and Mr. Townsend points it out very plainly. Let England sustain one heavy defeat outside India—a defeat heavy enough to forbid her reinforcing the little band of white men that now hold India under their feet—and the British Indian empire will be at an end. How soon it will come Mr. Townsend does not pretend to guess; but that it will come sooner or later he is resignedly confident. And if things are as he describes them, it would be hard to contradict his prophecy.

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[Notice] Chicago, Ill., April 6, 1888 (call for national conference of single tax advocates)

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

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

The following is the general committee on arrangements:

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

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

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

Judge James G. Maguire, San Francisco, Cal.

H. F. Ring, Houston, Tex.

H. Martin Williams, St. Louis, Mo.

L. P. Custer, Indianapolis, Ind.

Benjamin Adams, Charleston, S. C.

Freeman Knowles, Ceresco, Neb.

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

Thomas A. McCann, Detroit, Mich.

Richard L. Atkinson, Philadelphia, Pa.

E. Q. Norton, Mobile, Ala.

WARREN WORTH BAILEY, Chairman Provisional Committee.

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

Address all letters to M. K. LA SHELLE, Secretary Provisional Committee, Times Building, Chicago, Ill.

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