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THE STANDARD
NO. 82—VOL. [IV, partly obscured by mailing label], NO. 4.
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1888.
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CONTENTS:
The Fiscal and Moral Sides of Our Reform. The Policy of Separate Organization Needed Electoral Reforms. From Warren W. Bailey. Social Evolution. The Reform Club. A Significant Vermont Meeting. In Minnesota. The Light Spreading in England. Straws Which Show the Wind. Single Tax Petitions. The Question of Policy. The Cherokee Nation. The Beating of the Drums. The Duty of Single Tax Free Traders. Our Congressmen and the Tariff. Collars and Cuffs. Your Gored Ox and Mine. Personal. Men and Things. A Common Case (a story). New Ideas, Methods and Inv[entions?—faded]. Queries and Answers. Some Heavenly Possibilities. Current Thought.
We print this week a communication from the executive committee of the Texas tax reform association, giving some further account of the good work they have been doing with the single tax petitions, and proposing a plan of work in the same line for single tax men elsewhere.
The communication is suggestive, and will furnish valuable hints for individual and associated work in all parts of the country. But whether our Texas friends are right in thinking that the organization they propose and the plan they suggest could be as well effected and carried on prior to the pending election in all the other states as in Texas may well be doubted. In Texas there is practically but one national political party. There is no doubt or question as to how the electoral vote will go. And the discussion of the tariff question is nothing like as intense and bitter as it will be in the northern states, and especially in states where the protected interests are strong. In these states anything like a conference of single tax men can, for obvious reasons, be better held after the election than before it, while the feeling on the tariff question will be so intense that all attempts to bring up the subject of taxation must run into it. But there is no doubt of the efficacy of the petition plan, and even when the conditions may not be so favorable as in Texas for formal association and systematic action before election, much may be done by individuals. In Detroit, Mr. S. G. Howe has started a petition, which we also give this week. In Washington, as I stated some weeks ago, Mr. C. B. Hemmingway has already got the signatures of a number of the most prominent business men to a single tax petition to congress, and the local association of our friends proposes to push the work. The Philadelphia society is preparing a memorial to the legislature, which will be circulated in Pennsylvania, and in several of the western states petitions similar to the Texas memorial are already in circulation. In New York the Single tax league, of which Benjamin Urner, 6 Harrison street, is clerk, has prepared a petition, copies of which will be sent to any one wishing to use them. All these are indications of ɐ disposition to push the petition plan that promise great activity after the November election. Wherever there is a disposition to push it before, so much the better.
There is one point, however, on which I am inclined to differ from our Texas friends. They seem disposed to think that it is a mistake to present any other than the fiscal side of the reform. There are circumstances under which this may be true. But speaking generally it is not true that this is the strongest side, or that anything is to be gained by ignoring the question of the right to the use of land. To show men that the concentration of taxes on land values will reduce the taxes they have to pay and directly benefit them, is a good thing to do, especially among the farmers, who have been told that our object is to lay on them the whole burden of taxation. But to bring men to our side who will stay there through thick and thin, to arouse the enthusiasm that is alone capable of carrying a great reform against powerful vested interests, we must appeal to something stronger than any hope of individual gain. It is a mistake to suppose that men are altogether selfish, and view everything from p. 1, col. 2 the standpoint of how it will affect them. On the contrary, men are naturally sym[pat?]hetic; they naturally love justice; they [a?]re naturally moved by questions of right and wrong, even when these do not affect them. And in large matters, and when large bodies of men are concerned, the power that can be aroused by the appeal to higher and nobler instincts, is always more potent and more enduring than that which can be aroused by appealing to the lower qualities. Therefore it is that I believe that while the fiscal side of the great reform we would bring about is important, the moral side is more important still. It may be well at times to put the fiscal side to the front, but it would be the greatest of mistakes to permanently ignore the moral side. On that side we reach men whom we could not reach from the fiscal side, and from that side it is that we get the energy, the devotion, the activity that is carrying our movement forward. Take the men who are to-day subscribing to the campaign fund of THE STANDARD, and the men who from its start have sustained it; take the men who are distributing our literature and publicly or privately pushing our ideas; take the men on the other side of the Atlantic, and the men in Australia, who are working in the same cause—is it from the fiscal side or the moral side that they are moved? Take the men of Texas, who are doing such good work with their petition—if all that they saw in the reform they are trying to bring about was but a reform in taxation, I doubt if one of them would have stirred a hand. They certainly would not have done such work as Mr. Ring has done and is doing. And when these men propose to put the larger and higher aspects of the single tax in the background, and to present it only as a fiscal reform advantageous to the personal interests of those to whom it is presented, they are ignoring in others the very force that has set them to work and keeps them at it. Such a policy may be best at a certain time, in a certain place, and for a certain purpose, and it may be of great use in clearing away misapprehensions that are the result of misrepresentations. But the strength thus secured cannot be relied on long or far. As Mazzini pointed out, when men are appealed to by considerations of self-interest, they can be carried away whenever their self-interest is appealed to on the other side; and thus it is that reform movements based on appeals to class interests have constantly been shorn of their leaders. Therefore, as he contended, every great and successful movement for social reform must be in essence a religious movement; must appeal to men, not to assert or promote individual or class rights or interests, but to secure to all that freedom their Creator intended them to have.
Every once in a while some one, thinking only of the opposition, writes me that he deems it a mistake that in “Progress and Poverty” I should have said anything at all about the right of individual ownership of land; and that it would have proved far more effective if I had contented myself with pointing out the economic benefits of concentrating taxation on land values. I know that this is not so. I know that the feeling that induced me to write that book is the feeling to which it has appealed. The success it has had and the forces it has set in motion, are to me proofs of the truth of what I wrote in it when I said:
If you would move men to action, to what shall you appeal? Not to their pockets, but to their patriotism; not to selfishness, but to sympathy. Self interest is, as it were, a mechanical force—potent, it is true; capable of large and wide results. But there is in human nature what may be likened to a chemical force; which melts and fuses and overwhelms; to which nothing seems impossible. “All that a man hath will he give for his life”—that is self interest. But in loyalty to higher impulses men will give even life.
In the long list of men whom I know as having since then given money, time, influence, toil, to the spreading of the doctrines that book sets forth, I know of no single case in which the moving motive was any individual benefit, or even the idea of great and beneficial fiscal reform. In every case of which I know, the moving motive was the idea of overthrowing a monstrous wrong, the idea of making life better, brighter and fuller for those worse off than themselves, and for those yet to be born. I have known many who have recognized the fiscal side of the reform alone; but I have never known of any efficient aid from them. The men who have worked, the men who will work, the men who can be counted on everywhere, and every time, till death closes their eyes, are those to whom this reform appeals from the moral, the religious, side; those who see in it not a mere improvement in taxation, but a conforming of our most important social adjustment to the law of justice, to the will of God; a restoration to the disinherited of the bounteous provision which the In- p. 1, col. 3 telligence that laid the foundations of the world and brought them upon it has provided for them.
And so, while we point out the fiscal advantages of the single tax, while we show men how it will reduce their burdens and increase their incomes, let us never lay aside the appeal to higher principles—never seek to gain recruits by presenting to others in the light of a trading expedition that shall bring back much gain to those who participate in it, what to us is really a crusade. The unenlightened selfishness which brings want amid all the elements of plenty, which forces us to stint where we might enjoy, which converts into barren wastes what might be gardens, and makes life a drudgery where it might be a development, cannot be cast out by enlightened selfishness. Selfishness can only be overcome by what is higher than selfishness. This is the core of Christ’s teaching—the fundamental truth that it is only by seeking the good of others that men can fully secure what is truly good for themselves. And it is to the quick and sure moral sense, rather than to the slower and duller intellectual perceptions, that we can most successfully appeal. We seek to substitute a rational for an irrational system of taxation; we seek to bring into full play all the factors in the production of wealth, by abolishing the system that imposes fines and restrictions and prohibitions upon them. But what we primarily seek, is to do justice and give freedom. The great end to which the single tax is but a means, is to secure to all men the natural rights of man—to give to each during his life the equal right to the use of those natural opportunities that the Creator has provided for the sustenance and enjoyment of life, and to secure to each the equal benefit of what has been won for the common advantage by the progress of the race and the development of civilization. There are many slow to understand our economic reasoning who will be quick to appreciate our moral purpose.
And it is because they do not understand our moral purpose, because they only look on the fiscal side of what we propose, that there are so many who do appreciate the economic advantages of the single tax without seeing in it anything to stir their enthusiasm. “It will increase wealth,” they sic, “but how will it abolish poverty?” “It is a reform,” they say, “but when so many reforms are needed, how can it be a cure-all?” And so to them our concentration upon it seems the concentration of cranks who have lost the sense of proportion; our ideas of what it would accomplish, like the idea that all physical diseases can be cured by one medicine. Possibly because we are obliged to devote to the economic side of our propositions so much attention, they take this for all, and do not see that the only cure-all in which we trust is justice; that what we build our expectations upon is, not a mere improvement in human laws, but such simplification of human laws as in the most important of all human relations will give free play to the natural law.
Some months ago there was printed in THE STANDARD a letter from a Unitarian minister, H. Tambs Lyche of Warwick, Massachusetts, which told how one who had first viewed the single tax as a fiscal improvement, had come to see its higher side and larger meaning. Mr. Lyche told how the social problems had forced themselves on his attention, and how (and this is true consciously or unconsciously of the class of whom I speak) state socialism with all its crudeness and dangerousness seemed to him to offer the only practicable way for their solution. He told how he had followed our movement with interest and sympathy, as promotive of radical discussion; how he began to see in the single tax a decided step toward social reform, but could not see in it that one great reform that we see in it, and regarded us as given to extravagant rhetoric. And he told how the more he thought of the single tax the more he saw in it, until at last it burst upon him that what the single tax would really do would be to give free play to natural laws. “At last,” he went on—
I see in the divine order and in natural law a provision for all our social needs. I see a plain way out of all our social difficulties—merely to order things as nature and reason bid. . . . I now clearly see that this single tax is nature’s law; that such nationalization of land as you propose will mean the end of this social system—which every man who has seen how it grinds the under classes must regard as a veritable kingdom of hell upon earth; that it will mean a new social system, rising naturally into all the good the socialist aims at—a new and grander civilization, not only grand in its material advances, but grander still in the moral advances it will make possible; that it will mean, in brief and in truth, the physical foundation for the kingdom of heaven on earth.
I now clearly see that private property in land is contrary to nature, that is, to God’s p. 1, col. 4 will. I now see that it is the fundamental wrong which causes all the misery and ugliness of our advancing civilization; which has turned such things as machinery and all modern inventions into veritable curses to large classes of men, and which turns the greatest misfortunes like tornadoes and fires into much to be desired blessings for the same classes of men; which has separated society into classes having distinctly opposed interests, and withheld from the masses the good that modern progress ought to have given them. I see that the cause for which you struggle is the simple social economical truth—the answer to the sphinx-like social question. I see that the single tax is the law of nature, or, in brief, the pure, clear will of God.
No fanaticism is here needed to shout “God wills it!” In the calmest mood conceivable we see that if we may ever use these words, we may use them here. Yes, surely “God wills it.” It is no assumption; it is plain truth. We see the command written in the very fibers and textures of creation, of nature. Being natural, it is of course God’s will. And in a natural mood, without fanaticism, but quiet and calm, we must gird up our loins and work for this cause the best we can “while it is day.” It is a part of religion, a part of thinking men’s service to God. So I see it, so for several months have I seen it.
The man who sees this is with us, not for so far only, but to the end. He is “enlisted or the war.” Let us neglect nothing, and hide nothing, that will bring us such recruits.
We who have seen what Mr. Lyche has seen, we who have enlisted, as he has enlisted, for the war, have in this national campaign a great opportunity before us, and a great work to do. Endeavoring, as it were, to cut a new road through a rough country, we have met a great and well appointed army, bent as they say, on traveling a little distance in the way we want to go. What it is our part to do, is to help them on and urge them on, and so to animate and inspirit them that they will go further than they now dream of. We want to elect Cleveland and Thurman, not for their own sakes, but sic their election will mark a milestone passed on our way.
The democrats have laid hands upon a power which they fear to use. They are “men afraid of their horses”—the very horses that must be relied on to bear them triumphantly through. Mr. Mills’ speech in closing the tariff debate was, from the standpoint his party has assumed, a strong and effective one. He showed that the bill is not a free trade bill, but only a timid advance in the direction of free trade. Yet he supported it with arguments whose only logical conclusion is in free trade. All this is good as far as it goes, and it is the line on which the most advanced democrats will make the fight. But until they avow themselves for free trade—not “a tariff for revenue only,” but real free trade, the democrats are hampered. They cannot make that appeal for themselves that is most effective with the masses. They cannot present free trade in its beauty and harmony as the “international law of God;” they cannot appeal to that moral sense which is quick and true in men who distrust “figures and facts.” They can match “statistics” with men who are adepts in lying in figures; and facts with men who are ready to manufacture facts. But they cannot appeal to the deep sense of social injustice, to the wide-spread desire for social reform. Nor can they explain the social phenomena in which protection finds its real strength with the masses. They can promise the laborer that commodities shall be cheapened and production increased. But laborers are constantly told that the cheapness of commodities is the reason why thousands have to suffer for want of them; they are accustomed to look upon overproduction as the cause of widespread distress. And when confronted with the failure of what is called free trade to eradicate pauperism and abolish starvation in Great Britain, the “free trade” democrats have no answer that can satisfy the laborer. We who are really free traders in the full, true sense of the term, can in all these things do what the democratic “freer traders” cannot. We can appeal to the moral sense. We can point out that restriction, which is the true name for what is called protection, is the cause, and the only cause, why, in a world so abounding in all the materials of wealth, and in countries where the productive arts have reached such high development, wages should be so low and want so general. We sic show why wages are lower in Great Britain in spite of freer foreign trade, and higher in the United States in spite of restrictions on foreign trade. We can explain the paradoxes that have entangled so many men in the meshes of protectionist sophistry, and we are free to show that the way in which the democratic party is now timidly moving is the way that, if followed to the end, will really emancipate labor, open abundant opportunities of employment to all, and make wages what in natural justice they ought to be, the full earnings of labor.
This we must try to do in such ways as we can. p. 1, col. 5 On another page William T. Croasdale discusses this question. It does not seem to me that a separate organization is absolutely necessary anywhere. We can do a good deal of work individually. And as for organized work, we can do that most effectively, in states where no objection exists on either side, by working with and through democratic organizations. In states like New York I am inclined to think that instead of a separate organization of single tax men, it would be best to start or join free trade clubs, as quite a number of single tax men have recently been doing in this city and in Brooklyn, where the Revenue reform club, of which Thomas G. Shearman has long been an active spirit, is in reality a free trade club, and something more. We shall thus work with men who are much further on our way than the democratic tariff reducers, sic while uniting forces to push the discussion of the tariff question to more radical lines, do something to bring those who are already in favor of free trade to the further step of free production.
The Louisville Courier-Journal say there are indications that the protectionists propose to concentrate effort and money upon Mr. Carlisle’s district, and by the purchase of votes prevent him from coming back to congress, as at the last election they prevented Mr. Morrison from coming back. The Courier-Journal therefore calls upon the tariff reformers in Mr. Carlisle’s district to be vigilant, etc.
This is good as far as it goes, and is all that can be done to prevent at this election the success of any such protectionist scheme. But is it not worth the Courier-Journal’s while to look beyond the next election and to suggest to the consideration of its readers reforms that would make such schemes futile? The Australian voting system, which has been adopted in Massachusetts, and which would have been adopted in New York but for Governor Hill’s veto, would effectually end all possibility of either electing or defeating a candidate by the purchase of votes. It would thus not only put an end to the direct evils of bribery; it would put an end to the indirect evils. By making bribery impossible and by vastly lessening the power of money in elections, even when expended in what are now considered legitimate ways, it would largely rid representatives and other officials of their fear of corporations and moneyed combines, and tend to make ability and character count for more at the polls than they do now.
Furthermore, it is one of the most obvious weaknesses of our political system that it makes congress but a gathering of local representatives. No matter how prominent he may be, no matter how well he may express the feelings and the policy of a national party, a representative beaten in his district, like Morrison, a senator beaten in his state, as was Thurman, is removed from congress. In Great Britain, such men, if beaten in one district, would be re-elected from another. Thus there is secured in the house of commons the continuous service of the leaders of the great parties, no matter what the vicissitudes of district politics, and it is beyond the power of any influence to pick off truly representative men by beating them in particular districts.
Such men are, moreover, relieved from the petty details and freed from the local influences which waste the strength and fetter the freedom of our congressional party leaders. Mr. Parnell only nominally represents Cork; what he really represents is the Irish national party. Mr. Gladstone only nominally represents Midlothian; what he really represents is the liberal party in the three kingdoms. Mr. Balfour only nominally represents East Manchester; what he really represents is tory landlordism—the party which most closely answers to our protectionist party. And so on, with all the leading members of the British house. Such men do not have to bother with the local interests and local influences that fritter away so much of the time and strength of American representatives, and can freely devote themselves to larger questions. They do not have to fear local influences so long as they keep in touch with their party in the nation.
The disadvantages of our system are seen most clearly in such matters as the tariff, the omnibus bills making appropriations for rivers and harbors, public buildings,etc. There are few representatives who dare vote against the giving of any crumb of the general plunder to even a small part of their constituency, and thus such bills are frequently passed by the votes of men opposed to the general principle. We badly need in congress some men who are beyond the power of local constituencies, and who can freely represent national thought and feeling.
HENRY GEORGE.
p. 1, col. 6
FROM WARREN W. BAILEY.
The Anti-Protection Campaign—How It is Helping the Single Tax.
CHICAGO, July 21.—There is a mighty stir in this city and throughout the west on the tariff and economic subjects generally. The republicans are clearly on the defensive, and I personally know of many who voted for Blaine who have broken away—some going to the prohibitionists, but most of them to Cleveland. The labor leaders, like Joseph R. Buchanan take advanced grounds for the democratic party, and indications are not wanting that the democrats will gain enough in Chicago alone from the working classes to overthrow the 25,000 republican majority in the state. I have not heard of a single change in favor of the republicans here, but it is unlikely that the desertions are all from one side. It would be a miracle if the free trade cry that the pro-povertyites keep up should wholly fail to excite apprehensions of the ignorant. Tariff reform clubs, with single tax men at the helm, are forming in all the wards, with direct reference to the congressional elections. Efforts will be made to get at least one single tax man into the house from this great garden city, now represented by a set of men in no wise worthy the honors they wear. The legislative possibilities likewise will be looked after, and the electoral reform question will be brought before the next general assembly. Senator Crawford, who is the author of the Crawford election law, told me this morning that if returned this fall he would investigate the merits of the Australian system of voting and do what he could to promote reform in that direction.
The sentiment is growing marvelously here in Chicago in favor of municipal ownership of the street railways and of the lighting franchises. I believe a campaign conducted squarely on that issue, aside from the obnoxious features of socialism, would result in favor of public ownership of the transportation and lighting monopolies. Our water system is so admirable and its administration by the city is so thoroughly satisfactory that I am confident the people are all ready to extend municipal control to the other essential monopolies, especially since they have developed into a menace to good government and the welfare of the public. It has just developed that one of the street car companies has been carrying on wholesale jury bribing for years and the gas trust has been exposed in open court in a fraud of gigantic proportions.
Some of our friends will be glad to learn that Mr. Charles M. Wetzel of Indiana, a brilliant young lawyer who has done splendid service in advancing the cause of economic reform, has just been appointed a law clerk in one of the departments at Washington. He writes me that the work is progressing nicely in that city.
The democrats of Chicago are giving our people opportunities to talk to them at their meetings on the single tax. I need not add that the effect is encouraging. They will probably shut us out when the campaign gets fairly on, but meanwhile we are opening their eyes to the fact that the reform they propose is no reform at all, comparatively speaking. The leaven is working among them, and its effects will be seen in good time.
Fred M. Williams, ex-president of land and labor club No. 1, has just been nominated for state’s attorney by the Cook county prohibitionists. Free traders and single tax men are getting to be numerous in the ranks of the cold water army.
WARREN WORTH BAILEY.
The Minister and the Tramp.
Rev. Edward Everett Hale, in his article on James Freeman Clarke in the Unitarian Review for July, considers it “an advantage to the world that he had the courage to establish his home three or four miles away from the riffraff of map peddlers and other people who have axes to grind, who draw so much blood from most of the working ministers of a large city. Thus, to his own courage, and let it be added, to the loyalty and skill of the members of his household, the world owes a great amount of scholarly work such as the world has ceased to expect from ministers in the thick of professional duty in cities. If grumbling were ever in order, it would be worth while to ask, in passing, whether it is the best use to make of a man who has shown his powers for scholarship to put him in a place where the door bell may ring two hundred and fifty times a day and he be asked by two hundred and fifty tramps how they are to earn their living.”—[Christian Register.
I am not sure that it is best sic we can make of a minister to put him where the tramps can get at his door bell, but it would not be a bad idea to organize the tramps into “groups” of “two hundred and fifty,” and set them to ringing ministers’ door bells for the purpose of asking “how they are to earn their living.”
Mr. Hale doubtless tells them how rich they are in “common wealth,” such as the streets, Boston common and other parks, public libraries, museums, municipal and state buildings, and the likes, of which he recently told us in “Lend a Hand,” and it must be a great comfort to them to know this, because they can go right away and eat and wear these things and leave the “man who has shown his powers of scholarship” alone in peace.
But other ministers have not all discovered the beauties of the “common wealth” or their adaptability to satisfy hunger; and if “two hundred and fifty tramps” should systematically and persistently ask the reasonable and pertinent question, “How are we to earn a living?” every day, some of them might struggle for an answer to that question until they should “see the cat.”
HUGH O. PENTECOST.
Regarding the Ohio Assembly Taxation Committee.
OINCINNATI, July 21—In your issue of this date Mr. James White of Lima, Ohio, proposes a plan of action for the single tax men of this state in regard to petitioning legislative committee for the revision of tax laws. For the information of all I will state that after several meetings of gentlemen interested in the movement, we have adopted a form of petition proposed by Rev. E. P. Foster. All who desire signature blanks will be sic on application to any of the single tax men of this city.
E. T. WALKER, Foot of sic Street.
The Union Labor Convention in Wisconsin.
A state convention of the union labor party met at Oshkosh, Wis., on Tuesday, with Mr. Robert Schilling of Milwaukee as temporary chairman. A resolution against any fusion with either of the old parties was adopted after a long debate.
The following was offered as a minority report on platform:
Resolved, That we believe that the limited ownership of land cannot be brought about in any other way than by all taxes being laid on land values, except a graduated income tax.
Dr. Powell of La Crosse was nominated for governor.
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2 THE STANDARD, SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1888.
p. 2, col. 1
THE REFORM CLUB.
Its Tariff Reform Meetings—The Land Question Crops Out Occasionally.
The attendance during the hot weather at the Friday evening meetings of the Reform club gives gratifying evidence that business men are taking a decided interest in the discussion of the tariff question. It is a pity that the meetings should be confined to the small parlors of the club, and the suggestion has already been made that a hall shall be engaged for the sic of permitting a larger attendance. It is a notable fact that most of the speakers find themselves driven to make some allusion to land monopoly whenever they attempt to answer the questions put by the protectionists as to the cause of migration from Europe to this country. The daily newspapers, however, appear to take special pains to suppress all reports of such utterances. Mr. Everett P. Wheeler made more than one allusion to this subject in his speech last Friday week, and in contrasting the condition of England and America, he remarked that trade in land is not yet free in England. The hearty applause called forth by all allusions to the greater question underlying the tariff and all other economic problems gives evidence that there is a very considerable number of single tax free traders in the club.
The chief points of Mr. Wheeler’s speech were as follows:
The experience of all countries shows that a high protective tariff tends to diminish wages, to degrade the condition of the working man, and to injure the community at large, although the profits of a few protected manufacturers may be increased by it. This part of my subject I propose to discuss by answering some questions which I see posted up conspicuously in the elevated railway stations. Uncle Sam is represented as asking John Bull why, if free trade is such a good thing, his agricultural interests are in such a wretched state; why his manufacturers cry out for fair trade, and why his skilled workingmen come to America instead of going from here. Now, first, why are English agricultural interests in such a depressed condition? The immediate answer is that the change in the condition of the British agricultural interests is due to the competition of American farmers, who are not protected by tariff, whose wages are twice and three times those paid to the British agricultural laborer, and who sic compete with him on his own ground. The fall in the rent of farms has diminished the incomes of British landlords, and it is this that has caused such outcry here.
Why are English manufacturers crying for fair trade? I say they are not. The English manufacturers as a rule are very well satisfied with the present advantages which our Chinese system gives them. They have no desire that American manufacturers should compete with them in the markets which they now supply. The last person who will be gratified by a repeal of American taxes on raw materials will be the British manufacturer. The cotton manufactured in Great Britain in 1886 reached the enormous total of 1,517,000,000 pounds, and the wool the total of 234,000,000 pounds, the latter being an increase of sic 40 per cent in five years, and nearly twice the amount which was produced in the United States in 1880, that amount being shown by the census to be 155,000,000 pounds. Now here is the third question: Why do skilled workingmen come to this country from p. 2, col. 3 England? The answer to this is that they do not come in any number, and those who do make the venture are generally glad to get back. In the year ending June, 1887, the number of immigrants from England, Scotland and Wales was 93,378. The immigration from Ireland was 63,370; the total immigration was 481,453. When the occupations of the immigrants are examined it appears that the number of immigrants from all Europe who were engaged in the various industries, the capitalists engaged in which are protected by the American tariff, was only 19,009, being less than three per cent of the entire number of immigrants.
A SIGNIFICANT VERMONT MEETING.
Dr. M. R. Leverson Declares for Out-and-Out Free Trade and is Greatly Applauded.
BOSTON, July 21—I was in Rutland night before last and went to a Cleveland and Thurman flag raising at East Rutland. A good speech was made by the local democratic candidate for the state senate, but he showed his fear of free trade. Dr. M. R. Leverson, who, I was told, was a New York man, followed. He made the speech of the evening. Instead of showing any fear of free trade, he declared himself a free trader in the most emphatic terms; and he not only did this, but he expatiated upon the injustice of all taxes upon production, and insisted that the war now commencing upon the robbing tariff should go on until the crowning iniquity of land monopoly was done away with and all taxes removed from labor. He insisted that the policy of timidity was a mistaken one, and told the democrats to stop apologizing, proclaim themselves in favor of true democratic principles, and declare for absolute free trade. He told them if they would do this and discuss it thoroughly, that in the next presidential election, dyed-in-the-wool republican Vermont would be certain to go democratic. You may be sure I was delighted to hear that kind of talk at a democratic meeting. But I was not alone in this. Dr. Leverson seemed to carry the whole meeting by storm, and aroused an enthusiasm that the first speaker did not begin to excite.
The Rutland postmaster, came next. He made a good speech, and was loudly applauded when he made points against protection; but when he denied that the democrats were for free trade the audience only laughed.
I send you this as a straw which shows the wind. From my talk with the people I meet I am satisfied that the democrats will not, with their apologetic policy, get such a vote as they would have if they declared themselves out and out for free trade. They will be wise to put such speakers as Dr. Leverson on the stump whenever then sic.
COMMERCIAL.
Stumping in Some Ohio Towns.
YOUNGSTOWN, O., July 22.—I have had a lot of fun on the road during the last two weeks. I find the people listen to the single tax doctrine better than I thought they would, and I also find they like to hear tariff talk. The majority of them don’t know what the tariff is. They don’t see that it is a government tax and that they pay it. They seem to think that the only tax they pay is the tax they pay at the court house, and when I explain it to them they are eager to hear all about it. When they learn that the poor man pays more of this tax in comparison to his means than the rich man they begin to see there is something wrong in it.
I shook them up at Ravenna, Alliance, Minerva, Carrolton, Mineral Point, and Canton, and gave them the chance of asking questions, which they were very eager to do. I am sure my answers satisfied them.
I was more pleased at Carrolton than anywhere else. I found it a republican protection center and a narrow minded town. I gave them a good talk before they knew what they were getting. Then they put a crowd of young bloods up in front of me, and they yelled the name of Harrison until I had to give up. I left them and went to the hotel, where I sat on the porch and listened to a lively racket between republicans and democrats. I had found the town quiet, but when I left it there was plenty of noise.
I found some live single tax men at Canton, and I think they will make a good showing. I had a good audience, and they put a few questions to me, such as, What is the cause of difference of wages between countries? and Won’t free trade ruin our industries? and How the black man should vote, and What’s the Australian system of voting? I was also asked to explain the single tax. I have had to come home on account of sickness in my family, but I will go out soon again. The people take the tracts very eagerly, and there is a chance of this state going for Cleveland if it is worked right, and without fear, on the free trade policy.
BILLY RADCLIFFE.
The Italian Immigrants.
NEW YORK.—The presence of the hapless Italian immigrants in this city, over whom the Herald and our law makers are waxing very excited, may, in opening eyes, serve a great purpose after all, and their desperate endeavors to gain a living make every street noisy and exaggerate their numerousness. They are rapidly displacing the old and more Americanized street peddlers and hawkers. Car conductors say the young Italians are sic the old newsboys off Broadway. Italian bootblacks are as common as banana sellers. Why is this? Because the street is the only place where they can work without having to pay a land owner for the privilege. If there were not the public streets all these hundreds who are now industriously doing their best to earn a livelihood would be forced back among the sic idle in Mulberry bend. It is vain for the Herald to assert that these Italians are lazy. The way they go to work on our streets shows they are not lazy. It shows that if they had other opportunities open to them they would improve their condition. If they had land, even though it were swamps, they would make it blossom. The sole trouble is that the public land (the streets) which is accessible to them is inadequate. If there were in New York city 400 miles of streets like Park row these Italians could employ themselves. We cannot give them such streets, for they are the growth of years; but we can give them what they would appreciate far more, a chance at the vacant land lying all around the city.
W. E. H.
The Work of One Man.
WACO, Tex., July 15.—During this year my working time has been entirely absorbed by a small corn and cotton crop, but on Sundays, and on rainy days, when I made my weekly trips to the post office, I found opportunities to do something for the single tax cause.
I was the pioneer distributer of literature here, commencing on the Fourth of July, 1887. Now there are two hundred men to whom the subject was presented by me, who are believers and workers for the doctrine.
Between the end of the work of cultivation and the commencement of crop gathering there will be a few days of leisure which I shall utilize in obtaining signatures to our tax reform memorial, distributing literature and soliciting recruit subscriptions for THE STANDARD.
JAMES MACE. p. 2, col. 4
IN MINNEAPOLIS.
The Single Tax Petition to the Legislature Obtaining Many Signatures—Free Trade Democrats Leaning Our Way.
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.—The hot weather does not by any means lessen the enthusiasm of the single tax men of Minneapolis. I have been here nearly a week, and my experience has been a series of surprises. I do not think that any other city in America has progressed so rapidly in the comprehension of the merits of the single tax upon land values as Minneapolis.
On Sunday evening, July 8, I spoke before a meeting in Windom hall on “America’s Inherited Diseases,” and made the acquaintance of quite a number of the members of the anti-poverty society. Principal among these were Mr. C. J. Buell, its president, and Mr. Oliver F. Erickson, its secretary. The following days made me thoroughly acquainted with the men and their work in the city, which is only equaled by the work of H. F. Ring in Texas.
Mr. Buell showed me two petitions to the members of the legislature, asking them to submit the question to the people of Minnesota. These petitions contained nearly a thousand names, which Mr. Buell has obtained by his own personal efforts at odd hours while riding to and from his work. Mr. Erickson and others have procured many more names. The character of these names was not the least surprising thing. Some of the leading business firms of the city have signed the petition held by Mr. Buell. He told me that hardly one out of ten had refused. The justice of exempting personal property and improvements from taxation appeals with almost irresistible force to all candid minds.
With the signatures to such a petition as this, mounting into the thousands, the prospect is indeed cheering. Already the papers treat the movement and the movers with marked respect. The Labor Union and Star openly favor it, while the St. Paul Globe and the Evening Journal are careful not to antagonize it. This petition is sure to go to the next legislature and to provoke most earnest discussion, for the opinions of the merchants and manufacturers as well as the intelligent workingmen of Minneapolis can not safely be ignored.
Minneapolis is a most beautiful city. It is situated on a high level, well wooded and having charming swells in it. It has had the most phenomenal growth, rising in eight years from fifty thousand inhabitants to about two hundred thousand, and yet the more one examines this growth the less satisfactory it seems. The price of land is exorbitant beyond belief. It is a “city of homes,” but the tenement house era has begun. Rents are high and there are mortgages everywhere. Labor is getting scarcer each year.
The people at last begin to see that a speculative boom is a delusive prosperity. Enterprise sees that rent is its most formidable enemy. Industry feels the burden of excessive taxation and objects to a system which levies but a nominal tax on the holders of valuable vacant lots while it lays heavily on the man of moderate means who has made a home.
I look forward confidently to seeing Minneapolis soon adopt the single tax. There certainly is the most extraordinary awakening going on here, due in large measure to the work of a few determined, tireless men, such as Messrs. Buell, Erickson, McDaniels, and Gooch.
I spent several days in looking about among the free traders, and I am convinced of the wisdom of the course pursued by Henry George. I find the free traders leaning well toward the greater reform of free production.
HAMLIN GARLAND.
OUR TRADE WITH SOUTH AMERICA.
How the Abolition of Our Protective System Would Build It Up.
NEW YORK, July 18—A few weeks ago I met a gentleman who had just returned from a business trip to South America and from him I learned something of the condition of commerce in the Argentine Republic and Uruguay.
Being interested in machinery I asked what makes of machines, as a rule, were used. He replied that they were English, French and German; principally English. He said that American made machinery is better adapted to the wants of the people, but they can’t get it on account of the high tariff—not theirs, but ours. The money of the country is far below par and liable long to so remain, so that to sell for money is useless. But the country produces any quantity of hides and wool, and these commodities are carried to England and France, so that the trips pay a handsome profit both ways. South American wool is of a finer quality than that grown in any other country in the world. It is absolutely necessary to mix with other wools to produce the finer grades of “imported goods” that our Berry Walls must have, and the finer grades of carpets. This gentleman says the Stars and Stripes are very seldom seen in South American ports, and even then our flag is on slow going sailing ships, and not on steamers.
If American shippers could carry American machinery, etc., down to our sister republic and return with hides, wool and kindred products, our machine makers, on the one hand, would be busy with the new demand; and our manufacturers of fine clothes and carpets, on the other hand, would need more native wool to mix with the imported wool, and consequently would turn out a larger product. It is clear then that the protective system is keeping back manufactures and shipping interests and is restricting the field for employment, not from our neighbors across the Atlantic, but from ourselves. It allows a very small percentage of our people to trade with their neighbors in a way that in the far west would be called a “braced game.” They are not stimulated to go beyond our tight board fence and seek trade in the busy marts of the world. It is easier to get rich at home because the people can not buy their supplies where they want to, save by paying, on an average, 47 per cent more than other people have to pay. The majority of the people of these United States who have to buy supplies are workingmen, mechanics, farmers, laborers, etc.; and wiggle and twist as they may, say what they will, do what they will, believe what they will, one fact stares them in the face, and that is that every man in this republic who works, who produces, sells his labor, his produce, in the cheapest market in the world and buys his supplies in the highest.
The affairs of this nation are not in the hands of any man or men who were born so; they are in the hands of the men who work. Let the ballot declare for reduced tariff and cheaper necessities will come.
JOHN A. HILL.
“Protection” in Ulster County.
MIDDLETOWN, Delaware County, N. Y., July 23.—Hiram Whitney of Shandaken, of Ulster county, N. Y., is a republican and a protectionist, and from the manner in which he deals with his employes shows the principle of how the majority of protectionists are in favor of protecting the American laborer. Mr. Whitney owns a large chair factory in Shandaken, Ulster county, N. Y., employing p. 2, col. 5 about two hundred hands. He also has a store in connection with the business, and a genuine pluck-me store it is. His employes are obliged to pay this great protectionist of American labor nearly fifty per cent more for all the merchandise they use than any other store in the county would ask. For example, for a ten cent paper of tobacco they are charged eighteen cents; sugar, three cents per pound more than the usual price; flour, two to three dollars per barrel extra; pork, about five cents per pound extra; tea, fifteen to twenty cents additional, and all other goods in proportion. The manufacturing of chair seatings is done mostly by the people of the surrounding country, who are also compelled to pay these exorbitant prices or lose their situations. The extra commission that this great protectionist of American labor charges his employes nearly pays for all the work they do, so that he gets their work for next to nothing. Is it any wonder, under such circumstances, that the laborer rarely owns a home of his own?
Not content with thus appropriating a large part of the fruits of his employes’ labor, Mr. Whitney now takes means to deprive them of their freedom of the ballot. A few days since be sic the assertion that he would discharge any one of them that dared to vote except as he said.
Mr. Whitney is not a rare exception. Many other manufacturers do the same thing. Their employes are obliged to work for a nominal price or give place to foreigners.
The folly of putting a duty on foreign goods manufactured by pauper labor, and then of allowing the pauper laborers to come here free to compete with American labor and call that protection to the American laborer, must be apparent. Mr. Manufacturer is protected and Mr. Laborer pays for it.
ONE OF THOSE LABOR MEN.
Sauce for the Goose Should be Sauce for the Gander,
On one page of the Philadelphia Textile Record, a high protection paper, is an editorial showing that the present free trade agitation has demoralized the knit goods trade in this country. On the next page is a letter from Canada which says that this industry is suffering from very great depression in that country. The Textile Record does not say, however, that the free trade agitation here is frightening the Canadian manufacturers.
Labor’s Chivalry.
Gerald Massey.
Uprouse ye now, brave brother band, With honest heart and working hand; We are but few, toil-tried and true, Yet hearts beat high to dare and do; And who would not a Champion be In Labor’s lordlier Chivalry?
We fight! but bear no bloody brand, We fight to free our Fatherland; We fight that smiles of love may glow On lips where curses quiver now! Hurrah! Hurrah! true Knights are we In Labor’s lordlier Chivalry.
O! there be hearts that ache to see The day-dawn of our victory; Eyes full of heartbreak with us plead, And watchers weep and martyrs bleed; O! who would not a champion be In Labor’s lordlier Chivalry?
Work, brothers mine; work, hand and brain; We’ll win the Golden Age again; And Love’s millennial morn shall rise In happy hearts and blessed eyes. Hurrah! Hurrah! true Knights are we In Labor’s lordlier Chivalry.
PROTECTED AMERICAN LABOR.
Beauties of Protection in Northern New York.
M. F. McKiernan of the general secretary’s office of the Knights of Labor has been making a trip in northern New York, and thus writes to the Journal of United Labor:
The J. & J. Rogers iron company owns the places of Ausable Forks and Jay, N. Y., which is but six miles distant. The company store is a prominent feature of each of these places. They seem to know not only the number in each family, but the eating capacity of the same, and if they do not do just so much trading they are questioned in the matter. The Rogers iron company make no pretense to pay for labor in cash. In fact, they have a notice posted in their office: “No cash paid for labor.” I am creditably informed that there are men in the employ of this company who would hardly know a dollar if they saw it. Groceries, provisions, clothing, shoes, hats, etc., are either secured on the book used in store or by order. Even coffins for the final disposition of the mortal remains of the individual are kept constantly on hand. Just imagine a man who is not the fortunate owner of a razor stepping up to a clerk in the store and getting a ticket for a shave or a hair cut! The ticket is a regular form headed “Barber ticket. good for ten or fifteen cents at J. & J. Rogers iron company:” the former amount represents a shave and the latter a hair cut. I purchased one of these tickets from the barber, and he said it was the first cash he had ever received for one. On inquiry I found out when he got a dollar’s worth he went over to the store and he got sixty cents worth of groceries, etc., for them.
Hammondville is a mining camp, owned by the Crown Point iron company, and located thirteen miles from the latter place. The railroad is owned by this company, and the fare for the thirteen miles is seventy cents. Mining is let out by contract; one contractor is permitted to make $100 per month, and others only $35 or $40—the desire being to show favor and keep the men divided. Miners get $1.40 per day, and men on bank $1.10; drill sharpeners $1.32 and bell ringers 82 cents. The latter are principally boys.
This company owns for three miles around, and our members here are compelled to travel three and a half miles to place of meeting. Some have been discriminated against for being knights and compelled to leave this part of the country owing to discriminations by the company. The company employs a physician at a salary of $1,500 per annum. They then pay this amount and deduct fifty cents from each single man and seventy-five cents from married men, monthly. They have no choice in the selection of such physician, and not infrequently when his services are most required he is off on a fishing or hunting excursion. There are about two hundred married men and eighty-seven young men employed here at present. These pay $2,322 annually for the physician, a clear gain for the company of $822.
But this Question Leads to the Other Question, “Is Not Protection a Fraud?”
Philadelphia Record.
Very few people nowadays can be frightened by the cry of “free trade!” There never can be free trade while the government revenues shall be raised by a tariff on imports, and the only question to be considered is: Shall necessary revenue reduction be made by lowering the tariff taxes to forty per cent, or by raising them to a point that will be practically prohibitory of many imports? The former plan would keep the tax money in the people’s pockets; the latter would take it from them and bestow it, with additional bounties, upon a few men who profit because of the artificial raising of prices by means of high duties.
Boyle O’Reilly to Workmen.
Boston Pilot.
Let any one who doubts the working of protection go into the mining and iron manufacturing districts of Pennsylvania and Ohio, and see whom protection protects. Let him go and ask the unfortunate workmen who went on strike last Saturday to the number of a hundred thousand. President Cleveland is a right, bold, able man, and his party was wise and courageous. We are of the working people. We want the tariff revised just as he suggested and the democratic platform demands. p. 2, col. 6
THE LIGHT SPREADING IN ENGLAND.
The Liverpool Financial Reformer “Sees the Cat” and Indorses the Single Tax.
The Liverpool Financial Reformer is the organ of the Financial reform association, which through its financial reform almanacs, its tracts, etc., exerts a most powerful influence upon the most progressive part of the liberal party. It has been for some time quietly edging our way, and from the following, which is taken from its last issue, seems at last to have “got there:”
For the Daily News to call a real live lord “a mere rent receiver,” and to speak of “legalized plunder,” is enough to make one believe that the end of the world has come; that the editor has determined to keep the paper abreast of the time; or that some other equally improbable thing has happened. In an interesting article upon “The Land of London,” referring to Lord Portman’s estate, it says:
It is estimated that this mere rent receiver, Lord Portman, who, as far as is known, has never yet conferred the slightest benefit upon the greater London from which he extracts his revenues—it is estimated that he netted at least a million and a quarter from the premiums which he levied upon the large number of leases that fell in last March. Every farthing of this enormous sum was “unearned increment,” as Mr. Mill called that description of revenue, being too good natured to call it by its other name of legalized plunder.
We soon find, however, on reading the article, that though the instances of landlordism given therein would be suitable for any of Mr. Henry George’s works, the remedy proposed is merely suitable for—the Daily News. To use an Americanism, the writer of the article “can’t see the cat.” His proposal is leasehold enfranchisement; i. e., in place of one big Lord Portman, have a number of smaller ones. Leasehold enfranchisement will not break the land monopoly. It may increase the number of landlords, but what is wanted is something that will break the power of landlordism. The article from which we have quoted occupies the whole of one column and a third of another; the remaining two-thirds are filled with appeals, twenty in number, from ministers, town missionaries, and others, for funds to give poor children and their mothers a day among the green fields. Only one day. What good can that do for those who have to pass the rest of the year penned up midst “the dust and din ’neath city skies?” Not much beyond giving them one day out of the dreary year, which they can look forward to and back upon with pleasure. Leasehold enfranchisement will never help these people.
We do mean to sic that the leaseholders have great grievances, but the remedy proposed is most superficial, and would cause as much mischief in the future as the present system does now. That a tenant cannot have his rent raised because of his own improvements can surely be guaranteed by legislation without the necessity of transforming the tenant into an owner. All the other benefits of leasehold enfranchisement can be obtained by the taxation of land values. Of course, the land must be taxed upon its value in use, whether it be actually used or not, and the tax must be sufficiently heavy to render it unprofitable for a man to have his land idle. The landlord at present has the tenant at his mercy because he can afford to allow his land to remain unoccupied or unused; but if, in addition to the loss of rent caused by the tenant giving up possession, he had also to pay a substantial tax upon the annual value, and compensate the tenant for improvements made by him, the position would be entirely reversed, and the tenant, not the landlord, have the upper hand. As for the “unearned increment,” the tenant has no more claim to it than the landlord; it belongs of right to the community at large, and by means of taxation it can be appropriated for the good of the state and municipality.
STRAWS WHICH SHOW THE WIND.
Free trade necessarily will lead to a direct tax to support the government. There can be no other result, and the road in which the Clevelandites are traveling leads straight to it.—[Pittsburg Times (Rep).
Labor is high in this state as compared with the east because here there are too few laborers for the work to be done, while there there are too many; but who shall say how long this will last?—[San Francisco Examiner.
There is no reform more imperatively needed in our country than such an improvement of election methods as will prevent bribery and intimidation in voting and fraud in counting. Such a reform can be measurably accomplished by something akin to the Australian system.—[Buena Vista, Col., Democrat.
The Manistee, Mich., Broadaxe remarks of Congressman Ford’s effort to restrict immigration, that he is evidently commencing at the wrong end: “It is not less people that we want, but, first, a guarantee of the possession by the workers of a just and equitable share of what they earn, and secondly that the opportunities for self employment on the land be enlarged. Both of these can be secured by a repeal of all tariff laws, the imposition of a direct tax on all land values and the repeal of all laws protecting or guaranteeing the existence of money and transportation monopolies.”
The same good reasons against protection afforded to the few at the expense of the many stand out as boldly against any tax on personal property, avocations, professions, occupations or trades. Taxing capital or personal property tends to monopoly and even now creates monopolies. For a long time the greedy and selfish have been gulling the people by their legislation on finance and taxation, but light has come to the people and the day of reckoning is near at hand when the tariff and the monstrous monopolies, trusts and combines will be confronted, confounded and condemned by the single tax on land values.—[Pearsall, Tex., Sun.
The Mail and Express, referring to one of the recent hot Sundays, arrives at the following consolatory conclusion: “Fortunately it is Saturday, and most of us can flee from the furnace of brick and stone to the green of the grass and the trees, and enjoy at least one day of rest before beginning on another week’s labor.” What a mighty small world “us” is, after all. As a matter of fact, but a very small percentage of the citizens of New York, or any other great city, can revel amidst the “green of the grass and the trees” for one day in the week. The great majority of them are compelled by circumstances over which they have no control to make the best they can out of “the furnace of brick and stone.”—[American Machinist.
The history of natural gas furnishes another instance of the unwisdom of permitting a free gift of nature such as that to fall into the hands of a private monopoly. After it was found that this natural gas was available for lighting and manufacturing purposes, companies were organized to supply it to large cities. Its use effected a complete revolution in so important a locality as Pittsburg. It took the place of coal in all the large manufactories and bankrupted the artificial gas companies, but the business of supplying it fell into private hands; and as in the case of the telephone and the old artificial gas companies, there was stock watering, stock jobbing and consolidating, until now an organization—of which Mr. George Westinghouse, jr., is the head—controls the whole supply of Pittsburg and Allegheny City.—[Real Estate Record and Guide.
Page 3 of 8contents
THE STANDARD SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1888. 3
p. 3, col. 1
SINGLE TAX PETITIONS.
A COMMUNICATION FROM THE TEXAS TAX REFORM COMMITTEE.
They Tell How They Are Working and Offer Some Advice.
HOUSTON, Texas, July 4—It does not seem to us that the energies of single tax men should be exclusively devoted to the tariff issue during the pending presidential campaign. Or, to state our views more accurately, it seems to us that this campaign affords a magnificent opportunity for work exclusively in the interest of the single tax idea, to those of our friends who do not feel inclined to subordinate the single tax issue to the tariff question. It may reasonably be expected that the great majority of democrats and so called free traders will fail to discuss the tariff question in such a way as to make the free trade doctrine attractive to the average workingman. We fear that the minds of the great masses of the people will only be muddled upon the subject by the pro and con which they will hear about it. At the same time they will become intensely interested in the subject of taxation. Is not this, then, our opportunity for urging the single tax? Why should not single tax men now, of all other times, come quietly to the front by means of the circulation of a petition asking that personal property and improvements on land be exempt from taxation, and that all direct taxes be levied on relative land values only? Why not let tax reform missionaries everywhere, and most especially where parties are almost evenly divided, take this petition in hand and tell working people, quietly, by face to face work and in conversational methods, that here is a measure which they can easily understand, which will certainly increase the demand for labor and the wages of the laborer whether we have protection or free trade? It seems to us if this is done, working people who are confused by the babble of politicians over the tariff question will turn with relief to the tax reform missionary who can tell them of something the benefits of which they can see at a glance. In our opinion it will be far easier to excite interest in and obtain signatures to a proposed tax reform memorial before the election takes place than afterward. The speakers on both sides of the tariff question admit that there is something wrong somewhere. On one side the evil is attributed to too much protection, and on the other side to an insufficient amount of it. We find it difficult to convince the average man imbued with the protection idea that free trade will remedy this evil to any extent. We do not find it difficult, however, to make him see the absurdity of taxing farmers more for using land than speculators are taxed for withholding it from use. We have no trouble in convincing nine men out of ten whom we can engage in personal conversation on the subject, that a tax on personal property is largely paid by working people in the additional cost of what they consume, and that a tax on land values is a tax on speculation and monopoly, and would be paid only by those who enjoy the right of the exclusive possession of a portion of the earth. Working people are now being urged to vote so that the taxing power of the government may be used to their advantage; let us, therefore, embrace the opportunity which the excited state of their minds on this subject presents, and quietly show them how effectual it can in fact be used to their benefit by means of a tax on land values. This can now be done by the circulation of that memorial without, in our opinion, encountering violent opposition anywhere. Politicians bidding for popular support will not dare to antagonize the thousands of voters, who can be easily induced to sign the memorial before the election takes place.
Let all tracts and literature directly attacking private ownership in land be put aside. Let only simple tracts showing the benefit directly of this change in the system of taxation be circulated. Confine the work to the point of showing the direct benefit to result from the change. Circulate literature prepared with this one object in view. Let it be shown how this change in the great majority of cases will actually reduce direct taxation on farms and homesteads and improved real estate generally. That it will make vacant lands and lots, unused coal beds and mineral deposits, cheaper. That it will enable poor people to get homes and pay for them easier. That it will encourage investments of capital in productive enterprises giving employment to labor, and discourage its investment in the bounties of nature for the purpose of forestalling labor, and hence will increase the demand for labor and the wages of the laborer. All this can be done without a word being said against the private ownership of land. If this course is pursued, any energetic and determined man can soon bring nearly all his friends and acquaintances and his neighbors generally to favor such a proposed amendment. If this kind of campaign is carried on we shall have half of the local politicians everywhere talking up the single tax doctrine and bidding for the support of single tax men before the November election. They can be forced to declare themselves upon it and to discuss it. This is our golden opportunity. We here in Texas know this by experience. Without having an avowed candidate in the field, single tax men can everywhere force the single tax doctrine into politics some. What has been done here in Harris county and other counties in Texas can be just as easily done everywhere else. The plan should even work better where parties are more evenly divided. Here we have only one party, the democratic party. In this county to-day there is not a single office seeker who dares to open his mouth against the single tax doctrine, and most of them have pronounced in favor of it and signed the petition, and some are actively working for it. All the Knights of Labor assemblies in this city are solidly for it. The same is the case with all the farmers’ suballiances in the county, so far as we have gone with them.
A few weeks ago we sent Mr. James E. McCormick to Montgomery county, an adjoining county, for the purpose of organizing the tax reform movement there. At first his letters were discouraging, but soon the tone of them changed, and he finally succeeded in his work beyond our most sanguine expectations. He first approached he sic of the farmers’ alliance and Knights of Labor. He told them what we were doing here, how we had obtained already 2,000 signatures to our petition—we have 2,500 now. He did not attempt to go deep into the philosophy of the land question. He did not shock them with literature full of expressions threatening to vested rights in land. He explained to them only the obvious benefits to result to the farmers, directly and indirectly, by taking the taxes from improvements and from personal property. He asked them to read the tracts which we have gotten up for the direct purpose of convincing people in the easiest way that the adoption of this amendment would benefit every merchant, manufacturer, mechanic and farmer in the state, and would injure only the land speculators and land monopolists. At the same time, while he was trying to persuade
p. 3, col. 2
these bell wethers, as he expressed it, to lead their flocks out into these green fields of cheaper land and untaxed homes, he was distributing his tracts and showing the beauties of these same pastures to the rank and file and trying to persuade them to start in the right direction, whether the bell wethers went as leaders or not. In this case, however, he got all of the bell wethers to take hold of the work and help him along with it. He made enthusiastic converts of the president and secretary of the county farmers’ alliance and they helped him find an active and competent man to take charge of a petition in each of the twenty-seven sub-alliances in the county, and in this way he secured the circulation of twenty-seven petitions by as many different people in every nook and corner of the county. Nine men out of ten to whom the petition was presented while he was in the county signed it, and he was assured that the petition would be signed almost unanimously by the voters in the county long before fall. He was also promised that if the Knights of Labor and farmers’ alliance organizations could prevent it, none but single tax men should be sent as delegates to any of the democratic conventions.
Mr. David Russell of sic, Tyler county, a strong single tax man, writes us that he has worked the farmers’ alliance organization in that county in the same way, and that the six hundred active members of that organization there are almost to a man solid for single tax. He obtained from us a blank petition for each sub-alliance in that county, and got some man in nearly every alliance and Knights of Labor assembly in the county to take hold of it and put it through.
Mr. McCormick is now working up another county in the same way in which he worked Montgomery county, and we propose if possible to keep him in the field. This with us is simply a question of a few dollars. If we only had a little more money to use, we could certainly bring Texas into line on the single tax doctrine before the next legislature of our state adjourns. With us even the large land owners do not as yet violently oppose the measure when they understand it. They can see that the demand for land for actual use would be so increased if Texas were the first state to adopt this amendment that they could get rid of a great deal of their land at present values, and that the loss would come so gradually that it would not bring serious disaster to many of them. The colored population, having over one-fourth of the votes in the state, are our enthusiastic adherents almost to a man wherever our measure is explained to them, while four-fifths of the land owners are small farmers and homestead owners, whose improvements are in almost every case more valuable than their land.
At the risk of its seeming sic in us we would suggest to single tax men everywhere the following general plan of work in this presidential campaign:
Let a state conference of single tax men who favor this plan of work be called as soon as possible in that city in each state in which the single tax sentiment is strongest, and let them organize a state single tax league, or tax reform association, or whatever else they may choose to call it. Let this convention select a state executive committee and prepare a petition to be signed by the voters of the state, asking only for the adoption of a constitutional amendment exempting improvements on land and personal property from taxation and requiring all direct taxes to be levied on relative land values.
Let such executive committee select or get up two or three simple tracts, in which the argument is confined to the issue raised by the proposed amendment, and get them issued in the form of a periodical, so as to have the advantage of second-class postage rates in sending them out over the state. These tracts should be expressly designed to meet the direct issues which the discussion of the proposed amendment will raise. The workers with the petitions should not ordinarily allow themselves to be drawn from these issues in argument. Stick to the point that the proposed amendment will reduce taxes on improved real estate, force speculators to sell to workers on more reasonable terms, stimulate business, increase the demand for labor and the wages of the laborer. Never mind the question of private property in land. Go for the speculators and land and coal monopolists, and show up the iniquitous schemes by which the poorest classes of people pay the bulk of the taxes in the increased cost of what they consume.
Let the state executive committee, without delay, select one man in every county to take charge of and be responsible for the work of circulating the petitions in his county. If he is the chairman already of a single tax club so much the better. If there is no club in the county let him go to work and organize one, if he can; if not, let him go to work by himself alone. He will not work long without finding helpers. All blank petitions should be prepared by the state executive committee and sent out over the state as called for. Two sheets of legal cap with a wrapping paper back, and with the printed heading of the petition pasted to the top of the first page, is, we find, the most convenient form and size. Each blank petition should be numbered and the name of the county in which it is to be circulated put on the back of it, and a record of every petition, showing the name of the party to whom it is sent, should be kept by the executive committee.
We suggest that the work of circulating the petition in every county be systematized by the following plan: Make a list of every labor and benevolent organization and farmers’ association in the county, and get the names of the officers and leading men in all these societies. Where these men are personally unknown, get an introduction to them by letter or otherwise, and explain to them the proposed amendment and ask them to assist in circulating the petition, at least by the use of their names, and of course leave with them a tract. Rather than permit of much delay in seeing these men in person, write to them, inclosing a copy of the heading of the petition and a tract. The work of seeing these parties should of course be apportioned out at the weekly meetings of the county or ward club, and the reports of progress made and conversations had will form an interesting and inspiring feature of the weekly club meetings. Endeavor at first to get one member, at least, of every local assembly of the Knights of Labor, and of every local branch or lodge of all organizations of the character above referred to, to take a petition and circulate it among his brother members—to have it in his hands especially at every lodge meeting. If he can start the petition with the names of the bell wethers first, as Mr. McCormick says, let him do so by all means. If they will not take hold of it, however, let him go to work on the flock and the bell wethers will start the moment they see an inclination on the part of the flock to go along without them. Do not be discouraged because men refuse to sign the petition at first. The mere presentation of the petition and the statement that farmers, mechanics and merchants are signing it by the thousands in Texas will excite an interest in the subject and lead to a more careful reading of the tract which you will hand out than anything else could induce. Do not bother about trying to get up public meetings. We have never had one in Houston. It is quiet face to face work which counts. The average man shrinks
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from being considered a crank or a hobby horse rider, and you cannot get him out to your meetings; but if he is approached right he will sign the petition and go to studying up the single tax doctrine.
In circulating the petition ignore the tariff question. You will find high tariff men just as easy to convert as free traders, and you will find them just as apt to work enthusiastically for the proposed amendment.
The moment a local assembly of the Knights of Labor or any other organization can be worked up the right sic, get them to pass a resolution like the following, and then publish the fact in the papers, and let the state executive committee keep a record of it:
Whereas, To tax the farmer, mechanic, merchant or manufacturer more for using land than the speculator is taxed for holding land out of use is to impose a fine upon enterprise and thrift; and
Whereas, A tax on houses, improvements, goods and personal property is a tax on industry, and is paid by the workingman in the additional cost of what he consumes; and
Whereas, A tax on land values is a tax on speculation, taking for the common use a value created by the common industry; be it therefore
Resolved, That we hereby cordially indorse the proposed constitutional amendment exempting improvements on land and personal property from taxation and requiring all direct taxes to be levied on relative land values only; and we do most heartily recommend to the next legislature of the state that said proposed amendment be submitted to the vote of the people.
We are thoroughly satisfied that if this course which we have recommended should be vigorously pursued the single tax issue would be raised into prominence in the coming campaign. The opportunity should be embraced. The moment the number of signatures becomes imposing in any locality, local politicians at least will bid for the support of the parties who have signed the petition, and in many instances they can be forced to discuss the subject.
Though the question of free trade may be ignored, a very large proportion of the protectionists who sign the petition will be set to thinking in the right direction, and thus they will soon become disgusted with the shallow arguments by which protectionist speakers attempt to explain the cause of wages being higher in America than in England.
H. F. RING,
L. L. BEACH,
J. B. COCHRAN,
Executive Committee Texas Branch National Tax Reform Association.
A Michigan Petition.
S. G. Howe of Detroit has prepared the following petition, to which he is getting signatures. Mr. Howe says he will furnish petition heads or electrotypes to those who wish them at cost. In sending us this form of petition Mr. Howe says:
Please state to all sympathizers in this state that they can get petitions ready for signatures, with space for seventy-five to one hundred names, by addressing me and inclosing five cents in stamps to cover postage expenses. I expect next week to commence a canvass of the business men of this city for signatures on my petition, and shall keep at it until I get their signatures or their refusal, and I am hopeful of getting a majority of our business names on the petition. I am getting these petitions up at my own expense, and if there are any friends or Nicodemuses desirous of helping me out on them, such aid will be thankfully received and acknowledged.
This is the form of his petition:
THE SINGLE TAX—WHAT IS ITS DESIGN?
The Appropriation of Land Values for Public Instead of Private Uses.
IT WILL BE JUSTICE EXEMPLIFIED.
IN WHAT WAY?
By showing that labor is necessary, honorable, worthy of and entitled to a just share of its own creation.
By showing that an omnipotent God has created a field for labor, a laborer for the field, and designed that each should come together without obstruction.
By showing that labor successfully employed in God’s great vineyard is capable of producing a large surplus over his (the laborer’s) needs for consumption.
By showing that unrestricted production and exchange will give the sic the full fruits of his toil.
By showing that all productive labor creates a collective value independent of its direct returns.
By showing that this collective value, called land value, being a society value, it of right belongs to society.
By showing that when taken by society, its creator, for its society expenses, no other forms of taxation will be necessary, hence the term “single tax.”
WHAT WILL BE ITS EFFECTS?
It will relieve trade and industry of many artificial burdens and taxes that now oppress them.
It will open up all unused natural opportunities, and so give all who desire it a chance to earn their bread by the sweat of their brows, without an unnecessary waste of perspiration.
Removing the burden of taxation from production and exchange, it will largely increase the possibilities of consumption, thereby largely increasing trade and its compensation.
By absorbing only a universally created value no injustice will be done.
It will liberate the land, forests and mines from the grasp of obstructive monopoly by taxing them into use.
It, being the embodiment of equity and justice, must of necessity be right, and being right will prevail; so lend it your aid and name.
Petition to the honorable members of the legislature of the state of Michigan:
We, the undersigned, citizens of the state of Michigan, without regard to party distinctions, petition your honorable body to so amend the tax laws as to exempt from taxation the labor, industry and enterprise of residents of this state, and we pray that the following amendments to the tax law may be adopted:
Section 1. That all improvements on land and all personal property shall be exempt from taxation.
Sec. 2. That a direct tax shall be levied on relative land values only; that the word improvement, as herein used, shall be construed to include any product obtained by the application to land of human industry, such as the breaking up of wild sod, clearing and reducing it to cultivation, as well as the construction of buildings and fences, setting out trees and shrubs and all forms of ornamentation.
Sec. 3. That a reassessment of values shall be made between July 1 and Oct. 31 of the fourth (4th) and ninth (9th) year of each decade, said assessment to take effect on Jan. 1 of the first (1st) and fifth (5th) year of each decade, making an assessment occur once each five years.
Sec. 4. That the rates of assessment shall be commensurate with the requirements of government for revenue up to the full rental values of land occupied.
Petition No. . Solicited by .
NO. | NAME. | ADDRESS. | OCCUPATION.
Reductio ad Absurdum.
London Democrat.
What funny people be these protectionists! Emigration is the cure for poverty, say they, and the taxation of foreign corn will be a stimulus to home production. That is to say, send people away from growing corn at home to grow it in other countries, and then prohibit them from sending it here, where it might have been grown had they not been sent away.
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THE QUESTION OF POLICY.
A Correspondence Between Dr. Houghton of Cincinnati and L. P. Custer of Indianapolis.
NATIONAL COMMITTEE UNITED LABOR PARTY. No. 259 WALNUT STREET, CINCINNATI, July 15, 1888.
L. P. CUSTER, Indianapolis, Ind.—My Dear Sir: Twice I have been in Indianapolis since May 1, and both times was unable to see you.
The time is near when the active campaign work will be begun in your state and I am anxious to know how you stand in the matter.
It seems almost criminal that our forces have been divided, yet the division is so one sided that ultimately no harm will result.
United action this fall would most certainly have left us after election the political heir of the dissatisfied and disorganized remnants of the republican, union labor, greenback and prohibition parties; as it is we are being taunted by those who should now be with us that we are so insignificant that it is impolitic to stand together. Truth is never insignificant. Hoping to hear from you soon I am, yours truly,
A. S. HOUGHTON.
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind., July 19, 1888.
ALFRED S. HOUGHTON—Dear Sir and Friend: Yours of July 15 to hand and contents carefully considered. My position was substantially and clearly set forth in THE STANDARD of some weeks ago; but I presume you have not been reading that paper or you would not have taken the trouble to write me. However, I am glad you did so, as it gives me the opportunity to assure you and the friends of our faith, as to political methods, that while I cannot agree with you I have the utmost confidence in your integrity and earnestness of spirit, and appeal to you for the same magnanimity of feeling toward those you deem as outside of the pale of your political recognition at this time. I shall take the liberty, and consider it not a breach of faith, to forward your communication with a copy of this to THE STANDARD for publication, hoping thereby to at least in some measure enter as a factor into bringing about that to-be-desired feeling of amity within the ranks of the believers in our great actuating principle.
I accord you the undoubted right to follow the inclination of your judgement, and I hope you are fraternally endowed with the same spirit toward us, and that when the web and woof of this political battle that is now raging has been untangled you and your friends will again range yourselves with those you now feel are not with you, and the hosts thus united can certainly march to ultimate victory. A division as to method does not necessarily entail a division as to principle, and as both factions are certainly in harmony on the most vital question, I feel certain that we can all meet on common ground after the present unpleasantness is settled and renew pledges of faith and exchange fraternal greetings, as if nothing had occurred to mar the pleasures of the “new crusade.”
Referring to the third paragraph of your letter, I will say that it was certainly unfortunate, but not criminal. I have charity enough to believe that honesty and integrity has been the guiding spirit, and I also have faith to believe that it was brought about by that unseen power which guides and shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may, and that it will in the end prove good. “God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.”
As to the division being one sided, I am constrained to think that the one sidedness is not with you, for obvious reasons. In this city all the members of our league are in sympathy with the stand taken by Mr. George, and so are all others who are in any way inclined toward the single tax, with a few exceptions, who will vote with the republicans because of state pride or personal friendship for Mr. Harrison. With one or two exceptions the members of our league, myself included, have been republicans, and are going to vote for Mr. Cleveland this year, not because Mr. George is, but because in our judgment it is the only reasonable step to be taken at this time.
If the action which you are now intent upon had been persisted in without division in the ranks, I am fully convinced it would have resulted in making of us the scapegoats of both old parties, and possibly have been the means of returning to power the corrupt republican machine; and by the lavish use of funds at their command they could intrench themselves for years, while the democrats would undoubtedly be able to keep the rank and file of their party intact out of power indefinitely, as they did for twenty-four years prior to ’84. I am convinced that the great body of the progressive people are with the republican party. I believe if that organization is hopelessly defeated this year, the power of the machine will be overthrown and from the disorganized elements remaining a new and powerful sic will be formed that will face the democrats in ’92 with reforms far transcending anything now contemplated by democratic leaders, and which will sweep them from power, because, in my opinion, that party will in its turn become the champion of corporate wealth and monopoly. This year they are forced to take sides with the people. Their standard bearer rose above the machine and is greater than his party. He was not the choice of the machine democracy by any means, but in ’92 he will be out of the way, and then the machine will be enabled to make a choice, and I venture to say that choice will fall upon a man antagonistic to the best interest of the people. This year Cleveland with his hosts are moving our way, and are certainly educating the masses better than we could, even if it is not intended. We should go with them while on our road, and go right ahead when they leave us. With the utmost kindness and fraternal feeling, I remain, yours, etc.,
L. P. CUSTER.
A Wool Grower’s Experience.
HARTFORD, Kansas, July 17.—In 1875 I left Ohio for Kansas with intentions of engaging in sheep growing. I built a house and sheep barn on the broad prairies, one mile from the nearest settler. After learning that wool had sold in Kansas at thirty-two to thirty-three cents in 1875, and after talking about the wool prospects to the sheep men who decided that wool would hold to thirty to thirty-two cents, I decided to buy my ewes with wool on and get the benefit of lambs. Estimating at least five pounds of wool per head, at thirty cents per pound, and four lambs to five ewes at $2.50 each, I thought it would be more profitable to pay $5 per head for ewes there than to wait until fall and pay $3.50 per head. The tariff on wool I then understood was sixteen cents per pound. I was in a protected industry and felt safe, though I was young, inexperienced, and had much to learn. Now for results. The sheep clipped five and a half pounds per head, fine merino wool (sheep bought in Washington county, Pa.), and I was offered thirteen cents per pound. I held it five months and sold it for eighteen cents per pound.
The tariff on wool, valued at thirty cents or less, is ten cents per pound. Yet our wool growers here have been selling their wool for for sic to thirteen and a half cents for the last few years. Why is this?
It may be like the hide business. Thirty years ago a farmer could take a beef hide to
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a tannery and go back in a year and get one-half of it well oak tanned. When the same farmer now takes a beef hide to market he cannot get a two inch strip the length of the hide. Who gets the balance? Not the man who carries the hide, certainly, or he would be eating more beefsteak and would get more for our cattle. There are one hundred thousand voters in Kansas that can remember when they could take a beef hide to market and get a first-class pair of boots. Now he may take five good beef hides to market and can get a third-class pair of boots. What is wrong? Over one hundred and fifty thousand voters in Kansas know what is wrong, and if they will only throw down party prejudice, they can right it.
A farmer came into the store here last Saturday and asked for one dollar’s worth of sugar.
“How many pounds of granulated sugar do we get now for a dollar?” he asked.
“Eleven pounds,” was the answer. (Two years ago we gave fifteen.)
“What is the matter?” he exclaimed.
I told him it was the best we could do. He got forty cents’ worth of sugar and sixty cents’ worth of tax.
If the trust squeezes it down two pounds more, this state will go democratic.
R. T. SNEDIKER.
THE CHEROKEE NATION.
VINITA, Cherokee Nation, Ind. Ter.—We people of the Cherokee nation are among the heaviest taxed people on the globe. No citizen of the United States or anywhere else is allowed to go into or transact any mercantile business here unless he is a citizen of the Cherokee nation, either native born or by adoption. Consequently, as there is no competition, our merchants charge us all of twenty-five per cent more for the goods we purchase of them than what we can buy them for in the states. Now if we add the forty-seven per cent tariff we pay a tax of seventy-two per cent.
But that is not all. We get $96 per sic interest on our invested funds held by the United States government. We get from a cattle syndicate $100,000 yearly for grazing privileges on what is known as the Cherokee outlet, consisting of 6,000,000 acres. We also get $18,000 yearly for permits; we tax each man for the privilege of coming here to labor, fifty cents a month. But as he has become used to taxation in the states he does not complain. For mining coal and other minerals we get some more revenue, the amount of which is not known to me; but as we are not enterprising or progressive it does not amount to much. In short, estimating our income from all sources and dividing by the number of inhabitants, we would have about $11 per head; but it takes it all to carry on our little extravagant sham of a government. Now add that on to the seventy-two per cent and you will see my statement is nearly correct. Yet the people here are are sic boasting that they pay no tax. They are taught to believe that by the Indian politicians who live and fatten on the people’s ignorance. You see, we are getting civilized very fast, for we send delegates to Washington to guard our interests, and they catch on to all the tricks of your political shysters or protectionists. They come back here with a full knowledge of how to dupe us. I say us, for I am adopted by marriage, and consequently am an Indian by law, but one who don’t see things in the same light as the bona fide Indians do.
I am a regular reader of THE STANDARD. If you will send me a few sample copies and some plain facts in pamphlet form, I will distribute them where they will do the most good.
It may seem strange to people in the states that all of us white men who are citizens of the Indian territory are deprived of the rights of suffrage in the states, notwithstanding we are subject to the laws and courts of the United States. If we had our suffrages it would certainly be to the benefit of Grover Cleveland, as we are nearly all democrats. As for myself I have been a free trader all my life. I hope we will have four years more of democratic rule, and by that time the single tax party will be their successors. I think you could convert the cattle men to free trade were you to show them that owing to the policy of restriction we have lost our cattle trade with Europe, and as evidence show them that all the refrigerating ships that sailed from Boston, New York and Baltimore loaded down with our beef a few years ago, now sail from the ports of the Argentine Republic, where there is no forty-seven per cent tariff. Tell these cattle men that shippers there do not have to give one-half of their cargo for the privilege of selling the other half; explain how it is that a few years ago an average steer was worth about $[55?], whereas the same kind of a steer now is not worth $20.
How long will this thing last? When will all the different labor organizations join their efforts and see as they ought to see, and vote as they ought to vote? It is strange to me that poor people should stupidly keep barking up the wrong tree.
THOMAS HOWIE.
Drawbacks Again.
BROOKLYN, E. D.—Our friend S. T. Taylor of Portland, Me., is seemingly ’tween the devil of the tariff and the deep sea of the drawback. In his letter in THE STANDARD of July 7 he confused the matter into a wish for the repeal of the drawback. Is it not just possible that (horrible thought!) the present “prosperous condition of the country” under the republican tariff may have been brought about by the democratic drawback, which “destroys the tariff.” He will remember that the drawback laws came after the Pittsburg riots and the tramp laws, being a compromise between two sets of tinkering robbers, just the same as all our tariff laws have been for years. Wool, coal, iron and such monopolies have agreed to be robbed a little that they in turn might rob much. Seeing that the Chinese tariff wall prevented exports they decide to have a toll gate, and it works in this way: The Standard oil company, for instance, saves thousands of dollars through the drawback, while the small refiner saves comparatively little or none, because the difficulty of obtaining the drawback on a small shipment is only a little less than the difficulty of getting the drawback on a very large shipment. For example, I know of a small refiner who exported small lots of 100 cases last year, when, as I am informed, the Standard oil company exported 83,000 cases in one lot. Although in both cases the drawback was the same, namely, ninety per cent, little benefit was left to the small exporter after making deduction for the difficulty of obtaining the drawback. The advantage to the two was, therefore, very unequal. It is difficult to see how this “protects” the small man, and with him his employes.
If Mr. Taylor would trade some of his logic for some political economy he would soon see the benefits of free trade, with the single tax looming up behind.
I was prophetic when I said that Mr. Jarrett had better not be allowed to run loose. If he had been sent to England to get steel rail figures that senate committee would not have captured him and forced him to admit that it was not the tariff but labor unions that kept up the wages of iron and steel workers.
FRED. J. DEVERALL, 351 Bedford avenue.
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THE BEATING OF THE DRUMS.
The republicans of the northwest are very decidedly in favor of tariff reform, but they are very far removed from being free traders.—[Minneapolis Evening Journal (Rep).
Is any one foolish enough to think that the manufacturers would countenance the republican party in putting raw silk back on the list of dutiable articles?—[Northampton, Mass., Journal.
Whether the tariff reformers win in this year’s campaign or not, the days of excessive protection are numbered. All the forces of modern progress and of national development are on their side.—[Boston Post.
That protection may increase the profits of the manufacturer is plain, but how can it increase wages? It raises the prices of commodities, but how does that benefit labor? Labor is the consumer.—[Dayton, O., Workman.
By voting against the free wool clause Mr. Sowden is getting himself in preparation for the republican nomination for congress in the Berks-Lehigh district. But he may find that men, not sheep, do the voting in that district.—[Philadelphia Record.
The employer gets protection from the government, while the laborer must take care of himself and compete with his fellow laborer. The protective tax destroys competition for the manufacturer, but increases it for the laborer.—[Buena Vista, Col., Democrat.
During the past fifteen years wages have been continually falling, and yet we have been living all this time under a high protective tariff, so that any thinking man must see that the tariff could not, or has not, saved him from a cut down.—[Lewiston, Me., Labor Advocate.
Henry George is charged with being a visionary reformer, but seems to pursue an eminently practical course with regard to sustaining his tariff views, now that opportunity occurs. Reformers in all ages have been regarded as visionaries.—[Muskegon, Mich., Business Gazette.
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.—[Buena Vista, Col., Democrat.
The democrats won’t make a mistake. Their candidate for congress will be one who is in full sympathy with the administration and the St. Louis platform, who will be a credit to the district and an honor to his party. The district has no more use for non-committal useless sticks.—[Toledo Herald and Times.
Tariff does not regulate wages. Supply and demand only can affect wage workers. A protectionist or a free trader will get his labor where he can get it the cheapest. Why then should workingmen fear a reduction of wages under a reduction of tariff duties, or even under absolute free trade?—[Dayton, O., Workman.
We defy any organ of protection in Cedar, the state of Nebraska, or the United States, to contradict our statement that laborers engaged in our protected industries are the lowest paid laborers in the country to-day; and following this up, we also assert that the more highly protected is the industry the less are the wages of the laborers engaged in it.—[Cedar County, Neb., Nonpareil.
The vote of the democrats in the house on the free wool clause of the Mills bill is the “long step toward free trade” which the president urged the democracy to take in his message at the opening of the congressional session, and which Henry George accepted as a sufficient reason for leaving the particular branch of the labor party with which he had theretofore been identified.—[Brooklyn Standard-Union (Rep).
Under a low tariff the oceans were once covered by American ships manned by American crews and laden with American products. They entered almost every known port in the world, and either sold their cargoes for gold or advantageously exchanged them for the products of other countries. This was the golden age of prosperity to the American farmer. Mortgaged farms were almost unknown. A protective tariff has enriched monopolists and impoverished farmers, and shifted the carrying trade to British ships.—[St. Paul, Neb., Press.
Thus far the public journals have only heard from the conspicuous men who change political partners in the coming dance. It is only the vestibule and parlor trains which have been reported, but the gravel trains will come along by and by with the rugged workingmen of the land, and as they shall go so will go the country regardless of all the tricks, debauchery and expenditure of political leaders. They will come with banners declaring for honest protection to the wages of labor; for the removal of taxes upon the necessaries of life; for cheaper raw materials to multiply labor, and against all monopolies, trusts and combines to oppress consumers.—[Jamestown, N. Y., Standard.
The attempt made in the senate to lug increased shipping subsidies into an appropriation bill upon the empty pretense of building up American commerce and in the shape of payment for carrying the mails has met with the scoring it deserves. There is not a phase of the subsidy question that shows American commerce can be stimulated in this artificial manner. The experience of forty years has demonstrated that it not only fails, but that it is the fruitful source of boodle and bribery. American commerce will not be stimulated and the American flag will not be restored to the seas until Americans are allowed to buy vessels where they please and not be forced to pay three or four prices.—[Chicago Tribune (Rep).
There seems to be more unity among the farmers and laborers of the northwest at the present time than has been shown for many years. They, as a rule, are in favor of a common sense revision of the tariff in such a way that will protect their interests, and no amount of blarney can make them believe that taking the tax from whisky, tobacco and the balance of the internal revenue, which is about the only way the monopolists are reached at all, and putting it upon the real necessities of life as needed by the masses will help to keep the wolf from their doors. Therefore they are falling in line and working for self, home, country, common sense and Cleveland.—[West La Crosse, sic., Cooperator.
Nothing but Flats and Tenement Barracks for New York’s Poor.
The number of buildings projected during the first six months of 1886 in New York city was 2,858; the average estimated cost of each building was $13,118. In the first six months of 1887 there were 2,923 projected buildings, at an average estimated cost of $16,187 per building. In the first six months of 1888 the number was 1,647, at an average estimated cost of $15,496 per building. Estimating the average value of lots on which these buildings were erected, at $7,000 each, we have the value of each building and lot, as follows: 1886, $20,118; 1887, $23,187; 1888, $22,496. These buildings were almost all tenements, flats, warehouses and expensive private dwellings.
For a Single Tax Pictorial Diagram.
Louis Lesauliner of Red Bud, Ill., asks THE STANDARD to call upon its readers for suggestions for a pictorial diagram contrasting our present system of taxation with the proposed single tax system. He thinks it would be of aid in teaching the truth, just as a picture of a mountain would be of advantage to any one trying to explain what a mountain was like to another who had never seen a mountain. He is willing to contribute $5 as a premium for the best design and $10 toward the expense of reproducing the design in the best possible style.
Page 4 of 8contents
4 THE STANDARD, SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1888.
p. 4, col. 1
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SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1888.
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THE DUTY OF SINGLE TAX FREE TRADERS.
Though both parties are expressing great confidence in the success of their respective candidates, the canvass has not yet reached that stage which justifies confident predictions by cool observers. The chances at the beginning were undoubtedly in favor of Mr. Cleveland’s re-election by larger majorities than he received in 1884. He has given the country an administration that has been, on the whole, wise, clean and patriotic. Considering the tremendous pressure and the established precedents that he has had to resist, he has succeeded remarkably in maintaining his pledges in behalf sic civil service reform. That he has occasionally blundered in this and other matters is not to be wondered at by those who do not imagine that presidents are endowed with infallibility. Of course, Mr. Cleveland has been abused by disgruntled democrats and savagely assailed by his party opponents; but it is a notable fact that none of the assaults upon him have been such as to excite interest among those who would not have opposed his re-election had no such assaults been made. Taking the country as a whole, the popular verdict is that Mr. Cleveland has made a very good president, and the natural disposition among those not influenced against him by party prejudice is to give him another term.
Furthermore, the whole power of the federal officeholders was thrown against the election of Mr. Cleveland four years ago, whereas this year their influence will be neutralized or turned the other way. Again, there is always a considerable body of voters who deem changes undesirable and vote to sustain the party in power and who will vote against a change this year. Last, and by no means least, there existed four years ago an honest dread among thousands of voters of some ill-defined calamity that might fall upon the country if the democratic party should obtain control of the federal government. That bugaboo has been effectually slain by the four years of democratic rule and it cannot be resurrected in this campaign. Under these circumstances, were there no great principle at stake, the democratic party might enter the present canvass confident that with reasonable activity it could obtain by increased majorities all the electoral votes it received four years ago, with a fair chance of adding to the number.
But, fortunately for the country, a great principle has been brought into the present canvass. Too much credit can hardly be awarded to President Cleveland for the courage, patriotism and statesmanship he displayed in forcing the tariff question to the front at a time when it had become certain that he would be once more his party’s candidate for the presidency. The courage of the president was not equaled by the St. Louis convention, but, however haltingly, that body did indorse the message, and now with a loss of but five deserters the democratic party in the house of representatives has passed the Mills bill, so that the party is in every conceivable way committed to the policy of tariff reduction and reform. Whatever has been lacking in democratic action toward making the issue clear and definite has been supplied by the republican platform favoring a Chinese wall of exclusion against all good things offered us in exchange for our products by any of the nations of the world. But, now that this great issue has come into the canvass, the considerations already mentioned as working for democratic success cannot any longer be regarded as alone sufficient to assure such success. They will still have weight, but the party must now stand or fall on the tariff question. That it ought to win in such a contest a vastly greater triumph than would otherwise have been possible is certain. That it can win such a triumph I have no doubt. Whether or not it will adopt the course it must adopt to enable it to carry the pivotal state of New York is yet an open question.
To my mind it seems clear that whatever effective work has been done since the two great parties placed their candidates in the field has been done by or for the republicans. This city and state have been flooded with tracts and documents ingeniously designed to mislead wage earners into a belief that the democratic policy is one that will reduce wages everywhere and throw many men out of work. I am informed that the same work is going on in Connecticut and New Jersey as vigorously as in New York. That it is effective work thus far I have no doubt, p. 4, col. 2 and the democratic party will find it fatally effective if something is not done to counteract it.
Of course, I know, as do all the readers of THE STANDARD, that a really wonderful revolution has been accomplished in the opinions of the workingmen with whom we have been politically affiliated for the past two campaigns; but I am also aware of the fact that even in 1886 we never got the votes of the majority of wage earners, while the result in 1887 showed that probably not more than half of those who voted with us in 1886 had a complete comprehension of the principles they then supported. The large remainder of wage earners are still subject to the same influences that existed before the campaign of 1886. Some of them are, through prejudice or conviction, affiliated with the republican and some with the democratic party, and these men will support those parties now, as they have done in the past. Another and very considerable section will swing this way or that in accord with what they feel to be the interests of “labor” in this contest. For years all of these men have heard it asserted that a high tariff is designed to maintain higher wages than would otherwise be paid in the United States. The republicans have dinned this into their ears in season and out of season, while most democrats have acquiesced in the declaration, openly or tacitly. For some time past bitter experience and the awakening of intelligence by the labor agitation have caused an ever increasing number of wage workers to question whether they get any share in the advantages that the manufacturers derive from protection; and latterly the trend of opinion among men actively engaged in the labor movement has been toward the conclusion that the wage workers do not derive any benefit from the tariff. Still there is a large number who are yet under the old delusion. The republicans apparently understand the situation more clearly than the democrats, and though they still laud protection as a scheme for increasing the wages of labor, they skillfully meet the new development of opinion among workingmen by exciting their fears. Substantially they say to such men, “Suppose it is true that your bosses do not give you any more than they can’t help of the profits that they derive from the tariff; will you be any better off if a reduction of duties causes them to shut down their mills and throw you out of work?” This is a bugaboo that will be twice as effective in this campaign as was the assumption of the rebel debt lie four years ago. I cannot otherwise more clearly express my views as to the situation than by quoting the following from THE STANDARD of June 16:
The democratic leaders may rest assured of one thing, and that is that they cannot sic anybody else by shutting their own eyes to this situation. Above all they cannot fool workingmen. Republican papers and speakers can be depended on to prevent the success of any such attempt. If protection is a good thing for labor, then the reduction of protective duties is a bad thing for labor. If protection keeps up wages, then the democratic party has attempted to deliver a blow at wage workers, and it must expect the wage workers to sic back. All concerned may as well accept it as certain that this year the believers in protection are going to vote for the party that proposes to give them protection, to give them plenty of it, and to give it continuously.
The democratic party is not the friend of the protective policy. It has declared itself as opposed to protection because protection taxes the whole people to give to a favored few the advantages of monopoly. In assuming this position the democratic party really entitles itself to the support of the workingmen, and it ought to tell them so and show them the fallacy of protectionist claims. American workingmen have been deluded into a belief in the protective theory as much by democratic cowardice as by the interested advocacy of protected monopolists. It is now “good politics,” even if nothing else, to put an end to this ruinous policy. Let the democratic party now set about showing workingmen that protection does not protect them, or cease to expect their votes.
I wish I could drive the truths thus set forth into the heads of democratic leaders, and especially convince them of the uselessness of their protests that they do not favor free trade. Strange as it may seem to them, that protest is irrelevant. So long as workingmen are allowed to believe that a protective tariff assures them wages higher than they would otherwise receive, they will just as surely oppose a party that proposes to reduce the tariff seven per cent as they would one that proposed to abolish it altogether. They must be shown that protection does not benefit them, and this can only be done by a line of argument that is equally good in behalf of free trade.
But whatever may be the democratic policy elsewhere, I see little or no hope that it will be what it ought to be in the state of New York. The machine politicians who dominated the last state convention. sic caused it to put forth a cowardly and uncertain utterance on the tariff question at a most critical time, are likely to control the management and direct the policy of the democratic party in the canvass in this city and state. A campaign conducted on the lines laid down by these men cannot succeed in bringing the thoughtful and independent workingmen of New York to the support of Cleveland and Thurman.
But whatever may be the course of the democratic leaders in this city, the duty of the single tax free traders is clear. They should undertake, of their own accord, the duty that the democratic leaders appear likely to shirk. They have just as much reason to desire Mr. Cleveland’s election as have those who support him only because he is the democratic candidate. The single tax advocates are under no delusions concerning the situation. They understand fully that the democratic party is not a p. 4, col. 3 free trade party, and that it was never committed any further in this direction than to a tariff for revenue only. But they see that it has turned again toward its old traditions and taken a step toward freer trade, and they know that it is only through the gradual freeing of trade that trade can at last be made really free. They see clearly that with a tariff for revenue only once established, and the protective delusion dispelled by experience, the question of removing all taxes from the products of industry must come up in such fashion that it can never again be shirked or side tracked. That question will then be forced on public attention with no powerful interests, except those of the land monopolists, arrayed against the effort to secure a reasonable and just system of taxation for the support of all our various interdependent forms of government. Hence, with no illusions as to democratic sentiment or policy and with no affection for the local democratic machines, the single tax free traders of this city and state can engage with earnest enthusiasm in the support of the democratic electoral ticket.
They will labor under no difficulty in meeting the misleading arguments addressed to wage earners by the protected monopolists, and they understand the exact line of argument necessary to meet such pleas. They will be under no necessity of misrepresenting the attitude of the democratic party in order to justify their support of Mr. Cleveland, but while publicly rebuking the cowardice which prompts its local managers to attempt to run away from the real issue in this campaign, they can ask the thinking workmen of New York to support him as the leader of a movement toward freer trade.
In a letter written to THE STANDARD some months ago I expressed the hope that those of us who felt impelled to withdraw from the united labor party with a view to supporting Mr. Cleveland on the issue raised by his tariff reform message, would find some means of still acting together. What then seemed to me merely desirable now appears to be an absolute necessity. We cannot support Mr. Cleveland on the ground that he is almost as good a protectionist as Mr. Harrison, for if we believed that we should not support him at all. We propose to support him on precisely opposite grounds and we propose to assure to him many thousands of votes that he would not otherwise get. These considerations alone would make it desirable that we should have a separate organization of our own for work in this canvass, but the failure of the democratic leaders and newspapers to do anything effective toward refuting the specious arguments and positive falsehoods addressed to workingmen by the republicans render it sic necessary that we should organize to save Mr. Cleveland from defeat. The arguments necessary to his success cannot be addressed to New York workingmen from the democratic stump this year, and if such arguments are to be made at all they must be made from platforms under our own control, by speakers for whose utterances the democratic bosses will have no responsibility, and who in turn will assume no possible obligation to be guided by those bosses. What I once suggested as a mere means for maintaining pleasant associations I now earnestly urge in the interest of our cause, and as a step essential to the re-election of Mr. Cleveland to the presidency.
WM. T. CROASDALE.
New York, July 25, 1888.
OUR CONGRESSMEN AND THE TARIFF.
The state of New York furnished three of the four so-called democratic votes that were cast against the Mills bill. One of the members thus voting is Truman Adam Merriman of this city. Mr. Merriman is now serving his second term as a representative of the Eleventh congressional district, which embraces the Thirteenth, Fifteenth and Seventeenth assembly districts, and extends along the North river from West Sixteenth to West Fifty-second streets. Its eastern boundary is Seventh avenue, except for the blocks between Twenty-third and Twenty-fifth streets, where it extends eastward to Sixth avenue. Mr. Merriman had a walk over at the last election, but, if he is renominated, a strong effort ought to be made this year to defeat him. He is employed on the Sun, and appears to have voted to represent the tariff views of that journal rather than those of the democrats of his district. On the mayoralty vote in 1886 the united labor party carried this district, the vote being George 10,986, Hewitt 10,530 and Roosevelt 9,423. Last year the vote for secretary of state stood, democratic 13,291, republican 9,093 and united labor 6,023. These figures indicate that last year the democrats regained most of the votes they lost to the united labor party in the mayoralty contest of the previous year, and that the republicans regained none of the votes thus lost. If the 6,023 men who cast their votes for the united labor party a year ago are still faithful to the free trade doctrines involved in the single tax theory, they have it in their power to prevent the return of Mr. Merriman from that district by placing a sincere free trade democrat in the field.
Archibald M. Bliss, another of those voting against the Mills bill, represents the Fifth congressional district, which embraces the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth wards of Brooklyn. He, like Mr. Merriman, is serving his second term, and probably will not be renominated. He was elected to the present congress by 11,583 votes, against 11,111 for Waters, republican. The united labor vote for secretary of state in these wards last year was 4,651, and p. 4, col. 4 among these there ought to be no difficulty in finding more than enough single tax free traders to see to it that Mr. Bliss is defeated in case the democrats should renominate him. In all such cases the free traders should prefer the election of a republican protectionist to that of a democratic protectionist.
Edward W. Greenman, the other so-called New York democrat who voted with the republicans on the Mills bill, lives at Troy, and represents the Eighteenth district, which embraces the counties of Rensselaer and Washington. This is his first term in congress, he having been elected in 1886 by 17,082 votes, against 15,819 for Henry C. Burleigh, republican. As this is his first term, custom would give him another nomination unless his defiance of his party on this occasion prevents it. The united labor vote in this district a year ago was but 1,223, which is something short of Mr. Greenman’s majority. Small as it is, it might exercise no little influence in bringing about the defeat of Mr. Greenman in the nominating convention or at the polls.
One of the three members who still claim to be republicans, voting for the Mills bill, was sic Parmelee Fitch, elected as a republican in 1886 to represent the Thirteenth congressional district of this city. This district embraces the Nineteenth and Twenty-third assembly districts and is ordinarily democratic. General Egbert Viele, Mr. Fitch’s predecessor, was a democrat who voted in the previous congress against the consideration of the Morrison bill to reduce the tariff. There was a quiet effort on the part of the leaders of the united labor party in that district to teach Gen. Viele and the democratic party a wholesome lesson, and as Mr. Fitch proclaimed himself a tariff reformer the lesson was duly administered through his election by 17,611 votes against 13,939 cast for the protectionist Viele, who had been renominated by the democrats. Mr. Fitch’s election was one of the biggest surprises of that most surprising campaign, and he has recently acknowledged on the floor of congress his obligation to the workingmen for his election. The figures are significant, The sic stood as follows:
Court cf sic……Peckham, dem…………..17,750 Daniels, rep…………..12,157 Mayor………………Hewitt, dem…………..12,286 Roosevelt, rep………….. sic George, u. l………….. 8,627 Congress…………..Fitch, rep…………..17,611 Viele, dem…………..13,939
These figures show that George drew 2,216 republican votes from Roosevelt, 3,464 democratic votes from Hewitt, and 947 votes from persons who did not vote for state officers, but who appear to have taken part in the congressional contest, since the total number of votes cast for candidates for congress was 696 in excess of the votes cast for candidates for mayor. Where these votes came from it is impossible to say, and they remain an unknown quantity; but assigning one-half of them, for convenience, to each of the congressional candidates there is no difficulty in analyzing the figures of the mayoralty vote to show how it went in the congressional contest. General Viele obtained his vote as follows:
Hewitt’s total vote………………………… 12,286 George votes, drawn from Hewitt………….. [1,305?] Half of untraceable vote………………………… 348 Viele’s actual vote………………………… 13,939
Mr. Fitch obtained his vote as follows:
Roosevelt’s total vote………………………… 9,941 George votes, drawn from Roosevelt………….. 2,216 George votes drawn from Hewitt, less [1,305?] cast for Viele………………………… 4,159 George votes cast by those who did not vote for state candidates………………………… 947 Half of untraceable vote………………………… 348 Fitch’s actual vote………………………… 17,611
There may, of course, have been changes not indicated by these figures, but on the whole there is no question that they show conclusively that the great majority of the democrats who cut Mr. Hewitt to vote for Mr. George in the Nineteenth and Twenty-third assembly districts also cut General Viele to vote for Mr. Fitch, and that to this change the latter owes his election.
Though the united labor vote fell off at the next election to 5,741, it ought still to be strong enough to do something toward returning Mr. Fitch to congress, whether the republicans nominate him or throw him over. They certainly ought to be able to prevent the election of any democratic protectionist from the Thirteenth district. The republicans do not appear to have won back many of the votes they lost to George in 1886, but the democratic vote increased to 15,547 last fall as against 12,286 cast for Hewitt the year before. If then the republicans throw over Mr. Fitch, it will be easy to beat any protectionist they may nominate to succeed him, while the lesson of 1886 is likely to prevent the democrats from renominating another protectionist in that district.
All the other New York city congressmen, including Mr. Stahlnecker. sic represents the annexed district and Yonkers, appear to have voted for the bill, but that fact alone does not afford conclusive evidence that they are fit to be returned. Several of them have at times voted with the protectionists, and very few of them are known opponents of the protective idea. Lloyd S. Bryce of the Seventh district, it appears, does not share the opinions of his father-in-law, Edward Cooper, and he appears to be sound on the tariff question, while S. S. Cox of the Ninth district is a good free trader and not likely to ever go wrong on any tariff measure. Some petty ambitions are said to stand in the way of his renomination in the Ninth district, but it is impossible that that district should give him up. He is the one democrat in this city whose renomination is really important. p. 4, col. 5
COLLARS AND CUFFS.
This is what the Press told us on Sunday last about the city of Troy, in Rensselaer county, New York:
Troy is one of the best examples of a sleepy riverside town sprung at once into a thriving manufacturing city under the inspiring touch of industrial protection. A quarter of a century ago it was little more than a village. To-day it is a great manufacturing center covering six square miles of territory and possessing a population of over 75,000 souls. Its manufactures are of various kinds—iron, cotton, woolen, etc. But its chief industry, and the one in which it takes the most delight and pride, is the manufacture of collars and cuffs.
The growth of this line of business has been phenomenal. More than fifty years ago the first factory was established at Troy, and the work for the most part was done by hand instead of by machinery, as now, and yet the wages then paid were twenty per cent less than the present standard.
Each year has shown a substantial increase in every department of this industry, and the territory brought under contribution by the manufacturers has widened till at length Troy is represented by this product in every city in the Union and all important points in Canada. There is no feature of that development of trade which has not characterized the growth of Troy.
Her merchants rely upon this industry for the sic of their business. During the strike or lockout which occurred in Troy about three years ago there was almost a complete stagnation of business, which was relieved only when work was resumed in the shirt factories.
The money that has been acquired by the manufacture and sale of collars, cuffs and shirts has been spent with a princely hand by all classes engaged in this department of industry in Troy. Mammoth factories and palatial business blocks have been built, and the homes of wage earners are surrounded not only with the comforts, but the luxuries of life.
And then the Press presents us with some statistics about this collar and cuff business, which is the “delight and pride” of Troy. Here are some of them to start with:
During the year of 1887 the gross sales of collars, cuffs and shirts amounted to $10,000,000. The number of employes engaged in the manufacture of the same was 15,749, who were paid $4,289,299.45 in wages. The percentage of wages is 44½ per cent of sales and 60 per cent of the cost of goods. The 15½ per cent is divided among the expenses of the business, interest on investment, etc., the profit to the manufacturer.
The Press’s figures don’t hang together as well as they might; but still, with care and close attention we can make something out of them.
In the first place, we observe that the $4,289,299.45 paid out for wages in 1887 represents 44½ per cent of the selling value of the collars and cuffs manufactured in that year, and 60 per cent of the cost of making them. It is an easy matter to reckon these percentages backward. The total product of 1887 was sold for $9,638,875.16, and the cost of making the goods was $7,148,832.42. This left $2,490,042.74, or more than 25 per cent of the sales, for “expenses of the business, interest on investment, profit to the manufacturer, etc.” And a right good profit, too. The Press somehow has a notion that the manufacturer only took 15½ per cent; but the Press has evidently made a mistake in its bookkeeping—it’s a protectionist peculiarity.
And then we have this statement of the manner in which wages are divided among the employes in this “chief industry” of Troy:
The following is the average wages per week paid by one of the principal factories, and is taken from the week ending July 23, 1887:
[80?] machine hands………paid $739 00 average $9 28 52 turners………………..paid 397 55 average 7 64 29 button hole makers….paid 240 28 average [9 42?] 35 other female hands….paid 162 55 average [5 07?] 196 female hands……….paid $1,539 38 average $7 85 13 cutters, male…………paid 165 20 average 12 70 Total number hands, 209.paid [$1,704 58?] average $8 15
There is a slight discrepancy between the scale of wages as shown by this table and that deducible from the previous quotation. A yearly wage of $4,289.299.45, divided among 15,749 earners, will give a weekly average of only $5.23 instead of $8.15. It is scarcely likely that the particular factory visited by the Press pays more than the usual scale; the conclusion, therefore, seems inevitable that a good many of the hands can scarcely have steady work all the year round. At an average of $8.15 each, it would require $128,354.35 weekly to pay off 15,749 employes, and at this rate the yearly wage fund of $4,289,299.45 would be exhausted before the end of thirty-four weeks, leaving the 15,749 to get along as best they could without any wages for the other eighteen weeks. It would almost seem as though protection were in the habit of imitating the example of her chief expounders. and sic to Europe for a few months each year.
But the Press’s second table does give us some useful data, from which we may arrive at an idea of how the general pay roll of Troy’s collar and cuff makers is made up. In the “principal factory” visited by the Press, the table quoted shows the employes to be classified as follows: Thirty-nine per cent were female machine hands, receiving 43.2 per cent of the total wages; twenty-five per cent were female turners, receiving 23.2 per cent of wages; fourteen per cent were female button hole makers, receiving 14.6 per cent of wages; sixteen per cent were other female employes, receiving 9.5 per cent of wages; and six per cent were male cutters, receiving 9.5 per cent of wages.
Now, suppose we apply these percentages to the whole body of workers in the collar and cuff factories of Troy. There are 15,749 workers, and $4,289,299.45 to pay their year’s wages with. It is an easy matter to make the calculations. We find—
6,142 female machine hands, getting each $301.69 a year, or $5.80 a week. 3,938 female turners, getting each $252.70 a year, or $4.86 a week. 2,205 female button hole makers, getting each $284.01 a year, or $5.46 a week. p. 4, col. 6 2,519 other female workers, getting each $161.76 a year, or $3.11 a week. 949 male cutters, getting each $431.19 a year, or $8.30 a week.
There you have it! Troy’s chief industry—its delight and pride—protection’s choicest darling, to which she points as an example of what she can do when she gets a chance! It pays 949 highly skilled workmen $8.30 each a week, and gives 14,804 women a beggarly wage of $5.04 on the average, sic of them getting only $3.11 weekly. And this in a city of 75,000 people, where rents are treble or quadruple what they are in a village—a city of severe winters, where every pound of fuel has to be bought at monopoly prices. The protectionist authorities ought to discipline the Press. The Carlton club should speak to it. In its headlong zeal it is telling its readers facts, and facts are “pizen” to protection.
YOUR GORED OX AND MINE.
If the court of appeals had written an opinion in support of its decision against trades unions in the Gill case, the ink would not have had time to dry before a Massachusetts court pronounced a contrary decision in favor of employers. These two decisions, rendered within a few days of each other, are forcible illustrations of the fundamental difference in labor disputes between tweedledum and tweedledee, or your gored ox and mine.
Last January certain workmen in the shoe factories of Weymouth, Massachusetts, struck for higher wages. Their places were filled, and the strike failed. An agreement was then made by the shoe manufacturers of adjoining towns with those of Weymouth to the effect that none of the workmen who had struck should be employed by the parties to the agreement, and that such workmen who were then employed by any of the parties should be discharged. A workman named Thomas Williams was blacklisted under this agreement. He found it impossible to get work at his trade in his native place or in any neighboring town, not because there was no work to do, but because the manufacturers had banded together to “hound him,” as the expression would be if the combination had been between workmen instead of employers.
The analogy between this case and that of Obder M. Hartt, for whom Mayor Hewitt has been soliciting subscriptions, is complete except in the result. Hartt offended certain workmen; Williams offended certain manufacturers. The offended workmen made an agreement with other workmen to the effect that none of them would allow Hartt to work with them; the offended manufacturers made an agreement with other manufacturers to the effect that none of them would allow Williams to work for them. The workmen kept their agreement, and Hartt alleges that he was deprived of work and impoverished thereby; the employers kept their agreement, and Williams alleges that he was deprived of work and impoverished thereby. Hartt prosecuted the conspiring workmen; Williams prosecuted the conspiring manufacturers. But here the analogy ends. The workmen who boycotted Hartt were convicted of crime; the manufacturers who boycotted Williams were acquitted even of civil liability.
The leading Massachusetts decision on the question of labor conspiracies, the opinion having been written by Chief Justice Shaw, sustains the right which the New York court of appeals has denied. If that decision stood alone as a landmark of the law in Massachusetts the court that decided in favor of the manufacturers of Weymouth would be entitled to the credit of declaring sounder principles than can be fished out of the autocratic decision of our court of appeals against the workman Gill; but the courts of Massachusetts as well as our own are open to the charge of finding one law for workmen and another for employers.
In the leading Massachusetts case already referred to, it was held that a combination of workmen refusing to work with men who worked for less than “society wages” was not indictable; and following that decision the same court subsequently held that an action for damages would not lie against shipping brokers who in combination refused to procure sailors for any master who patronized a broker not in the combination. These two cases were consistent. But a little later the principle common to both was “distinguished” beyond possibility of recognition when the same court held that a contractor could recover damages from workmen for striking, although they were under no contract of service with him, and might have been discharged at a moment’s notice without redress.
The latter case has been regarded as so far sic the effect of the two previous decisions as to make a combined refusal of workmen to continue in their employment a subject of civil action, without proof of a contract of service, though possibly not criminal in the absence of a penal statute. But now comes the Williams case, holding that a combination of employers to deprive workmen of employment is not the subject even of civil action. The only principle it is possible to draw from these Massachusetts cases, taken together, is this: A workingman’s boycott is not criminal, but if it causes damage it is subject to civil prosecution, while an employer’s boycott is not subject to prosecution either civilly or criminally.
In New York, the same sharp distinction between “master and servant,” as the law books have it, does not appear, probably because the same opportunity for drawing it has not occurred. There is continued on p. 5 →
[continued on page 5] (the column breaks off mid-sentence; no jump line is printed)
Page 5 of 8contents
THE STANDARD, SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1888. 5
p. 5, col. 1 [continued from page 4]
← continued from p. 4 but one reported case in this state in which it has been attempted to apply workingmen’s law to employers, and in that case the distinction was promptly made.
A shoemakers’ union was successfully prosecuted in this city in 1812 for establishing a scale of wages and agreeing not to work for less, and some years later a hatters’ union was prosecuted here, also with success, for agreeing not to work with “scabs.” Later still, in 1835, the old supreme court held, Chief Justice Savage writing the opinion, that it was a criminal conspiracy for shoemakers to refuse in combination to work with a craftsman who having worked for less than union rates was fined for it by the union and refused to pay the fine. Relying on this case a master stevedore who was boycotted by the master stevedores’ association for precisely the same reason, namely, that he had worked under rates, and had been fined by the association and neglected to pay his fine, brought a suit for damages. It took a pretty keen eye to discover any distinction of principle between this case of the “master” stevedores and Chief Justice Savage’s case of the “servant” shoemakers; but a difference that did duty for a distinction was found, and the master stevedores’ association was protected without very serious damage to the precedent against journeymen shoemakers. The difference was that, while the man whom the journeymen shoemakers had fined was not a member of the journeymen shoemakers’ association, the man whom the master stevedores had fined was a member of the master stevedores’ association. It is perfectly plain that this difference makes no real distinction, for if an association has a right to boycott a member in his business with the world, it has a right to boycott a non-member in his business with the world. The question does not relate to the reason for boycotting, but to the right to boycott. It could have been said that a member who has agreed to boycotting rules cannot claim personal damages if for disobedience he is himself boycotted; but that distinction would have left the master stevedores’ association to the tender mercies of the criminal courts, while the “distinction” that was drawn saved it all further annoyance.
It would be unjust to charge judges with corrupt motives in thus distinguishing between the rights of “masters” and the rights of “servants.” It is not so much a matter of motive as of perspective. The same is possibly true of newspapers like the Evening Post, which are so enraged at the refusal of the lower courts to impose a vindictive sentence on workingmen after the court of appeals has declared their boycott a crime, and yet calmly refer to the Massachusetts case, which recognizes the lawfulness of the same kind of boycott by employers, as an “interesting labor decision.” Perspective makes magical differences.
The Nashville American, the democratic paper which does not like Judge Reid’s coming over to the support of Cleveland because he does so on single tax principles, evidently still believes in the ante-bellum, pro-slavery doctrine that when a man had paid his money for another man he owned him. This is the way it is frothing:
The Henry George theory of the single tax—a tax on land equal to the rental value—is founded on the monstrous doctrine that a man’s money paid for land does not give any right, because the earth is the common inheritance of all, and this abominable doctrine, coming sometimes in one shape and sometimes in another, is the root from which all anarchists spring.
The Press draws the line. It won’t swear that the surest way to make a one cent journal successful is to double the cost of the paper used in printing it:
But it will swear that the tariff on wood pulp and paper, and the consequent development of those industries in this country, has cheapened the cost of print paper and made a one cent paper like the Press a possibility.
Curiously enough, on the very day that this extraordinary confession of faith appeared in the Press, THE STANDARD was favored with a visit from a gentleman recently resident in Australia and formerly proprietor of a successful journal there. This gentleman was an American by birth and education, a protectionist by prejudice, and an ex-contributor to the Press tariff talks. Altogether he was a pretty good Press witness. He told us a good many things about Australia, and among others mentioned the fact that there were as yet no paper mills there. We suggested that probably he had been in the habit of buying his paper in this country. To which he replied:
“No, indeed! I tried to do so, but the mills here couldn’t meet the English figures. I contracted for my paper in England at a cent a pound less than it would have cost me here.”
Now we don’t want to add to the Press’s embarrassments, which are already sufficiently numerous, but we can’t help asking it to enlighten our ignorance on one or two points about this paper business.
If it is the duty on wood pulp and paper that has brought the price of paper down to its present level in this country, how much higher duty will be needed to enable our paper makers to compete with the English in the Australian market? Will the Press get a letter from some paper manufacturer stating that he will sell paper cheaper if the duty on wood pulp is increased?
Also, where does the paper mill operative come in? The Press is forever telling him that if his employers are compelled to sell their paper at a lower price they must, of necessity, cut down his wages. But the Press says the tariff does compel them
p. 5, col. 2 to sell at lower prices. If both these statements are true, won’t the paper mill operative be wise to vote against the tariff whose inevitable effect, as the Press so confidently asserts, is to cut down his wages?
Lastly, doesn’t the Press think it would be a good thing for both paper mill owners and paper mill operatives, if we could sell Australia what paper she uses?
CAMPAIGN “STANDARD” FUND.
Louis Prang writes us:
BOSTON, Mass., July 21—Inclosed please find another $5, my second installment to the campaign fund. That conversion of Judge sic of Tennessee is a sign of the ripening of our reform movement. It is a sign of an early harvest. I am delighted.
It may not be superfluous to remind you that the campaign STANDARD would do great service if placed in all the barber shops throughout the country. It is there that papers are taken up to pass an idle moment and where discussion is most readily excited
LOUIS PRANG.
That is a specimen of the letters that come to us daily—letters that show how keen an interest men, who themselves have learned the truth, take in making it known to their fellows.
People are hunting truth now as never before. Economic questions, vital to human welfare, are being discussed in public meetings, in shops, in homes—wherever men meet with time to talk. The field is plowed and harrowed for the sowing of our seed. It rests with you and other readers of THE STANDARD to say how widely it shall be scattered.
We want to send to every man who there may be reason to believe is prepared to listen to us a supply of single tax literature—copies of THE STANDARD and tracts of the land and labor library. This is what the “Campaign STANDARD Fund” is for. If you think the idea a good one, and feel that you can afford to aid it, send your contribution and send it quickly. Remember, too, that besides money we want lists of persons to whom tracts and papers may be sent. There must be many right in your own neighborhood who will gladly listen to what we have to say. Let us have their addresses.
Here are the subscriptions to the fund for last week:
W. E. Sewell, Mare Island, Vallejo, Cal. . . . . . . . . $ 2 55 S. B. Welcome, . . . . . . . 3 00 Louis Prang, Boston, (second installment) . . . . . . . . 5 00 George T. Knight, New York, . . . 50 00 B. H. Nadal, New York, . . . . 15 00 Dunham & Leavens, Webotock Farm, Conn. . . . . . . . . . . 70 00 $145 55 Previously acknowledged . . . 1,531 22 Total to date . . . . . . . . . $1,676 77
Three dollars credited last week to J. D. Foley should sic been credited to the subscription for the month of July of F. P. Quimby, F. A. Merrill and F. C. Thompson of Concord, N. H.
PERSONAL.
Mr. Robert Schilling, a leader of the labor party of Wisconsin, made an out-and-out free trade argument at the labor convention at Oshkosh last Monday.
Mr. D. C. David, in a two-column article in the Fort Worth, Tex., South West, shows that he is a free trader who would not stop short of making production as well as exchange free.
Congressman A. R. Anderson of Iowa, who spoke and voted for the Mills bill, has been nominated for re-election and has just received the unanimous indorsement of the union labor party of his district.
Rev. Albert Walkley, a noted prohibitionist of Midland, Mich., has declared for Cleveland in this election, saying: “I am squarely and avowedly in favor of pushing the tariff question until we reach free trade.”
E. Q. Norton of Mobile, Alabama, chairman of the large labor convention held in that state last spring, proposes to devote his time this summer to the single tax cause, and is ready to enter the field wherever he can be of service.
Rev. George Brooks of London, who was the liberal candidate for Lambeth in the last general election, will arrive in New York in September for a lecturing tour in this country Mr. Brooks is not only a clergyman but a journalist, having been for five years assistant editor of the Christian Commonwealth, and a contributor to a number of the leading papers. An active prohibitionist, he is also a thorough believer in the single tax.
The Elizabeth (N. J.) Daily Herald suggests Benjamin Urner as a good candidate for congress for the democrats of that district. The Elizabethport sic fears that Mr. Urner is too good a man to receive the nomination. This is more than questionable. Mr. Urner is as good a man as any party could nominate; but now that questions of principle are coming once more to dominate our politics both parties will begin to find out that the better the man they nominate the better will be their chances of success.
In an article in the Monthly Circular, the organ of the journeymen stone cutters’ association, Mr. Charles W. Kohlman calls the attention of labor unions to the fact that there is another cause than those to which unions usually attribute their hard lines. He says: “It is because the masses are denied access to the natural bounties provided by the beneficent Creator. It is because the soil upon which all labor in the last analysis must be expended is allowed to be treated as private property. It is because labor is unable to employ itself, but must first gain permission from the owners of the earth before it can begin the production of wealth. It is because the men who work do not get or enjoy the products of their own labor.”
Courtlandt Palmer, the founder and president of the Nineteenth century club, died at Lake Dunmore, Vt., on Monday last, at the age of forty-three. A man of kindly instincts, Mr. Palmer was keenly sensitive to the sharp contrasts between rich and poor—more keenly perhaps, than had his own wealth been less. To him the scheme of the socialists, to nationalize all the machinery of production, including real estate—in which his own property chiefly consisted—gave greatest promise, and he allied himself openly with that body of agitators. His efforts to interest wealthy people in the social problems of the day were often made at the cost of his own comfort. The frank expression of his views on socialism brought about a bitterness between him and Mr. Carnegie and led to the resignation from the Nineteenth Century club of Judge Barrett and Judge Gray. Courtlandt Palmer was, in short, a man who saw that there were wrongs to be redressed and set about doing his part to redress them in the way that seemed best to him. His conceptions of truth were necessarily distorted by his surroundings; but his sincerity and unselfish zeal deserved and commanded the respect of all to whom the cause of industrial emancipation was clear.
The Town in a Commotion.
WICHITA FALLS, Texas, July 18—This town is now in considerable commotion about free trade and the single tax. I have made a strong convert to the single tax doctrine to-day. He is a prominent man and requested privilege to sign my single tax petition. I shall make a number more before my tracts are used up.
E. J. PEREGO, Secretary Farmers’ Alliance.
p. 5, col. 3
MEN AND THINGS.
The English tory party have found out at last what is the matter with Ireland. It has taken them some time to do it, and involved quite a number of rather costly experiments—such as the imprisonment of members of parliament, the killing of Mr. Mandeville, etc.—but the problem has been solved at last. Ireland needs to have her natural resources developed, and then everything will be lovely. The trouble now, as all torydom knows, is that there are more people in Ireland than Ireland can support. After the necessary beef and bacon and eggs and linen and other things have been taken out of the country to pay the absentee landlord their rentals, there really isn’t enough left to feed the people, who have consequently up to the present time had to make their choice between three courses of action; to sit quiet and starve, to leave the country, or to turn downright dishonest and let the landlords whistle for their rents. The tory party have discovered a fourth plan—a quartum quid, so to speak. They are going to improve the natural resources of Ireland so that the fields will grow more potatoes and flax, and the meadows fatten more cattle. Then, of course, there will be enough to pay the landlords their rents, and support the people too. Emigration will stop, agrarian disturbances will come to an end, and the British lion will be able to rest in peace, soothed by the melodious tinkling of the harp of Erin.
Arterial drainage is to do it all. Three great rivers of Ireland—the Shannon, the Bann and the Barrow—which are now troubled with frequent and destructive floods, are to be so treated that hereafter they will remain quietly within their banks, and allow the neighboring agriculturists to pursue their vocation in peace. This will double or treble the productive power of an immense extent of country, and all the rest will follow, as before stated. Mr. A. J. Balfour, who has hitherto concealed his friendship for Erin under a pretense of persecution, has thrown off disguise and announced his championship of the plan. The imperial government is to superintend the work and pay half the cost; the other half is to be borne by the Irish people; and Mr. Parnell and his party are to find their occupation gone.
All this is very fine. The new drainage scheme, when written up in the Spectator or Saturday Review, has a satisfying plausibility about it that is very enticing. But what Mr. Balfour and Mr. Balfour’s followers have not taken into consideration, is the fact that all the lands to be thus improved are the property of private individuals. The only effect of trebling their fertility will be to multiply the incomes of those who control the privilege of using them. The landlords will get rent where they now get none, or will double or treble the rents they already get; or the tenants holding under leases will get rich with gratifying suddenness. But the people of Ireland will receive no benefit. Laborers’ wages will be no higher than they are now. Meat will be as infrequent as ever upon the cottier’s table. Mr. Balfour will have done no more for the prosperity of Ireland than if he had presented a half dozen individual Irishmen with pensions of a hundred thousand pounds a year apiece. The improvement of the three Irish rivers will have just the same effect as the discovery of natural gas in Pittsburg. It will make the land owners rich. And it will do nothing more.
Of late years a new chemical product has come into extensive use. Caffeine, the active principle of tea and coffee, has been largely manufactured, both pure and in combination with the bromides, and has met a steadily growing demand. Whether this increasing use of a powerful stimulant is a good thing for mankind or not is a question we are not discussing. The fact remains that caffeine, once a mere curiosity of the laboratory, has become a recognized article of commerce.
Two or three years ago the German chemists discovered that caffeine could be extracted just as well from damaged tea as from tea in perfect order. It made very little difference in what way the tea was damaged. It might be wet with salt water, mixed with oil or lime, soaked with petroleum, injured by any one of the thousand accidents to which it is liable in transit, and still the caffeine could be got out of it perfectly good and pure. And when the German chemists found this out they naturally enough looked around for some source from which they could draw constant and sufficient supplies of damaged tea.
They found their opportunity in the London docks, the great tea depot of the world. Out of the immense quantity of tea landed at the docks the damaged chests were carefully sorted by inspectors and thrown aside. The English law very properly forbids the offering for sale of any tea not in perfect order, and the damaged leaves were therefore burned to get them out of the way. The German chemists came, bought the damaged tea at a half-penny a pound, carried it off to Germany and in due season supplied the London market with the extracted caffeine.
But presently the English chemists found out what was being done by the Germans, and sought to do likewise. But when they went to the London docks to buy damaged tea they were met with a demand for a duty of six pence a pound. In vain they represented that they didn’t want to use the tea as tea at all; in vain they offered to extract the caffeine under the superintendence of government officials; the custom house had only one answer, the duty must be paid. And so the Germans went on buying the damaged tea without competition and made big profits out of their caffeine manufacture.
However, the matter has been arranged at last. The British government has consented to allow the English chemists to compete with the Germans. The damaged tea in London docks is hereafter to be thoroughly mixed with assafetida, and in that condition Englishmen may buy it. They have a certain blundering, bull headed economic sense in England which is lacking in this country. Our policy would have been to bite our own nose off to spite our face, and get square with the Germans by clapping a thundering duty on caffeine.
p. 5, col. 4 On the other side of the Atlantic J. Morrison Davidson is striking stalwart blows for industrial emancipation. A recent issue of the London Star contains a column article from his pen on “Poverty: Its Root and Remedy.” Here is a specimen excerpt:
If it were only once possible to get it into the heads of people that the earth is common property, which no individual can morally buy, sell, rent or mortgage any more than he can commit highway robbery, the folly of such reactionary measures as the leaseholds enfranchisement bill would at once be discerned.
The real problem, of which the ground rent question is but an acute phase, raises the most momentous of all human inquiries—viz., what is the cause and the cure of poverty? Why, in a world of plenty are there rich and poor? Whence “the classes” and “the masses?” Whence affluent indolence and indigent industry?
So the fight for freedom goes on all along the line. Now here, now there, in Australia, in England, in continental Europe, a slight advance is made—a bold word spoken for the good cause. And each success, wherever won, renders easier the task of those who are doing battle elsewhere. It is no slight advantage to us, here in the United States, that Mr. Davidson’s ringing words and clear, convincing arguments are broadcasted among 300,000 or more English readers.
There was a queer meeting held in the city of Paris, Tex., on the 9th of July. The business men of the place got together in the mayor’s office, and complained to each other that the town was growing too wealthy; so wealthy, in fact, that they couldn’t any of them make any money. Measured in the value of real estate, the prosperity of Paris, it appears, is abounding; but measured in the profit of buying and selling things, of getting up early and going to bed late, and working hard at wealth production, it is at a very low ebb indeed. Not that buying and selling isn’t profitable in Paris, or that labor is less efficient there than elsewhere; the trouble is that the men who own the city insist that the buyers and sellers and hard workers generally shall hand over the biggest part of their earnings in return for the privilege of simply continuing in Paris. The merchants and other workers who have made Paris what it is were not far sighted enough to buy the land on which they proposed to work before beginning operations; and now that they have built up a thriving city, they are filled with consternation at the discovery that they have only been working for their landlords all the time.
However, the Paris merchants and other workers seem likely to find a way out of the difficulty. They know perfectly well, though it might puzzle some of them to express the idea in words, that if they all go away together they can take the land values they have created with them; and so they are meditating making a grand united move, all together, out upon the prairie, and founding a new Paris upon a new site. Whether they will have the foresight to provide against a repetition of their present landlord experience or not, the dispatches do not say.
We commend the citizens of Paris to the attention of the Texas tax reform association. The Parisians, like the Athenians before the unknown god, are puzzling over some thing they don’t fully understand. A little single tax literature will enlighten them.
The emperors of Russia and Germany met at Cronstadt on Friday of last week, and after making a variety of public demonstrations of mutual esteem and regard, held a private conference, the results of which, to whomever else they may have been communicated, have at all events not been given to the newspaper reporters. The general impression is, however, that the two monarchs have been exchanging guarantees of peace, and that a principal result of their meeting will be a simultaneous reduction of the immense armies now maintained by the great European powers. A million or two of Frenchmen, Germans and Russians will be allowed to return to their families and business vocations; and the peoples of Europe will be relieved of a portion of their well nigh insupportable burden of taxation.
That is one side of the picture—the bright and rosy side. We are invited to contemplate the happiness of the returning father, or husband, or son, or brother, unexpectedly released from years of service. We see the great industrial army reinforced by a million or so of eager workers, who give a fresh impetus to production, and push it forward with redoubled energy. The taxpayers, too, feel the weight lifted from their shoulders, and have more money to spare for investment in industrial enterprises. More than all, the grim shadow of impending war is lifted, and men can sow with some assurance that they will be permitted to reap when the harvest season comes. All this is very attractive. But there is another side to the picture, and it is painted in somber colors.
What will be the effect upon the labor market of Europe of the sudden advent of more than a million of men, all competing for employment? What will be the effect upon the goods market of Europe of the sudden annihilation of the demand for the material and paraphernalia of war—for guns and bayonets, and powder, and uniforms, and tents?
So the social paradox confronts us in another form. We maintain our convicts in semi-idleness lest by working for their own support they should take the bread out of the mouths of honest men and women. We make our beggars work to show that they are willing to work, but insist that they do inefficient work, lest the non-pauper class suffer by their competition. We set congressional committees to considering how best strong arms and ready hands can be kept away from our shores, though in our very midst millions are wanting the things that those hands and arms can make. If we are right in this, what misery may be entailed on a continent by the sudden withdrawal of a million men from the useless barbarism of the camp?
Mayor Hewitt, by an appeal to the citizens of New York, has succeeded in rais-
p. 5, col. 5 ing a fund of $2,500, with which to compensate Mr. O. M. Hartt for losses sustained by reason of the refusal of certain people to allow him to work for a living. Readers of THE STANDARD are familiar with Mr. Hartt’s case. He was employed as foreman in Gardner & Estes’s shoe factory. In that capacity he made war upon the trades union which controlled the franchise of working in the factory, and strove to assert the equal right of all men to make shoes for Gardner & Estes if Gardner & Estes were willing. The result was that Mr. Hartt lost his job, and when he sought an opportunity to apply his labor to the production of wealth in some other shoe shop, the unions controlling the work franchise peremptorily and effectually forbade his employment. The natural result was that Mr. Hartt was reduced to poverty, from which the beneficence of Mayor Hewitt has rescued him. It was a very ordinary case. There are a great many men and women in this country to-day—probably several millions of them—who, like Mr. Hartt, are stricken with poverty simply because the people who control the opportunities for work will not allow them to apply their labor toward production.
It was a kindly impulse that prompted Mayor Hewitt to help Hartt out of his trouble. Men deprived of the opportunity to work are certainly deserving of sympathy; and the impulse to bestow alms upon them is altogether humane and praiseworthy. And yet we feel it a duty to remind Mayor Hewitt that in treating Hartt as he has done, he has flown directly in the face of political economy and social science, and set an example, to follow which would disorganize society and breed a generation of paupers.
What Mayor Hewitt ought to have done in Hartt’s case is this: He should simply have given him a ticket of the Good Samaritan society and washed his hands of him. Mr. Hartt, taking this ticket to the office of the society, would have been subjected to that rigorous cross examination with which the modern Samaritan finds it necessary to preface his application of wine and oil and twopence to the hotel keeper. He would have been asked the particulars of his past life, what crimes he had committed, what sentences he had served, how he lost his job, how long he had been out of work, whether anybody had given him anything, and, if so, what he did with it. The ages of his wife and children would have been asked for, and their previous misdemeanors carefully noted; also the kind of work they were suited for and how they lost their jobs. These preliminary inquiries being satisfactorily answered, an agent would have been detailed to work up the case, and Mr. Hartt would have been presented with a ticket entitling him to saw wood for a certain number of hours a day, and get fifty or seventy-five cents for doing it. Possibly he might also have received a tract explaining what a bounteous provision of happiness God had stored up for him, and how he had only to die to get some of it. And the next day, while Hartt himself was taking saw horse exercise, a lady visitor would wait upon Mrs. Hartt, and in a strictly friendly way—no patronage or anything of that kind—advise her to keep her rooms tidy, explain the best way of cooking inferior cuts of meat, criticise the children’s dress, and perhaps give her a ticket to another society, entitling her to the privilege of making one chemise a day—with the understanding, of course, that she mustn’t use a sewing machine. And then Mr. and Mrs. Hartt would have been left to plod along the road to happiness and fortune, he on his sawhorse and she in her chemise; and the whole story would have been written out at length in the chronicles of Samaria, to be referred to whenever any other Samaritan should show a disposition to do the wine and oil and twopence act on behalf of the Hartt family. The result would have been, of course, that Mr. and Mrs. Hartt would have developed into respectable and sic citizens, contented in their humble stations, thankful for their daily rations, blessing the squire and his relations, and with a reassuring sense, born of experience, that if things should go badly for a time, there would be always the sawhorse and chemise to fall back upon.
But alas! instead of treating Hartt in this philosophical manner, Mayor Hewitt has preferred to follow the blind impulses of his own pitying disposition. He has given $100 out of his own pocket, and persuaded other citizens to give $2,400 more. He has really made the deprivation of the rights to work a profitable thing for Hartt, and to that extent he has pauperized him. Suppose the mayor should try to do as much, or half so much, for every man who, like Hartt, is struggling in poverty, simply because other people refuse to let him go to work? Why, all the wealth of New York city would be dissipated in the effort. Mayor Hewitt means well, but he is thoughtless—far too thoughtless.
Well, it is easy to point out the danger and sic of Mayor Hewitt’s headlong way of relieving undeserved distress. It is an easy matter, too, to make fun of the cross examining and detective methods of the Good Samaritan society. But the fact remains, that between these two systems the man must make his choice who wants to give immediate relief—to help his fellow man out of the poverty slough now, at once. There is no third way. Indeed there is no way at all to do more than relieve here and there an unfortunate whose louder outcry, or more pitiful appearance, distinguishes him from his fellows. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho is lined on both sides with men who have fallen among thieves and lie stripped and bleeding. The modern Samaritan, with his little store of wine and oil and his limited stock of twopences, may relieve here one and there another, making room for fresh victims of robber greed; but he can do no more. And if he would avoid encouraging those who make a trade of being stripped and bled, he must of necessity avail himself of the services of some organization whose business it is to distinguish the helpless sufferers from the willing ones. It is sad that it should be so, but so it is. Men can do no more than play
p. 5, col. 6 at obeying Christ’s loving precepts of charity, so long as they persist in disregarding God’s fundamental law of justice. Mayor Hewitt would have been wiser had he put Hartt in the way of getting a wood-yard ticket. He would then at least have had an assurance that Hartt’s story would be verified, and his fitness as an object for alms giving be tested by men expert in the detection of poverty impostors.
Moreover, if Mayor Hewitt had thought a little before making his public appeal on Hartt’s behalf, he could not have failed to see the impolicy of discrediting the methods of the trades union which forbade Hartt to go to work. For those methods are precisely those by which the great fortunes of our self made men have been acquired; and to discredit them is, in effect, to discredit the industry of self manufacturing. There is no surer way of making a fortune—indeed, there is no other way of making a large fortune—than by getting control of some branch of the great work franchise and exploiting it in just the way in which the shoemakers’ union exploited their control of the right to work in shoe shops. Mayor Hewitt has been trying to put two things into one and the same place. He wants both to run with the hare and to hunt with the hounds. He condemns the methods of Hartt’s persecutors, and he appeals on Hartt’s behalf to men whose fortunes are founded on those very methods, on the extraordinary ground that Hartt has been fighting their battle.
They are going to have a novel and interesting time with their men-of-war over in England. A considerable section of the British navy is being got ready for sea, and when the proper time comes this will be divided into two fleets. Of these one, representing the Russians or the Prussians, will endeavor to make a descent upon the coast of the tight little island, while the other will endeavor to prevent it. The ships will be armed with real guns and genuine powder, but no balls. The admirals and vice-admirals, and all the rest of them, will do their prettiest. And the whole affair, in number of performers, magnificent scenic effects, thrilling episodes, and strictly moral tone, promises to rival anything that the Kiralfy’s or Buffalo Bill have ever brought before the public. The bills will be paid by the people of Great Britain and Ireland, and the management will be upon a scale of lavish expense.
After the show is over the proper officials will rise in parliament and make a statement about it. They will tell the representatives there assembled that the attacking fleet was completely successful in effecting its purpose, and that therefore an immense sum of money must be immediately spent for new ships, improved guns, admirals’ salaries and so on. Or else they will announce that the attack was a complete failure and that therefore it is evident that an immense sum of money may be spent, and ought to be spent, in perfecting the British navy on its present plan. There is a doubt as to whether the attacking or defending fleet will have the best of it. But there is no sort of doubt about the immense sums of money being asked for.
It was intended to give, upon a much more modest scale, a somewhat similar exhibition in this country. We have a war department and a navy department here, just as they have in England; and our contractors are just as hungry for public money as any Englishman can possibly be. And so we were to have had a grand spectacular attack upon Fisher’s Island by the North Atlantic squadron, with an equally gorgeous defense by the major generals and other military men, all in splendid uniforms. But it didn’t come off. The squadron was there; the major generals were likewise on hand; and an immense crowd of sightseers from Newport and other watering places had assembled to see the show. But at the last moment, just when the performance was about to begin, the owners of Fisher’s island sent word to the attacking fleet that if they wanted to come ashore they would have to pay $500 for the privilege. That burst up the combination. The war department had no appropriation to which they could charge the rent of a battle field, and so the fight couldn’t come off.
But, really, when you come to think of it, there’s a good deal of suggestiveness about this Fisher’s island incident; and we strongly advise the Peace society to heed the lesson. Already the principal fighting powers of the world have agreed between themselves that private property at sea shall be inviolable, and shall not, as in the old piratical days, be liable to seizure by the first hostile man-o’war that happens along. Now if the Peace society can only induce them to extend this inviolability to private property in land a great deal will have been done toward making war impossible. An army wanting to fight would then have to hire the land to fight on, and a general who wanted to get control of a strategic position would have to see the landlord, and take care the other fellow didn’t see him first. All this sounds absurd, but is it any more absurd than the fact that New York city cannot build a viaduct railway, within her own limits, for the common use of all her citizens, without first paying a lot of private individuals two or three times its cost for the mere privilege of using the land to build it on. If beneficence must pay tax to the landlord, it is surely illogical that malevolence should go tax free.
According to the Chicago Tribune a great volume of natural gas belonging to Mr. William Borders, the sic, and two or three other prominent business men of Sparta, Ill., was struck on the 8th of June, and is pouring out through two pipes at the rate of 5,000,000 feet a day with a great roar and flame. Mr. William Borders. the banker, and the other prominent gas owners are preparing to secure and sell their gas, and the owners of the surface of the globe thereabouts are marking up the price they will ask for the privilege of building work shops and factories on their part of the surface of the globe. As for the people who only own their hands. it is hard to sic what good the discovery of Mr. Borders’s gas will do them.
Page 6 of 8contents
6 THE STANDARD, SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1888.
p. 6, col. 1
A COMMON CASE.
[Belford’s?] Magazine for July.
“How that woman lives is more’n I c’n tell,” said Amos, in a pause which followed a remark of Robie, the grocer, “f’r she’s nawthin’ but skin and bone. I swear it makes me crawl t’ see her go glidin’ around like a dummed spirut, ‘n’ when she smiles she makes y’ think of a skeleton, like that in Doc. Carver’s office.”
“Mis’ Bent is a good woman, Amos—”
“Of course she is.” retorted sic, looking over at his wife, seated on the dry goods side of the store; she’s too good, Marthy. too danged sic by half t’ suit me. I’d like t’ hear her get on her high heels once, and swear—”
“Amos Ridings!”
“Wal! I would. It’d relieve her, and might stir up old Joe Bent a little.”
“Joe ain’t over ‘n’ above energetic, I take it,” said Robie, from the counter, where he was reflectively chewing a cracker.
“That’s a sufficiently delicate periphrasis,” observed Norman Wheelock, the county superintendent of schools.
“Periff—how many?” queried Adams.
“I say you are sufficiently delicate in your statement of the point at issue.”
“Good land! Hear that, will you? Talk United States, young feller.”
“When ‘r’ y’ going t’ tackle y’r grass,” said Wheelock, dropping propitiatingly into dialect, and sucking at an orange.
“I swear I don’t know. The weather is mighty ketchin,’ but I reckon it’ll settie by Saturday; if it does I’ll be into it bright an’ early Monday morning. I swear it’s about the hottest and wettest June weather I’ve notist for a hundred years ‘r so. Come, Marthy, it’s holdin’ up a little; I guess we’d better scoot.”
As motherly Mrs. Ridings gathered up her bundles and moved toward the door Amos stopped to say to Wheelock:
“Say! Norm, don’t yer fire any of that dude English at the boys, ‘r they’ll bolt the ticket and let y’ drap into a hole. Ajew, gents.”
“Hold on a minute, Mr. Ridings,” called Rance Knapp, the principal of the village school; “you didn’t finish what you were saying about Mrs. Bent. I’d like to know more of her.”
“A—! Git Wheelock there t’ tell—he knows her as well as I do. I must be gittin’ home t’ feed m’ calves.” But he stopped and stood a moment reflectively, then laid his package down, leaned against the counter, and, after a silence, spoke again in a curious tone—a mixture of sympathetic emotion and a deprecation of what he feared might be called a weakness:
“I’ve known Matildy Bent since she was a girl—‘n’ a darn purty girl she was thirty years ago. Not purty, like a doll; I s’pose Marthy here’d say she was homely—”
“Now, Amos!”
“Probably she would a been, in some eyes. But she had nice teeth and brown hair—an’ she laughed a good deal then, an’ she had a soople sort of way in dancin’ that was mighty han’sum. But her face was good and looked brainy. Fact was, she was a mighty fine haired girl—hey? O, I know what y’ mean by winkin’. Used to go t’ dances with her myself before Marthy come across m’ path. Yes! M’tildy was a great girl t’ laugh and dance in them days; y’ wouldn’t think it, t’ see her now. Well! Marthy she come—”
“I guess we’d better be going, Amos,” put in Mrs. Ridings, rising hastily.
“No. I’m gett’n’ started now, and they’s no stoppin’ me till I finish my sermon. I’m jest limberin’ up, and you can’t tell what I’ll say ‘of the utmost practical value’ (as Editor Foster said of my speech at the grange picnic). I was up to Bent’s last week t’ buy a couple o’ pigs—a pair o’ his black and tan Berkshires; for if they’s one thing Joe Bent can do, it’s raise pigs. It was most dinner time and I staid t’ dinner.”
“It was Monday, too, and you had no business staying to dinner on wash day. I hope you hadn’t anything but salt pork and potatoes.”
“That was about the size of it. I swear I couldn’t keep m’ eyes off’n that woman! They was four men of us, and that weak minded girl o’ hers and a boy; and that woman done all the waitin’ on the table and went slidin’ around there like a ghost. The way she got the dinner ready and got rid o’ work was a caution t’ snakes! No noise, no fuss, no words—but it made me crawl! An’ when I got off one o’ my best jokes—she jest drawed up her thin lips off’n her teeth, but her eyes didn’t laugh! they kept dark—and when I thought o’ them teeth o’ her’n, and how purty they used t’ look behind her red lips, and now—I swear I felt sick. I couldn’t eat another mouthful. It almost seemed as if she was jest a dead woman workin’ along when she ought t’ be restin’ in her grave.”
There was a death-like pause when Amos finished; only the dreep-drop of the rain, beginning again, broke the hush, till Amos spoke again with the air of a man who suspects that he has been carried too far.
“Why don’t you laugh, Wheelock? There’s where the laugh ought to come in,” he said, savagely, to the silent group.
“It ain’t a laughin sic, Amos,” said Wheelock in reply. The tension was so great that the tears started into the eyes of Mrs. Ridings. Wiping her cheeks, she said:
“I guess we’d better be going, Amos; the rain is beginning again. I didn’t know till to-day that M’tildy was clear down sick, Mr. Robie; I must go right up and see her this week, sure. Perhaps she’s jest tired out like, and needs a little rest.”
“I should’t wonder a sic,” said Amos, grimly, picking up his parcels and following his wife out to the carriage at the door. He came in a moment later, and said finally:
“I’d jest like t’ ask you edgicated chaps what that woman’s life is worth t’ her—‘r what any wife’s life is worth on the western farm? It’s bad enough f’r Marthy an’ me, but our livin’ is a general picnic all the year round compared to such a life as M’tildy Bent’s.”
“Riding’s got pretty well stirred up,”
p. 6, col. 2 commented Wheelock, after Amos had driven away. “I don’t know as I ever saw him come closer to breaking down. You see he and Matilda Fletcher used to go together a good deal, and it’s pretty hard lines for him to stand by and look on while she fades away in this way. I can remember how she was looked upon, though I was a little shaver when she was a sic. She was considered a ‘fine haired girl,’ a little too fine haired, some people were always saying.”
“But what sort of a fellow is Bent?”
“O, good enough sort; ‘bout an average. Hard worker himself in his way; thinks his wife ought to do the same. He works well enough. but he’s sic somewhere. He lacks vim—staminy.”
Robie was waiting on a customer at the forward counter, and Wheelock lit another cigar and settled himself in his chair. The rain was beginning again in earnest, a continuous musical roar was rising from the roof of the low storeroom at the back. Through the open door a number of fowls could be seen foraging about for food to last over night. The streets were very quiet, save the splashing of the rain drops into the pools.
“Between you and me, Proff, I’m going to say just what I mean. Don’t let it get out, or my chances for re-election wouldn’t be worth a pewter cent. The fact is, that woman is being murdered, just like thousands of others like her in this country. It’s the rule. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of that woman’s death to-morrow.”
“But Amos said she was still working.”
“Working! she’s got to work till she drops. There’s no rest for her this side of the final hole in the ground. I’ve seen that woman off and on for over twenty years, and she’s been going on in the same way about every year that I can remember. After she married Joe Bent she mighty soon found herself in a harness, and she’s never got out of it since. Damned if I think she’s tried! She sees all around her other women in substantially the same fix, and I suppose she thinks it’s in the nature of the American civilization.”
“If she is dissatisfied she never says anything about it. Now don’t think Joe knowingly abused her, for he didn’t; he’s an easy going—say! you remember that story about the winged horse that the peasant yoked up to the plow with the ass, and how the poor cuss of a Pegasus chafed while the ass grew fat? Well, now, Joe Bent ain’t egsactly an ass, nor his wife a winged creature. But—h’m!—I guess I’ll haf t’ back out that hole and try again.”
“No! I see what you mean, Norman. Life on Bent’s farm, as on most farms in America, is a terrible grind. Yet one person can get fat where another chafes and frets the life out. The man who is content with a diet of meat and drink alone can sic; the one who wants to live on finer fare starves.”
“Pree-cisely! Joe is a slow coach. An easy fit. Nothing worries him. A little fills his dipper. But Matilda Fletcher was worth a better man. She was too fine a grain for Joe. She was one o’ these kind o’ people who grow, no matter how old they get. Joe is just where he was at twenty-five. He naturally sojers, leans back in the harness, nips at the blue-joint along the furrow. See?”
“I see.”
“His wife he has starved t’ death and worked t’ death—without knowing it. Why? She is living in the very little log house he built on his claim first. Matildy had a natural love for pretty things—flowers and pictures an the like o’ sic—but she hasn’t been able to have a single thing of that kind. Her time has been all taken up with cooking and washing and nursing children.”
Here Wheelock paused, and leaning over, said in a low voice:
“Her girl Julia is a little weak in the head, and some people wonder at it; I don’t. Why, that woman cooked for a great crew of men right up t’ the day of her birth bed. I saw her, when she had no business to be standing up, out chasing the cattle from the corn field. That night her only girl was born.”
Knapp gave a long, quivering, indrawn breath.
“Don’t go on, Wheelock, for heaven’s sake! You bring back a thousand things of the same kind that I have seen. I have seen tens of just such starving, worn out women. It is no wonder the percentage of the insane is large from these farms. I know the homes—poor, small, without a single touch of color or grace—where the only ornament to the bare wall is a clock tolling off the hours of ceaseless toil.”
“There that woman has lived, in that miserable little hovel, for a quarter of a century. She has heard nothing, seen nothing, of the grandeur and glory of this great age we boast about. What are pictures and operas and dramas to her—or to us, for that matter, Norman? Just the sunlight and shadow play on the blank wall of our prison. The mighty pageant passes by, afar off, out of sight; we catch now and again a faint pulse of the music, a flash from a banner pierces our window; the rest is a dream.”
“And yet this is America.”
“Yes, this is America,” he went on, in the same bitter voice. “The American farmer living in a semi-solitude, his wife a slave, both denied the things that make life worth living. Fifty per cent of these farms mortgaged, in spite of the labors of every member of the family and the most frugal living. Wheelock, it makes me ugly to think of these things.”
“Why don’t you get out of it. sic ain’t bound in as Matildy Bent is, or even as I am.”
“I can’t stand it much longer, to tell the honest truth. But in the city, the tenement—”
“Davis was just in,” interrupted Robie, “and says Doc. Chapin told him Mrs. Bent is worse—as good as dead.”
“What of—hard work?”
“Yes, and cancer.”
“Cancer!”
“So he said. It turns out she’s been going around with that thing hid in her breast for years.”
“Well! by—heavens!” exploded Wheelock, as soon as he took in the situation, turning on Robie in great excitement. “Good God! Hadn’t that woman enough to bear without being eaten up
p. 6, col. 3 by cancer? Say, Robie that’s piling up the misery a little, jest a little, too steep. I won’t be able to sleep sound for a week. Cancer! Slaving seventeen hours a day—Sundays and all—and dying inch by inch. Say! now—now—don’t mention Job in this connection, nor Hamlet. Why, Hamlet’s little difficulty would be rest for this woman. Dying. is she?”
“So the doctor thinks.”
“Thank somebody for that! The woman will get a rest, under ground. No threshin’ crew or harvest gang yelling for breakfast will ever reach her there. But say! don’t tell me Joe Bent knew of this all along—don’t say it—it ain’t safe. I’d be tempted to shoot him at sight.”
“No! that would be a tough record on Joe. Nobody knew it. She kept it secret. She must have employed some traveling doctor, or else jest grinned and bore it.”
“Well! that just ends Matilda Fletcher,” said Wheelock, after a few moment’s sic, and after his excitement had ebbed away in a few oaths. “She’s done with life. I’m not much on religion, gentlemen; I believe what seems reasonable to me, and let others do the same. If that woman has got a belief that tells her she will be eternally young and happy on the other side, so much the better for her. And as for me, if there ain’t any other world to reverse such a sentence as she has served out in this world, don’t ask me to justify the American civilization—or anything else—that’s all! I can’t do it. I won’t try.”
“In the event that there was another world to rectify wrongs in this, would suffering in America or any other place be justified?” asked the young teacher.
The others were silent.
Mrs. Bent was dying; there was no doubt of that now, if there had been before. The gruff old physician—one of those overworked and underpaid country servitors—shook his head and pushed by Joe Bent, her husband, as he passed through the room which served as dining room, sitting room and parlor. The poor fellow slouched back to his chair by the stove as if dazed, and before he could speak again the doctor was gone.
Mrs. Ridings was just coming up the walk as the doctor stepped out of the door.
“Oh! doctor, how is she?”
“She is a dying woman, madam.”
“Oh! don’t say that, doctor. What’s the matter?”
“Cancer.”
“Then the news was true—”
“I don’t know anything of the news, Mrs. Ridings, but Mrs. Bent is dying from the effects of a cancer primarily, which she has had for years—since her last child, which died in infancy, you remember.”
“But, doctor, she never told me—”
“Neither did she tell me. But no matter now. I have done all I can for her. If you can make death any easier for her, go and do it. You will find some opiate powders there with directions. Keep the pain down at all hazards. Don’t let her suffer; that is useless.”
When the good matron entered the dowdy, suffocating little room where Matilda Bent lay gasping for breath. she was sic for a moment with sympathetic pain. There the dying woman lay, her world narrowed to four close walls, propped up on the pillows near the one little window. Her eyes seemed very large and bright, and the brow, made prominent by the sinking away of the cheeks, told that it was no common woman who lay there, quietly waiting the death angel.
She smiled, and lifted her eyebrows in a ghastly way.
“O, Marthy!” she breathed.
“Matildy, I didn’t know you was so bad, ‘r I’d a come before. Why didn’t y’ let me know?” said Mrs. Ridings, kneeling by the bed and taking the ghostly hands of the sufferer in her own warm and soft palms. She shuddered as she kissed the thin lips.
“I think you’ll soon be around agin,” she added, in the customary mockery of an attempt at cheer. The other woman started slightly, turned her head, and gazed on her old friend long and intently. The hollowness of the other’s words stung her.
“I hope not, Marthy—I’m ready t’ go. I want t’ go. I don’t care t’ live.”
The two women communed by looking for a long time in each other’s eyes, as if to get at the very secretest desires and hopes of the heart. Tears fell from Marthy’s eyes upon the cold and nerveless hands of her friend—poor, faithful hands, hacked and knotted and worn by thirty years of ceaseless daily toil. They lay there motionless upon the coverlet, pathetic protest for all the world to see.
“O, Matildy, I wish I could do something for you! I want to help you so. I feel so bad that I didn’t come before. Ain’t they somethin’?”
“Yes, Marthy—jest set there—till I die—it won’t be long,” whispered the pale lips. The sufferer, as usual, was calmer than her visitor, and her eyes were thoughtful.
“I will! I will! But oh! must you go? Can’t somethin’ be done. Don’t yo’ sic the minister to be sent for?”
“No, I’m all ready. I ain’t afraid t’ die. I ain’t worth savin’ now. O, Marthy! I never thought I’d come to this—did you? I never thought I’d die—so early in life—and die—unsatisfied.”
She lifted her head a little as she gasped out these words with an intensity of utterance that thrilled her hearer—a powerful, penetrating earnestness that burnt like fire.
“Are you satisfied?” pursued the steady lips. “My life’s a failure, Marthy, I’ve known it all along—all but my children. O, Marthy, what’ll become o’ them? This is a hard world.”
The amazed Marthy could only chafe the hands, and note sorrowfully the frightful changes in the face of her friend. The weirdly calm, slow voice began to shake a little.
“I’m dyin’, Marthy, without ever gittin’ to the sunny place we girls—used to think—we’d git to, by an’ by. I’ve been a gittin’ deeper ‘n’ deeper—in the shade—till it’s most dark. They ain’t been no rest—n’r hope f’r me, Marthy—none. I ain’t—”
“There, there! Tillie, don’t talk so—
p. 6, col. 4 don’t, dear. Try t’ think how bright it’ll be over there—”
“I don’t know nawthin’ about over there; I’m talkin’ about here. I ain’t had no chance here, Marthy.”
“He will heal all your care—”
“He can’t wipe out my sufferin’s here.”
“Yes he can, and he will. He can wipe away every tear, and heal every wound.”
“No—he—can’t. God himself can’t wipe out what has been. O, Mattie, if I—was only there!—in the past—if I was only young and purty agin! You know how tall I was? how we used to run—O, Mattie, if I was only there! The world was all bright then—wasn’t it? We didn’t expect—to work all our days. Life looked like a meadow, full of daisies and pinks, and the nicest ones. And the sweetest birds was just a little ways on—where the sun was—it didn’t look—wasn’t we happy?”
“Yes, yes, dear. But you musn’t talk so much.” The good woman thought Matilda’s mind was wandering. “Don’t you want some med’cine? Ain’t your fever risin’?”
“But the daisies and pinks all turned to weeds,” she went on, waiting a little, “when we picked ‘em. An’ the sunny place—has been always behind me, and the dark before me. Oh! if I was only there—in the sun—where the pinks and daisies are!”
“You musn’t talk so, Mattie! think about your children. You ain’t sorry y’ had them. They’ve been a comfort to y’. You ain’t sorry you had them.”
“I ain’t glad,” was the unhesitating reply of the failing woman; and then she went on, in growing excitement: “they’ll haf t’ grow old jest as I have—git bent and gray, an’ die. They ain’t ben much comfort to me; the boys are like their father, and Julyie’s weak. They ain’t no happiness—for such as me and them. The rich folks in the city gets it all. You an’ me don’t get anything—but scrub an’ scrub from year’s end t’ year’s end—”
She paused for breath, and Mrs. Ridings, not knowing what to say, did better than say anything. She fell to stroking the poor face, and the hands getting more restless each moment. It was as if Matilda Fletcher had been silent so long, had borne so much without complaint, that now it burst from her in a torrent of incredible force. All her most secret doubts and her sweetest hopes seemed trembling on her lips or surging in her brain, racking her poor, emaciated frame for utterance. Now that death was sure, she was determined to rid her bosom of its perilous stuff. Martha was appalled.
“I used to think—that when I got married I’d be perfectly happy—but I never have been happy sence. It was the beginning of trouble t’ me. I never found things better than they looked; they was always worse. I’ve gone further an’ further from the sunshiny meadow, an’ the birds an’ flowers—and I’ll never get back to ’em again, never!” She ended with a sob and a low wail.
Her face was horrifying with its intensity of pathetic regret. Her straining, wide open eyes seemed to be seeing those sunny spots in the meadow.
“Mattie, sometimes when I’m asleep I think I am back there agin—and you girls are there—an’ we’re pullin’ off the leaves of the wild sunflower—‘rich man, poor man, beggar man’—and I hear you all laugh when I pull off the last leaf; an’ then I come to myself—and I’m an old, dried up woman, dyin’ unsatisfied!”
“I’ve felt that way a little myself. sic,” confessed the watcher, in a sacred whisper. She saw that it was not mere wandering thought which the sufferer was babbling.
“I knew it, Mattie; I knew you’d know how I felt. Things have been better for you. You ain’t had t’ live in an old log house all y’r life, an’ work yourself t’ skin an’ bone for a man you don’t respect n’r like.”
“Matildy Bent, take that back! Take it back, for mercy sake! Don’t you dare die thinkin’ that—don’t you dare!”
Bent came to the door at this moment, and the wife, knowing his step, cried:
“Don’t let him in! Don’t! I can’t bear him—keep him out; I don’t wan’t t’ see him sic.”
“Who do you mean? Not Joe?”
“Yes. Him.”
Had the dying woman confessed to murder, good Martha could not have been more shocked. She could not understand this terrible revulsion in feeling, for she herself had been absolutely loyal to her husband through all the trials which had come upon them. She could hardly appreciate the utter lack of sympathy between Joseph and Matilda.
But she met him at the threshold, and, closing the door, went out with him into the summer kitchen, where the rest of the family were sitting. A gloomy silence fell on them all after the greetings were over. The men were smoking; all were seated in chairs tipped back against the wall. Joe Bent, a smallish man, with a weak, good natured face, asked in a hoarse whisper:
“How is she, Mis’ Ridings?”
“She seems quite strong, Mr. Bent. I think you had all better go to bed; if I want you I can call you. Doctor give me directions.”
“All right,” responded the relieved man. “I’ll sleep on the lounge in the other room. If you want me, just rap on the door.”
When, after making other arrangements, Martha went back to the bedroom, she was startled to hear the woman muttering to herself, or perhaps because she had forgotten Martha’s absence.
“But the shadows on the meadow didn’t stay; they passed on, and then the sun was all the brighter on the flowers. We used to string sweet williams on spears of grass—don’t you remember?”
Martha gave her a drink of the opiate in the glass, adjusted her on the pillow, and threw open the window, even to the point of removing the screen, and the gibbous moon flooded the room with light. She did not light a lamp, for its flame would heat the room. Besides, the moonlight was sufficient. It fell on the face of the sick woman, till she looked like a thing of marble—all but her dark eyes.
“Does the moon hurt you, Tilly? Shall I put down the curtain?”
The woman heard with difficulty, and
p. 6, col. 5 when the question was repeated said, slowly:
“No, I like it.” After a little—“Don’t you remember, Mattie, how beautiful the moonlight seemed? It seemed to promise happiness—and love—but it never come for us. It makes me dream of the past now—just as it did o’ future then; an’ the whip-poor-wills too—”
The night was perfectly beautiful, such a night as makes dying a terrible loss. The summer was at its liberalest. Innumerable insects of the nocturnal sort were singing in unison with the frogs in the pools. A whip-poor-will called, and its neighbor answered it like an echo. The leaves of the trees, glossy from the late rain, moved musically to the light west wind, and the exquisite perfume of many flowers came in on the breeze.
When the failing woman sank into silence, Martha leaned her elbow on the window sill, and, gazing far into the great deeps of space, gave herself up to unwonted musings upon the problems of human life. She sighed deeply at times. She found herself at moments in the almost terrifying position of the human soul in space. Not a wife, not a mother, but just a soul facing the questions that harass philosophers. As she realized her condition of mind she caught a glimpse of the thinking of the woman on the bed. Matilda had gone beyond or far back of the wife and mother.
The hours wore on; the dying woman stirred uneasily now and then, whispering a word or phrase which related to her girlhood—never to her later life. Once she said:
“Mother, sing to me; hold me. I’m so tired.”
Martha took the thin form in her arms, and, laying her head close beside the sunken cheek, sang, in half breath, a lullaby till the sufferer grew quiet again.
The eastern moon passed over the house, leaving the room dark, and still the patient matron sat beside the bed, listening to the slow breathing of Matildy Bent. The cool air grew almost chill; the east began to lighten, and with the coming light the tide of life sank into the dying body. The head, hitherto restlessly turning, ceased to move. The eyes grew quiet and began to soften like a sleeper’s.
“How are you now, dear?” asked the watcher several times, bending over the bed, and bathing back the straying hair.
“I’m tired—tired, mother—turn me,” she murmured, drowsily, with heavy lids drooping.
Martha adjusted the pillows again, and turned the face to the wall. The poor, tortured, restless brain slowly stopped its grinding whirl, and the thin limbs, heavy with years of hopeless toil, straightened out in an endless sleep.
Matilda Fletcher had found rest.
HAMLIN GARLAND.
The Land of Fire.
Chambers’s Journal.
The group of islands which form the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego have an area of about 80,000 square miles, nearly the same size as England and Scotland. Darwin describes the country as “a mountainous land, partly submerged in the sea, so that deep inlets and bays occupy the place where the valleys should exist. To find an acre of level land in any part of the country is most rare.” Don Ramon Lista, however, who has had greater and more recent opportunities of investigation, thinks this description a mistaken one. He describes Argentine Tierra del Fuego as presenting two aspects: in the north there are valleys more or less extensive, covered with splendid groves, and irrigated by large rivers, some of which are navigable; this region enjoying an agreeable temperature, with very little snow during the winter. South of this he reports that the appearance of the country changes and extended forests appear, where the grass is not so abundant or the rivers so large. The face of the land is in this part something like Switzerland, with small lakes, elevated mountains and valuable timber forests. He seems to think the country capable of great development, for he adds: “On the plains there will yet be planted a great pastoral industry, while I believe the mountains will be found to contain valuable mineral deposits.”
Travelers’ reports as to the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego have been conflicting. Some visitors have reported the natives to be stalwart, fine looking men, and others have described them as small and abject beings. Darwin, whose scientific investigations were confined to the south of the country, says that “one can hardly believe them to be fellow-creatures and inhabitants of the same world.” On the other hand, other explorers in the north and northwest describe the Fuegians as powerful men of large stature and warlike instincts. This apparent discrepancy seems to be due to the fact that the land is inhabited by two very distinct races of Indians. Mr. Brydges, whose long residence in the country enables him to speak with authority on this point, assures us that there are two separate and distinct tribes dwelling in Tierra del Fuego. He calls them as they call themselves, Onas and Yahgans; the former living in the north, and the latter in the south. The Onas seem to be almost identical in character, manners and language with the Tuehelche sic of Patagonia. Like them, they use bows and arrows in the chase and are muscular, active and well formed. Their number is now much reduced, an epidemic of measles having been very fatal among them a few years ago, and the whole tribe probably does not now number more than five hundred persons. They are nomadic and live principally in portable tents, covered with guanaco skins. Mr. Popper did not form a high opinion of their intellectual faculties, judging from the primitive nature of their implements. He describes their tools as consisting for the most part of pieces of iron taken from some vessel cast on shore, and tied to pieces of wood by leather thongs. They have no canoes, and do not fish, though they pick up on the shore such fish as are left behind after heavy tides. Their only water vessels are large shells; but they display some ingenuity in making arrows and baskets.
True; But a Vote for Prohibition is a Vote Cast to the Winds.
Chicago Mail.
The genuine free trader will find what he wants in the prohibition platform. Curiously enough, perhaps by an oversight, it contains a plank demanding the removal of import duties from food, clothing, and other necessaries of life—a demand so broad and sweeping that Mr. Cleveland’s so-called free trade deliverance is insignificant by comparison. Even the Henry George single tax folks might join with the prohibitionists, for not only do the latter propose the practical abolition of the tariff, but of the internal taxes as well, leaving the government no recourse for revenue save the direct tax on land. It is improbable that the cold water people meant any such thing as their platform indicates, but they will be judged by the fact, not by the intention, and so it may turn out that a party built upon an idea of proscription, of governmental interference with a certain line of traffic, may come to be the refuge and the champion of those who hold that government transcends its just powers when it employs the taxing device to modify the natural laws and conditions of trade.
p. 6, col. 6
NEW IDEAS, METHODS AND INVENTIONS.
The Milling World is apparently doubtful as to anybody inventing some method of utilizing the power of the Niagara river and falls. It says: When the Keely motor successfully motes, when a man serenely in atmosphere floats, when Yankees are brought to the eating of oats, when motion perpetual shall be achieved, when cyclone pulverizing is proved and believed, and when grinding pneumatic is else than conceived, we shall look to see some inventor successfully utilizing the power of the Niagara river at its exit from Lake Erie. Meanwhile said inventors are wilting their collars in struggling to acquire the Buffalo prize of $100,000.
The Electric Age says: “The Bell telephone company has extended its successful experiment of long distance telephony between Boston and New York to the establishment of a line between New York and Saratoga, between which points it is competing with the Western Union for public business. The rates charged are rather steep as compared with the modest tolls of the telegraph company, but the compensating advantage to the customer lies in the fact that he can obtain a much quicker service and at the same time minimize the chances of his message falling into other hands than those of the person for whom it may be intended. But the supreme advantage of the telephone system is in there being no doubt or uncertainty of the conversation or liability of error whatever.”
The statement that a full sized locomotive had been built in eighteen hours, which was quoted in this column last week, is said by the American Machinist to be untrue, for the reason that such a feat is utterly impossible. It says “there is one part of a locomotive, i. e., the boiler, which cannot be built much short of twenty days, and there are many other parts of a locomotive which cannot be finished in anything like twenty hours.” Further: “Where locomotives are built upon the interchangeable plan, each part being made to standard gauge, it is perhaps possible to assemble those parts properly within twenty hours, provided the boiler. frames, and some other sic are previously made. But assembling a locomotive is not building one, by any means, and we very much doubt if any locomotive has ever really been built—the castings, forgings, boiler and all included—in less than three weeks.”
The Age of Steel says that the use of common salt appears to be of increasing importance in connection with building materials. Among the carpenters the article is now found to be an aid in the heating of glue, and where, as has been usual in joiners’ and cabinetmakers’ shops, the glue is melted in a jacket kettle, surrounded by water, it is said to be an improvement to place salt in the water in the outer kettle—that is, the addition of salt raises the boiling point, and therefore enables the glue in the kettle to be kept at a higher temperature than could be maintained with water alone, and this is advantageous to the work. Again, masons find their use of salt in adding it to cement mortar in cold weather to preserve it from the injurious effects of freezing. It is known that in many cases masonry has been laid in cement in cold weather, using a considerable proportion of salt in the mixture which, after repeated freezings and thawings, has remained in perfect condition, while work near by laid in mortar of the same kind, but without any admixture of salt, became disintegrated by the frost.
A practical telegraphic typewriter has at last been invented and is in actual use on the Postal telegraph cable company’s lines between New York and Pittsburg and New York and Philadelphia, and has demostrated the sic of the system. It is called the Essick printing telegraph system, and its advantages are briefly stated in the Electric Age: 1. It is an electrical typewriter, by means of which the message is printed in the presence of the transmitting operator in page form, and a duplicate of the same is printed at all receiving stations on the line, whether it be a long or short circuit. 2. It is a news printer, by the use of which the current news may be distributed for the benefit of the press in the various newspaper offices. A single transmission prints the same simultaneously, in page form, ready for the compositor’s case in all the newspaper offices in the city. 3. It is a news ticker for the distribution of the current commercial and financial news to public places. The advantage of the page system over a tape printer will readily be seen when it is understood that the entire transactions of the day are condensed within a small space in a form convenient for reference or file. It will not be necessary to scan a mile of tape in order to find a single quotation. 4. It is a system practicable for general telegraph purposes and puts within the reach of telegraph corporations a means of reducing the working expenses of the operating department fully one-half with no loss in time of service. No previous training is necessary to operate it, and no attention whatever is required at the receiving stations farther than the collection of messages by check clerk, to be copied and sent to delivery department. 5. A system highly commendable for railroad service, where necessity almost compels railroad companies to put up with cheap labor—consequently inferior ability. Train orders and other important matter can be sent without error and relied upon as being received correctly. 6. It will unquestionably take the place of the telephone to a very great extent, owing to the advantages over the present telephone system. A record is made of all transactions for reference. Absolute secrecy may be had in all business dealings and the annoyance of calling up and being interrupted by others waiting for the line is entirely overcome. Messages can be sent and received day or night without the presence of the person for whom the messages are intended. The company is now ready for the introduction of its system into public use and solicits the investigation of persons who desire a safe, certain, practical and economical system of inter-communication. The instruments can be seen in actual operation, receiving and transmitting messages between New York and Philadelphia, at the company’s offices 169 and 171 Broadway, New York city.
Kitchen Possibilities.
Chambers’s Journal.
Greek cooks, as we see in the writings of many of the ancients, claimed that there were few professions requiring wider and sounder knowledge and philosophy than that of cooking; and we can hardly doubt them. The Roman cooks were quite as clever. We are told on credible authority that they contrived to serve up pigeons and young spring chickens—no matter at what season—even though they had nought but the flesh of four footed beasts or fish on which to exercise their art. Martial has recorded a sumptuous dinner where the guests thought they were partaking of tunny, anchovies, sausages, besides a great number of different vegetables; yet the cook only used common pumpkins, seasoned with oils, various condiments, seeds and roots.
To this day in Italy we may taste excellent veal pates, or wholesome fried pork, made out of tunny fish; fish curries of exquisite delicacy made of vegetable marrows. In these instances it is simply the mode of curing, the oil used, and, in the case of the vegetable marrows, the chemical effect of the heat and curry powder, which cause the change. Beefsteaks, again, juicy and splendidly tender, may be cut from the stem of a pine tree! These are large mushrooms, or fungi, which are impregnated with a red bloodlike fluid.
It would indeed be at once interesting and amusing to see our chemists put on the apron and white cap and serve up a complete artificial dinner from their laboratories, so that the bread and vegetables should come before us in the shape of crayfish soup, well fried herring, or carefully boiled cod, oyster pates, fish sauces; to be followed by steak pies and savory ragouts. We know that they could with ease, and indeed daily do, serve us with an artificial cheese or paste of jargonelle pears and artificial apple candy. Such things have been done, and can be repeated. The vegetable juices, long locked up in our coal beds, are now set free from the odorous tar, to assume considerable commercial importance as flavoring essences.
Page 7 of 8contents
Page 7 — The Standard, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Whole No. 82), July 28, 1888
THE STANDARD, SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1888.
p. 7, col. 1
QUERIES AND ANSWERS.
Steel Rails.
OKOBOJO, Dak.—Please comment on the following: “Until 1867 we bought our steel rails in England. We paid for them as high as $150 a ton. Under the influence of protection the price came down. We are enabled to now buy American rails at $27 a ton. We travel cheaper by rail than do the people of any other country.”
SUBSCRIBER.
The first figure is too high and the second too low. It is true, however, that we did pay a very high price for steel rails in the beginning, whereas now we pay a very low price, comparative, the difference being somewhat between $125 then and $30 now. But the tariff has had no more to do with the decline in price than had King Canute with the fall of the tide.
If it was our tariff that reduced the price of American steel rails, how happens it that the price in England has all along been, and is now, just about as much below the price here as the amount of our tariff duty? Was it because England was compelled to lower the price to compete with us? Then why has she put her price so much lower than ours as from $10 to $14 a ton, when a dollar or two would have answered the purpose? The truth is that in 1867 the process of manufacturing steel rails was new, and the plant was so costly that manufacturers were slow to change; the supply was therefore small, the price high and profits large. In time, with the perfection of the process and extension of manufacture, prices fell in England and our protected manufacturers were forced to drop their prices accordingly: but in doing so they have managed to get the benefit of nearly the whole of the tariff tax, while the total wages of their workmen are but about half the duty.
From the beginning you will find that wages have been but slightly affected, if at all, by the fall in the price of steel rails, the reason being that improvement in manufacture enables a given amount of labor to turn out a greater number of tons.
At the present time, as already stated, the extra profit for American rails which is due to the tariff is about double the labor cost of production. In what way does that indicate any benefit to labor?
Whether or not we travel any cheaper by rail than the people of any other country I do not know; but if we do I am sure it is not because American steel rails cost less now than English steel rails cost in 1867. If a difference in the cost of steel rails makes the difference in cost of traveling, the English ought to travel by rail much cheaper than we do, since they get steel rails for less than $19 a ton, while we have to pay $30.
Free Trade and Money Wages.
DANVILLE, Ind.—Will you please show where the following is faulty:
Free trade will reduce the wages of labor in dollars and cents.
The price of the farmers’ products being determined by foreign markets, is not affected by free trade.
The laboring man pays most of his wages for farm products.
Therefore, under his reduced free trade wages the laborer must continue to pay a high price for most of his commodities.
The statement is bunglesome, but it was so submitted to me. Two free traders disagree as to the truthfulness of the second proposition, and as to the relation of the first and second.
GEO. A. BOYD.
It is not true that free trade will reduce wages in dollars and cents. That it is based upon the assumption that the sum by which the price of commodities is reduced is subtracted from the labor cost of production. This is a mistake. Labor cost is regulated by competition between laborers, and free trade will not increase that competition. It will diminish it by making a greater demand for laborers, the tendency of which is to increase wages in dollars and cents as well as in the things which dollars and cents will buy.
This is true.
If by this statement is meant that the laborer consumes more products of agricultural origin than of any other kind, it is probably true; but if it means that most of the wages of workingmen go to farmers, it is not true. Besides what they pay for commodities not of agricultural origin, workingmen pay out a very large proportion of their incomes to prepare agricultural products for their use. Between the Liverpool price of wheat and the price to the workingman of bread, there is a considerable difference, the amount of which is not determined by foreign markets.
The conclusion falls with the premises.
But if it were true that the laborer would be compelled, under free trade, to pay a high price for most of his commodities, is that any reason for continuing a protective tariff which compels him to pay a high price for all of them?
Products of Labor.
CLEVELAND, O.—(1) Under the single tax will the enhanced value given to fifty acres by clearing and breaking be looked upon as a product of labor, and therefore be exempt from taxation?
- Should there be a natural growth of trees upon it, which the settler formed into logs, would those logs be regarded as distinct products of his labor, or as compensation for clearing the land?
GUS SANFORD
Any value due to clearing the land would be exempt from taxation. Assuming the fifty acres in its natural state to have no value, the settler would not be taxed until land in the neighborhood similarly situated, but not cleared, acquired value.
The logs would be a labor product distinct from the clearing and breaking.
Where Was It, and What of It?
NIRA, Iowa.—I have been asked by protectionists, “Where was our gold in 1860?” Please answer.
D. S.
If there is any point to the question you will have to get your protectionist friend to restate it.
Some of our gold was then in the ground, a very large quantity was in circulation, some of it was in the banks, some was in the pockets of our people, some was in plate, some was in old stockings, and some was in old teeth. If the question has anything to do with the tariff controversy it p. 7, col. 2 is difficult to discern the relation, but that is true of most protection conundrums.
Notes.
JAMES A. GILMORE, Milford, Mass.—We cannot tell where you will find a copy or pamphlet on the tariff question by H. V. Nelson, published four years ago. Perhaps some of our readers may. We think the estimate of the average tariff duties as forty-seven per cent is correct.
O. E. ROBERT, Torrington, Conn.—The United States supreme court have never in terms declared that “the tariff was a legalized robbery upon the people.” The supreme court cannot pass upon the question of protective duties because they are always levied under acts purporting to be for the purpose of raising revenue, a matter within the power of congress. But it has passed on the principle of protection in the case of The loan association vs. Topeka. This was quoted by Representative Scott in his speech on the Mills bill, and will be found on the first page of THE STANDARD of May 19.
W. C. BOWMAN, Las Cruces, N. M.—Write to Mr. Charles Sprague, care Union dime savings bank, Thirty-second street and Broadway, New York.
LOUIS F. POST.
SOME HEAVENLY POSSIBILITIES.
All the Year Round.
A dream which has haunted more than one imagination, whether astronomically scientific or not, is the possibility of communication with other worlds outside our own. M. Flammarion begins with the nearest heavenly body, namely, our brightfaced satellite.
Some fifty years ago the astronomer Littrow, director of the Vienna observatory, started the idea of effecting an optical communication with the inhabitants of the moon.
A triangle traced on the lunar surface by three luminous lines, each ten or twelve miles long, would be visible here by the aid of our telescopes. We even observe much smaller details; for instance, the singular topographical tracings remarked in the lunar circus to which the name of Plato has been given. Consequently, a triangle, a square, or a circle of like dimensions constructed by us on some vast plain by means of luminous points, either reflecting the solar light during daytime, or by electric light at night, would be visible by astronomers in the moon, supposing those astronomers to exist and to possess optical instruments equivalent to our own.
The inference is as plain as may be. If we were to observe on the moon a triangle correctly drawn, we should be not a little puzzled. We should either refer it to some optical illusion, or we should ask ourselves whether the chances of geological disturbance could have resulted in the formation of a regular geometrical figure. No doubt we should in the end feel obliged to admit this very exceptional possibility. But if, all at once, we saw the triangle change into a square, and, a few months afterward, be replaced by a circle, we should then, quite reasonably, allow that an intelligent effect proves an intelligent cause, and we should be led to conclude that those geometrical figures revealed the presence of geometricians on the neighboring world.
From that to demanding the reason for the formation of those figures on the lunar soil, and inquiring why and with what object our unknown brethren traced them, is only a step very quickly made. Could it be with the hope and intention of entering into communication with us? The hypothesis is not so very absurd.
Why, after all, should not the inhabitants of the moon be more inquisitive, more intelligent than we? Why should they not suppose that the earth may be inhabited as well as their own little world? And why should not their geometrical signals be made with the object of inquiring whether we really do exist? Moreover, an answer is not difficult. They exhibit a triangle; we can produce it here. If they trace a circle, we can do the same. And thus we shall have established a correspondence between earth and sky for the first time since the beginning of the world.
Since geometry is absolutely the same for the inhabitants of every planet, since two and two make four throughout the regions of infinite space, the signals thus exchanged between the earth and the moon would not be more obscure than the hieroglyphics which Champollion succeeded in deciphering. Communication once accomplished would soon become regular and productive. The moon, indeed, is close at hand—distant only thirty times the earth’s diameter. Many a veteran rural postman has walked as many miles during the course of his official rounds. A telegraphic dispatch would reach it in a second and a quarter.
It must be confessed that, up to the present time, nothing has been remarked on the moon which can betray the existence there of an intelligent race of human beings. Nevertheless, astronomers who specially observe our satellite and perseveringly study its singular aspects, are generally of opinion that this heavenly body is not so utterly dead as it seems. We ought not to forget that, in the actual state of optics, it is difficult to apply to the observation of the moon a magnifying power superior to two thousand. A view of the moon two thousand times nearer than it is in the heavens only brings it to a distance from us of one hundred and ten or one hundred and twenty miles. But what can we distinguish at a distance of one hundred and ten miles? A vast army on the march? A great city? Perhaps, still it is doubtful.
What is certain is that enigmatical variations are even now taking place on its surface—notably in the area of the circus Plato, already mentioned. What is also certain is, that the lunar globe, forty-nine times smaller than the earth, and eighty-one times lighter, causes weight on its surface to be six times weaker than that which exists on the surface of our planet; so that an atmosphere analogous to that which we breathe would be six times more rarefied, and difficult to be perceived by us. It is not, therefore, surprising that this neighboring world should be so widely different to our own. Moreover, beheld from a balloon, at an altitude of only twelve or fifteen thousand feet, the earth appears desert, uninhabited, silent as an enormous cemetery. The traveler who should reach us from the moon in a balloon might doubt, at that trifling distance, whether there were people. or sic in Paris.
The deathlike aspect of our pale satellite did not offer much encouragement for the realization of Littrow’s original project. Consequently, other speculators allowed their imaginations to fly off to the planet Mars, which, although never nearer to us than fourteen million leagues, is the best known of all the worlds in the sky, and which bears such a resemblance to the world we live in that, if we were suddenly transported thither, we should hardly feel ourselves out of our element.
The aspect of Mars, in fact, consoles us a little for that of the moon. We might fancy ourselves, really, in some terrestrial region. Continents, seas, islands, shores, peninsulas, capes, gulfs, clouds, rains, inundations, snows, winters and summers, springs and autumns, days and nights—all are there exactly as with us. The years are longer, consisting of six hundred and eighty-seven days, but the intensity of the seasons is absolutely the same as ours, for the inclination of its axis is the same. The days are also a trifle longer, since the diurnal rotation of Mars takes twenty-four hours, thirty-seven minutes and twenty-three seconds; but the difference is not great. And please note, all this is known with precision. The diurnal rotation, for instance, is determined within the tenth of a sic.
When we behold the polar snows on Mars melting in spring, the sharply cut continents, the mediterranean seas with their deeply indented bays—the whole varied and suggestive geographical configuration—we cannot help asking whether the sun, which illumines Mars as well as the earth, can possibly shine upon no living creature there; whether those rains fecundate nothing; whether there be no live thing—no bird or beast—to breathe the atmosphere; and whether Mars, which rushes so rapidly through space that we can follow its progress from week to week, and even from p. 7, col. 3 day to day, is like an express train traveling along a railroad without passengers or merchandise.
The idea that the earth on which we live could revolve as it does, round the sun, without being inhabited by any animated organism whatsoever, seems so inconsistent that it is difficult to admit its possibility. We cannot conceive that the energies of nature, which would be as potent there as they are here, should remain eternally inactive and sterile.
But the distance of this planet is so great that although far superior to the moon in volume, it appears at its nearest approach to us, sixty-three times smaller. So that a telescope which magnifies only sixty-three times, shows us Mars of the same dimensions as the moon seen by the naked eye. A magnifying power of six hundred and thirty would give us a diameter ten times larger than our satellite’s as we behold it with our unaided vision, only, if any attempt were ever made to effect a communication between Mars and ourselves, the signals must evidently be on a much vaster scale than in the case of correspondence with the moon.
But may not the inhabitants of Mars have already taken the initiative? And is it not we who have failed to understand them?
According to the most probable cosmogonic theory, Mars is anterior to our planet by several millions of years, and much more advanced in its destiny. The inhabitants of Mars may have been making signals to us for more than a hundred thousand years, without anybody on earth suspecting it. The means of perceiving signals were wanting, even if we had the gift of interpreting their meaning.
The state of the case at present is this: The geographical map of Mars has lately been made, with infinite care, by Schiaparelli, the able director of the Milan observatory. Now, on this map, which is given in Flammarion’s richly illustrated volume, “Les Terres du Ciel,” we may remark the presence of bright spots, shining like snow illumined by the sun. That their brightness is due to snow is scarcely probable, because they occur close to the equator and in the tropics, as well as in higher latitudes. They can hardly be the summits of mountains, for they are close to seas, and are so symmetrically disposed in relation to certain rectilinear canals, that they compel us involuntarily to take them for geodesic landmarks. We notice triangles, squares and oblongs.
M. Flammarion is far from asserting that these luminous points have been so placed by engineers or astronomers, or that the sixty straight, parallel and double canals in the same planet, which enable the seas to communicate with each other, are the work of the inhabitants. Nature is so rich in processes that it would be presumptuous to limit her modes of action. Nevertheless, if the people of Mars intended to attract our attention by signals, this method would be one of the simplest, and even is the only one which has hitherto been imagined here. If such were the case, it would be we who have failed to understand it.
The inhabitants of Mars, possessing a much older civilization than ours, may be much more advanced in the way of progress and be in the full enjoyment of intellectual and spiritual life. Perhaps, however, the martial academies have declared the earth to be uninhabited and uninhabitable, because it is not identically the same as their own country; because it has only one moon, whereas they have two; because our years are too short; because our sky is often cloudy, whilst theirs is almost always bright; and for a thousand sundry reasons one as completely conclusive as the other.
After steam, the telegraph, the electric light and the telephone, would not the discovery of undoubted proofs that humanity exists in another region of our solar archipelago be the most marvelous crowning of the nineteenth century’s scientific glory?
And this is only one of M. Flammarion’s dreams—which may not all, perhaps, be dreams.
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PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE? by Henry George; paper, 35 cents.
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No. 72. “Protection the Friend of Labor?” Thomas G. Shearman. 8 pages.
No. 75. “A Short Tariff History.” Thomas G. Shearman. 2 pages.
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[Advertisement] HENRY GEORGE’S WORKS.
PROGRESS AND POVERTY.
An Inquiry Into the Cause of Industrial Depression and of Increase of Want With Increase of Wealth—The Remedy.
BY HENRY GEORGE.
25[0?] pages.
CONTENTS:
Introductory.—THE PROBLEM.
Book I.—WAGES AND CAPITAL.
Chap. 1. The current doctrine—its insufficiency.
The meaning of the terms.
Wages not drawn from capital, but produced by the labor.
The maintenance of laborers not drawn from capital.
The real functions of capital.
Book II.—POPULATION AND SUBSISTENCE.
Chap. 1. The Malthusian theory—its genesis and support.
Inferences from fact.
Inferences from analogy.
Disproof of the Malthusian theory.
Book III.—THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION.
Chap. 1. The inquiry narrowed to the laws of distribution—necessary relation of these laws.
Rent and the law of rent.
Interest and the cause of interest.
Of spurious capital and of profits often mistaken for interest.
The law of interest.
Wages and the law of wages.
Correlation and co-ordination of these laws.
The statics of the problem thus explained.
Book IV.—EFFECT OF MATERIAL PROGRESS UPON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH.
Chap. 1. The dynamics of the problem yet to seek.
Effect of increase of population upon the distribution of wealth.
Effect of improvements in the arts upon the distribution of wealth.
Effect of the expectation raised by material progress.
Book V.—THE PROBLEM SOLVED.
Chap. 1. The primary cause of recurring paroxysms of industrial depression.
- The persistence of poverty amid advancing wealth.
Book VI.—THE REMEDY.
Chap. 1. Insufficiency of remedies currently advocated.
- The true remedy.
Book VII.—JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY.
Chap. 1. Injustice of private property in land.
Enslavement of laborers the ultimate result of private property in land.
Claim of land owners to compensation.
Property in land historically considered.
Property in land in the United States.
Book VIII.—APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY.
Chap. 1. Private property in land inconsistent with the best use of land.
How equal rights to the land may be asserted and secured.
The proposition tried by the canons of taxation.
Indorsements and objections.
Book IX.—EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY.
Chap. 1. Of the effect upon the production of wealth.
Of the effect upon distribution and thence upon production.
Of the effect upon individuals and classes.
Of the changes that would be wrought in social organization and social life.
Book X.—THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS.
Chap. 1. The current theory of human progress—its insufficiency.
Differences in civilization—to what due.
The law of human progress.
How modern civilization may decline.
The central truth.
Conclusion.—THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE.
The new Land and labor library paper edition of “Progress and Poverty” is now ready, price thirty-five cents. This is printed on better paper, in larger type, is better bound and a considerably larger book than the previous twenty cent edition.
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
BY HENRY GEORGE.
342 pages.
CONTENTS:
The increasing importance of social questions.
Political dangers.
Coming increase of social pressure.
Two opposing tendencies.
The march of concentration.
The wrong in existing social conditions.
Is it the best of all possible worlds?
That we all might be rich.
First principles.
The rights of man.
Dumping garbage.
Over-production.
Unemployed labor.
The effects of machinery.
Slavery and slavery.
Public debts and indirect taxation.
The functions of government.
What we must do.
The great reform.
The American farmer.
City and country.
Conclusion.
PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE?
An Examination of the Tariff Question with Especial Regard to the Interests of Labor.
BY HENRY GEORGE.
CONTENTS:
I. Introductory.
Clearing ground.
Of method.
Protection as a universa sic.
V. The protective unit.
Trade.
Production and producers.
Tariffs for revenue.
Tariffs for protection.
X. The encouragement of industry.
The home market and home trade.
Exports and imports.
Confusions arising from the use of money.
Do high wages necessitate protection
Of advantages and disadvantages as reasons for protection.
The Development of manufactures.
Protection and producers.
Effect of protection on American industry.
Protection and wages.
The abolition of protection.
Inadequacy of the free trade argument.
The Real Weakness of Free Trade.
The Real Strength of Protection.
The Paradox.
The Robber that Takes All that is Left.
True Free Trade.
The Lion in the Way.
Free Trade and Socialism.
Practical Politics.
Conclusion.
THE LAND QUESTION.
What It Involves, and How Alone It Can Be Settled.
BY HENRY GEORGE.
87 pages.
PROPERTY IN LAND.
A Passage-at-Arms Between the Duke of Argyll and Henry George.
77 pages.
FORTSCHRITT AND sic.
(Progress and Poverty in German.)
TRANSLATION OF C. D. F. GUTSCHOW.
430 pages.
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| Protection or Free Trade? paper | 35 |
| ” ” cloth | 1 50 |
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No. 13. “Sailors’ Snug Harbor and the Randall Farm.” By W. T. Croasdale. 12 pages.
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No. 15. “Only a Dream.” By Abner C. Thomas. [4?] pages.
No. 16. “The Anti-Poverty Society.” Dr. McGlynn’s address at the first meeting. 8 pages.
No. 17. “The Cross of the New Crusade.” A poem. By David Rorty. 2 pages.
No. 18. “It is the Law of Christ.” By Rev. S. H. Spencer of Henry, Ill. 4 pages.
No. 19. “My Landlord. By John sic. 4 pages.
No. 20. “Thou Shalt Not Steal.” An address by Henry George before the Anti-Poverty Society. [8?] pages.
No. 21. “Christianity and Poverty.” An address by Father Huntington before the Anti-poverty society. 4 pages.
No. 22. “Poverty and Christianity.” An address by Rev. Hugh O. Pentecost before the Anti-poverty society. 8 pages.
No. 23. “The Single Tax.” By Thomas G. Shearman. 8 pages.
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No. 26. “Religion vs. Robbery.” Address by Rev. Dr. McGlynn before the New York Anti-poverty society, June 12, 1887. 8 pages.
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No. 30. “The Case Plainly Stated.” A speech by H. F. Ring before the Knights of Labor at Houston, Texas. 8 pages.
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No. 32. “Objections to the Land Tax.” By Thomas G. Shearman. 4 pages.
No. 33. “Socialism—Its Truth and Its Error.” Henry George. 4 pages.
No. 34. “Horse Sense.” W. C. Woods. 2 pages.
No. 35. The Syracuse Platform. 2 pages.
No. 36. “Citycus and Rusticus.” Tudor S. Jenks. [4?] pages.
No. 37. “Taxing Land Values.” Henry George. 8 pp.
No. 38. “God Wills It.” Henry George. 4 pages.
No. 39. “What We Want.” Everett Glackin, president Typographical Union No. 6. 2 pages.
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8 — THE STANDARD, SATURDAY, JULY 28. 1888.
p. 8, col. 1
CURRENT THOUGHT.
Under the title, “Studies of Factory Life: The Village System,” Mrs. Lillie B. Chace Wyman gives in the Atlantic Monthly an account of the development of the labor system in the New England cotton mills, tracing it from its earliest beginning, when “an American mechanic would often start a little mill with a few dozen employes,” among whom would sic “his own children and the children of his relatives,” down to the present day, when employers and employed have differentiated into two widely separated castes, between whose members anything like friendship, or a common mode of thought, is all but an impossibility.
This differentiation, Mrs. Wyman tells us, “began to develop as the profits of the employer grew greater than the wages of the employed,” and proceeded with accelerating rapidity as foreign labor was substituted for American.
The next generation sic the change. The New England girls of this period did not go into the factory, as their mothers had done. They sought higher employment during the interval between school and marriage. The governing class in the industry, including owners, clerks, superintendents and overseers, was now of a different race and religion from the workers, who, so far as money affairs were concerned, had become a governed class. I do not mean that such of the men as had the franchise were improperly controlled in their political action . . . I mean that the methods of their daily life and work are under control.
This control of “the methods of their daily life and work” was and is largely due to the fact that the governing class own not only the mills in which the operatives labor, but also the houses in which they live. Around each mill a village rises—a manufacturing village pure and simple. The factory is its core and center, and the factory owner is its autocrat. The tenement houses and boarding houses are his; the stores and churches and saloons exist by his permission. Even when he is not the owner of all the land in the village it is clear that his power can be but very slightly diminished. For he controls the opportunity to labor; he can give or refuse permission to work at his pleasure. He can, practically, say who shall live in the village and who shall not, and within wide limits can make his own conditions.
What sort of life the mill hands lead under this system we may judge by a few extracts from Mrs. Wyman’s article:
When an operative who is the head of a family comes to a mill village, he tells the overseer or superintendent how many laborers he can enter into the mill, and he is assigned a tenement, with more or less liberty of choice as to the dwelling place, according to circumstances. . . .
If a family in the mill service, which has rented rooms from the company, withdraws its working members from the factory, it is required to leave its habitation within a reasonable time. This rule is apt to be strictly enforced if the tenants retire from the mill because they are dissatisfied with their work or their wages, unless they are participants in a general strike. In that case the company is forced to defer action until the issue of the matter seems probable. No one can be familiar with factory village life without perceiving that the control of the tenements might be a tremendous lever in the hands of an unjust person. This portion of the management devolves upon the superintendent. He rents the tenements to the people, admits and warns them out.
If for any reason there are plenty of houses to accommodate the operatives, tenants are frequently allowed to remain in possession who do not fulfill the rule that the number of persons in a family furnished to the mill must bear some proportion to the size of the tenement held. Instances of the kind have frequently come to my knowledge, such as that of an old couple who occupied a house for years, while the company waited till they should die to tear it down. On the other hand, when it is necessary to provide more shelter for help than can be easily obtained, the rule is sometimes very strictly carried out. Cases often arise, therefore, of families whose working force has grown smaller being obliged to move from a home that they have had for many years. . . . As the children grow up and leave the parents, no longer constituting a working force for them, the old man and his wife may be constrained to quit their roomy residence, and in one day all the associations of twenty years are destroyed. Since these movings are not voluntary, the sundering of old ties cannot be accompanied by the softening influence of the new hopes which are implied in the deliberate choice of a removal. The managers may regret these things, but they are themselves acting under pressure. . . .
The superintendent and the overseers hire and discharge the help. In Rhode Island, until recently, pay day came once a month, and a superintendent has been known to require an operative who left him inopportunely to wait some weeks till the regular pay day came before he could be paid. A recourse to law would result in the man’s receiving his pay, but the law is too expensive to be always sought when it is needed. If an overseer is vexed with an operative who is leaving his work, or who is discharged for some fault, it is easy to delay for a day or two that casting up of accounts which is necessary to enable the man to obtain at once the wages due him. . . . These delays of course often cause a poor wretch’s board bills to increase, while he is prevented from going to another village in search of fresh employment. In all these matters, however, the overseer must be judged in the light of his situation. He is put by the system into a place where he is subjected to great pressure from above and much annoyance from below. . . He is generally a man of no education except in factory matters, and of no especial refinement or moral development. He has a good deal of opportunity and much temptation to be tyrannical. . . .
A large proportion of the operatives are always in debt; that is, the wages they receive each pay day are nearly all due for the food already eaten, the clothes already worn, in the past month. . . . If the mill company own a store, its bills against any of the help are subtracted from their wages when the monthly accounts are made up. Rent and board are taken out in the same manner, and also the price of wood and coal furnished by the establishment. After these deductions are made it often happens that, in the phrase of the mill worker, very little cash “comes in” to him. . . .
. . Let us suppose a family to have two working members and three dependent ones. Their monthly receipts might be from thirty-five to fifty dollars. This is a large estimate as to receipts, and a small one as to persons among whom those receipts must be divided. Such a family, while they feed and clothe themselves, pay rent, buy fuel and lights, and meet occasional expenses for doctors, births and funerals, must save the amount required to support themselves for an entire
p. 8, col. 2 > month before they can begin to pay as they go. If they should move to another village, what ready money they have would probably be expended in moving, and then they must work some weeks before they receive any wages. Meanwhile, the old routine of debt begins again. . . .
The advocates of monthly payments think the men drink less than they would if they received money every week . . . My own impression is, however, that the cause of the drink evil lies rather in the poverty of the operatives than in the fact that they occasionally handle money, and that their tendency to run in debt, and consequently to grow poorer, is increased by the custom of infrequent distribution of wages to them.
. . . . . .
Tenement ownership by the manufacturers was a necessity in the past, and is both a convenience and a source of great difficulty in the present. It is a powerful engine of control over the working people—a control that can be used for the pecuniary advantage of the mill owners, in the hold which it gives over such operatives as they wish to retain in their employ. It seems also to have both good and evil effects on the character of the villagers. It will not do to overlook either the good or the evil, in attempting to form a judgment as to the value of the institution to the country. Mr. Arnold B. Chace gives it as his opinion that tenement ownership checks rum selling and open immorality, and that it preserves a higher sanitary condition than could otherwise be at present obtained. On the other hand, he thinks that it is not friendly to the development of the sentiment for home, and that it tends to make the operatives a floating class in the population. In one of the largest Rhode Island villages, thirty families moved into the place and entered the mill service within five months in the winter of 1887–88. Eleven of these went away before the five months were past, and nine other families also departed during the same period. Six moved on account of malaria. Their names indicate that about one-third of the whole number were French Canadians. Probably more were of that race, as these people frequently anglicize their names beyond the recognition of their nationality. If they do not effect this transformation themselves, it is often done for them at the factory counting room, where the clerks dub them anew, after vain struggles to get their original appellations correctly.
Briefly, Mrs. Wyman’s story of a great American industry, fostered by protection to the very utmost, may be thus summed up: Americans have been all but completely driven out of it; and the foreigners who have replaced them exist in a condition of degrading tutelage than which it would be hard to imagine anything more irreconcilable with democratic institutions. An instructive picture this, to set beside those fanciful sketches of contented New England industry that romancists like the Rev. Edward Everett Hale are so fond of offering us.
—
Mrs. Wyman is by no means a defender of the system she describes; neither does she condemn it. She simply recognizes that there is a problem to be solved, and does her best to convey to us a correct sic of one of its factors.
The discovery of the principles upon which society should be founded is helped by the study of existing imperfect conditions. As a contribution to the materials for such study it has seemed worth while to call attention even to this small group of facts, which bear on the condition of the laborers who have received religious freedom, and a portion of whom possess or may attain political prerogatives, but who have no heritage in the soil, and no claims upon society insuring them work and wages. These facts may be verified in every New England factory village.
How clear an idea our author has of the actual industrial situation she shows in no uncertain fashion:
It has been held to be a fundamental axiom that each man possessed of a portion of this world’s natural products has a right to hire and a right to refuse to hire other men to work over those products. The corollary to this proposition is that each would-be laborer—that is, each man not possessed of natural products, has no right to insist upon being hired; no concrete right to be hired by any particular employer, no abstract right to be hired at all. His chance to earn a living is secured by no inherent right to the opportunity to earn his living. He has been given absolute freedom—the freedom from all claim, as a human being, to a portion of the earth, whereto he is sent, presumably by the same power as other men are sent, to whom certain rights in the earth are granted as soon as they are born in virtue of their relation to some person or family. The simple human being is allowed nothing in the way of possession. He may work if he pleases, and some one pleases to hire him. He has no right either to the soil or to employment on the soil. He is not like the Roman colone, who was obliged to labor on one spot of land forever, he and his descendants, but from whom and from whose descendants that land could never be taken. The colone was indeed bound to the land and to various hard conditions, but the land was also bound to him. He had a place to be born, to stand and to be buried.
We bargain for the graves we lie in.
It is not well to exaggerate the deplorable phases of the modern industrial system. Many men, though poor, lead comfortable lives under this arrangement. Moreover, the growth of this system was consequent upon the recognition of individual liberty, which is infinitely valuable. The defect seems to be that liberty of thought and of motion is not all that is necessary to insure each human being his due opportunity in this world. Francis Walker comments upon the supposed liberty of the laborer to carry his labor to the best market, saying that it is almost as absurd as to talk of the liberty of a bale of goods to travel about, if there is no person interested to carry it. The fact is that, barring the purely intellectual pursuits, there are only two ways by which a man can support life—first, by possessing some portion of the natural products of the earth, which be can eat, drink, wear, and shelter himself withal; or second, by having the opportunity to work over the natural products for another person, who in return gives him food, drink, clothing and shelter, or else the money, with which he can purchase these necessities. Modern society has decided that a man, in virtue of his simple humanity, has no inherent and inalienable right to either of these two ways by which to support life. He may gain either, if he is able. He may have either given him, as a pauper or as an heir. He has no birthright to either. According to theory, the laborer of to-day is hung between heaven and earth in the social atmosphere, his feet on nothing. His mouth is open and he reaches out a pair of empty hands, in the hope that some other man will employ them in such fashion that they may, between whiles, grab and cram some bits into the mouth.
The right to live, which we call “inalienable,” has not always been considered a right at all. Now it is pretty generally granted that if a man is born, it is a sign that he has
p. 8, col. 3 > received from God, or nature, or some authority, the right to live. But that right translated into usage resolves itself into little more than the right to walk the roads, to breathe air, and to use water under some restrictions. The legal right to “take up” land in some distant portion of the country cannot be placed in the same category with these others, since the exercise of it involves the sundering of domestic ties and depends on emigration, the possession of some money, and on various conditions, which a man cannot fulfill without labor; and he has no right to demand the labor necessary to fulfill them.
It does not lie within the scope of this paper to inquire whether all or any of the theories are wise which society is beginning to consider, and which, if adopted, would lead to important alterations in our institutions. It may, however, be worth while to note that the question, What are the inalienable rights which are involved in existence on this planet? is met by Henry George with one answer, while various labor organizations, which inquire into the causes for which workmen are discharged, are suggesting a different reply. Mr. George maintains that man is born with a right to possess a portion of the natural products of the earth. These labor organizations do not yet affirm, but they do imply, that man is born with a certain less definite right to be employed. These two solutions of the problem are theoretically antagonistic to each other. Grant one and the other falls to the ground. A man cannot have as a birthright a claim upon the soil, and in addition a claim to be employed by some person who also possesses a claim upon the soil. Modern society has denied both in practice, and the “labor movement” has begun. Its agitation is a hopeful sign. It is especially hopeful because in consequence of it people are seeking for fundamental ideas by which to modify institutions. The ideal atmosphere is the only atmosphere in which a practical world can breathe and not grow sordid and squalid.
Mrs. Wyman’s use of the term “natural products” to convey the idea of natural opportunities for production involves her in some confusion of thought, as when she apparently supposes that the mere possession of “some portion of the natural products of the earth” would be sufficient to support life. To the same faulty terminology may be traced her misconception of the single tax doctrine. Neither Henry George nor anybody else “maintains that a man is born with a right to possess a portion of the natural products of the earth.” What is maintained is that every human being has an equal and unalienable right to the use of natural opportunities for producing wealth—which is a very different thing. But it is a hopeful sign of the times that a woman of Mrs. Wyman’s powers of thought and observation should see the social paradox so clearly, and state it so plainly.
Three London Landlords.
One of Thackeray’s most entertaining chapters is entitled “How to live well on nothing a year.” It describes and illustrates the manner in which a gentleman, doing no work himself and receiving no alms from charitably disposed persons, may still contrive to enjoy a more than ordinary share of the good things of life. The thing is very simple. All that is needed is to get other folks to work for you and pay them nothing for it. When Colonel Crawley and his wife wanted a house they just took one; when they wanted bread and butter they took that. Clothes, jewelry, furniture, excursions, milk for the spaniel dog—it was all the same to them; what they wanted they took; and if incidentally it happened that the takees were ruined, why it was a pity, but didn’t damp the noble spirits of Colonel Crawley and his spouse.
In “The Great Landlords of London” (1) Mr. Banfield shows us truth that is stranger than fiction, and tells of a set of people who so far outdo Rawdon Crawley and his wife that they not only manage to live without work in a state of luxury to which Becky Sharp never aspired, but contrive to avoid the odium which attached to the Crawley method, and enjoy the esteem and respect of their fellow countrymen. They levy taxes on those around them, not in the half hearted Crawley way, by taking things and pretending that they are going to pay for them, but openly and above board, and with the strong hand. They have the power, and they exercise it; and their fellow mortals humbly submit, first, because they cannot help themselves, and secondly, because they have got used to the infliction, and see nothing immoral in it. These men are the great landlords of London—the men who own the chief city of the world; and in this book Mr. Banfield tells us how three of the chief among them administer the taxing franchises which they call their “properties.”
The estates of Viscount Portman, we learn, embrace between two and three hundred acres, crowded with large residences and fine shops, with here and there an alley or a slum. Ninety-nine years ago the father of the present viscount, in consideration of certain annual rents to be duly paid, graciously gave permission to a number of people to build houses on these lands and to keep possession of them for ninety-nine years, and no longer. On March 25 last the whole batch of leases fell in, and all the houses became Lord Portman’s property. Neither he nor his father have ever done a stroke of work toward building these houses, nor toward increasing the value of the land on which they stand. They have paid nothing for building, nothing for opening streets[,?] nothing for paving, nor for lighting, nor for laying gas or water mains, nor for poor rates, nor for police expenses. They have simply allowed themselves to be supported in luxurious idleness. And now they own the houses, every brick and tile of them.
But the Viscount Portman is generous. He doesn’t want the houses nor the land. He is willing his tenantry should continue to occupy them, but of course he wants more rent:
The old Viscount Portman is eighty-nine, so the family council, assisted by Mr. Hunt, have evolved the following stipulations. There are three classes of renewals, which I number here below 1, 2 and 3:
- Long term—Where a tenant is able to do certain works, and a house in a residential street is worth, say, with stables, £200 a year, it would be let for forty years at £80 a year and a premium of £1,400. The “certain works” alluded to are these: The tenant must put on an extra story, and modernize the
[footnote, printed at foot of column 3:]
- The Great Landlords of London. By Frank Banfield, M. A. London: Spencer & Blackett, 35 St. Bride street, Ludgate Circus, E. C.
p. 8, col. 4 > house throughout. Modernizing the house throughout means putting in plate glass windows, new drains, water service and raising the ceiling of the top floor—that is to say, as I am given to understand, from 7 feet 6 inches to 8 feet 6 inches.
- Same class of house—A lease of twenty-five years. Here the rent is again fixed at £80 a year, and the premium is £1,400. The tenant also has to modernize the sic and repair. His lease is fifteen years shorter than that of No. 1, because he has not been disposed to go to the expense of making Lord Portman a present of an additional story, together with the other good things. What the difference is between Nos. 1 and 2, architecturally considered, may be seen by any one who cares to pay a visit to Gloucester place, and there, on the spot, study the points of divergence in modern buildings.
- Where the tenant will not lay out capital, a seven years’ lease for seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years is given at a rack rent, the tenant only doing repairs.
This sort of thing is only for residential properties. Where the building is occupied as a store, and more particularly if it happens to he a tavern, the proceeding is more elaborate. The tenant is required to produce his books, and make a full disclosure of his business, in order that the agent may properly estimate the value of the good will. For the good will, of course, goes with the house, and belongs to Lord Portman:
It may be asked how these cruel premiums, exactions and rack rents affect the worldly prosperity of the dwellers on the Portman estate. I have already alluded to the migration from East street. A tradesman, who has long carried on business in Baker street, informed me that, after the heavy fine levied on him by the estate, and withdrawn from his working capital, he has had to face the fact that sixteen of what he called his “good old fashioned customers” had been driven off the estate out of Gloucester place by the policy which commends itself to Mr. Hunt. Tradesmen aver that it is with declining revenues that they have had to face the fierce financial cyclone which burst upon Baker street and the surrounding thoroughfares during the month of March just past. I was told a pathetic story of how the Portman extortions make it impossible to conduct business except at a loss, and the victims endure and persist in their callings only because of that hope for better days which, happily, though it is often vain, cheers, like the sun ray flashing between dark storm clouds, the most melancholy, cast down and dismayed of mortals. One shopkeeper, whose name was given me, has despaired of earning more money in Baker street. He has resolved, while a little capital is still his, to shake the dust off his feet and depart, trusting that he may be able to support his remaining days upon the money he has been able to save from the wreck of his fortunes. But the others, for the most part, hang on. It has been hard to leave the old haunts and the good will acquired at so much cost. But they maintain that the Portman policy spells “Ruin,” that a once prosperous trading community is in a condition not dissimilar from that of the least fortunate of English farmers.
The net result of the re-leasing of the Portman lands, Mr. Banfield informs us, has been a million and a half of pounds sterling in Lord Portman’s pocket, and an increase of eight hundred per cent in his rent roll besides.
—
The duke of Westminster is a slightly different sort of landlord from Lord Portman. The latter looks chiefly after the ready cash, and is strongest in imposing fines for renewals, and otherwise devising excuses for transferring money from his tenants’ pockets to his own. But the duke, while, of course, not neglecting his own immediate interests, appears more anxious to secure the erection of fine buildings, to have his streets widened and well sewered, and his property generally made a strictly first class one. All this, of course, costs a great deal of money. But it isn’t the duke’s money:
On the immediate right, the northeastern end of Mount street, there is a ghastly gap where houses have come down and the builder has not yet had time to replace them. On the left, the southern side, stretches for a considerable distance a massive pile of dwellings, rich in all the ornament which the artistic skill of Messrs. Doulton can command. The ground floors are handsome shops, and above rise five or six stories of such height and general dimensions that one immediately comes to the correct conclusion that they are not adapted to be abodes for the tradesmen who carry on business below, but must be meant for letting in residential flats. This side of the street now presents a very fine appearance, and there can be no question that when the architectural schemes have been carried out to completion, Mount street will be one of the most striking thoroughfares in the metropolis. “Very noble and public spirited of the duke,” it may be observed. Just so; but then these grand edifices were not raised at his cost, but by the present tenants out of their hard earned savings, on the commercial credit they possess, and on pain of having to wander forth. They constructed this massive pile no more willingly than the children of Israel, some thousands of years ago, expended their energies in deference to the task masters of Pharaoh.
Each of these new houses cost, on an average, seven thousand pounds to build, and, in certain instances, the occupier has found his outlay run up to nine thousand pounds, and has had no choice in the matter. He has been obliged to follow the duke’s plans, and his liberty has been further fettered in that he has had to accept the duke’s architects. A list of them has been given him, and from this list he has been obliged to choose. If he consents to build in this way he is granted a lease, the ground rent varying from £3 to £6 a foot, and as much as £6 10s. a foot has been asked. As a leading tradesman observed to me, the outlay demanded of the tenant is so great as to seriously handicap him in his business; and he asked me if there was any relation in reason between the lofty structure above the shop and the place of business below. Architecturally one supported the weight of the other; but financially the burden was much too great. Of course, where the tenant may be lucky enough to let the superimposed flats at a good rent, he may survive the ordeal through which he has been forced to pass; but this is a speculative matter, and we may venture to inquire what moral right the duke of Westminster has to compel old tenants of fifty years’ standing to go to an enormous expense, at grave risks to themselves, to launch out in such an experiment. Then, be it borne in mind, that, after paying a large ground rent and spending £7,000 to £9,000 on the house, the premises will go to the descendants of the duke, without one pennyworth of compensation to the descendants of the man who staked his capital and ventured his credit that they might stand a monument to the duke’s taste in architecture. Yet tradesmen accept these terms because they do not wish to leave the neighborhood where they have formed a con-
p. 8, col. 5 > nection, and where they have acquired a good will.
If the present system of land tenure endures for another hundred years, the duke of Westminster of the year 1988 will have cause to bless the forethought of his ancestor.
—
The third great landlord described by Mr. Banfield is his grace the duke of Bedford, who owns in one of the busiest parts of London, a snug little estate of 118½ acres. Included in this domain is the famous Covent garden market, where the duke takes toll of Londoners for the flowers and vegetables they consume. Every basket of cherries, every crate of apples, every bunch of carrots or nosegay of flowers exhibited for sale in Covent garden must pay tax to the duke’s agent before it can be sold. Even when there is no room in the market the tax is levied just the same, and farmers’ wagons standing in the open street half a mile or more from the market, are visited and assessed by the duke’s representative.
In his capacity of ordinary landlord, the duke of Bedford seems to unite the characteristics of the two other landlords of whom Mr. Banfield has given us pictures. And there is an added something about him—an extra touch of greed and tyranny—that neither of the other two rent eaters possesses. In the residential part of the estate the tenants are allowed to do nothing that may lower the aristocratic tone of the neighborhood. A tenant may not take boarders—he may not put up a door plate that at all approaches to a sign in character—he may not have, in short, in or about his house, any evidence that he earns an honest living. Even the street itself is sacred, and may not be profaned by tradesmen’s vehicles. Here is a copy of the notice that adorns a gate across the east end of Harrington square:
By permission of the duke of Bedford, and during his grace’s pleasure, gentlemen’s carriages of every description, hackney coaches, cabriolets and persons on horseback may pass this gate from 7 o’clock in the morning till 11 o’clock at night. Empty hackney coaches, empty cabs and carts, drays, wagons, trucks, cattle and horses at exercise will not be permitted to pass.
Bedford office, Bloomsbury, June, 1887.
How this duke treats his ordinary tenants—the people who work for a living—may be judged from the story of Miss Slaymaker:
In Centre row, Covent garden, during forty-three years, the Slaymaker family carried on a business as fruiterers and florists. There were a father and mother, two sons and a daughter. The father died many years ago; but it was only in April last year that Mrs. Slaymaker passed away, leaving her daughter, Miss Julia Slaymaker, to carry on the shop and to support herself and her invalid brother. The shop had been tenanted by the Slaymakers at a rental of £1 15s. a week. When her mother died Miss Slaymaker called at the Bedford office to obtain permission to continue in the premises. It may here be interjected that her father had paid £100 in 1844 to the then outgoing tenant for the business, while the Slaymakers laid out so much money in fitting up the place that it was the most completely provided retail establishment in Centre row. The agent informed Miss Slaymaker that she could continue in [the premises?] at a rent of £4 a week; but on conditions. She was to give up the florist sic and become, purely and simply, a fruiterer. Moreover, besides this, she was to dismiss her manager, whose skill and energy, displayed over a number of years, had proved the mainstay of her family.
Miss Slaymaker begged and protested, but there was no mercy for her. The end of the matter was that she moved away and established herself elsewhere, of course losing a great part of the good will of the business. And no sooner had she gone than another tenant was installed in her place, whose sign announced him as a fruiterer and florist! The duke of Bedford had simply gobbled the good will of her business and sold it to somebody else.
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THE OUTLINE OF A BETTER SYSTEM.
Hugh O. Pentecost’s Final Sermon on the Social Problem—The Way to Social Redemption—Effect Simple Justice and in Fifty Years Religion Will be Born Again—The Moral Side of the Tariff Question.
Mr. Pentecost delivered his last sermon for the summer last Sunday. His discourse was the final one of three on social evolution. Having already diagnosed the social disease, he proceeded to point out the remedy. The important thing to understand, he said, was that whatever remedy shall be finally applied to the social disorder it must involve a radical change. The present monopolistic social system must be destroyed and a new system established under which no person shall have a privilege granted him by law which gives him an unfair advantage over another person; so that no person shall have a legal right to take money which he emphatically does not earn, away from some one who emphatically does earn it. He said:
In olden times a band of robbers used to establish themselves in a mountain fastness and maintain themselves in luxurious idleness by descending upon the neighborhood and robbing the people in one way and another. It frequently happened that these robbers were well known. They mingled with the people upon very good terms, and, in fact, for reasons which had considerable weight in those communities, no effort was made to break up their thriving business. The peaceful people concluded that it was better to lose a cow or two and a few bushels of grain or sides of bacon occasionally than to incur the vengeance of the robbers by attempting, with probable failure, to root them out. Then, too, the robbers were fine gentlemen who made a good appearance, they spent their money freely among the people; they protected the people from other robbers, and the people had become accustomed to their methods of robbery, and dreaded any change.
Under those circumstances no one could blame the robbers particularly for enriching themselves in a manner not especially objectionable to the community. The people were to blame for supposing that their social system involved a band of robbers in every community, and tamely submitting to the arrangement. By and by they saw their error and when they did the robbers had to go.
Who can blame the robbers when the robbed are perfectly well satisfied with the arrangement? That the people who prefer the robbers to those who would deliver them is proved by the fact that American workmen at every election vote in favor of landlordism, national bankism, railroadism, telegraphism, coalmineism and against every principle that is calculated to deliver them from their bondage by breaking up the system which festers and protects the class or band of robbers who prey upon the community.
Nothing can be done for our social betterment as long as we retain the system which legalizes the plundering methods of those who take away from the people every dollar above what is necessary to buy food, clothes, shelter and a few months’ schooling for their children. That class or band of robbers must go, not by personal removal, but by abolition of the laws which constitute the system under which they operate and making other laws under which no such criminal practices can obtain.
The hope of the world is not in the reformation of individuals, nor in any attempt to change human nature, but in changing the industrial conditions under which men live.
To convert individuals to Christianity, to improve their morals, to better educate them, to make the rich more charitable and the poor more contented, however much it may improve their condition in some possible next world. will notsic perceptibly purify society in this world: and I, for one, am especially concerned about bettering the conditions of life in this world, and I believe this will improve our condition in any possible next.
The man who picks your pocket in a crowd is no more a criminal (and not half so dangerous to society) than he who robs you of earnings when you buy a piece of land or when you work for him in his factory. The man who kills the wayfarer for his money is no more a murderer than he who kills his fellows by compelling them to live in death breeding tenements. The only difference between them is that in one case crime is committed contrary to law, and in the other crime is committed according to law. And I am sure that when it is no longer possible for men to commit crime according to law, there will be very little crime contrary to law.
Another thing I would like you to clearly understand, is that while it is not possible for us to reform all men individually, or to change human nature, it is possible for us to change the industrial conditions under which men live, so that each man and woman shall be assured of enough wealth to keep him or her in comfort, and thus take away most temptations to do wrong, and afford sufficient leisure for the cultivation of the intellectual, moral and religious nature. By putting people under favorable industrial conditions they will reform themselves by the operation of the laws of human nature. The reason why people are so prone to do wrong now is because it pays to do wrong. We can make a virtuous people by so changing social conditions that it will pay to do right.
How can these conditions be brought about? I cannot tell you the whole story in the last half of one sermon, but I can give you a great general principle upon which, if you think long and clearly enough, you can soon learn the whole story. This is the general principle:
No class or individual shall be taxed for the benefit of another class or individual. That is to say: No one shall be taxed on the products of his industry.
There is not a monopoly or a privileged class which would not be destroyed, or a privileged person in the world who would not be reduced to a social and industrial equality with all his fellows, if that principle were embodied in constitutions and statute laws.
Now, observe how this social system is a skillful contrivance for enriching the few by taxing the many. A portion of the taxes is collected by the government and a larger portion by individuals under the sanction of the laws.
What is our whole system of tariff duties but an adroit scheme by which a few become enriched out of the taxes levied on the many. I have no interest in this subject as a political question. I am interested in it only as an economic question. I am not thinking of the platforms or the destiny of the republican or democratic parties. Both platforms were made, as they always are, simply and only to catch votes, and there is not one grain of principle or conscience or patriotism in either of them, if we consider the motive behind them. And so far as the two great parties are concerned, the best and the worst that can be said of them is that either is as bad as the other, and they are both as bad as they can be, and yet they must be up to the average principle and p. 2, col. 2 consciences and patriotism of the majority of the people or they could not continue to exist and flourish. If any one supposes that I am talking for either party, as I heard hinted with regard to a recent sermon, he is mistaken. I expect to vote with one of them this fall, but I shall do so just as if I wished to cross a river and there was but one ferry boat at hand. I should be obliged to take that, even if it were a mud scow loaded with manure. I should hold my nose in transit, but be thankful to go on toward my journey’s end, but I shouldn’t try to make the boatman think that I thought he had a nice clean boat to ride in.
This is what I expect to do this fall. One of the parties is going my way. The boat in which I rode last year has sprung a leak. Some things have leaked into it, and some things have leaked out of it. It is not going my way this year. I expect to get into the democratic boat and hold my nose till I get as far as the boat can take me. But it isn’t a pleasant boat to ride in, all the same. That is, it isn’t pleasant to me.
As I started to say, I look at the tariff simply as a tax upon one set of people for the benefit of another set, and I therefore consider it a social crime. It would not change my mind if you should prove to me that the 16,000,000 people who live upon the wages of workingmen engaged in “protected” industries were benefited by the tariff as well as their employers, because I do not see why 44,000,000 people should be taxed to help support 16,000,000. The only possible excuse for taxing 60,000,000 people would be that the whole of them would be mutually benefited; but there is no such tax as that and there cannot be.
All that I have said of the tariff applies with equal force in principle (though not in exact effect) to internal revenues, and all taxes on houses, goods, machinery and all other personal property, and to all taxes or licenses for the privilege of selling goods. Our whole system of taxation by which products of labor are heavily mortgaged and products of nature (criminally appropriated by individuals) hardly taxed at all is expressly calculated to punish the industrious and reward the idle.
Our whole system of taxation says as plainly as if in so many words: “We know that if people are allowed to get upon the land freely where they can get a comfortable living, there can be no monopolies and no millionaires. They must be kept off the land therefore; and the cheapest and most effective way to accomplish that is to encourage individuals to fence in the common property and reward them for not using it themselves or allowing any one else to use it. This we can do by making taxes on unimproved land very light and taxes on the products of industry very heavy.” Thus we have a system which impoverishes the wealth producer by giving the products to the drone and the sharper.
The principle of the better system is government without taxation, which will be effected as soon as the community takes its own—the value of land—and permits the individual to keep his own—the product of labor.
Effect this radical change, and in fifty years religion will be born again; morals will consummately flower forth, mind will develop under the fair hand of leisure, health will drive out disease, homes will supplant tenement houses, the city will be as clean and fresh as the country, the country as sociable as the town, the hum of machinery will become the music of healthful toil instead of the dirge of drudgery, tears will evaporate in the sunshine of laughter, the millionaire and the tramp, the twin social monstrosities, will shake hands on a plain of moderate wealth, competition will become emulation instead of strife, and mankind will, for the first time, emerge from its martyrdom.