educational agitation, appealing to the judgment, the conscience, and
the sense of right in the people, and at the same time supply means for
maintaining self-respecting manhood among the unemployed until this
waiting time is over, our civilization will move onward without the
crash or shock of force, the destruction of property, and the loss of
life incident to all struggles in which physical force and blind passion
dominate. It is necessary to examine this problem on the side of human
dignity and on the side of national life. The question of utility,
though of far less concern in its ultimate effect on conditions, has
also an important place in the discussion.

Only under conditions which are fundamentally unjust, and only where the
finer sensibilities of man have been blinded and deadened, could it be
possible to witness the spectacle of millions of men and women begging
for work, and begging in vain, in a nation of fabulous wealth and almost
boundless resources; and yet such a condition prevails in our republic
to-day. It is, therefore, time for every patriotic citizen to lay aside
all partisan contentions and face this great question as we would face
any great danger which suddenly came upon the nation, not as partisans,
but as patriots; not as warring factions seeking victory for some
special body or party, but as men and women who have the welfare of the
race at heart, and who appreciate the gravity of the situation. It is
the eternal law of recompense that when justice is long denied and the
rights of man are systematically ignored, though the sufferers may
Samson-like crush themselves in the ruins of the temple, yet the temple
and its inmates also must fall. Or if by some chance the ruin comes not
through the strength of the burdened ones, it will nevertheless come
with unerring certainty, and not unfrequently through the very excesses
of those who have hardened their hearts against the cry of justice.

Such is the interdependence of the units in national life that a wrong
committed against one injures the whole people; and when that wrong is
inflicted upon a large number of the units, and is of long duration, its
fatal effects become very apparent. You cannot crush a finger or a toe
without causing your whole body to suffer in consequence. You may
disregard the hurt, you may ignore the wound until mortification sets
in, but the result means death or the loss of one of the most valuable
members of your body. It is precisely so with national life; for such is
the divine economy, such the inevitable law of progress, that only by
conscious recognition of human brotherhood, and of the rights and
obligations which it implies, can any nation or civilization move onward
and upward without those great periods of depression and decline which
too frequently end in total eclipse.

Shortsighted, indeed, is that policy which places gold above manhood.
When lust for gain stifles the voice of conscience, and the cry of the
disinherited is heard throughout a land of marvellous wealth, a nation
is confronted by a deadly peril which calls for a supreme effort on the
part of every man and woman of conviction.

It is useless to close our eyes to the fact that the rising tide of
bitterness is turning into hate, and that hate darkens the eye of
judgment, obscures reason, and deadens conscience. A few years ago, when
I wrote a brief paper on the menace of the unemployed, I was assured
that the deplorable condition then present was temporary, that in a few
months at most it would be a thing of the past, and that therefore it
was not a problem calling for the intervention of the government; but
to-day there are far more unemployed than there were then. The problem
is assuming gigantic proportions, and the instincts of self-preservation
second the demand of humanity in calling for immediate measures for the
relief and the maintenance of self-respecting manhood. Whenever a
workingman becomes a tramp or sinks into the social cellar, as tens of
thousands are now doing, the nation suffers a real injury. Present
conditions call for prompt action. The unemployed must receive that
succor which will in no conventional sense be charity, but which will
elevate instead of degrade. And this can be done by the state allowing
those armies of men who now unwillingly represent unproductive labor to
become armies for increasing the wealth of the country, by extending the
productive area of the nation's domain, and by providing against the
ruin which constantly menaces tens of thousands of industrious people in
such a way as to stimulate business in all its ramifications by placing
in circulation the equivalents for the work performed and the wealth
earned. The ancient Romans understood the importance of having great
works substantially built. The mighty highways which centred in the
Eternal City, and the great public works which contributed so much to
the comfort and happiness and grandeur of Rome, while not constructed
with a view to affording employment to the unemployed, were wise
measures for the benefit of the state, and it is safe to say that no
expenditures were more serviceable or contributed more to the greatness
and essential wealth of the empire, save the money spent in the
patronage of education.

The ancient Peruvians went further. They argued that the happiness,
welfare, and prosperity of one was the concern of all. They banished
poverty by giving every person productive work, and by their system
transformed every foot of tillable land into productive gardens,
enabling them to support in affluence an immense population, only a
small fraction of which could have subsisted under conditions such as
prevail with us. In our country to-day we have vast areas of useless
land, only waiting to be transformed into tillable acres second in
richness to no land in the country. To-day we have necessary work in the
way of internal improvements which is imperatively demanded, and which,
but for the slothfulness and indifference of our government, would be
performed, thereby enormously increasing the wealth of the nation; while
the performing of the same would give productive employment to millions
of idle hands.

A striking illustration of the criminal neglect and shortsightedness of
our government was seen this last spring in the devastation created by
the floods in the Mississippi Valley, rendered possible through the
inadequate levee system. Here the losses to crops and in stock killed
are said to have been considerably over twelve million dollars, to say
nothing of the enormous outlay which will be required to patch up the
levees and make the devastated farms again habitable. This great loss
would have been averted had the government acted upon the suggestions
which I made some years ago in a paper on "Emergency Measures for
Maintaining Self-respecting Manhood," in which it was shown that a
permanent levee was practicable, and could be built in such a way as to
resist the floods, reclaim many hundreds of thousands of acres of rich
land, and protect millions of dollars' worth of property which is now
under a yearly menace through danger of floods.

In this enterprise, which I shall again touch upon, we have a striking
illustration of a practicable work which would immediately increase the
national wealth far beyond the outlay required, while it would also
change an army of idle consumers into an army of wealth-producers.

But as I wish to consider this question more at length a little later,
I now pass on to a brief notice of the vast tracts of land in the West,
which have not yet fallen into the clutches of land syndicates, and
which for a comparatively small outlay by proper irrigation could be
transformed into garden spots. Take, for example, the State of Nevada.
Here we find immense tracts of arid land, representing millions of
acres, which to-day are unproductive for lack of moisture, but which,
wherever irrigation has been introduced, have been transformed into
wonderfully productive garden land. Mr. William M. Smythe, in the April
_Forum_, has given some very interesting facts in regard to the
agricultural resources of Nevada, from which we summarize the following:

     The most painstaking and systematic inquiry, however, ever made
     with regard to the extent of her water supply resulted in the
     conclusion that at least 6,000,000 acres of rich soil could be
     irrigated. The commission of 1893 reported twenty lakes and sixteen
     rivers of importance, which with minor streams and springs could be
     made to irrigate upward of 5,000,000 acres; and artesian wells
     would bring up the total to the figure above named. It should be
     borne in mind that the splendid agricultural prosperity of Colorado
     and Utah is based upon a cultivated area of only about 2,000,000
     acres. It seems, then, that, so far as her agricultural
     capabilities are concerned, Nevada might sustain at least as many
     people as do Utah and Colorado put together, at their present stage
     of development. The products of the irrigated lands of Nevada are
     the fruits, the vegetables, cereals, and grasses of the temperate
     zone, and, in the extreme southern portions, the more delicate
     products of the semi-tropics, such as figs, olives, pomegranates,
     almonds, Madeira walnuts, and, in sheltered places, even oranges.
     When we add that Nevada, like all parts of the arid plateau, is
     distinguished for pure dry air, an extraordinary amount of
     sunshine, and consequently a very high degree of healthfulness, it
     can be scarcely maintained that the state is destitute of
     attractions.

What is true in regard to the possibilities of Nevada is true of large
areas of land in other Western States and Territories. It must be
remembered that irrigated land can be relied upon to yield bountiful
crops with practical regularity, as the water-supply is ever present,
while for most persons the fine pure air in these high regions is
peculiarly healthful and invigorating. Thus the great West still offers
millions of acres of exceedingly productive land which can be
transformed into gardens and made to increase the national wealth by
untold millions if the government will treat these tracts as any wise or
thrifty private owner would treat them. If the government or the various
commonwealths would take all the available land which can be irrigated
and give to the unemployed work at fair wages until the great desert
tracts become fertile areas, the national or state domain would be
enormously increased in wealth at a relatively small cost through the
wise employment of the now paralyzed hand of industry.

Returning to the question of the Mississippi river, let our national
government build a permanent levee, which, like the great highways of
ancient Rome, should be built to endure for generations.

     "There are," says ex-Governor Lionel Sheldon, "over twenty-three
     million acres exposed to overflow from the mouth of the Ohio to the
     Gulf of Mexico. The productive power of these lands is not excelled
     in any part of the world, and by proper cultivation they would
     annually add many hundreds of millions of dollars to the national
     wealth and afford profitable employment for several hundreds of
     thousands of people."

Eminent engineers who have examined the levees under the auspices of the
Mississippi river commissioners, agree that the problem is one which can
be successfully solved if a sufficient amount is appropriated for so
gigantic an undertaking, which would require substantial uniformity in
the width of the channel of the river by building spurs and dikes at
points where the Mississippi is too wide, the proper riveting of the
banks wherever caving is likely to occur, together with the building of
permanent levees of a height and strength sufficient to confine the
waters in the channel. It is stated that since 1865 the cost of repairs
has amounted to considerably over forty million dollars, yet owing to
the fact that this work is of a temporary character the benefits which
would be derived from a permanent levee are lost, and every few years
the floods necessitate fresh expenditures of vast sums of money. Hence
this patchwork policy is shortsighted and in the long run the most
expensive. The carrying out of a comprehensive plan for permanent
improvements by the erection of impregnable levees and the governing of
the currents by dikes and spurs, would give us a territory, now
absolutely useless, which would annually add hundreds of millions of
dollars to our national wealth.

The great arid plains of the West and the levees of the Mississippi are
merely examples of internal improvements of a perfectly legitimate
character which could be undertaken most properly by the general
government, under Sec. VIII of the Constitution, which authorizes the
"raising of revenue to pay the debts and provide for the common defence
and the _general welfare_ of the United States." By such internal
improvements as those mentioned above the nation's wealth would be
increased to a far greater extent than by the amount of outlay required
for the completion of the work, while these enterprises would at once
give productive employment to our millions of out-of-works, and this
army of employed would put into immediate circulation large sums of
money which would at once stimulate business through all its
ramifications and bring about the long-hoped-for good times.

But at the very threshold of the discussion we are met with the
declaration that we have no money in the Treasury with which to carry on
these great projects. Before answering this objection I wish to point
out the fact that we have millions of dollars to spend for a useless
navy, a navy which in the hands of our senile government does not
protect the life or the property of American citizens, a navy which is a
constant and an enormous expense. While almost unlimited sums can be
raised for the building and equipment of battleships, we have not a
dollar to aid honest industry to maintain self-respecting manhood by
engaging in works which would add immensely to the real wealth of the
nation.

And, again, before pointing out how this money could be raised, I would
call attention to the fact that this cry is by no means a new one. It
was raised, and with much more show of foundation, during the dark hours
of the early sixties, but the great Civil War exploded the fallacy. One
would think that in the presence of the stupendous facts connected with
the conduct of our Civil War, even if the question of the value to the
state of an independent, contented, and prosperous manhood should be
left out of consideration, the shallowness of the objection would be so
apparent that it would have no weight with thoughtful persons. Let us
not forget that there was a time in the history of our country when the
Treasury of our government was empty, a time of great national peril
when gold had fled across the seas or into the vaults of the bankers
and usurers, as it ever flees in time of danger, when public credit was
greatly impaired by the presence of war within our borders and a strong
probability that even if the national government escaped overthrow a
large number of the States would become an independent nation. In this
crisis we had men in charge of the government who were statesmen, men
great enough to rise to the emergency of the hour. Now, if we were able
under such conditions to carry to a successful termination the most
expensive and memorable civil war of modern times by the aid of the
greenback, surely there would be no risk in resorting to a similar
medium of exchange for the carrying on of a work which would immediately
add to the nation's resources and free from the bondage of involuntary
idleness a large army of men who are now a burden to society and a
danger to stable government.

If, however, the fiction by which bondholders enslave the people still
holds such power over our legislators and the public mind that the
menace of the growing army of unemployed, the injury to the state by the
enforced degradation of her children, and the continued unproductivity
of both soil and industry must go on unless a concession is made, it
would be wiser to make the concession than to let the crime against
manhood continue. I therefore suggest that bonds on the land to be
reclaimed be issued to the amount of the national notes used for these
great works in redeeming the now useless land. The bonds issued against
these lands could be cancelled as the lands were sold. I do not for a
moment hold that this is necessary. I only advance this suggestion in
case the prejudice fostered by selfish and interested classes might
otherwise defeat a work of such inconceivable importance.

The inevitable result which would follow such wise, statesmanlike, and
humane proceedings on the part of the government may be briefly
summarized as follows:

Through this judicious, far-sighted, and enlightened course the
government would, first, so strengthen and intrench herself in the
hearts of the people that armories and militia would be little needed
against the menace of lawlessness _within our borders_, while this wise
solicitude and care for the welfare of her citizens would make millions
of persons, who to-day have little or no love for a nation which is
indifferent to their manly cry for work, loyal defenders of the flag. By
such a broad, wise, and just course the United States would do more than
she could in any other way to render herself impregnable in time of
danger. Second, by affording millions of her citizens the opportunity to
engage in productive work she would utilize a vast amount of idle energy
in adding to the permanent wealth of the nation, and the state would be
fulfilling the noble function of government to promote justice, increase
happiness, and ennoble citizenship. She would be restoring hope and the
spirit of independent manhood to her children, and so would prevent a
great increase in beggary, in degradation, and in crime, which must
inevitably follow unless present conditions are radically changed. From
an economic point of view the government would be far richer through the
amount saved from what otherwise would be required to provide prisons,
poorhouses, and court expenses. Third, it would add vastly to the
nation's wealth in increasing by untold millions the annual product of
real wealth, while it would also supply homes for millions of
home-seekers. Fourth, it would bring prosperity to America.

Let us suppose three millions of those now idle should be thus enabled
to engage in productive work, there would then be placed in circulation
each week from five to ten million dollars more money than there is now,
and it would be paid out in small amounts, so that the bulk of it would
instantly go into general circulation. The men would not only purchase
for their own needs, but would send a part of their earnings to their
loved ones, who would thus be able to do what they cannot now do--buy
coal, wood, groceries, and, indeed, life's various necessaries. The
prices of the farmer's crops would naturally rise, and he in turn would
be able to increase his buildings and purchase more machinery. The
increased demand for clothing would raise the price of wool and cotton,
while it would start up the factories without any resort to artificial
measures, such as levying a tax on imported goods.

The difference between present hard times and low prices and good times
and high prices would be illustrated in this way: To-day millions of our
people are idle, a load and an expense; they cannot buy what they need
at any price, for they have nothing to buy with. Millions of others
have to curtail in every way, frequently doing without many needed
things, for times are such that it is impossible for them to do more
than barely subsist. Now, the millions who to-day buy nothing, because
they have nothing to buy with, under these provisions for internal
improvements would soon be buying regularly, because they would have the
wherewithal to buy. They would gladly pay the farmer, manufacturer, and
merchant more than what they now ask because they would have something
to buy with, while to-day they have nothing; and those other millions
who are curtailing expenses to the last degree would gladly pay the
increased amount, for all lines of productive business would receive an
impetus from the great addition to the circulating medium put forth as a
result of the productive work being carried on. Now, our tariff taxes
may put up prices for the favored classes, but they thereby increase the
burdens of all save those who are enabled to gain added wealth from the
taxes imposed on the millions who are yet able to buy, while the small
increase in the demand for work, so long as millions are unable to buy
what is made, would make but little impression on the vast army of
unemployed.

_A tariff tax is a burden to the millions, stimulating prices
artificially, and benefiting chiefly the very wealthy._ But the plan for
internal improvements here outlined would give all ablebodied men
productive work which would benefit the nation far more than the amount
of the outlay involved, and afford time for the general work of
education, by which justice and equitable conditions could be brought
about, to proceed. Those who love peace, those who would see mankind
elevated and the wealth of the nation preserved and increased, should
favor this great palliative movement for maintaining self-respecting
manhood, for enriching the nation's resources, and for insuring
prosperity in the quickest and most healthful manner possible.

AN OPEN LETTER TO EASTERN CAPITALISTS.

BY CHARLES C. MILLARD.

Gentlemen: Against you individually, or as a class of persons who have
accumulated more or less wealth, and who loan it at interest to those
who perhaps have been less fortunate, I have not the least prejudice. I
believe that yours is an honest as well as a legitimate business; that
great wealth may be, and often is, won by honest means; and that it does
not border upon the marvellous that the capitalist is often an honest
man, and the pauper as often a rogue. I believe that you are as honest
as other men are, and that if you fully understood the situation in the
West and South, and knew that a certain line of conduct would result to
your own advantage financially, and also be a great benefit to the whole
country, you would act as other honest people would act under similar
circumstances; and it is because I so believe, that I write this letter.

I write neither as a partisan nor in the interests of any party, but to
give plain facts which can be easily verified, and to show how these
facts are seen and felt by those who, like myself, have been born and
bred on the boundless prairies, and have had a varied experience with
the ups and downs of life on the sunset side of the Father of Waters. I
hope by so doing to help you to realize the extent of the disasters
which a continuance of the present financial policy will inevitably
bring to _you_ as well as to us.

THE ACTUAL CONDITION.

In 1886, the chief clerk and trusted agent of a great loan company, who
has since been in the employ of Jarvis Conklin & Co., said to me: "There
is plenty of money to loan, but the securities are practically
exhausted." Everything "in sight" was covered with a mortgage. The few
who had escaped the mania of speculation did not want any mortgage on
farm or city property. Loans since then have been mostly renewals, and
for a time one company loaned money to be paid to another; but, with a
few exceptions, the Eastern money borrowed since 1880 has not been paid,
and anyone familiar with the facts does not need the gift of prophecy to
foretell that, under the present conditions, it never can or will be
paid.

The mortgages, bonds, and most of the coupons you still hold, and, in
many cases, you also have a deed to the property; but neither the one
nor the other is of any practical present value. The mortgagor is dead,
moved away, bankrupt, or working at daily labor--when he can get
work--for his daily bread. Therefore the debt is worthless, and the
property is but little better. The very best of it--costly business
blocks in the heart of the cities--is unremunerative. No intelligent
poor man would, or could, take a brick block as a gift and keep the
taxes and interest paid.

And perhaps the larger share of the city property is unoccupied or
paying no rental. He who rides upon a Western railroad can see the proof
of this from the car windows. In every city, town, village, and on not a
few farms, can be seen the broken or boarded-up windows which are the
footprints, not of time, but of the Eastern mortgage. This property
belongs to you. No Western man pays taxes or interest, and no one
expects to pay the principal. No one wants the property; no one has any
use for it; and no want ever existed which it was calculated to fill,
except in the brain of the monomaniac who built it. Whether you have
"foreclosed" or not, the property is virtually yours; the mortgagor has
no equity in it. While he had an equity, the decline in prices affected
that equity; now it affects only _your_ interest.

You own our business buildings, mansions, and cottages. You have an
everlasting grip on our public buildings, Board of Trade halls, Young
Men's Christian Association buildings, and even our churches. The Rev.
Mr. Wooley, in the pulpit of the Central Christian Church of Wichita,
said recently: "Every church building in this city, except one, is
heavily incumbered, and most of them are practically insolvent." Even
the "calamity howlers" of the "Populist" party are afraid or ashamed to
tell the truth, "and the whole truth," about our financial condition.

And it is not improving. A few farm mortgages are being paid, and
scarcely any new ones are being made except renewals; but all the
reduction so made is more than equalled by the sum of defaulted interest
payments on mortgages outstanding. The statements in the papers, that
the mortgage indebtedness of Kansas--or some other State--was reduced so
many thousand dollars during the past year, are misleading. They are
regularly published to restore "confidence." For the benefit of my
Eastern brother, I will explain, lest he may imagine that we are each
year paying back more money than we borrowed during that time, and that
therefore, in the course of geologic time, our debts would be paid.

The "reduction" is a reduction of record only. I have known of the
payment of $25 to reduce the record of $650, and $20 to make a
"reduction" of $400; and for various reasons many mortgages are
cancelled without any cash payment. These are well-known facts, and I
could give a long list of those which have come under my own personal
observation, while the mortgages which I have known to be paid in full
might be counted on the fingers of one hand.

In addition to this, nearly every city or incorporated town, and many of
the counties, have a bonded indebtedness as large as they can possibly
carry. In some cases bonds have been issued and sold to pay interest on
other bonds, and in one case at least--Pratt Centre--the interest
payments have been discontinued "by order of the council."

THE FUTURE PROSPECT.

So far I have been dealing only with the past and the present, and have
given only a plain statement of facts, the value of which must depend
upon my capacity as an observer, my opportunities for observation, and
my truthfulness as a writer. If you are inclined to be sceptical,
inquire of your neighbors who hold, or have held, Western mortgages. The
value of my forecast of the immediate future must depend upon the
character of my reasoning and judgment.

As "death and taxes" are certain, it is safe to predict that taxes will
be levied to pay the interest, and afterwards the principal, of city
bonds. Also, it may be assumed that you, who own the larger and more
valuable share of the property, will pay the lion's share of the taxes.
The Western man has "let go"; he is not "in the deal"; and when one
capitalist is taxed to pay another, he is not an "interested" party. I
sympathize with you. You have exchanged good money for bad property; and
with the property you have assumed the bulk of our _burden of taxation_.
You must pay our bonds, pay for the repairs and improvements of public
property, pay for educating our children and making our laws, and yet
you have no voice in determining when, how, or to what extent these
things shall be done; nor power to prevent the jobs and steals which
accompany such transactions in Kansas as well as in New York.

But, notwithstanding my sympathy, and the additional fact that I must
indirectly suffer from the effects of your suicidal policy, it is
amusing to see you trying to squeeze the remaining value out of _your
own property_. For, I repeat, it is yours. Interest payments will cease
in the same ratio that they have ceased, and for the same reasons. And
the principal cause will be that the mortgagor has _discovered_ that he
has no equity in the property. If property is worth only "what it will
bring in money," there are few pieces of mortgaged property in the West
in which there still remains an equity. But many farmers are economizing
and wearing rags in order to make interest payments, which can only
result in putting the evil day a little further off.

The Westerner is a practical man. When he finds that the equity is all
squeezed out of his property, and that it is still being squeezed at the
same rate, he stops paying taxes and interest, uses the property free
while you are foreclosing, saves up a little money, buys a house for
about one-tenth of the money it cost to build it, moves it onto a
"clear" lot, and is then ready to help you squeeze your property by
voting for taxes for various purposes. Under like circumstances the
farmer raises one or two crops without rent, taxes, or interest, clothes
his family more comfortably, replaces worn-out machinery, rents a farm,
and is in better circumstances than he has been for years.

THE PROPOSED REMEDY.

It may be that there is no remedy, but that will not prevent us from
trying to find one. During the last ten years we have experimented. We
have tried Democratic rule and Republican rule; the "McKinley bill" and
the "Wilson bill"; "tariff for protection" and "tariff for revenue
only"; a Treasury "surplus" and a Treasury "deficit"; yet none of these
things have sensibly affected the squeezing process. We have lost our
faith in the tariff and in tariff-tinkering, as well as in the leaders
who recommend it. We have dismissed our old political leaders and chosen
new ones; and as your "gold-standard" squeezing policy is the only
rational cause "in sight" for the origin and continuance of our
condition--to use an expressive Western phrase--we are "going for it."

We are willing that you should own and control the property which was
ours, and in which your money was invested, but when you attempt to
force upon us your financial policy, your politics, and your religion,
we object. You may own and control the property, but not us; here we
draw the line. This is what Marsh Murdock had in his mental view when he
said at the St. Louis Convention, "You want to own the country and run
it too." But the veteran editor of the _Eagle_ has changed his mind and
consented to being "run."

You have bought the leading papers, caused our editors to "change their
minds," flooded the country with a trashy literature that is an insult
to our intelligence, and provided funds to pay third-rate preachers for
preaching to us a religion which we do not want. We are not rich, yet we
are able to pay for our education and our religion--if it is a kind that
will be of any use to us.

We do not fear the result of our experiment. If we fail, the same old
squeeze will continue; if we succeed, there is a prospect of relief.
Without variation, there is not even a prospect of bettering our
condition. If we should succeed in creating that financial paradox, a
fifty-three-cent dollar, we are such political heretics as to prefer
that kind of a dollar to none, or to "confidence." We have unbounded
confidence in the dollars which jingle in our pockets, but very little
in those which exist only in the imagination, and are represented by
stocks, bonds, checks, drafts, clearing-house certificates, and other
devices, which always fail to perform the function of money in the last
extremity, when money is most needed.

Do not allow yourselves to be terrified at the ghost of a silver dollar,
for the ghost of it is all that will ever trouble you. In the event of
free coinage, the trains going East will not be loaded with silver
dollars to pay off old mortgages. I have seen a statement in Eastern
papers to the effect that we wanted cheap money with which to pay our
debts. It is a base slander; every intelligent Western man knows that,
whatever happens short of the miraculous, only a small share of our
mortgage debts will be paid.

All the holdings you now have in the West, new and old taken together,
are not worth fifty-three cents on the dollar; and you cannot now in any
way realize that much from them; and if your present policy is
indefinitely continued you have no prospect of ever realizing
fifty-three per cent on your investments. If, then, you should be paid
in silver dollars, or if a larger share of the loans should be paid
under the new conditions, you would be a gainer and not a loser by the
change. It seems to me that an increase in the volume of money and
rising prices are the opportunity for you to realize from your holdings,
for without some favorable change you will hardly realize twenty-five
per cent.

You can test the truth of these statements. Take twenty holdings, not
selected, and try to convert them into cash. Or offer them to some
capitalist who has travelled extensively in the West during the last
five years. Time will convince you, if nothing else will; but the
knowledge may come a little too late for practical purposes. You ought
to be with us in this free-silver movement, and you would be if you knew
what we know. We are not fools, although we may appear so to you; we
know what we want, and we are trying to get it.

You threaten "to draw in your money from the West." If you have any
money in the West which you _can_ "draw in," the sooner you do it the
better; it will be an heroic remedy instead of misery long drawn out. A
"panic" will return like a boomerang upon yourselves, and make _your_
property still less valuable. You can cause a panic, break our business
men, make more idle men and tramps, and, in short, concentrate three or
four years of squeezing into a few weeks or months; but what benefit can
_you_ hope to derive from it?

Whatever adds to _our_ prosperity will increase the actual value of
_your_ holdings; our interests are identical, then why should _you_
desire the continuance of present conditions? Have the present
conditions done anything for you, as far as Western investments are
concerned? Is not your increase of capital simply an increase "on paper"
which you can never realize? We cordially invite you to join us in our
effort to bring on an era of prosperity; forsake your political leaders,
as we have forsaken ours, and use at least as much common sense in
politics as you do in business.

Save this article; it will be good reading after the election is over.
It is not politics, it is business; it is the naked truth. The writer
does not want to borrow any money; he seeks no office, is not a
politician, has no axe to grind, and expects no reward, except to share
in the general prosperity, as he has shared in the general adversity, in
the capacity of a humble citizen.

WICHITA, KANSAS.

THE TELEGRAPH MONOPOLY.

BY PROF. FRANK PARSONS.

XIII.

10. _The Union of Telegraph and Post is needed for the Interests of the
Post as well as for those of the Telegraph._ It will elevate the skill
and competency of postal employees. When mails do not arrive on time, it
will inform the public thronging the post office, not merely that the
mail has not arrived, but when it will arrive. It will permit the
employment of the telegraph in tracing a missent letter or package,
rectifying an erroneous address, discovering the whereabouts of an
absentee, etc. It will permit the more rapid extension of the
free-delivery system by affording a larger basis for its sustenance. It
will multiply many fold the rapidity in transmitting letters across the
continent.

The telegraph is naturally a part of the post office,[3] as much a part
of it as the sewing machine is a part of a dressmaking establishment.
Suppose the government were in the clothing business (as it might have
been to advantage during the war), and continued to sew the garments
entirely by hand, leaving the sewing machine to private enterprise; it
would be a charming situation for private enterprise, but not very
delightful for the government. With such advantages private enterprise
would be apt to deprive the government of the best part of its business
in spite of its willingness to work for people at cost. The same thing
has happened to some extent with the telegraph and telephone, and will
happen to a far greater extent if they are allowed to continue in
private control. If trunk lines for automatic transit were established
by a private company, even at 25 cents per hundred words (a rate
sufficient to pay a very large profit on a corporate investment, water
and all), the post office would soon lose a considerable portion of its
most valuable business, the letter mail between the large cities.[4]

      [3] Mr. Hubbard says: "The telegraph and the post office are
          two great pieces of machinery going on, both for the same
          purpose, the transmission of intelligence" (J. T. U. p. 17).
          Prof. Ely calls the telegraph the "logical completion of the
          post office" (ARENA, Dec. 1895, p. 49). Cyrus W. Field says:
          "Why should not the two branches of what is really one service
          to the public be brought together in this country, as in other
          countries, and placed under one management? It would certainly
          be a great convenience to the people if every telegraph office
          were a post office, and every post office a telegraph office"
          (_N. A. Review_, Mar. 1886).

      [4] Postmaster-General Cave Johnson said: "Experience teaches
          that if individual enterprise is allowed to perform such
          portions of the business of the Government as it may find for
          its advantage, the Government will soon be left to perform
          unprofitable portions of it only, and must be driven to
          abandon it entirely or carry it on at a heavy tax upon the
          public Treasury.... I may further add that the Department
          created under the Constitution and designed to exercise
          exclusive power for the transmission of intelligence, must
          necessarily be superseded in much of its most important
          business if the telegraph be permitted to remain under the
          control of individuals" (Reps. of 1845 and 1846).

          Postmaster-General Cresswell said in 1872: "If the effects of
          rivalry between the telegraph and the mail upon the revenues
          of the post office have not been serious, it is due alone to
          the liberal management of the latter as compared with that of
          the companies, a management which since the invention of the
          telegraph has reduced the rates of postage from 25 to 3 cents,
          and increased tenfold the correspondence of the country" (Rep.
          1872, pp. 22-3).

          One of Hannibal Hamlin's three great reasons for a postal
          telegraph was "for the sake of the post-office system, which
          may at any time be depleted by a strong telegraph in private
          hands" (_Cong. Globe_, 42-2, p. 3554).

In times of pestilence the telegraph will save the post office from
embargo. A letter from Port Gibson, Miss., says:

     Whenever the yellow fever breaks out at any point, all cities and
     towns, and some counties, having communication with the infected
     districts, at once declare a rigid quarantine. The effect of this
     is to cut off all communication between themselves and the outside
     world. Trains and boats are prevented from receiving or delivering
     the mails. Business men are unable to communicate by letter with
     their correspondents, and all are prevented from hearing from
     relatives and friends in the quarantined places, except by
     telegraph, whose rates prevent many from using the wires.[5]

          [5] Wan. Arg. p. 138.

The infection does not travel on an electric wire, and if the post
office possessed the telegraph, its business would go smoothly on in
spite of the plague, instead of being brought to a dead standstill
throughout the region of disaster at the very time when hearts are
breaking for daily news, and communication is of the utmost importance
to alleviate the quarantine.

11. _Employees will be benefited_ by passing from a régime of oppression
to one of elevation; from low wages[6] and long hours to high wages and
short hours; from a service almost hopeless of promotion to a service of
almost limitless possibilities to the man of character, brain, and
energy; from an employment in which they are regarded as so much
machinery to be obtained at the lowest market rates and worked for all
the profit there is in them to an employment in which their comfort and
advancement are among the main objects of solicitude with the
management; from a business in which they have no share to a business in
which they are equal partners with all their fellow-citizens; from
serfdom to liberty and manhood. No more boycotting and black-listing, no
more denial of the rights of organization and petition.

      [6] In the last Congressional investigation, dated May 26,
          1896, the great telegraph inventor P. B. Delayner testified
          that the pay of American operators had fallen forty per cent
          in the last twenty years; and he said that, "while the British
          operator has had two increases of pay since 1891, his American
          brother has had four reductions, and to-day the British
          operator is better paid for the same amount of work, and by
          his environment occupies a higher plane of comfort and
          contentment, than the American operator. Good behavior and
          diligence in his duties warrant him a life position, from
          which the whim and caprice of no one can drive him. He is not
          an itinerant wandering from place to place looking for work
          and hired for a day or a week, to be again sent adrift, nor is
          he permitted to work overtime to the detriment of his health
          and the exclusion of another wage-earner from his share. His
          increasing years of service are taken into account in various
          beneficial ways. He has his yearly vacation. He is not cut off
          in sickness, and, most important of all, he is not 'turned
          down' in old age, but is retired on a pension, proportioned to
          his years of service" (Sen. Doc. 291, 54-1, pp. 4, 6).

Some of the consequences will be the lifting of thousands to a higher
plane of living, the annihilation of strikes by uprooting the causes of
them,[7] the improvement of the service as already stated under the
seventh sub-head of this section, etc., etc.

      [7] Joseph Medill, the publisher of the Chicago _Tribune_,
          expressed the opinion to the Blair Committee that, with a
          postal telegraph, there would be no strikes any more than
          among the clerks in the Treasury or the officers of the army.
          Government employees do not resign _en masse_. Their pay is
          good as a rule, and, anyway, they could not get it raised till
          Congress thought it right; and a strike would not be apt to
          hasten the achievement of their purposes, but would place them
          face to face with the limitless power of the United States.
          Instead of occupying a position of brave revolt against
          corporate oppression, impervious to petition, the strikers
          would place themselves in the position of deliberately
          departing from ready and hopeful redress by peaceful petition
          and discussion, to the very objectionable method of
          obstructing the public business, defying the people's
          government, and dictating terms to the nation."

          The telegraph system would no longer be subject to such
          disasters as that so well described by the Hon. Wm. Roche in
          the Ohio legislature Jan. 29th, 1885: "A convulsion of the
          trade and commerce of the entire country resulted, when, on
          the 19th of July, 1883, 12,000 operators left their posts
          after the flat refusal of the magnates to give audience to
          their representatives to state their case."

12. _The press will be relieved of an ever present tyranny_ likely at
any moment to transfer itself from the potential to the real.[8] Sen.
Report 242, 43-1, p. 5, says:

      [8] We have seen in Part VI (ARENA, June, 1896) how rates were
          raised on papers that criticised the Western Union's president
          or advocated a postal telegraph too vigorously, how papers
          were ordered not to criticise news reports under penalty of
          loss of news facilities, etc. It is interesting to note that
          even the largest and most influential papers do not always
          escape persecution. In his speech in the House, Mar. 1, 1884,
          the Hon. John A. Anderson, of Kansas, tells us that "the
          Chicago _Inter-Ocean_ had the lease of a private wire from
          Washington to Chicago, and published Washington news every
          day. A few weeks since, Senator Hill spoke for the postal
          telegraph. The _Inter-Ocean_ published the speech verbatim.
          That evening word was sent to the _Inter-Ocean_ that the lease
          was terminated. The manager of the _Inter-Ocean_ said
          afterwards that their relations with the Western Union were
          still friendly, but he had to be, of course, in order to keep
          the general despatches."

     The operation of the postal-telegraph system would result in a
     speedy termination of this alliance [between the telegraph and news
     association, and groups of favored papers], and will be a very
     important step toward the freedom of the press.

Sen. Rep. 577, 48-1, p. 16, says:

     The bill [for a postal telegraph] will lessen the danger of a
     concealed censorship of news whereby it may be colored and
     distorted so as to subserve political purposes, to mislead public
     opinion as to the merits or demerits of men and measures, to
     pervert legislation, and to favor schemes of private gain.

The press of the nation will not be forbidden to criticise the news, nor
will any paper be excluded from equal participation in the benefits of
the telegraph service--equal rates to all, special privileges to none.
Moreover, the rates will be greatly reduced for all press despatches,
and papers will be able to buy the world's history every day for a
fraction of what they pay now for imperfect and garbled reports.

As a result of National Ownership in England, "the press rates have been
reduced so low that every country paper can afford to print the latest
telegraphic despatches as it goes to press, and a telegraph or telephone
is at every country post office."[9]

      [9] Sen. Doc. 205, 54-1, p. 50; Report of U. S. Consul at
          Southampton, Consular Reports, vol. xlvii, No. 175, April,
          1895, p. 564. The press rate in England averages nine cents
          per hundred words. In this country it is at least 40 cents per
          hundred; the electrician P. B. Delany says it is 50 cents per
          100 (Sen. Doc. 291, May, 1896, p. 3).

          The Report last quoted contains the testimony of Mr. Bell of
          the Typographical Union, May 20, 1896, in which he says: "The
          news of this country is controlled by two great press
          associations, and in any place in which either has a footing,
          no new journal can be established and secure telegraphic news
          except on such terms as may be prescribed by the paper or
          papers that already occupy the field. In England, on the
          contrary, all papers are on an equal footing." The
          Typographical Union is fully alive to the benefits of a
          government telegraph; in fact, labor and commerce in general
          very strongly favor the reform. Mr. Bell says: "In this
          movement of ours we are supported by all the organized bodies
          of workingmen in this country. We are a unit on this question"
          (p. 17).

13. _Discrimination will receive a serious blow._ No more telegraph
rebates of 20 or 40 or 50 per cent to favored individuals and
corporations. No more telegraph blanks for legislators, politicians, and
lobbyists. No more delaying B's despatch until the rival message of C is
sent. No more precedence for bucket-shops and gamblers over honest
business and government despatches.

14. _Gambling in government stocks will cease_, speculators in wheat,
corn, pork, copper, oil, and other products of industry will be unable
to control the wires for their uses, or even secure a precedence over
the lines, and the Louisiana Lottery and similar frauds will no longer
find a refuge in the telegraph as they do at present. The post office
has been taken away from the gamblers; it is time the telegraph were
taken from them also. The telegraph in the hands of cunning men may be
the means of abstracting millions of money from the producers of the
country, and may even become a potent factor in the causation of panic
and depression. On page 3 of his Argument for a postal telegraph, Mr.
Wanamaker says:

     The measureless body of producers, in order not to be manipulated
     and robbed by the speculators, need to be nearer the consumers; and
     the measureless body of consumers, in order not to be manipulated
     and robbed by the same speculators, need to be nearer to the
     producers.

Take the telegraph away from the speculators and give it to the
producers and consumers, that they may come into the closest possible
relations.

15. _Political corruption_ will lose an able contributor when the
telegraph ceases to belong to a private corporation (See Part VII,
ARENA, July, 1896).

16. _A Postal telegraph will be a step toward a fairer distribution of
wealth_ and away from the congestion of power and wealth in the hands of
a few unscrupulous men, which is one of the chief dangers threatening
the future of the country (See Part VIII, ARENA, August, 1896). On this
ground alone the establishment of a national telegraph would be
justified, were there no other reason in the case.

17. _The public safety demands a national telegraph_, not merely as a
precaution against corruption, speculation, and panic, congestion of
wealth and power, strikes, and duress of the press, but also as a
military measure and a valuable addition to the police power of the
government,--a means of strength in time of war, and a conservator of
law and order by aiding in the capture of criminals and in the general
enforcement of the law. We have already quoted the opinion of Mr.
Scudamore that the postal telegraph "will strengthen the country from
hostility from without, and the maintaining of law and order within the
kingdom." Let us call attention here to the weighty words of the New
York _Public_, cited in Wanamaker's Argument, pp. 206-7:

     The Government itself absolutely needs a telegraphic system for its
     own protection. This will not seem the language of exaggeration
     when it is considered that the ordinary enforcement of laws, the
     capture of offenders, the success of fiscal operations, the
     protection of the country against domestic insurrection and foreign
     invasion, have come to depend in these days upon the instant
     transmission of intelligence with certain and absolute secrecy. It
     may at any time come to pass that the private interests of those
     controlling a telegraph system shall require the non-enforcement of
     the law, the prevention or delay of a financial operation, or the
     partial success of a domestic outbreak or foreign inroad. It is
     nonsense to say that this cannot happen. If Mr. Gould could
     suppress for a few hours or days, news of an outbreak on the
     Pacific coast or of the capture of a hostile ironclad from Europe,
     he could make millions by it. The Government has no certainty that
     he would throw away millions. It has no certainty that its orders
     bearing on great financial operations may not be betrayed and its
     aims thwarted. When the Government was hunting for the Star Route
     offenders, how many would have been caught if its despatches had
     been secretly betrayed? An important witness happened to be a
     Government director of the Union Pacific Railroad, and it has
     always been a mysterious fact that the officers in search of him
     could never catch him.

18. _It will be a step toward civil-service reform._ Every increase of
public business brings us nearer to thorough civil-service reform,
because it enhances the importance of that reform, impresses the need of
it more strongly upon the people, and deepens their sentiment in its
favor. This has been the experience of European cities and states. A
good reason why they are ahead of us in civil-service management, is
because they are ahead of us in the public ownership of railroads,
telegraphs, telephones, etc.

In the case of the telegraph there are special reasons to expect that
government control would carry with it an extension of the civil-service
principle. In the opinion of Mr. Rosewater the postal telegraph "would
be an entering wedge for the greatest possible success of the civil
service." He says:

     It would bring into the postal service a large number of skilled
     operatives whose services could not be easily dispensed with. They
     would be divided in politics like every other class of citizens,
     their experience and trustworthiness would be of great moment, and
     their trustworthiness would be increased by the knowledge that they
     could not be displaced by partisan politics. This has been the
     experience in Great Britain, and would be the same here. Once get
     the postal service under government control and the civil-service
     act, and you would soon be able to place all departments of the
     government under the same system, and a large share of the public
     nuisance incident to office-holding would be done away with,
     leaving the officers free to inquire into and learn their duties to
     their office and to the public.[10]

          [10] _The Voice_, Aug. 29, 1895, pp. 1, 8.

Prof. Ely says:

     One of the strongest arguments in favor of a postal telegraph, is
     that such a telegraph would carry with it an improvement in our
     civil service. It would increase the number of offices in which
     civil-service rules would be applied, even according to existing
     law, and it would be an irresistible argument in favor of the
     extension and elevation of the civil service. Some want to have us
     wait until the civil service has been already improved, but the
     purchase of the telegraph lines would inevitably carry with it the
     improvement of the civil service.

The country would insist upon it. The acquisition of the telegraph lines
by the nation would convert more people to civil-service reform in one
day than all the speeches which have ever been delivered on the subject
would win to this good cause in a year.[11]

     [11] The total number of positions that must now be filled
          from the classified civil-service lists is 85,100, out of a
          total of a little more than 200,000 positions in the national
          service, aside from the army and navy.

The plan advocated in this paper includes the civil-service act as one
of its essential terms, for without it we run the risk of having, for a
time at least, boss-ownership instead of public ownership of the
telegraph. The recent extension of the civil-service act to 30,000 new
positions, argues well for the future of this great reform.[12] That
such an order should have come from President Cleveland, who has not
been noted for his absence of partisan feeling, indicates that the
election of a man of thorough independence would probably complete the
transformation of our service. Even without that, the work will be done
by the piece, each president ordering a section into line at the end of
his term when the delay of justice can no longer aid his own political
purposes, but may, on the contrary, strengthen his successor. Or he may
act before the end of his term and from less selfish motives; the main
thing for the nation is that he act.

      [12] ARENA, Dec. 1895, pp. 51-2.

19. The public ownership of the telegraph will remove one of the
antagonisms that weaken the cohesion of society and retard the
development of civilization.[13]

      [13] See Part VIII, ARENA, August, 1896.

20. It will be a step toward coöperation and partnership, away from
private monopoly, usurpations, and taxation without representation.[14]

      [14] See Parts VIII and IX, ARENA, Aug. and Sept. 1896.

Let us now see what the defendants have to say; that means the Western
Union, for, as Mr. Bell said to the Senate Committee on Post offices and
Post roads, May 20th, 1896:

     The only persons who have ever put in an appearance in opposition
     to this measure, have been the officers, attorneys, and agents of
     the telegraph companies. No representative of the people has ever
     opposed it.[15]

          [15] Sen. Doc. 291, 54-1, p. 18.

THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF THE CUBANS.

BY THOMAS W. STEEP.

When the recognition of belligerency was argued for the Cubans by the
friends of Cuba in Congress, it became a question of pivotal importance
as to whether the Cubans had a government to recognize as dual to that
of Spain; whether the government, if any, was merely nominal or
chimerical; whether, if existing and operating, it had the potency to
receive recognition and thus justify such action by the United States.

The first thing that attracted my interest on arriving at the war field
of Cuba, in the Province of Santiago, early one sunny morning in
January, was the obsequious ceremony of the government prefecto who
received me and gave me my first roasted _boniato_, upon which I
afterwards so often appeased hunger. I had come out on the field by
crawling beneath the barbed-wire military line around Santiago one night
and marching by stealth in the early dawn to the mountains and over them
to the interior. A body of Cubans escorted me. Fatigued and hungry, the
prefecto's attention in serving coffee and boniatos seemed over-due
kindness. I offered to pay him, but he raised his hands and said, "No!
No!" He was a government officer. From that time on my interest was
enlisted in the study of the civil organization of the Cubans.

When ex-President Cleveland intimated that the civil government
provisional of the Cuban insurgents was puerile and immature, and said
it was, for the most part, a government on paper, he was more correct
than otherwise. In the first place, however, let me say that the Cubans
have a government, that it is not an impractical one, that the people
are loyal to it. To this loyalty, which is so striking for its
widespread prevalence, and so sympathy-eliciting because of the
sacrifices which are made for it by the Cubans, I shall refer later.

The statement made by the ex-President, while for the most part correct,
is superficial, because it does not substantiate its assertiveness. It
is one that any intelligent observer of the anterior conditions of Cuba
last December might have correctly though vaguely made.

The Cuban government is immature. To say that most of it exists on paper
is not sinistrous to an ambitious civil organization which has been in
existence but two years. Schemed exactly like that of the States, the
unfavorable condition under which it labors makes many of its functions
of mere nominal existence. For instance, the Secretary of State just at
this time has no duty to perform other than, perhaps, to doff his
figurative robes of state and get out and fight. The Secretary of War
has no routine office, because the Cubans have no diplomatic corps and
the rebellion is conducted by aggressive generals who have the munitions
of war in their own hands.

Yet the Cuban insurgents have established a civil organization in the
interior over which they hold sway, the strength and qualities of
endurance and prominence of which defy the government of Spain itself.
The remoteness of the Cuban headquarters, and the control which Spain
has had over the regular news channels that lead from Cuba, have kept
the world largely in ignorance of the real condition of the Cuban
insurgents.

Fundamentally and upon which the plans of the government are drawn, the
Republic of Cuba now comprehends all the area of the island of Cuba. The
disposition taken by the head civil officers is that the entire island
is under dominion of the Cuban Republic, but that because some powerful
foreign enemy has landed on certain parts and taken possession--as, for
instance, Havana and its harbor, and Santiago and other cities--the
civil rule cannot be extended into these quarters until by strategy the
enemy can be driven from the shores of Cuba. In the national
organization the power of government was transferred by the popular
assembly to a Council of Government. Then departments were formed, with
secretaries at the head--state, war, foreign affairs, interior, and
finances. At the head of the government were placed a provisional
President and Vice-President. In the Council of Government is vested the
legislative power.

Politically the island is divided into four States, Oriente, Camaguey,
Las Villas, and Occidente. Each State is divided into districts, and
each district into as many prefecturas and sub-prefecturas as are deemed
necessary. A district has from seven to fifteen prefecturas. The State
is presided over by a Governor, who reports to the Secretary of
Interior. The Lieutenant-Governor is under the Governor, and has
jurisdiction over a district. His corps consists of one secretary and
one assistant clerk. The prefectura is the smallest political
subdivision but one--the sub-prefectura. The prefectura has a secretary
and assistants. Then follow the sub-prefecturas, of which there are
generally from four to eight in each prefectura.

The Lieutenant-Governor is the intermediary between the Governor and the
prefectura. Besides his executive functions the prefecto has judicial
power. He records all contracts between citizens, including marriages.
He has the power to form a jury and to try all cases, from the simplest
intrigues to those of spies guilty of treason, whenever the cases cannot
be submitted to court-martial.

Every portion of territory possessed by the Cubans is subject to civil
order. The minutest detail is so accurately and delicately balanced
that, though the thoroughness for which the civil officers are even now
adroitly working has not yet been attained, the whole governmental
machinery is in harmonic operation.

The facts which I have set down relative to the geographic distribution
of the government I have myself seen. I spent much time in the saddle on
the march with Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, who, as Governor of Oriente,
conducts the affairs of state in the saddle. With him I visited the
prefectural workshops and many well-managed prefecturas. I saw much
rearranging and readjusting of these functions by the Governor.

Almost the first thing the Governor said to me at our first meeting at
Baire Arriba, was: "I have been wishing for months that I could get hold
of an American newspaper man to show him the inside of the revolution.
The American people don't know how strong we are. They have no way of
finding out. Now I will show you our civil government as it is in
operation." We visited the medical posts--"drug-stores" as the Cubans
call them--the tanneries, workshops, and the various officials,
including the tax-collector.

Supplementary to the regular lines of civic routine are other branches
of organization necessitated by the war. The most important of these is
that of the tax-collector. The State tax-collector has as many
subordinate officers as the Governor. Taxes are levied on those engaged
in commercial pursuits. This commerce is, of course, only internal. The
levying of taxes and the subsequent shipment of Spanish money to the
United States for use by the Junta has created great scarcity of money
among the insurgents. The schedule in effect when I was with chief
tax-collector Tomas Pedro Grinan, in February, was as follows:

  Coffee and cocoa        4 pesos per 100 pounds.
  Timber                  8  "    "   1000 feet.
  Hemp                    4  "    "   100 pounds.
  Wax                     4  "    "   100 pounds.
  Honey                   1 peso per 100 pounds.
  Cattle                  3 pesos per head.
  Cheese                  2 "     "   100 pounds.
  Bananas                  .03 peso per bunch.
  Tobacco (leaf)          5 pesos per 100 pounds.

The commerce consists of the exchange of the products of one part of the
island with those of another. I once saw Cespedes stop a coffee
merchant, and, upon his inability to produce a receipt for the tax on
the coffee he was transporting, take into custody him and twelve little
pack-mules. The man pleaded that there was no tax-collector in the
vicinity when he started on his journey, paid his fine, which I think
was thirty pesos, and continued his march with a receipt for taxes.

Four important branches of the government of the Republic of Cuba are
the territorial guard, the coast inspection, the postal service, and the
workshop system. Each prefectura has under its supervision ten armed
territorial guards, who serve also as police. These guards scout the
Spanish columns when they venture from their blockhouses.

Every district with a seacoast has a civil coast inspector, who ranks as
a captain in the army. He is assisted by a sub-inspector, who acts as
his secretary. The inspectors have established along the coast line and
in every bay and inlet watch posts, commanded each by a vigilant, who
has under him eight or ten coast-guards. In this way, when a Spanish
man-of-war sets out from a port, the news is signalled along the coast,
and the Cubans, if she be in sight of the land, watch every movement of
the ship. The coast-guards have captured many small Spanish sailing
vessels.

Saltmaking is carried on under the direction of an inspector. All the
salt consumed by the Cubans is made from distilled sea water. A hundred
men are continually boiling sea water in Santiago de Cuba province.
These saltmakers are ready at all times to take up arms.

The postal system is under the direct care of the Governor of each
State. Along the rough roads at intervals of ten or fifteen miles are
established the Cuban postmasters, each supplied with from four to eight
couriers. In this way official as well as private communications are
carried to any part of the island. Each post office is supplied with a
registering stamp, so that the time of the coming or going of every
parcel is registered upon it. There is a dead-letter office, and the
lists are published monthly at the presses of _El Cubano Libre_.

The workshops are under charge of foremen. These shops turn out all
kinds of roughly made but substantial leather goods, such as shoes,
boots, bags, saddles, straps, and belts. Gun shops, powder factories,
and cartridge factories are said to exist on the island, but I never saw
them. The making of other metal articles, such as cooking utensils, is
in its infancy.

The Cubans are struggling hard to form some sort of a school system. The
"little press in the woods" was just printing a little primer, written
on the fields, to be distributed among families for the tutoring of
children when I left the printing establishment last January.

The medical posts and stations are under military order, and are purely
provisional. The post of El Mate, in Jiguani, I found in charge of Dr.
Farrel, a graduate of a medical institute in Spain, and Dr. Rafael de
Lorie of New York. This post is tolerably well stocked. It contains
about one hundred pounds of antiseptic plasters, tablets and gauzes,
10,000 quinine pills and powders, thirty pounds of drugs, ten pounds of
narcotics, and fifty quarts of tonics.

Like the whole military system of the Cubans, this post has an
objectionable management, subject only to the orders of a few
officials, so that it does little practical good, and many persons are
dying for want of proper medical attention.

I have told in this article what I have seen during four months of
constant travel among the insurgents.

When it is remembered that the Cubans have spread the rebellion over
more than two-thirds of the area of the island, and have carried into
effect, for their purposes, a provisional form of government
successfully in the time of war, it is reasonable to suppose that they
are capable of rearranging their government and maintaining it in time
of peace.

A NOTED AMERICAN PREACHER.

BY DUNCAN McDERMID, M. A.

It is interesting, while it is said that preaching is losing its ancient
power, to find here and there a preacher whose influence is increasing
instead of diminishing. One of these is the Rev. Minot J. Savage, D. D.,
of the Unitarian Church.

The writer desires to call attention to the two essential conditions of
this preacher's influence and popularity. This will be instructive not
only to the public, but to the clerical profession as well. One of these
conditions may be found in the wide latitude of American opinion,
especially as it expresses itself in New England, and particularly in
the city of Boston where Mr. Savage spent many years as a preacher.

I.

In the community in which one lives, no less than in himself, often lies
the secret of a man's strength and greatness. The individual shares the
endowment or potency of those impersonal forces which sustain and
enhance public life. The spirit which animates the broader ranges of
general history acts with unhindered freedom on the narrower sphere of
the individual mind and often becomes the creator of its better moments.
Silent influences, hidden providences, are at work in society of which
the individual has no suspicion, and whose effects cannot be recorded in
statistics. Below the plane of conscious recognition there are
far-reaching movements of thought which transcend our powers of
understanding, but which act with almost unbounded sway in controlling
the thought and life of each person. The early promise is fulfilled in
the ripening powers of the mind under the cumulative influences which
nourish it from without. In the order which surrounds the individual,
and in the movement of which he has become a part, we see, as clearly as
in himself, the inevitable promise of his ultimate destiny.

In whatever pertains to liberal culture Boston is never weak or
wavering. Boston impresses one as possessing innate respect and
enthusiasm for intellectual supremacy, and reverence for the pure
sentiments of religion as continuous forces in human life. For two and a
half centuries it has been the wish and work of her most cultivated
minds to give human thought and life the highest expression; and this
has been done with monumental activity. In Boston, culture and religious
piety have never been decadent; over and above the controversies and
schisms and sectarian quarrels which from time to time have rent the
churches, they have remained intact. In spite of the manifold currents
of opposing tendencies, which now and then threaten to overwhelm
cherished beliefs and to lift the world off its hinges, they remain
essential elements in this city's social life. They are stern present
necessities, unwritten and immutable laws which she will not and cannot
transgress. From the founding of the city by the "choice spirits" of the
seventeenth century, they have retained their vitality and have been
affirmed without doubt or debate. With the growing demands and maturity
of her civilization she reiterates them as her loftiest and most sacred
privileges, subject to no vicissitudes. With these primitive traits
eternally vital, thought is quick, and intellectual enthusiasm spreads
rapidly. Boston is always stirring with "new ideas" and with the passion
for a broader ethical and religious development. The character and
repute which she acquired in former days for literary taste, clerical
influence, and the administration of religion are to-day influencing
surrounding secularity and the hurrying concerns of daily life. They are
animating every institution and ordinance, every supreme and exquisite
medium of feeling, every revelation of truth and hope in the human mind.
In this exhaustless tide of thought and aspiration, which we may accept
as Boston's native product, it is easy to interest the people and to
unite them in any attempt for the good of mankind under the sanction of
culture, benevolence, or religion.

But religion is felt to be Boston's greatest need and glory. In this
city of philosophy and poetry, art and business energy, religious faith
and life have their proper place, and are invested with power and
dignity. Fixed habit and traditional thought contribute, without doubt,
to the need and sacredness of religion; yet its transcendent results are
due to the permanent disposition of the people. They are the appropriate
manifestation of a religious culture and spirit that are fitted for all
time, the logic of truths born of religious intuitions working out in
the most practical results. However universally certain religious
beliefs are ignored, there is no disposition to put culture or
philanthropy above the gospel, the school above the church, or to make
the schoolmaster, the literary autocrat, or the princes of wealth take
precedence of the preacher. The spirit of conventionalism reigns more or
less in Boston's religious life; yet religion makes an irresistible
appeal to the understanding, the conscience, and the heart. Everything
is compelled to bow to its influence and to feel its inspiration.
Although our churches present various theological tendencies, from the
stiffest orthodoxy to the freest rationalism and pantheism, and with
creeds yet confessedly nowhere settled, reason never pronounces religion
absurd; to it homage is accorded. It is still the deepest and holiest
interest of man. We all have an elevated sense of its vast importance in
the destiny of mankind. Its manifestations may change, but its spirit is
ever the same. While edifices of towering magnificence, grand displays
of musical talent, time-honored ordinances, and attractions for popular
reverence are fashionable and full of beauty and significance, and,
possibly, prudent means to stimulate our patronage and to save to the
ranks of the churches the votaries of all that is artistic and refining
and impressive, they are no sure sign that spiritual life is departing;
they have their utility, they foster the higher interests of mind and
heart. These symbols of religious faith are not the productions of cold,
speculative reasoning, but the statement of truth wrought into the
convictions of the devout and spiritually minded.

Guided by these facts we may assume that the man who distinguishes
himself in Boston as a preacher is one to whom considerable interest
attaches. Upon such a man, as upon all her citizens of rare attainments
and peculiar personal excellence, she confers distinction.

The Rev. Minot J. Savage, D. D., who recently changed his residence and
his ministry from Boston to New York, and whose successful work in the
former city may be a prophecy of enduring honors in the latter, has thus
distinguished himself and been rewarded.

When Mr. Savage came from the West to Boston, he came "as a stranger,"
as I myself heard him say. For years he thought and walked and worked
alone. He was unpopular, and he felt his unpopularity. All religious
sects, even that of his own persuasion, were critical and sceptical. As
a preacher he had fellowship nowhere. He was met as a preacher of
unwelcome and unwholesome doctrines. But he came as one having a special
dispensation, as the witness and repository of new truth, as the
representative of no low and paltry type of the Christian ministry, but
as a living testimony to the reality and power and excellency of
religion and its institutions. He felt the difficulties with which he
had to contend. They were manifold, subtle, and fraught with deepest
peril to his ministry. Prejudices, precedents, and the theology of the
schools--whose only merit seemed to be that it was smitten with a
passion to reduce Christian doctrine to logical form--were arrayed in
open hostility to him. He was met by the _régime_ of ecclesiastical
orders, by men who preached the Gospel according to established and
venerable routine, and whose credentials, not their wisdom, were their
only power. But although he felt himself to be a _persona non
grata_,--another unpopular person to suffer for his beliefs,--he girded
himself for earnest uncompromising warfare. He planted against every
church his strongest batteries of criticism, satire, and sarcasm. He
poured forth his thoughts in words that made men's ears tingle, till the
protestations of his adversaries fell from their lips with something of
a hollow sound. Half preacher, half assassin, as he was thought to be,
repudiating as offensive the doctrines of the Cross, and hating with
every drop of his blood the general traditions and faith of the Church,
he worked and awaited the day of his triumph. It came.

Boston is slow to recognize new prophets; yet religious belief of every
kind is treated with gentleness and indulgence. The preachers of the
city might regard Mr. Savage as a teacher of "positive error," but they
could not object to the hospitality of Boston, a citizen and preacher of
which Mr. Savage became on the footing of democratic fraternity. By the
free development of reason and the spread of intelligence Boston has
become temperate and tolerant. She will not enslave the understanding or
deny anyone one vestige of religious freedom. With her, religion is a
practical and spiritual thing rather than a theoretic and ceremonial.
The latter helps to stimulate the former to the fullest discharge of
duty, but does not in itself constitute religion. The one comes by
internal necessity, the other belongs to the sphere of outward
operation, of inventive and enterprising minds. Religion is a living
mode of thought sustained by personal character, and needs not ambitious
terminology or supervision. Boston trusts her instincts, as Emerson has
taught her, and asks only ample scope for the imperative working of her
religious sentiment and the life of the heart.

Under these favoring conditions, by which Boston, like a mother, works
out her own character in the spirit and life of her gifted men, the Rev.
Mr. Savage was impelled onward in his daring enterprise. With stern
fidelity Boston exercised a definite and pervasive influence on Mr.
Savage's mind. Although his religious thinking came upon the public like
a new birth, he was only reiterating its progressive thought and the
stout emphasis it placed on thinking out religion in intelligible terms
and in all the breadth of its activities. Instrumental rather than
absolute, Boston's versatile and expansive thought furnished the new
preacher his coveted opportunity. Her faith failed not, nor did her
courage falter. Silently she was assailing the old theology and
elaborating the new, in which she has unhesitating belief, and which
entered with enlightening and nourishing force into Mr. Savage's broad
and free opinions. It came to him as the expression of the abiding
atmosphere in which he dwelt and with a beneficent bearing on his
ministry. Favored thus by the concurrent voices of those to whom he
ministered, and by the general freedom and grace of the entire
community, Mr. Savage made a real and salutary advance in his religious
work in Boston. And supported by the judgment of an ever widening
public, conservative thinkers about him felt his influence on current
religious opinion. While he indulged a liberty of speculation, he
instilled religious habits of thought and the spirit of worship into
many inquiring minds, and enabled them to identify themselves with the
highest development of his own religious consciousness. Boston and
vicinity became fully appreciative of the distinctiveness of his mission
and of his apprehensions of the truth. In recognition, therefore, of the
unmeasured praise and enthusiastic acceptance which he received from
the public, he was honored, at the close of his ministry in Boston, with
the degree of Doctor of Divinity at Harvard University. Harvard thus
expressed her highest confidence in the truth and permanence of his
ministry. This famous institution of classic, scientific, philosophic,
and sacred learning attested the sanity of the mind and doctrines of
this once obscure and despised but now noted preacher.

II.

Another condition of the Rev. Minot J. Savage's influence and popularity
as a preacher is his ethical intensity.

In the preceding section I have spoken of what has actually taken place.
I have there shown the favoring conditions under which Mr. Savage
labored in the city which was to him both friend and teacher, and where
he has done his most efficient work as a preacher. The particular type
of religious thought represented by him in the pulpit has not been
brought about by his or any man's device. For generations it has been
pouring itself forth from mind to mind in philosophy, science, poetry,
and religious thought. He did not initiate any distinctive movement; he
only helped to popularize and make permanent doctrines which already had
found favor among the people. He emphasized these and vitalized anew
their application to the Christian religion. In this section I shall
devote myself to a study of the ethical intensity of his ministry.

The Rev. Mr. Savage's ministry of nearly a quarter of a century in
Boston teaches some important lessons. And while he has had many
critics, no one has yet displayed and made current his most emphatic
qualities as a preacher. In attempting this the writer does so not from
the standpoint of the theologian or the professional clergyman, but from
that of a liberal thinker with mind unfettered by any prepossession.

The first thing to be noted is the candor of the man, the great
sincerity which marks whatever he says and does. His theology is simple;
his creed, which is neither the Apostles' nor the Nicene, nor the
utterances of modern pontiffs, but in a measure his own, is readily
comprehended, and betrays a sweet reasonableness which invites the
subscription of anyone without fear or trembling or convulsive
revolution. And while some of his fundamental beliefs impinge against
current prejudices and awaken enmities, he fearlessly submits them to
the judgment and common sense of mankind. What he believes he preaches,
and what he does not he rejects with all the vehemence of a man of
conviction. Correct modes or forms of religious thought he conceives to
be necessary, and the more so the firmer will be one's principles of
duty. Yet essential and sanctifying as this is, more essential in his
opinion is an honest mind,--a mind that is faithful in the pursuit of
truth and true to its own convictions and inspirations. He believes that
the most perfect man is he who is most diligent in duty and fervent in
spirit; who incorporates the truth into his selfhood; who toils with a
prompt and ardent devotion to know the truth, to maintain his opinions
firmly, to diffuse and propagate them by every means consistent with a
perfect character. With unselfish courage Mr. Savage resists every
allurement to compromise. Never timid, never complaisant or patronizing,
he exhibits some of the rarest virtues of the human mind. Oh that there
were more like him in this indolent and obsequious world!

Compared with Mr. Savage's strength of character, how contemptible are
some of the clerical and theological enigmas of our day. Waning and
waxing periods are not uncommon in our pulpits and our schools of
divinity. Now and then they diffuse a feeble as well as a strong glimmer
of religious virtue, and too often become the presages of things with
which we have no patience. It is painful to see preachers and
professors, like chartered buffoons, suppressing the light of reason,
intruding into places and folds to which they do not belong, and
sanctioning what in their hearts they do not accept. Among our
clergymen, where intelligence, character, and earnestness are
everything, we witness a conspicuous lack of sovereign motives shaping
and harmonizing life and doctrine. Nothing is more marked to-day in the
American pulpit than theological insincerity and indifference to the
obligation to preach only what is believed. Instead of feeling the might
of conscientious will and the higher aspirations of the age, they are
faint and muffled echoes of that moral force which has given efficiency
to the Christian ministry. We still hear the boast that the ministry of
to-day has outgrown the old Puritan austerity and the lines marked out
in earlier and more rigorous periods. May we not admit also that the
courage, the righteousness, and the heroic discharge of duty, by which
the Puritan has attracted the attention and the admiration of the world,
have lost something of their former greatness and power? Like hunters,
too many preachers are on the scent, not for the truth, but for
game,--for gain and earthly glory. To speak the truth might interfere
with their vocation; it might throw out of market their stock in trade.

Yet ought not the preacher to stick to his text? So great an advocate of
the truth should speak the truth and practise it. He should feel
inspired with a strong and awful prepossession in its favor. He need not
make pretension to infallibility, but we expect of him the absolute
veracity of his sacred calling and learning. His living should never
depend upon sustaining an error or an untruth. If it does, he does not
deserve the name he bears, and is not in the strictest sense a teacher
and leader of thought. We will excuse a deficiency of knowledge, but
never a deficiency in character,--in the word and spirit of what he
proclaims as the truth. Every truly devout minister of the Gospel should
rise and erase this stigma from his profession. It is a humiliating
reproach that any of this class of teachers lack true insight,
truthfulness, and faithful service; that they mask their convictions,
that they will not act out their opinions. This is a perversion of what
man really is. It makes him a vanishing spirit destitute of true
sentiment, character, and practical rectitude. Forms of worship and of
religion may be temporary and change, but love of truth and conviction
should always be an active power, uniform, eternal. Even in our
theological schools, where the human spirit is supposed to be exorcised
into worlds of graver and graver realities, we are just now learning
some valuable lessons in the flexibility of theological opinion.

He who stands in a conspicuous place in any community will always be
looked at. What he says and does will be judged by everybody. His person
and life and character, his joys and sorrows, are things of public
gossip and interest. And if the uniqueness of his position in society be
due to some sacred calling, such as a teacher of religious truth, he
evokes the highest esteem and expectations. All truth is sacred; and
truth's propagator is expected to be, not only a truth-seeker, but a
teacher of it in the interests of the public weal. The responsibility of
this is distributed among all men, but nowhere is it so great as with
the professed preacher and teacher of religious truth. He cannot absolve
himself from it. It is the price he pays for his exalted privilege, his
dignified position.

The creed-test of the Andover theological school may be unwarranted at
the present time. Yet while there is such a test, and the old creed
comes up and insists upon being reaffirmed in its original meaning by
each incumbent, we are bewildered the moment we attempt to harmonize
what happened there recently with stalwart conviction and vital piety.
Within a few months we have seen the Andover creed, over which there has
been so much wrangling, and some of whose doctrines make the human heart
to-day sink in despair, receiving unqualified indorsement. With
unfaltering confidence this ancient creed was reaffirmed by a professor
of that school of divinity without modifying the conditions of
subscription. This surprises us. It may be that the recently inducted
Professor of Sacred Rhetoric did not signify explicit allegiance to this
creed, whose doctrines are so inflexibly maintained by our older
theologians, but simply gave his assent, just as the clergy of the noble
Church of England are giving their assent, but not their strict
adherence, to the Thirty-nine Articles. And yet what is progressive
orthodoxy, so boldly and ably enunciated, but a growing away from the
old Andover creed?

Or is it only a question of emphasis, not of dogma? Are we to infer that
the old dogma abides, while only the emphasis alters? It may be that
progressive orthodoxy is not what it professes to be, that instead of
giving religious thought a definite impulse and being a necessary onward
step in sacred learning, religious thought is only receiving a richer
and deeper volume as it lies in its old bed. Be this as it may, the
verbal assent and subscription of the new incumbent gave fresh force to
every dogma of the old faith. True, we could not expect him to be so
recreant as to disown this venerable creed, to break the traditional
thread and cease to be the heir of his sires.

Yet we should like to see progressive orthodoxy, or the New Theology, of
Andover mean something; represent, without the slightest misgiving, some
distinctive dogma, some fresh insight into religious truth. At present
it is an unintelligible hypothesis. It does not appear to be definitely
settled. A master hand has sketched it, but there are none to complete
and make it triumphant. Why not go to the root of the matter?
Progressive orthodoxy is yet only "in the air." On paper it is
inspiring; in practice, a paradox to the discomfiture of every friend of
the revival of religious thought. It is subtle and disputatious, and
predicts for itself a reforming mission, but it has not the courage of
its convictions; it looks like a clever juggling of divinity. We may
speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but unless we have deep
convictions and feel the intensity of the principles we are attempting
to promulgate, we are as sounding brass; we lower the dignity of truth
and moral worth, we offend the purity of conscience. Filled with the
ecstasies of an office while enacting an untruth is satanic; it is
unworthy of any trained intelligence. Honest conviction is the
indispensable condition of the preacher and teacher. Without it he
compromises the sacred character of his particular commission, of his
appointed trust.

All this is meant to throw light upon the artless simplicity, the
outspoken but sensitive judgment, the indefinable strength of character,
of the Rev. Mr. Savage. Beneath all he says and does we may see the calm
utterance of unwavering convictions and an individuality unimpaired. He
is thoroughly possessed with the sense of duty; he has his being there.
There is nothing spurious in him; he disguises no hypocrisy. We see in
him no secret acquiescence with what he cannot conscientiously accept.
Always standing in the full light of the incomparable obligation and
privilege of his work,--which is a cheerful, happy exercise, not a
doleful and despondent one,--he influences the world not only as a
teacher, but as a character. He proclaims the sanctity of his office not
by a set of pious phrases, but by a spotless devotion to it, as the only
way by which he most completely can subserve the public welfare. This
perpetually invests the man and his ministry with interest and with an
almost magic power.

The ethical intensity of Mr. Savage's character unfolds itself in his
preaching as a consistent result. In the sermon the convictions of the
man are not sacrificed. He puts more than words into his sermons; he
puts himself. He speaks the truth "bluntly," as if it were not a hard
but an easy attainment, and an element of human nature. Without
pretension or self-exaltation, craving no man's praise and envying no
man's distinction, he endeavors in an unwavering and high-spirited
manner to disclose in his sermons the great verities, the substantial
realities, of life.

In the broadest sense of the word Mr. Savage is not a man of scholarly
attainments or tastes; not many are. He is nevertheless a highly
cultivated man. Whether he addresses us through the faculties of speech
or through his written compositions, we always feel the independence of
his intellect, his delicate and discriminating moral sense, and his love
of truth. His sermons, his public utterances, and his devout invocations
exhibit a maturity of mind and a range of culture which enable him to
impress other minds with whatever has possession of his own. In the
pulpit, in authorship, in every mode of religious activity, we meet the
cultivated, sincere, and reverent man. We feel the influence of his
sympathetic mind and singular chasteness of spirit in hearty and
symmetrical development. A culture like this, combined with a nature
deeply religious, brings one into possession more or less completely of
truths which make a direct appeal to the understanding. It has enabled
Mr. Savage to enjoy a certain lordship in the realm of mind and mental
life. He is an example of the dictum, that he who would think truly on
spiritual things must first be spiritually minded. In both his acted and
his written life he seems to comprehend and to realize the truth, to
have reached the loftiest heights of fellowship with eternal wisdom.
Judging from his own serene, unclouded, and practical vision of the
truth, one is driven to the conclusion that he is proclaiming and
formulating the ultimate gospel of mankind.

Some may sneer and scoff at his "deadly notions" and "perverted
thoughts," but in his demand for personal life, development of
conscience, and attainment in righteousness, his ministry is potent; its
inspiration is constant. He believes and preaches only those truths
which are possible to rational belief. With that exquisite instinct
which characterizes all his thinking, he places, as if he were in
apostolic succession, man's greatest need in coming to himself and in
making religion inseparable from personal thought and character. Mr.
Savage holds this forth as man's paramount task, to refuse which is
alone to be faithless and hopeless and unforgiven. His idea of religion
consists in nothing external or formal; nothing can avail with him but
the culture of the soul and the quiet discharge of duty. It is his
superlative merit that he enables one to feel his own capacity of
thought as a positive and independent efficacy, and to rest upon the
authority of his own conscience as the hope of glory and as a
coördinating power with Holy Writ. He makes a broad survey of human
nature, and commands men to traverse the whole range of their being and
to call themselves to rigid account until the germs of moral debility
are cast out of the heart. Man is not to waste his energies in grasping
the immense and misty proportions of the beliefs of this or that
traditionist or minute systems to which souls are often bent in
unwilling conformity. The object of his ministry is to summon men to
reckon with themselves every day, and to regenerate themselves by right
thinking and by deeds of piety. In his opinion each person is a
spiritual agency, a marvellous display of divine power and goodness, not
only in the majesty of the truth which he apprehends, but in the dignity
of the life which he may live. Temptation may open its alluring paths,
evil may solicit us, sin may lead us astray, sorrow may drag us down;
yet they need not. His public ministry is devoted to the infusion of
this better sentiment,--that man is not the mere victim of
circumstances, the necessary prey of temptation, or the helpless subject
of wrong; that he need not contemplate life in indolent despair, but may
check the dominion of sin and impurity, rise above not only intemperate
indulgence, but every intemperate desire and impulse, and form
dispositions of peculiar excellence, of original strength and beauty.

Mr. Savage's ministry, then, is full of truth and power. It is strongly
personal and ethical. There is no abler advocate of this important truth
and master-word of the Gospel and of religion. It is a divine truth ever
working in him, breaking into utterances, and giving to his beliefs and
his life the highest dignity. With him it is a persistent and
overwhelming duty to give to his ministry this practical content, this
ethical intensity. In this he is evangelical.

The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments assert or imply that
without our personal agency, and without the truth in the substance and
texture of our characters, there can be no spiritual elevation or final
perfection. In the terms of the Scriptures the divine resources are
infinite; but instead of overwhelming our personal agency or
responsibility they make a stupendous demand upon us. The truth must be
received with unhesitating acceptance and assimilated to our individual
being.

To teach such consummate truths the Rev. Minot J. Savage, D. D., strong
in every fibre of intellectual and religious faith, has devoted his
talents, his strength, and his life, and for that reason he stands
before the American people as one of their most noted preachers.

THE CIVIC OUTLOOK.

BY HENRY RANDALL WAITE, PH. D.

I. FRATERNAL GOVERNMENT.

The disposition to give due attention to the spirit of American
institutions is one which needs cultivation. Government, looked upon
only as machinery, may easily become a means for the accomplishment of
ends very different from those intended by its designers. In this
connection some recent utterances by Dr. Lyman Abbott are worthy of
serious thought:

     It is sometimes said that the majority rules in America, and it
     would be unfortunate if it were true. The French Revolution shows
     that no despotism of the individual is so cruel as the despotism of
     the majority. When the decisions of the majority or minority are
     supported by the whole people that is Americanism. Our democracy is
     not founded on the idea that our people make mistakes, but that the
     decision of all the people is better than that of one class, and
     that all the men are better judges than priests and kings and their
     instruments. Fraternal government is what we are trying to
     establish, and whoever strikes against the spirit of fraternalism
     strikes against the foundation of our government. We can get along
     with anything bad in our laws and correct it in our progress, but
     we can never live and prosper with the East arrayed against the
     West, the North against the South, rich against the poor, and labor
     against capital.

II. TRUE AMERICANISM.

Whatever other meaning may attach to the word Americanism, Dr. Abbott
points to its best definition. But what he has in mind cannot be
expected in the absence of a spirit which is made manifest in real
fraternalism conjoined with faithful devotion to intelligent convictions
of duty. This spirit will take patriotism out of the realm of mere
sentiment into that of noble passion. It will give to citizenship so
high a meaning that failures in civic duty will take on--as they clearly
ought to do--the character of sins against one's own manhood and against
the brotherhood of which the citizen is a member. If this spirit be
underneath our laws and manifest in their administration, we need have
little anxiety as to their statutory form. Political as well as
scriptural wisdom expresses itself in the statement that the "letter" of
the law kills, the "spirit" alone gives life.

III. THE RIGHT SPIRIT IN CITIZENSHIP.

How the spirit of genuine citizenship is to be made ascendant is a
question of increasing concern. It may nevertheless be doubted whether
organized forces for its suppression do not, in the matter of
painstaking and persistent energy and adroit management, excel the
organized elements specially devoted to its cultivation. Citizenship
activities, politically considered, for the most part are merged in the
machinery of parties; and this machinery, instead of representing in its
tenets the will of great bodies of independent and well-intentioned
suffragists, is too often so manipulated by a few skilful and
unprincipled political machinists as to represent their will instead. It
is obvious that in so far as these clever machinists are able to run our
politics to suit themselves, the very machinery through which the right
spirit in citizenship must come to power, if at all, is turned into a
means for its own suppression. It thus comes to pass that we have the
pitiable spectacle of great party organizations through which masses of
honest and patriotic citizens farcically--nay, tragically--coöperate for
the accomplishment of results, which, while secured through their votes
and in their name, are in reality results of the clandestine and
sinister work of a few men.

IV. REFORM IN PRIMARY ELECTIONS.

Plainly, if the right spirit in citizenship is to be ascendant, it must
find some means of doing away with the boss system in politics. This
system is made possible only by the ease with which primary elections
are controlled by coteries of designing men. Here is a battlefield where
the best and worst elements in our politics need to be brought into
immediate and conclusive conflict. A system which foists upon the people
as its candidates for office those whom they have had no real voice in
choosing, and who are not worthy, represents an actual subversion of
popular government, and calls for such a manifestation of the spirit of
true Americanism as shall overthrow it once for all. This question is an
overshadowing one. Pollution at the fountain means pollution everywhere.
Men elected to office through shameful methods may sometimes be better
than the methods by which they have profited, but they are not to be
trusted. Their responsibility is to the "bosses," not to the citizens
whose machine-directed votes elected them. The only sentiment to which
they bow is that expressed by the leader whose favor bestowed, and whose
hostility will deprive them of, official position and emoluments. The
immediate outlook is not, however, without hope. Independent movements
in several States are in progress looking to the complete uprooting of
the boss system. In parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and
California, and in some of the Southern States "the Crawford County
method," which takes the choice of candidates out of the hands of the
few and places it in the hands of the majority of voters, is already
being tried. In Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota similar methods have
been the subject of legislative action, and satisfactory results are
anticipated. This is a reform which should not be left to the advocacy
of a few individuals, or to the members of a few organizations like the
American Institute of Civics and local civic reform bodies. Members of
these bodies have done much and will do more to promote it, but its
final success depends upon the manifestation everywhere of an aroused
public spirit whose demands cannot be denied.

V. CIVICS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Much progress has recently been made in educational provisions for the
instruction necessary to qualify American youth for the intelligent and
efficient discharge of civic obligations. The Patria Club of New York
City, a strong body organized under the auspices of the American
Institute of Civics and devoted to the objects which it represents, has
offered prizes to the pupils in the schools in the vicinity of New York
for the purpose of stimulating their interest in matters of government
and citizenship, and has undertaken a similar work in connection with
the charity industrial schools of that city. Of great importance is the
action of the New York Board of Education looking to specific
instruction in civics in all the city schools, and its later action in
giving to this subject an important place in the curriculum of the high
schools which are to be established the coming year. Another
organization which contributes to the same results, the American Guards,
is represented by battalions in several New York schools. This
movement, which has already extended into many schools in different
States, is under the fostering care of Col. H. H. Adams, an officer of
the Institute of Civics. The guards are composed of boys who voluntarily
devote a certain amount of time, out of school hours, to exercises
promotive of a virile and intelligent patriotism. These exercises
include military drill, and the youthful guards, in their becoming
uniforms, develop a marked degree of manliness and self-respect. Two of
the battalions are under the leadership of public-school principals, E.
H. Boyer and D. E. Gaddes, councillors of the Institute of Civics. The
guards participated in the ceremonies at the dedication of the Grant
monument, and no organization in line attracted more favorable
attention.

VI. RURAL INFLUENCES ON URBAN AFFAIRS.

It cannot be denied that the hitherto controlling power of voters in
rural districts has frequently been used to the prejudice of city
interests. Representatives from country regions have lent their aid in
effecting vicious as well as wholesome changes in legislation affecting
municipalities, and this aid has sometimes been secured by corrupt
methods. It is nevertheless true that the average country voter and the
average legislator who represents him sincerely desire to promote only
such legislation as will be of highest advantage to urban communities.
If their votes fail to secure this result it is more often because of
insufficient knowledge of urban conditions and needs, than of
indifference or corrupt influences.

It is, therefore, a matter of the very highest importance that citizens
remote from our great cities be made sufficiently familiar with
municipal needs to enable them to reach wiser conclusions as to the
desirability or undesirability of special measures affecting their
political, social, and industrial interests. Opinions based, as now,
chiefly upon the statements of a partisan press, too often represent the
interests of a party regardless of those of the municipalities directly
concerned.

With the steady growth of our great cities in population and political
power, the question of wholesome State legislation in matters affecting
their civic and moral wellbeing, is one of no less importance to rural
communities than to the cities themselves. Controlling power is already
drifting cityward in many States, and rural voters who have not
contributed to the creation of right civic conditions in our great
municipalities may soon find this power used to their own serious
injury. In this connection the New York _Christian Advocate_, referring
to the possibilities of good and evil in the Greater New York, justly
says:

     The only balancing force in preventing the evil from triumphing
     over the good, will be the influence of the remainder of the Empire
     State. The morale of cities differs from that of rural regions in
     that the evil-minded can consort and conceal their deeds, can
     obtain great political power; and large cities are prone to
     legalize vice and admit of organized political corruption. Whereas
     elsewhere the laws are generally in harmony with morality, and the
     difficulty of concealment impedes the growth and the increase of
     the arrogance of vice.

     The force of Greater New York in legislation and the administration
     of law, is something appalling to contemplate. Permanent antagonism
     between the Metropolis and the rest of the State will in itself be
     a demoralizing element. Yet unless the State watches this immense
     aggregation of heterogeneous peoples and cities, Greater New York
     may become a pervading source of corruption. If there be one
     tendency confirmed by history, it is that smaller cities imitate
     the greater, that towns imitate the smaller cities, and villages,
     the towns. Thus for good or ill the most populous centres become
     the controlling force.

VII. WOMAN'S WORK IN CIVICS.

The growth of organizations which are directed by women, wholly or
chiefly devoted to reforms in civic conditions, has been paralleled by
hardly any popular movement of recent years. The Women's Christian
Temperance Union, although hardly more than a juvenile among other great
organizations, is second to few of them in its potentiality for good.
Women's clubs are found everywhere, and, wherever found, for the most
part represent a serious purpose to find and apply right remedies to
existing civic and social evils. The Federation of Women's Clubs brings
all of these local movements into harmonious efforts for the upbuilding
of unselfish patriotism in the community and the highest virtue in the
home. The National Health Protective Association, whose second annual
meeting was recently held in Philadelphia, has already made a record for
itself, through its branches in many cities, which evidences not only a
reason for its existence, but the capacity and success which women have
brought to the solution of some of the most important problems of city
life, such as protection from contagious diseases, the supply of pure
water and pure milk, the prevention of food adulterations, improvements
in tenement conditions, provisions affecting the health of working
people, attention to the sick children of the very poor, and a score of
equally important matters. The chairman of this organization is Mrs.
Etta Osgood of Portland, Maine, and its leading members include Dr.
Lozier of New York, Mrs. A. J. Perry of Brooklyn, Mrs. Theo. F. Seward
of Orange, N. J., Mrs. Henry Birkenbine of Wayne, Pa., Mrs. L. E. Harvey
of Dayton, O., Miss Florence Parsons of Yonkers, N. Y., Mrs. J. E Weiks
of Buffalo, and Mrs. John H. Scribner of Philadelphia.

In the same city was also held, shortly after the meeting of the Health
Protective Association, the Triennial Convention of Working Women's
Societies. This gathering of earnest women was notable for the keenness
which its members brought to the discussion of questions affecting the
interests of working women, and the equal sincerity of their desire to
reach only just conclusions. Here is an opportunity for the bright women
who are at the head of the Federation of Women's Clubs to establish
reciprocal relations which will be fruitful in great good.

VIII. MUNICIPAL REFORM ORGANIZATIONS.

The third year of the National Reform League has been completed with
results full of encouragement to the members of the various social
organizations of which it is composed. Its annual meeting at Louisville,
Ky., was attended by one hundred and fifty delegates. Much of the
success of the widely extended work represented by this national
organization is due to the persistent and unselfish activities of its
able secretary, Mr. Clinton Rogers Woodruff, of the Philadelphia bar,
who closed his address before the convention with these encouraging
words:

     In every direction the outlook is bright and promising, not of the
     immediate fulfilment of all the hopes and desires of those who are
     most deeply interested perhaps, but of substantial progress and
     steady growth. The sentiment for better government is gaining day
     by day. It is not a movement for a particular form of local
     government or of specific panaceas for municipal evils, but rather
     one to bring the citizens, those who are primarily responsible, to
     a fuller appreciation and a more general discharge of the duties of
     citizenship--in short, a movement for citizenship reform. The
     indifference and apathy of the average voter have been a matter of
     general comment. To overcome this, and to replace it with that
     interest and that action without which no permanent reform can be
     accomplished, the realization that good government depends for its
     very existence upon good men, is the fundamental basis of municipal
     reform. Charter revision, civil-service rules and regulations, fair
     elections, and an honest count and return are all important; but
     they depend for their success upon sound public opinion, and that
     depends upon good citizenship. Good laws are important; good
     citizenship is essential.

The Good Citizenship League of Minneapolis adds to the means of its
increasingly useful work by the publication of a carefully edited little
periodical under the title of _Facts_, in which information that might
not otherwise reach them in proper form is placed before all citizens.
E. F. Waite is President, and Alfred Sherlock, Secretary, with offices
at 254 Hennepin Avenue.

IX. CITY TAXPAYERS.

Mr. Charles Richardson, vice-president of the National Municipal League,
in seeking the causes for the non-participation of large taxpayers in
efforts to secure good government in cities, finds the following among
other reasons:

     1st. Because they fear that their opposition to influential
     politicians may be punished by an increase in their assessments for
     taxation, or by a loss of custom or employment, or by some other
     action injurious to their personal or business interests.

     2nd. Because as investors, employees, or otherwise, they have or
     hope to have some pecuniary interests in corporations, contracts,
     or offices, which would be much less profitable under a government
     too pure to be corrupted, and too intelligent to be outwitted.

     3rd. Because they believe that it pays better in dollars and cents
     to submit to existing abuses than to expend the time and money
     required for a long and difficult series of political contests.

     4th. Because they consider that national legislation affects their
     personal interests far more than any probable action of their local
     government, and that their national party must therefore be
     supported in its efforts to strengthen itself by securing complete
     control of local affairs.

     5th. Because they believe the local machine of the opposition party
     is still worse than their own, and that to promote its success by
     wasting their votes on a third ticket would only be jumping out of
     the frying pan into the fire.

     6th. Because they have no faith in the possibility of subjecting
     politics to the principles of common honesty, or public affairs to
     the methods of intelligent business.

     This list is not complete, but it is sufficiently formidable to
     show that the progress of reform principles among the taxpayers
     must continue to be slow and difficult, unless city government can
     be made to appear much more important and interesting than it has
     hitherto seemed to be.

X. CIVICS IN STATE UNIVERSITIES.

A writer in _Christian Work_, urging the importance of action such as
the American Institute of Civics is devoted to, says:

     With the new way of looking at Government, and with new tasks
     imposed upon it, must come preparation for the grave
     responsibilities of the present and future. Old ideas linger after
     they have subserved their purposes. We are living in an industrial
     age. Especially is it true in a country like the United States that
     the ordinary pursuits of peace outweigh a hundredfold the interests
     of war. Nevertheless, we have our well-equipped academy at West
     Point to prepare young men for the army, and our excellent academy
     at Annapolis to prepare young men for the navy; but we have no
     civil academy to give men careful preparation for the civil
     service, which is of inestimably more importance to us than either
     the army or navy so far as ordinary, everyday life is concerned.
     Even in his day, Washington saw the importance of a national
     university which should fulfil many of the purposes of such an
     academy. As a part of the remedy for trusts and combinations, and
     an important part, the writer would mention institutions designed
     to give the most careful training in preparation for every branch
     of the civil service. This should go hand in hand with the
     enlargement of this service. The progress which has already been
     made in the reformation of our civil service is gratifying, but
     something far more than has yet been advocated by any
     civil-service-reform association is needed. As part of the general
     programme of the solution of the problem of monopoly, the
     development of the State universities of the country along the line
     of civics may be mentioned. Each State university should, in
     addition to other things, be a civil academy.

XI. A BETRAYAL OF REFORM.

These are the words applied to an act of the Republican Governor of New
York by one of the ablest and stanchest Republican journals of that
State, the _Mail and Express_ of New York City. It goes on to say:

     Gov. Black's approval of the bill to place the civil service of
     this State at the mercy of machine politics is a perversion of
     Republican principle and a betrayal of reform. There is not one
     legitimate public interest that this measure will benefit; not a
     single purpose of honest administration that it will strengthen,
     nor an object of sound party policy that it will help to
     accomplish.

     The Governor's bill is a step backward from the advanced position
     of the party on the civil-service issue. It is a trick to nullify
     the merit principle in appointments to public office, and it opens
     the way for a full restoration of the spoils system. There is not a
     boss nor a machine politician in the State who does not indorse it.
     There is not an intelligent supporter of honest civil service who
     will not denounce it.

     The rank and file of the Republican party repudiate the Governor's
     bill and disclaim all responsibility for it. Party sentiment has
     spoken against it in unmistakable terms. The Governor's reflections
     upon those who opposed the bill are neither well grounded nor in
     good taste. They mean nothing save that he is sensitive to the
     criticism which his ill-advised measure has provoked--criticism
     which, it may truthfully be said, is abundantly warranted by the
     character of the bill itself as well as by his own amazing advocacy
     of the spoils system in the public service.

XII. STATE AID TO INDUSTRIES.

Massachusetts has undertaken an interesting experiment in the way of
promoting home industries. With the aim of producing in that State the
finer grade of goods now produced only in foreign markets, the
legislature two years ago appropriated $25,000 for the establishment of
a textile school in any town which might make a like appropriation for
the same object. This offer has now been accepted by the citizens of
Lowell, and the first school of the character proposed is being
established. It is hoped that this experiment may lead to results which
will in some degree compensate for the industrial losses sustained by
New England through the competition of the multiplying cotton mills in
the South.

XIII. READING MATTER FOR PRISONERS.

Some time ago, in response to a need brought to its attention by one of
the local officers in Texas, the American Institute of Civics offered to
superintend the distribution among the prisons of the United States of
literature suitable for the use of prisoners. Citizens were asked to
coöperate, and much good literature has thus been placed in the hands of
those who have found it not only a source of entertainment, but, through
its refining and elevating influences, a means of great benefit. This
beneficent work can be indefinitely extended with a little cost if
citizens who appreciate its importance will give to it their aid by
contributions of literature, such as wholesome works of fiction, popular
works of history, treatises on the useful arts and industries, popular
periodicals, etc., etc.; or by assisting in the payment of the cost of
collection and distribution. One of the Institute's councillors in the
State of Washington, President Penrose of Whitman College, has recently
made an appeal for such literature for the use of convicts in the
Washington penitentiary. Inquiries as to methods of coöperation, or
gifts for the prison literature expense fund, may be sent to the
American Institute of Civics, 203 Broadway, New York.

"THE TEMPEST" THE SEQUEL TO "HAMLET."

BY EMILY DICKEY BEERY.

"The Tempest" is a little enchanted world where play all the forces that
are manifested in the larger creation from the lowest animalism to the
highest manhood, harmonious with his invisible environment. This world
in miniature--true to the laws of the macrocosm--begins in chaos, storm,
and stress, but finds completion in supernal air and divine peace. We
shall find by consecutive study of the dramas that the poet, in his
creative work, has ever risen from lower manifestations to higher as his
own soul soared on higher and higher wing. Prospero was his last,
greatest, and divinest thought of man in his unfolding godward.

Nature in her evolution takes no vast strides, and her supreme poet
follows her divine current of growth from the animal man to the grand
manifestation of his ideal. He understood that in man's unfolding not a
round could be missed of the "Jacob's Ladder" resting upon the earth,
but reaching into the heavens.

In this ideal world of "The Tempest," Caliban stands upon the earth
groping to attain the first step, while Prospero stands upon the summit
with his face heavenward. This typical man comes upon the stage on a
high plane of development. Long previously he had left the rank and file
of humanity to tread the ever lonely path to higher achievement,
therefore we must look below him to find, among the creations of the
poet, the incarnation which was the chrysalis for this last ideal. Here
our intuitive perception immediately descries Hamlet, that wonderful
human mystery who was the first of Shakspere's sons to enter the
precincts of the inner life and catch a glimpse of the godlike
potentialities of the human soul.

In Hamlet was the struggle of birth; in Prospero, the glory of
achievement, the fulfilment to some extent of the poet's ideal man, and
the first to realize that the power of thought is the supreme force in
the universe. Hamlet caught the first glimpse of this truth when he
said, "There's nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so." He is the
hero of spiritual birth and growth in man from the dawning of the
soul-life, through its fierce struggles to dominate the lower self and
rise into realms of clearer light and truth. The "godlike reason which
was not left in him to rust unused," in its aspiration became
illuminated by intuition and revealed to his awe-inspired gaze new
worlds not dreamed of by the Horatios of his time.

Hamlet was lost in wonder at himself. The lower forces of his nature
along the old inherited lines of thought, coming in contact with the
higher thought-currents, newly created, caused the blended stream to
"turn awry and lose the name of action," termed by the unseeing world
lack of courage and will-power. Even he could not understand but that in
some inexplicable way he _must_ be a coward, because he could not
perceive the _why_ of his delaying vengeance. Yet he knew he was brave
to the core of his being. When his military friends, "distilled almost
to jelly with the act of fear," would have restrained him from following
the spirit of his father, he cries out:

     Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin's fee;
     and for my soul, what can it do to that, being a thing immortal as
     itself? ... My fate cries out, and makes each petty artery in this
     body as hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.

He was strong of will and resolute of purpose, but had reached the plane
of development where his higher nature would not permit him to commit
murder. Yet the strong current of popular opinion, as well as all
hereditary and sub-conscious influences in himself, were ever impelling
him to do the deed. In his soul-growth, Hamlet had passed the plane of
revenge as a passion, but had not reached the divine heights of
forgiveness. To avenge the murder of his father was to him a sacred
command and duty coming in conflict with another equally sacred duty
voiced by his higher self, and the mighty meeting of these two
soul-forces always resulted in inaction. This moral battleground is the
pivotal point of the drama, indirectly putting in motion all the forces
which terminate in the final catastrophe.

In his thoughtful moods his disposition was ever shaken with "thoughts
beyond the reaches of our souls," saying, "Why is this? wherefore? what
should we do?" It was the unlaid ghost of his higher self that
propounded these queries to the apparition. The birth-throes of thought
were giving him entrance into a new world where he began to see "What a
piece of work is man! how _infinite_ in faculty! in action how like an
angel! in apprehension how like a God!"

The thoughts that Hamlet voices had passed through Shakspere's brain,
and the wonderful powers manifested by Prospero had been apprehended by
his own prophetic vision. Hamlet might have moved along on the lower
plane successfully, but the law of spiritual growth, the divine force
upheaving and uplifting his soul against the barriers of his
sub-conscious mentality and his environment, finally ended in the sad
tragedy. Yet in the defeat was a victory, for it was merely the turn of
the spiral downward for a higher rise in evolution.

Prospero is first revealed to us at about the age of Hamlet when the
curtain falls and hides him from our tear-dimmed eyes. Shakspere loved
Hamlet. He was dearest to his heart of all his children, and he felt
that he must not die, but must come into the full fruition of the
immortals. The soul so nobly struggling from its swaddling clothes
_must_ become a freed spirit of godlike power. Therefore he presents to
us an ideal world where Hamlet sits upon the throne as Prospero,
"transported and rapt in secret studies," "neglecting worldly ends, all