MOTHER EARTH

E. Goldman and M. Baginski

THERE was a time when men imagined the Earth as the center of the universe. The stars, large and small, they believed were created merely for their delectation. It was their vain conception that a supreme being, weary of solitude, had manufactured a giant toy and put them into possession of it.

When, however, the human mind was illumined by the torch-light of science, it came to understand that the Earth was but one of a myriad of stars floating in infinite space, a mere speck of dust.

Man issued from the womb of Mother Earth, but he knew it not, nor recognized her, to whom he owed his life. In his egotism he sought an explanation of himself in the infinite, and out of his efforts there arose the dreary doctrine that he was not related to the Earth, that she was but a temporary resting place for his scornful feet and that she held nothing for him but temptation to degrade himself. Interpreters and prophets of the infinite sprang into being, creating the "Great Beyond" and proclaiming Heaven and Hell, between which stood the poor, trembling human being, tormented by that priest-born monster, Conscience.

In this frightful scheme, gods and devils waged eternal war against each other with wretched man as the prize of victory; and the priest, self-constituted interpreter of the will of the gods, stood in front of the only refuge from harm and demanded as the price of entrance that ignorance, that asceticism, that self-abnegation which could but end in the complete subjugation of man to superstition. He was taught that Heaven, the refuge, was the very antithesis of Earth, which was the source of sin. To gain for himself a seat in Heaven, man devastated the Earth. Yet she renewed herself, the good mother, and came again each Spring, radiant with youthful beauty, beckoning her children to come to her bosom and partake of her bounty. But ever the air grew thick with mephitic darkness, ever a hollow voice was heard calling: "Touch not the beautiful form of the sorceress; she leads to sin!"

But if the priests decried the Earth, there were others who found in it a source of power and who took possession of it. Then it happened that the autocrats at the gates of Heaven joined forces with the powers that had taken possession of the Earth; and humanity began its aimless, monotonous march. But the good mother sees the bleeding feet of her children, she hears their moans, and she is ever calling to them that she is theirs.

To the contemporaries of George Washington, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, America appeared vast, boundless, full of promise. Mother Earth, with the sources of vast wealth hidden within the folds of her ample bosom, extended her inviting and hospitable arms to all those who came to her from arbitrary and despotic lands--Mother Earth ready to give herself alike to all her children. But soon she was seized by the few, stripped of her freedom, fenced in, a prey to those who were endowed with cunning and unscrupulous shrewdness. They, who had fought for independence from the British yoke, soon became dependent among themselves; dependent on possessions, on wealth, on power. Liberty escaped into the wilderness, and the old battle between the patrician and the plebeian broke out in the new world, with greater bitterness and vehemence. A period of but a hundred years had sufficed to turn a great republic, once gloriously established, into an arbitrary state which subdued a vast number of its people into material and intellectual slavery, while enabling the privileged few to monopolize every material and mental resource.

During the last few years, American journalists have had much to say about the terrible conditions in Russia and the supremacy of the Russian censor. Have they forgotten the censor here? a censor far more powerful than him of Russia. Have they forgotten that every line they write is dictated by the political color of the paper they write for; by the advertising firms; by the money power; by the power of respectability; by Comstock? Have they forgotten that the literary taste and critical judgment of the mass of the people have been successfully moulded to suit the will of these dictators, and to serve as a go od business basis for shrewd literary speculators? The number of Rip Van Winkles in life, science, morality, art, and literature is very large. Innumerable ghosts, such as Ibsen saw when he analyzed the moral and social conditions of our life, still keep the majority of the human race in awe.

MOTHER EARTH will endeavor to attract and appeal to all those who oppose encroachment on public and individual life. It will appeal to those who strive for something higher, weary of the commonplace; to those who feel that stagnation is a deadweight on the firm and elastic step of progress; to those who breathe freely only in limitless space; to those who long for the tender shade of a new dawn for a humanity free from the dread of want, the dread of starvation in the face of mountains of riches. The Earth free for the free individual!

Emma Goldman,
Max Baginski.

The Song of the Storm-Finch*

By Maxim Gorky

THE strong wind is gathering the storm-clouds together
Above the gray plain of the ocean so wide.
The storm-finch, the bird that resembles dark lightning,
Between clouds and ocean is soaring with pride.

Now skimming the waves with his wings, and now shooting
Up, arrow-like, into the dark clouds on high,
The storm-finch is clamoring loudly and shrilly;
The clouds can hear joy in the bird's fearless cry.

In that cry is the yearning, the thirst for the tempest,
And anger's hot might in its wild notes is heard;
The keen fire of passion, the faith in sure triumph--
All these the clouds hear in the voice of the bird . . . . .

The storm-wind is howling, the thunder is roaring;
With flame blue and lambent the cloud-masses glow
O'er the fathomless ocean; it catches the lightnings,
And quenches them deep in its whirlpool below.

Like serpents of fire in the dark ocean writhing,
The lightnings reflected there quiver and shake
As into the blackness they vanish forever.
The tempest! Now quickly the tempest will break!

The storm-finch soars fearless and proud 'mid the lightnings,
Above the wild waves that the roaring winds fret;
And what is the prophet of victory saying?
"Oh, let the storm burst! Fiercer yet-fiercer yet!"

*From "Songs of Russia," rendered into English by ALICE STONE BLACKWELL

To the Readers

The name "Open Road" had to be abandoned, owing to the existence of a magazine by that name.

Observations and Comments

The importance of written history for the people can easily be compared with the importance of a diary for the individual. It furnishes data for recollections, points of comparison between the Past and Present. But as most diaries and auto-biographies show a lack of straight-forward, big, simple, sincere self-analyses, so does history seldom prove a representation of facts, of the truth, of reality.

The way history is written will depend altogether on whatever purpose the writers have in view, and what they hope to achieve thereby. It will altogether depend upon the sincerity or lack thereof, upon the broad or narrow horizon of the historian. That which passes as history in our schools, or governmentally fabricated books on history, is a forgery, a misrepresentation of events. Like the old drama centering upon the impossible figure of the hero, with a gesticulating crowd in the background. Quacks of history speak only of "great men" like Bonapartes, Bismarcks, Deweys, or Rough Riders as leaders of the people, while the latter serve as a setting, a chorus, howling the praise of the heroes, and also furnishing their blood money for the whims and extravagances of their masters. Such history only tends to produce conceit, national impudence, superciliousness and patriotic stupidity, all of which is in full bloom in our great Republic.

Our aim is to teach a different conception of historical events. To define them as an ever-recurring struggle for Freedom against every form of Might. A struggle resultant from an innate yearning for self-expression, and the recognition of one's own possibilities and their attitude toward other human beings. History to us means a compilation of experiences, out of which the individual, as well as the race, will gain the right understanding how to shape and organize a mode of life best suited to bring out the finest and strongest qualities of the human race.

The American Brutus is, of course, a business man and has no time to overthrow Caesar. Recently, however, the imperialistic stew became hot and too much for him. The marriage of Miss Alice Roosevelt produced such a bad odor of court gossip, as to make the poor American Brutus ill with nausea. He grew indignant, draped his sleeve in mourning, and with gloomy mien and clenched fists, went about prophesying the downfall of the Republic.

Between ourselves, the number of those who still believe in the American Republic can be counted on one's fingers. One has either pierced through the lie, all for the people and by the people-in that case one must become a Revolutionist; or, one has succeeded in putting one's bounty in safety-then he is a conservative. "No disturbances, please. We are about to close a profitable contract." Modern bourgeoisie is absolutely indifferent as to who is to be their political boss, just so they are given opportunity to store their profits, and accumulate great wealth. Besides, the cry about the decline of the great Republic is really meaningless. As far as it ever stood for liberty and well-being of the people, it has long ceased to be. Therefore lamentations come too late. True, the American Republic has not given birth to an aristocracy. It has produced the power of the parvenu, not less brutal than European aristocracy, only narrower in vision and not less vulgar in taste.

Instead of mourning one ought to rejoice that the latest display of disgusting servility has completely thrown off the mantle of liberty and independence of Dame Columbia, now exposed before the civilized world in all her slavish submissiveness.

The storm in Russia has frightened many out of their warm bed-clothes.

A real Revolution in these police-regulated times. More than one voice was raised against the possibility of a Revolution, and they who dared to predict it were considered fit for the lunatic asylum.

The workingmen, peasants and students of Russia, however, have proven that the calculations of the "wise" contained a hitch somewhere. A Revolution swept across the country and did not even stop to ask permission of those in authority.

Authority and Power are now taking revenge on their daring sons and daughters. The Cossacks, at the command of the "good Czar" are celebrating a bloody feast-knouting, shooting, clubbing people to death, dragging great masses to prisons and into exile, and it is not the fault of that vicious idiot on the throne, nor that of his advisors, Witte and the others, if the Revolution still marches on, head erect. Were it in their power, they would break her proud neck with one stroke, but they cannot put the head of a hundred million people on the block, they cannot deport eighty millions of Peasants to Siberia nor ran they order all the workingmen in the industrial districts shot. Were the working bees to be killed, the drones would perish of starvation--that is why the Czar of the Peace Treaty still suffers some of his people to live? --

In Mayville, Wis., a transvaluation society has been formed, the purpose of which is, to bring about the transvaluation of all values in matters of love and the relations of the sexes. The members of this society are to contribute by word and deed towards the breaking of all barriers that prevent an ideal and healthy conception of love.

The president of this society, Emil Ruedebusch, known in this country through his work, "The Old and New Ideal," which, by the way, was condiscated upon the grounds of obscenity and the author put on trial. It is an undisputed fact that robust, graft-greedy Columbia abhors every free expression on love or marriage. Emil Ruedebusch, like many others who have dared to lift the veil of hypocrisy, was condemned to a heavy fine. A second work of the author, "Die Eigenen," was published in Germany.

His idea, that the relation of the sexes must be freed oppressing from the fetters of a lame morality that degrades every human emotion to the plane of utility and purpose, I heartily endorse. His method of achieving the ideal seems to me too full of red tape. However, I welcome every effort against the conspiracy of ignorance, hypocrisy, and stupid prudery, against the simplest manifestation of nature.

Tragedy of Women's Emancipation

By Emma Goldman

BEGIN my article with an admission: Regardless of all political and economic theories, treating of the fundamental differences between the various groups within the human race, regardless of class and race distinctions, regardless of all artificial boundary lines between woman's rights and man's rights, I hold that there is a point where these differentiations may meet and grow into one perfect whole.

With this I do not mean to propose a peace treaty. The general social antagonism which has taken hold of our entire public life to-day, brought about through the force of opposing and contradictory interests, will crumble to pieces when the reorganization of our social life, based upon the principles of economic justice, shall have become a reality.

Peace and harmony between the sexes, and individuals does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits or peculiarities. The problem that confronts us, to-day, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be oneself, and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one's own innate qualities. This seems to me the basis upon which the mass and the individual, the true democrat and the true individuality, man and woman can meet without antagonism and opposition. The motto should, not be forgive one another; it should be, understand one another. The oft-quoted sentence of Mme. de Stael: "To understand everything means to forgive everything," has never particularly appealed to me; it has the odor of the confessional; to forgive one's fellow being conveys the idea of pharisaical superiority. To understand one's being suffices. This admission partly represents the fundamental aspect of my views on the emancipation of woman and its effect upon the entire sex.

Emancipation should make it possible for her to be human in the truest sense. Everything within her that craves assertion and activity should reach expression; and all artificial barriers should be broken and the road towards greater freedom cleared of every trace of centuries of submission and slavery.

This was the original aim of the movement for woman's emancipation. But the results so far achieved have isolated woman and have robbed her of the fountain springs of that happiness which is so essential to her. Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being who reminds one of the products of French arboriculture with its arabesque trees and shrubs--pyramids, wheels and wreaths; anything except the forms which would be reached by the expression of their own inner qualities. Such artificially grown plants of the female sex are to be found in large numbers, especially in the so-called intellectual sphere of our life.

Liberty and equality for woman! What hopes and aspirations these words awakened when they first uttered by some of the noblest and bravest souls of those days. The sun in all its light and glory was to rise upon a new world; in this world woman was to be free to direct her own destiny, an aim certainly worthy of the great enthusiasm, courage, perseverance and ceaseless effort of the tremendous host of pioneer men and women, who staked everything against a world of prejudice and ignorance.

My hopes also move towards that goal, but I insist that the emancipation of woman, as interpreted and practically applied to-day, has failed to reach that great end. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipation from emancipation, if she really desires to be free. This may sound paradoxical, but is, nevertheless, only too true.

What has she achieved through her emancipation? Equal Suffrage in a few states. Has that purified our political life, as many well-meaning advocates have predicted? Certainly not. Incidentally it is really time that persons with plain, sound judgment should cease to talk about corruption in politics in a boarding-school tone. Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals or the laxity of morals of various political personalities. Its cause is altogether a material one. Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world, the mottoes of which are: "to take is more blessed than to give"; "buy cheap and sell clear"; "one soiled hand washes the other." There is no hope that even woman, with her right to vote, will ever purify politics.

Emancipation has brought woman economic equality with man; that is, she can choose her own profession and trade, but as her past and present physical training have not equipped tier with the necessary strength to compete with man, she is often compelled to exhaust all her energy, use up her vitality and strain every nerve in order to reach the market value. Very few ever succeed, for it is a fact that women doctors, lawyers, architects and engineers are neither met with the same confidence, nor do they receive the same remuneration. And those that do reach that enticing equality generally do so at the expense of their physical and psychical well-being. As to the great mass of working girls and women, how much independence is gained if the narrowness and lack of freedom of the home is exchanged for the narrowness and lack of freedom of the factory, sweat-shop, department store, or office? In addition is the burden which is laid on many women of looking after a "home, sweet home" cold, dreary, disorderly, uninviting--after a day's hard work. Glorious independence! No wonder, that hundreds of girls are so willing to accept the first offer of marriage, sick and tired of their independence behind the counter, or at the sewing or typewriting machine. They are just as ready to marry as girls of of middle class people who long to throw off the yoke of parental dependence. A so-called independence which leads only to earning the merest subsistence is not so enticing, not so ideal that one can expect woman to sacrifice everything for it. Our highly praised independence is, after all, but a slow process of dulling and stifling woman's nature, her love instinct and her mother instinct.

Nevertheless, The position of the working girl is far more natural and human than that of her seemingly more fortunate sister in the more cultured professional walk of life. Teachers, physicians, lawyers, engineers, etc., who have to make a dignified, straightened and proper appearance, while the inner life is growing empty and dead.

The narrowness of the existing conception of woman's independence and emancipation; the dread of love for a man who is not her social equal; the fear that love will rob her of her freedom and independence, the horror that love or the joy of motherhood will only hinder her in the full exercise of her profession--all these together make of the emancipated modern woman a compulsory vestal, before whom life, with its great clarifying sorrows and its deep, entrancing joys, rolls on without touching or gripping her soul.

Emancipation as understood by the majority of its adherents and exponents, is of too narrow a scope to permit the boundless joy and ecstasy contained in the deep emotion of the true woman, sweetheart, mother, freedom.

The tragic fate of the self-supporting or economically free woman does not consist of too many, but of too few experiencees. True, she surpasses her sister of past generations in knowledge of the world and human nature; and it is because of that that she feels deeply the lack of life's essence, which alone can enrich the human soul and without which the majority of women have become mere automatons.

That such a state of affairs was bound to come was foreseen by those who realized that in the domain of ethics, there still remained decaying ruins of the time of the undisputed superiority of man; ruins that are still considered useful. And, which is more important, a goodly number of the emancipated are unable to get along without them. Every movement that aims at the destruction of existing institutions and the replacement thereof with such as are more advanced more perfect, has followers, who in theory stand for the most extreme radical ideas, and who, nevertheless, in their every-day practice, are like the next best Philistine, feigning respectability and clamoring for the good opinion of their opponents. There are, for example, Socialists, and even Anarchists, who stand for the idea that property is robbery, yet who will grow indignant if anyone owe them the value of a half-dozen pins.

The same Philistine can be found in the movement for woman's emancipation. Yellow journalists and milk and water literateurs have painted pictures of the emancipated woman that make the hair of the good citizen and his dull companion stand up on end. Every member of the women's rights movement was pictured as a George Sand in her absolute disregard of morality. Nothing was sacred to her. She had no respect for the ideal relation between man and woman. In short, emancipation stood only for a reckless life of lust and sin; regardless of society, religion and morality. The exponents of woman's rights were highly indignant at such a misrepresentation, and, lacking in humor, they exerted all their energy to prove that they were not at all as bad as they were painted, but the very reverse. Of course, as long as woman was the slave of man, she could not be good and pure, but now that she was free and independent she would prove how good she could be and how her influence would have a purifying effect on all institutions in society. True, the movement for woman's rights has broken many old fetters, but it has also established new ones. The great movement of true emancipation has not met with a great race of women, who could look liberty in the face. Their narrow puritanical vision banished man as a disturber and doubtful character out of their emotional life. Man was not to be tolerated at any price, except perhaps as the father of a child, since a child could not very well come to life without a father. Fortunately, the rigid puritanism never will be strong enough to kill the innate craving for motherhood. But woman's freedom is closely allied to man's freedom, and many of my so-called emancipated sisters seem to overlook the fact that a child born in freedom needs the love and devotion of each human being about him, man as well as woman. Unfortunately, it is this narrow conception of human relations that has brought about a great tragedy in the lives of the modern man and woman.

About fifteen years ago appeared a work from the pen of the brilliant Norwegian writer, Laura Marholm, called "'Woman, a Character Study." She was one of the first to call attention to the, emptiness and narrowness of the existing conception of woman's emancipation and its tragic effect upon the inner life of woman. In her work she speaks of the fate of several gifted women of international fame: The genius, Eleanora Duse; the great mathematician and writer, Sanja Kovalevskaja; the artist and poet nature, Marie Bashkirzeff, who died so young. Through each description of the lives of these women of such extraordinary mentality, runs a marked trail of unsatisfied craving for a full, rounded, complete and beautiful life, and the unrest and loneliness resulting from the lack of it. Through these masterly psychological sketches, one cannot help but see that the higher the mental development of woman, the less possible it is for her to meet a congenial mate, who will see in her, not only sex, but also the human being, the friend, comrade and strong individuality who cannot and ought not lose a single trait of her character.

The average man with his self-sufficiency, his ridiculously superior airs of patronage towards the female sex, is an impossibility for woman, as depicted in the "Character Study" by Laura Marholm. Equally impossible for her is the man who can see in her nothing more than her mentality and genius, and who fails to awaken her woman nature.

A rich intellect and a fine soul are usually considered necessary attributes of a deep and beautiful personality. In the case of the modern woman, these attributes serve as a hindrance to the complete assertion of her being. For over one hundred years, the old form of marriage, based on the Bible, "till death us do part" has been denounced as an institution that stands for the sovereignty of the man over the woman, of her of complete submission to his whims and commands and the absolute dependence upon his name and support. Time and again it has been conclusively proven that the old matrimonial relation restricted woman to the function of man's servant and the bearer of his children. And yet we find many emancipated women prefer marriage with all its deficiencies to the narrowness of an unmarried life; narrow and unendurable because of the chains of moral and social prejudice that cramp and bind her nature.

The cause for such inconsistency on the part of many advanced women is to be found in the fact that they never truly understood the meaning of emancipation. They thought that all that was needed was independence from external tyrannies; the internal tyrants, far more harmful to life and growth, such as ethical and social conventions, were left to take care of themselves; and they have taken care of themselves. They seem to get along beautifully in the heads and hearts of the most active exponents of woman's emancipation, as in the heads and hearts of our grandmothers.

These internal tyrants, whether they be in the form of public opinion or what will mother say, or brother, father, aunt or relative of any sort; what will Mrs. Grundy, Mr. Comstock, the employer, the Board of Education say? All these busybodies, moral detectives, jailers of the human spirit, what will they say? Until woman has learned to defy them all, to stand firmly on her own ground and to insist upon her own unrestricted freedom, to listen to the voice of her nature, whether it call for life's greatest treasure, love for a man, or her most glorious privilege, the right to give birth to a child, she cannot call herself emancipated. How many emancipated women are brave enough to acknowledge that the voice of love is calling, wildly beating against, their breasts demanding to be satisfied.

The French novelist, Jean Reibrach, in one of his novels, "New Beauty," attempts to picture the ideal, beautiful, emancipated woman. This ideal is embodied in a young girl, a physician. She talks very clearly and wisely of how to feed infants, she is kind and administers medicines free to poor mothers. She converses with a young man of her acquaintance about the sanitary conditions of the future and how various bacilli and germs shall be exterminated by the use of stone walls and floors, and the doing away of rugs and, hangings. She is, of course, very plainly and practically dressed, mostly in black. The young man who, at their first meeting was overawed by the wisdom of his emancipated friend, gradually learns to understand her, and, recognizes one fine day that he loves her. They are young and she is kind and beautiful, and though always in rigid attire, her appearance is softened by her spotlessly clean white collar and cuffs. One would expect that he would tell her of his love, but he is not one to commit romantic absurdities. Poetry and the enthusiasm of love cover their blushing faces before the pure beauty of the lady. He silences the voice of his nature and remains correct. She, too, is always exact, always rational, always well behaved. I fear if they had formed a union, the young man would have risked freezing to death. I must confess that I can see nothing, beautiful in this new beauty, who is as cold as the stone walls and floors she dreams of. Rather would I have the love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan, and Madame Venus, rather an elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by a father's curse, mother's moans, and the moral comments of neighbors, than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks. If love does not know how to give and take without restriction it is not love, but a transaction that never fail to lay stress on a plus and a minus.

The greatest shortcoming of the emancipation of the present day lies in its artificial stiffness and its narrow respectabilities which produce an emptiness in woman's soul that will not let her drink from the fountain of life. I once remarked that there seemed to be a deeper relationship between the old-fashioned mother and hostess, ever on the alert for the happiness of her little ones and the comfort of those she loved and the truly new woman, than between the latter and her average emancipated sister. The disciples of emancipation pure and simple declared me heathen, merely fit for the stake. Their blind zeal did not let them see that my comparison between the old and the new was merely to prove that a goodly number of our grandmothers had more blood in their veins, far more humor and wit, and certainly a greater amount of naturalness, kind-heartedness and simplicity than the majority of our emancipated professional women who fill our colleges, halls of learning, and various offices. This does not mean a wish to return to the past, nor does it condemn woman to her old sphere, the kitchen and the nursery.

Salvation lies in an energetic march onward towards a brighter and clearer future. We are in need of unhampered growth out of old traditions and habits. The movement for woman's emancipation has so far made but the first step in that direction. It is to be hoped that it will gather strength to make another. The right to vote, equal civil rights, are all very good demands, but true emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in courts. It begins in woman's soul. History tells us that every oppressed class gained its true liberation from its masters through its, own efforts. It is necessary that woman learn that lesson, that she realize that her freedom will reach as far as her power to achieve her freedom reaches. It is therefore far more important for her to begin with her inner regeneration to cut loose from the weight of prejudices, traditions, and customs. The demand for various equal rights in every vocation in life is just and fair, but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved. Indeed if the partial emancipation is to become a complete and true emancipation of woman it will have to do away with the ridiculous notion that to be loved, to be sweetheart and mother, is synonomous with being slave or subordinate. It will have to do away with the absurd notion of the dualism of the sexes, or that man and woman represent two antagonistic worlds.

Pettiness separates, breadth unites. Let us be broad and big. Let us not overlook vital things, because of the bulk of trifles confronting us. A true conception of the relation of the sexes will not admit of conqueror and conquered; it knows of but one great thing: to give one's self boundlessly in order to find oneself richer, deeper, better. That alone can fill the emptiness and replace the tragedy of woman's emancipation with joy, limitless joy.

TRY LOVE

By GRACE POTTER

IN the human heart it lies. The key to happiness. Men call the key love. In the sweet time of youth, every man and every maid knows where lies the key that will unlock happiness. Sometimes, they, laughing, hold the key in eager, willing hands and will not put it in the door for very bliss and waiting. just outside they laugh and play and blow wild kisses to the world. The whole world of men and women, who in their youth found happiness in just that way, is gathered round to see it found again.

When at last the man and maid unlock the door and go in joy to find their happiness, the men and women who have been watching them bury their faces in their hands and weep. Why do they weep? Because they are thinking that soon other doors in life will be met by this man and maid and that there will be no keys to unlock them. They, themselves, could find no key.

They never thought of trying the key of love in all the doors of life. Long, and wearily, eyes searching wide, hands eagerly groping, they have spent their time trying to find other keys. They have looked for and found knowledge. And tried that. Looked for and found fame. And tried that. Looked for and found wealth. And tried that. Looked for and found many, many other keys. And tried them all. And when at last they have lain down on their deathbeds, they have turned gray hopeless faces to the world and died saying, "We could not find the right key."

Some few, some very few, there are, who try the key of love in all life's doors. Radiant, they turn to the men and women about and cry, "Try love! It unlocks all other doors as surely as it does the first in life. Try love!"

And though their fellow beings see that these are the only ones in all the world who find happiness, they turn doubting from them. "It cannot be," they say, "that the key we used in youth should be used again in all the other doors of life." And so they keep on trying the keys that every disappointed, dying man calls out in warning voice will fail.

Only a few there are who learn--a very few--that love unlocks all other doors in life as surely as it does the first. Try love!

Japan.--A new civilization. The land of a new culture! was the cry of every penny-a-liner at the time she began to display her battleships, cannon, and her accomplished method of drilling her soldiers. They were mocking themselves and did not know how. They talk of culture and civilization and their criterion thereof is the development of the technique of murder. Again, Japan a modern state. She can take her place in the ranks of other civilized countries. Rejoice! and then learn that victorious Japan is on the threshold of a famine. Nearly a million people, it is laconically reported, are in danger of dying of starvation. Surely, no one will possibly doubt now that Japan is a civilized country.

WITHOUT GOVERNMENT

By MAX BAGINSKI

THE gist of the anarchistic idea is this, that there are qualities present in man, which permit the possibilities of social life, organization, and co-operative work without the application of force. Such qualities are solidarity, common action, and love of justice. To-day they are either crippled or made ineffective through the influence of compulsion; they can hardly be fully unfolded in a society in which groups, classes, and individuals are placed in hostile, irreconcilable opposition to one another. In human nature to-day such traits are fostered and developed which separate instead of combining, call forth hatred instead of a common feeling, destroy the humane instead of building it up. The cultivation of these traits could not be so successful if it did not find the best nourishment in the foundations and institutions of the present social order.

On close inspection of these institutions, which are based upon the power of the State that maintains them, mankind shows itself as a huge menagerie, in which the captive beasts seek to tear the morsels from each other's greedy jaws. The sharpest teeth, the strongest claws and paws vanquish the weaker competitors. Malice and underhand dealing are victorious over frankness and confidence. The struggle for the means of existence and for the maintenance of achieved power fill the entire space of the menagerie with an infernal noise. Among the methods which are used to secure this organized bestiality the most prominent ones are the hangman, the judge with his mehanical: "In the name of the king," or his more hypocritical: "In the name of the people I pass sentence"; the soldier with his training for murder, and the priest with his: "Authority comes from God."

The exteriors of prisons, armories, and churches show that they are institutions in which the body and soul are subdued. He whose thoughts reach beyond this philosophy of the menagerie sees in them the strongest expression of the view, that it is not possible to make life worth living the more with the help of reason, love, justice, solidarity. The family and school take care to prepare man for these institutions. They deliver him up to the state, so to speak, blindfolded and with fettered limbs. Force, force. It echoes through all history. The first law which subjected man to man was based upon force. The private right of the individual to land was built up by force; force took way the claims upon homesteads from the majority and made them unsettled and transitory. It was force that spoke to mankind thus: "Come to me, humble yourself before me, serve me, bring the treasures and riches of the earth under MY roof. You are destined by Providence to always be in want. You shall be allowed just enough to maintain strength with which to enrich me infinitely by your exertions and to load me down with superfluity and luxury."

What maintains the material and intellectual slavery of the masses and the insanity of the autocracy of the few? Force. Workingmen produce in the factories and workshops the most varied things for the use of man. What is it that drives them to yield up these products for speculation's sake to those who produce nothing, and to content themselves with only a fractional part of the values which they produce? It is force.

What is it that makes the brain-worker just as dependent in the intellectual realm as the artisan in the material world? Force. The artist and the writer being compelled to gain a livelihood dare not dream of giving the best of their individuality. No, they must scan the market in order to find out what is demanded just then. Not any different than the dealer in clothes -who must study the style of the season before he places 'his merchandise before the public. Thus art and literature sink to the level of bad taste and speculation. The artistic individuality shrinks before the calculating reckoner. Not that which moves the artist or the writer most receives expression; the vacillating demands of mediocrity of every-day people must be satisfied. The artist becomes the helper of the dealer and the average men, who trot along in the tracks of dull habit.

The State Socialists love to assert that at present we live in the age of individualism; the truth, however, is that individuality was never valued at so low a rate as to-day. Individual thinking and feeling are incumbrances and not recommendations on the paths of life. Wherever they are found on the market they meet with the word "adaptation." Adapt yourself to the demands of the reigning social powers, act the odedient servant before them, and if you produce something be sure that it does not run against the grain of your "superiors," or say adieu to success, reputation and recompense. Amuse the people, be their clown, give them platitudes about which they can laugh, prejudices which they hold as righteousness and falsehoods which they hold as truths. Paint the whole, crown it with regard for good manners, for society does not like to hear the truth about itself. Praise the men in power as fathers of the people, have the devourers of the commonwealth parade along as benefactors of mankind.

Of course, the force which humbles humanity in this manner is far from openly declaring itself as force. It is masked, and in the course of time it has learned to step forward wit the least possible noise. That diminishes the danger of being recognized.

The modern republic is a good example. In it tyranny is veiled so correctly, that there are really great numbers of people who are deceived by this masquerade and who maintain that what they perceive is a true face with honest eyes.

No czar, no king. But right in line with these are the landowners, the merchants, manufacturers, landlords, monopolists. They all are in possession, which is as strong a guarantee for the continuance of their power, as a castle surrounded by thick walls. Whoever possesses can rob him who possesses nothing of his independence. If I am dependent for a living on work, for which I need contrivances and machines, which I myself cannot procure, because I am without means, I must sacrifice my independence to him who possesses these contrivances and machines. You may work here, he will tell me, but only under the condition that you will deliver up the products of your labor to me, that I may trade with and make profit on them.

The one without possessions has no choice. He may appeal to the declaration of human rights; he may point to his political rights, the equality before the law, before God and the archangels--if he wants to eat, drink, dress and have a home he must choose such work as the conditions of the industrial mercantile or agricultural plants impose upon him.

Through organized opposition the workingmen can somewhat improve this condition; by the help of trade unions they can regulate the hours of work and hinder the reduction of wages to a level too low for mere living. The trade unions are a necessity for the workingmen, a bulwark against which the most unbearable demands of the class of possesors rebound; but a complete freeing of labor--be it of an intellectual or of a physical nature--can be brought about only through the abolition of wage work and the right of private ownership of land and the sources of maintenance and nourishment of mankind. There are heart-rendering cries over the blasphemous opinion that property is not as holy a thing as its possessors would like to make it. They declare that possessions must not be less protected than human life, for they are necessary foundations of society. The case is represented as though everybody were highly interested in the maintenance of the right of private property, whereas conditions are such that non-possession is the normal condition of most people.

Because few possess everything, therefore the many possess nothing. So far as possession can be considered as an oppressive measure in the hands of a few, it is a monopoly. Set in a paradox it would read: The abolition of property will free the people from homelessness and non-possession. In fact, this will happen when the earth with its treasures shall cease to be an object of trade for usurers; when it shall vouchsafe to all a home and a livelihood. Then not only the bent bodies will straighten; the intellect free itself as might the bound Prometheus rid himself of his fetters and leave the rock to which he is chained, but we shall look back on the institutions of force, the state, the hangman, et al, as ghosts of an anxious fantasy.

In free unions the trades will organize themselves and will produce the means of livelihood. Things will not be produced for profit's sake, but for the sake of need. The profit-grabber has grown superfluous just as his patron, the state, which at present serves by means of its taxes and revenues, his anti-humanitarian purposes and hinders the reasonable consumption of goods. From the governing mania the foundation will be withdrawn; for those strata in society will be lacking which therefore had grown rich and fat by monopolizing the earth and its production. They alone needed legislatures to make laws against the disinherited. They needed courts of justice to condemn; they needed the police to carry out practically the terrible social injustice, the cause of which lay in their existence and manner of living. And now the political corruptionists are lacking who served the above-mentioned classes as helpers, and therefore had to be supported as smaller drones.

What a pleasant surprise! We see now that the production and distribution of means of livelihood are a much simpler matter without government than with government. And people now realize that the governments never promoted their welfare, but rather made it impossible, since with the help of force they only allowed the right of possession to the minority.

Life is really worth living now. It ceases to be an endless, mad drudgery, a repugnant struggle for a mere existence.

Truth and beauty are enthroned upon the necessity of procuring the means of existence in a co-operative organized manner. The social motives which to-day make man ambitious, hypocritical, stealthy, are ineffective. One need not sell his individuality for a mess of pottage, as Esau sold his primogeniture.

At last the individuality of man has struck a solid social foundation on which it can prosper. The individual originality in man is valued; it fructifies art, literature, science, which now, in so far as they are dependent upon the state and ownership--which is far-reaching--must take the direction of prescribed models that are acknowledged, and must not be directed against the continuance of the leisure classes.

Love will be free. Love's favor is a free granting, a giving and taking without speculation. No prostitution; for the economic and social power of one person over another exists no longer, and with the falling off of external oppression many an internal serfdom of feeling will be done away with, which often is only the reflex of hard external compulsion. Then the longing of large hearts may take tangible shape. Utopias are arrows aimed into the future, harbingers of a new reality.

Rabelais, in his description of life in the "Thelemite Abbey," wrote:

"All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labor, sleep, when they had a mind to it, and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor do any other thing. In all their rule and strictest tie of their order, there was but this one clause to be observed: 'Do What Thou Wilt.'

"Because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honor. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition, by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off that bond of servitude, wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable to the nature of man to long after things forbidden, and to desire what is denied us. By this liberty they entered into a very laudable emulation, to do all of them what they saw did please one. If any of the gallants or ladies should say, 'Let us drink,' they would all drink. If any one of them said, 'Let us play,' they all played. If one said, 'Let us go a walking into the fields,' they went all. If it were to go a hawking, or a hunting, the ladies mounted upon dainty well-paced nags, seated in a stately palfrey saddle, carried on their lovely fists either a sparhawk, or a laneret, or a marlin, and the young gallants car- the other kinds of hawks. So nobly were they taught, that there was neither he nor she amongst them, but could read, write, sing, play upon several musical instruments, speak five or six. several languages, and compose in them all very quaintly, both in verse and prose. Never were seen so valiant knights, so noble and worthy, so dexterous and skilful both on foot and horseback, more brisk and lively, more nimble and quick, or better handling all manner of weapons, than were there. Never were seen ladies so proper and handsome, so miniard and dainty, less forward, or more ready with their hand, and with their needle, in every honest and free action belonging to that sex, than were there."

A few days ago the red ghost of revolution showed itself in the White House. The President saw it and threatened it with his boxing fists: "What are you looking for here, be off to Russia." "You are comical in your excitement," answered Revolution. "You must know, I am not only Russian, I am international, at home here as well as on the other side of the great water."

A Proposition.--Would it not be wiser to explain theories out of life and not life out of theories?

VIVE LE ROI

By Frances Maule Bjorkman

Aye, vive le roi. The King is dead--
So move our lives from day to day.
The triumph of to-morrow's lord
Meets for our former chief's decay.

Then love and live and laugh and sing--
The world is good and life is free--
There's not a single care I know
That's worth a single tear from me.

What's love or fame or place or power?
What's wealth when we shall come to die?
What matters anything on earth
So long as only I am I?

The joy or grief or love or shame
That holds its little hour of sway
Is only worth its destined time--
What use to try to make it stay?

Aye, let it go. The monarch dead,
A better king our shouts may hail
And if a worse--well, still be glad;
He too will pass behind the vail.

They all must pass--fame, joy and love,
The sting of grief, the blot of shame;
The only thing that really counts
Is how we bear the praise or blame.

I'll take the good the while it lasts
And when it goes I'll learn to sing,
All eager for the coming joy--
"The king is dead, long live the king."

Reflections of A Rich Man

If God were not in existence we would have to order one from the Professors of Theology.

The fear, instilled in the majority of the poor, with the God, Devil, Heaven and Hell idea, is greater than their dread of a hundred thousand policemen. Had we not given God the place of Chief Gendarme of the Universe, we would need twice as many soldiers and police as we have to-day.

A poor devil who owns but one million dollars said to me the other day: "I, in your place, would rather contribute money towards art and literature than to donate it to the Baptist Church." What an impracticable fellow! Art and literature, among the common people, only tends to cause mischief. They are to remain our privilege. We know the demands of good taste and we can afford to pay for the aesthetic pleasures of life. The majority is unable to do that; besides, to teach them the beauty of art only means to make them discontented and rebellious against our authority.

I frankly admit I never had a great admiration for Jesus of Nazareth. A man of disordered circumstances arouses my disgust. Jesus was neither engaged in any kind of a business, nor did he possess as much as a bank account, nor even a steady home. He preached to the poor. What for? The poor should work and not philosophize. The Scriptures tell nowhere that Jesus returned the mule, upon which he made his entry into Jerusalem, to the owner, or that he paid him for it. I strongly suspect he did not do it. One thing is certain, I never would have taken this dreamer of the abolition of profits as my business partner.

It was very hot yesterday. I walked through my park, intending to betake myself to my favorite place for rest and reverie. Suddenly I stood still, arrested by the sight of a man lying under a tree. In my park? And how the fellow looked! In rags and dirty! I have been told I was kind-hearted, and I realized this myself at the moment. I walked over to the man and inquired interestedly: "Are you ill?" He grunted in reply. The wretch must have thought, in his sleep, that I was one of his kind. My generosity did not cease. "If you need money, do not feel shy about telling me. How much do you need. I am the rich X Y Z, who has a fabulous fortune, as you have undoubtedly heard." At this remark the scoundrel turned on the other side, with his back toward me, and said, while yawning: "What I want? I want to sleep. Will you be good enough to keep the mosquitoes away for two hours?" Within five minutes I had my servant kick this impertinent and ungrateful wretch out of my park. If all of the low class think as this fellow, I fear our charitable efforts in their behalf will accomplish little.

Eleven million, nine hundred and seventeen thousand, nine hundred and forty-six dollars and fifty-eight cents is what the gallant Gen. Bingham asks us for protecting us from each other for the ensuing year. With a population of four million and 4.50 members to a family, we pay a fraction less than $3 per head, and about $13.50 for a family, a year for police protection in this enlightened Christian (750,000 of us are Jews, but ours is a Christian city) city of ours, I'd give that silver watch of mine away and mind my own business if I thought it would come cheaper, but it won't do. H. H. Rogers is my brother and keeper, and he insists he needs protection, and I must pay for it, so what can I do? I've told him I'm a peaceful, propertyless man with no higher ambition than to love my fellow-man--and woman, and mind my own business: but his reply has invariably been, "I'm Dr. Tarr, and my system prevails in this lunatic asylum!" I recognize the logic of his argument all right and continue to pay for his protection and feel grateful for the privilege of grumbling a little now and again.

COMSTOCKERY

By John R. Corvell

BE it understood that the shocking thing which we know as Comstockery, goes back into the centuries for its origin; being, indeed, the perfect flower of that asceticism, which was engrafted on the degraded Christianity which took its name from Christ without in the least comprehending the spirit of his lofty conception.

The man Comstock, who has the shameful distinction of having lent his name to the idea of which he is the willing and probably the fit exponent, may be dismissed without further consideration, since he is, after all, only the inevitable as he is the deplorable result of that for which he stands; seemingly without any sense of the shame and the awfulness of it.

It may be said, too, in dismissing him, that it is of no consequence whether the very unpleasant stories current concerning him are true or not. It is altogether probable that a man who stands for what he does and who glories in proclaiming the things he does, will also do things for which he does not stand and which he does not proclaim. That is a characteristic of most of us and only proves that, after all, he is not less than human.

The only point that need be made in regard to the man who is proud of representing Comstockery is, that if he had not done so, some other lost soul would. In that sad stage of our social growth when death was the penalty for most infractions of the law, an executioner could always be found who took pride in his work and who seemed to be beyond the reach of the scorn, the abhorrence and the contempt of his fellows.

Comstockery, as we know it, is apparently an organized effort to regulate the morals of the people. If it were nothing more than this, it would be absurd and negligible, because futile; for what we call morals are only the observances which the conditions of life impose upon a people; and an act depends, for its moral status, upon its relation to those conditions. As, for example, horse-stealing in a closely settled community, which has its railroads and other means of communication, is a crime to be punished by a brief period of imprisonment; while in the sparsely settled sections of a country, where the horse is an imperative necessity of life, its theft becomes a hanging matter, whatever the written law for that section of the country may be as to the punishment of the crime. And men, brought up in law-abiding communities in the deepest respect for the law, will, under the changed conditions of life, not merely condone the infliction of a penalty in excess of that provided by law, but will themselves assist, virtuously satisfied with their conduct because the society of which they form a part has decided that horse-stealing shall be so punished. On the other hand, there are numerous laws on the statute books, still unrepealed and unenforceable because the acts treated of are no longer held to be offences against morality. In other words, the morals of a people can be regulated only by themselves.

What Comstockery does is bad enough, but its real awfulness lies in the fact that it seems to fairly enough represent us in our attitude toward a certain class of ideas and things. It is the expression of our essential immorality -using that word in its conventional sense -having its roots deep down in pruriency, hypocrisy and ignorance. Like the blush on the cheek of the courtesan, it deceives no one, but is none the less a truthful expression, not of the thing it simulates, but of the character of the simulator.

Comstockery was probably brought to this country by the first Anglo-Saxon whether pirate or minister of the gospel, who set foot on this soil; certainly it was a finely blooming plant on the Mayflower, and was soon blossoming here as never elsewhere in the world, giving out such a fragrance that the peculiar odor of it has become a characteristic of this land of liberty.

When the so-called Comstock laws were passed there was a real disease to be treated: The symptoms of the disease were obscene books and pictures which were being freely circulated among the children of the land, boarding-schools, whether for girls or boys, being fairly flooded with the pernicious literature. The work of confiscation, suppression and of imprisonment was done thoroughly and conscientiously, so that in the course of a comparatively short time it was difficult to find books or pictures of the kind in question. It is said that the effectiveness of the work done is best shown by the one or more libraries of obscene books which the society, or some of its officers, have collected.

The value of the work done and the efficiency of the workers were recognized in the passage from time to time of laws giving extraordinary powers not alone to the popularly so-called "Comstock Society," but to officers of the government. A perfect fury of purity took possession of our legislators; they were determined to stamp out impurity. And perhaps they were establishing reputations for themselves. It is recorded that in the days of the Inquisition men established their orthodoxy by the loudness of their cries against heresy; that in the times of the French Revolution, men proved their patriotism by making charges of treason against their neighbors; that practicing polygamists have purified themselves by hounding a theoretical polygamist out of their legislative body. Anyhow, the laws were passed, the thing was done.

And what was the thing that was done? A moral Inquisition had been established. Arguing from a wrong premise a hideous conclusion had been reached. It was voiced only a few weeks ago by an official of the postoffice in Chicago, when confiscating a publication. He said in substance, if not literally: "Any discussion of sex is obscene."

There it is in a few words -a complete and perfect treatise on Comstockery! In the early days in some parts of New England, a man might not kiss his wife on a Sunday. On common days, the filthy act was permissible, but the Sabbath must not be so defiled. And now, any discussion of sex is obscenity!

Pause a while and consider what this means and whither it will lead, where it has already lead. Discussion of sex is obscene; then sex, itself, must be obscene; life and all that pertains to it must be filthy. That is, providing it be the life of Man. The sex of flowers may be discussed frankly and freely either for the pleasure of knowledge, or in order to use knowledge for the purpose of improving the flower. The sex of animals may be discussed; it is discussed in government publications and in the many farm journals published throughout the country, because it is necessary to improve the breed of our domestic animals, because these animals are valuable. But discussion of the sex of man is obscene!

There have been some changes in public sentiment, some changes, perhaps, in the grey matter on the judicial bench, since the early days in New York when Comstockery was most rampant; for what was tolerated then is not tolerated now; some things that were judicially wrong then are judicially right now. And in this change there is hope and the promise of greater change.

In those early days a confectioner on Fulton street sought to attract customers by exhibiting in his window a painting by a great artist. If memory serves, it was "The Triumph of Charles V," by Hans Makart. Figures of nude females were in the picture, and Comstockery established in its censorship of art and solemnly unconscious of its appalling ignorance, but true to its fundamental pruriency, ordered the picture removed from the window. And it was removed. Just as Boston, finding its bronze bacchante immodest, rejected the brazen hussey. And now she stands on her pedestal in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, giving joy to the beholder, and -not ordered down by Comstockery. Why? And why is not the whole museum purged of its nude figures? It is a puzzle not even to be solved by the theory of change in public sentiment; for it is only a few months ago that the art censor in chief of Comstockery saw in the window of an art dealer on Fifth Avenue a landscape in which figured several nude children discreetly wandering away from the beholder. The picture was ordered out of the window forthwith. And went. A few blocks below, on Broadway, there were then and are now exhibited in a window, numerous photographs of nude children, not all of them discreet as to way of their going. Why? Has the art censor decided that the photographs are innocuous, or that they are art?

But these instances and the amazing expeditions made by the censor into the realm of literature are hardly more than ludicrous; and they can and will correct themselves. But the frightful results of Comstockery, as applied to life and to real purity, cannot be so lightly passed over. And let it not be forgotten that an indictment of Comstockery is an indictment or ourselves, for the prurient, hypocritical, degrading thing can exist not one instant after we have declared that it shall perish.

It is no exaggeration to say that Comstockery is the arch enemy of society. It seeks to make hypocrisy respectable; it would convert impurity into a basic virtue; it labels ignorance, innocence; it has legislated knowledge into a crime, and it seeks its perpetuation in the degradation of an enfeebled human race. And that these are not over-statements can easily be established to the satisfaction of any reasonable mind.

The most creditable work ever done by Comstockery was the practical suppression and elimination of the obscene book; but when that is said, all is said. How worse than fatuous, how absolutely fiendish that physician would be deemed who hid the signs of small-pox with paint and powder and permitted his patient to roam at will among his fellows, unwarned even of the nature of the fell disease that was devouring his life. Nay, worse! What if the physician should have himself clothed with plenary powers and should compel the poor wretch to refrain from making his case known after he had discovered is nature? But this is precisely what Comstockery does.

The obscene book was removed from circulation. In other words, the symptom of the disease was hidden. But was anything done to eliminate the disease, or to remove its cause? On the contrary, everything possible was done to perpetuate the disease; everything possible was done to prevent anyone who had suffered from the disease or who knew anything about it, from imparting his knowledge. For the disease was ignorance; ignorance of self, of life, of sex. And not only does Comstockery strive to perpetuate ignorance, not only does it glorify ignorance and miscall it innocence, not only does it elevate it into a virtue, but it has legislated knowledge into a crime. The offence of the book it had eliminated was not its vicious misinformation, but its use of sex as a subject. The postoffice has said that any discussion of sex is obscene and the courts have put one noble old man of over seventy years into prison at hard labor, and have punished an aged woman physician in some other way because they sought, in all purity and right-mindedness, to help their brothers and sisters to a knowledge of themselves.

It is true that, at last, there is a rift within the lute; or would it better be called a leak in the sewer? Comstockery has not quite the standing that it once had. When it was made generally known that a postoffice official had said that any discussion of sex was obscene, there followed such a rattling fire of reprobation and condemnation even from many startled conventionalists, who could support the thing but could not look it in the face, that themaker of the now historic phrase was moved to deny that he had said it officially. In fact, there are many signs, most of them still small, on the distant horizon, it is true, which indicate that we are becoming alive to the fact that it is imperative that sex should be discussed.

This is an age of radical ideas. Radicalism in politics, in religion, in ethics, is ripe; which is only another way of saying that we are beginning to dare to think. Probably the most apparent, if not the most significant, sign of the general radicalism, is the tendency to exalt the science of life to an even higher plane than that which it occupied in the days of Hellenic supremecy. We are beginning to understand that right living is a purely physical matter, and that morals are only laws of health; and if there are yet but few who dare take so radical a view of morals as that, still there are quite as few who will not admit freely that nothing can be immoral which is beneficial to the human body.

Of course, it is unthinkable, even from the point of view of the most conventional of orthodox Christians, that there can be any immorality in sex, for sex in itself is absolutely a work of the deity, hence of the highest morality, if it can have any such attribute at all. As well might one give digestion a moral quality. Morality is surely a matter or personal conduct. One may say that it is immoral to eat so much as to injure one's health, but it is not a matter of record that any considerable body of persons declares the stomach to be an immoral organ, or the digestive function to be an immoral one, or any discussion of digestion immoral. Then why sex or sex functions?

It is true that Comstockery has us to designate our legs, limbs, though not at the present time with any legal penalty for not doing so; it prescribes the word stomach for polite usage in describing that part of the body which lies subjacent to the actual stomach, anterior to the spinal column and posterior to the abdominal wall; it forbids a visible bifurcated garment for the "limbs" of a female; and it does a variety of other absurd things, all going to show that in some singular fashion it has confounded acts with things; as one might call all knives immoral because a few knives had been used to do murder with.

By what extraordinary process does Comstockery conjure decency into the stomach and indecency into the bowels? But how rejoiced we should be that it is no worse than indecent to speak of the receptacle of the intestines by its common name. By some hocus pocus of which Comstockery is easily capable it might have been obscene to speak of the digestive process or of any of the digestive organs. We might easily have been taught that digestion was a moral matter, not to be talked of, not to be studied; ignorance of which was a virtue, knowledge of which a crime. And then, under those conditions, if a person, possessed of a little knowledge such as might have crept stealthily down the ages, were in a fine humanitarian spirit to dare to publish some of the things he knew in order to help dyspeptic humanity, he would have been robbed of his worldly goods and clapped forthwith into jail. Fancy that under such circumstances a man who had lived his three score and ten years and had learned something from his own suffering and experience, something from the secretly imparted information of others, might not say a word to help his fellows. Is it not too absurd to contemplate without both tears and laughter that that man who should plead with his fellow men to abstain from habitually living on butter cakes and coffee, should be charged with obscenity and imprisoned in consequence? And imagine some sapient postoffice official solemnly declaring that any discussion of digestion is obscene. Consider how the land would be flooded with literature describing the pleasures of gluttony and depicting impossible gastronomic feats! Consider, too, trying to cure indigestion and to suppress the orgies of our children in pies, crullers, fritters and butter cakes by the näive device of forbidding all knowledge of the digestive function and making the utterance of the name of a digestive organ an obsecenity punishable by fine and imprisonment!

Digestion is a matter to be considered in the light of hygiene. So is sex. Digestion is not in itself either moral or immoral. Neither is sex. But there is the most hideous immorality in the ascription of obscenity to sex, sex function or any phase of sex life. And this is the crime of Comstockery. It has reared an awful idol to which have been sacrificed the best of our youth; with hypocrisy the high-priest, ignorance the creed, and pruriency the detective.

Comstockery strikes at the very root of life. It forbids that we shall know how to live our best; it forbids that we shall know how to save our children from the perils we have so discreditably passed through; it raises barriers of false modesty between parents and children by branding the very science of life an obscenity. Owing to the shocking suggestions of Comstockery all that relate to life is degraded into the gutter; and that which would be pure and sweet and wholesome in the home or in the school, becomes filthy Comstockery on the snickering lips of ignorant playfellows.

The wonder is that we have endured the nasty thing for so long a time. We have been boys and girls and have gone from our parents to our school-mates and play-fellows for the information to which we are entitled by very reason of living, but, more than all, because of our need to live right. We all know the hideous untruths we were told because of Comstockery; we all know how much we had to unlearn, and how great the suffering mentally, how great the deterioration physically in the unlearning; we all know our unfitness for parentage at the time we entered it; every man knows how the brothels kept open doors and beckoning inmates by the thousand for his undoing. And yet we endure it -Comstockery.

It is such a subtly pervasive thing, this Comstockery, it steals in wherever it can and puts the taint of its own uncleanness on whatever it touches. Clothing becomes a matter of Comstockery. We do not always see it, but such is the fact. We do not wear clothing for convenience, but to cover our nakedness. You see nakedness is obscene. Not in itself, but only in man. You may take a naked dog on the street, but not a naked human being. The summer previous to the last one was a very hot one in New York, and a poor wretch of a boy of fourteen years of age, being on the top floor of a crowded tenement was half crazed by the heat and the lack of fresh air which there was absolutely none in the closet in which he was trying to sleep. He ran down into the street nude at two o'clock in the morning in the hope of finding a surcease of his distress. A policeman saw him, remembered his blushing Comstockery in time and haled the poor lad off to a cell. The next morning the magistrate in tones of grimmest virtue sent the boy to the reformatory, remarking with appropriate jest that the young scoundrel might have seven years in which to learn to keep his clothes on.

Theodore Roosevelt, who is at once the greatest President and the wisest man of whom we have any record, tells us that we must breed more children. But how shall our women bear more children, or presently bear any, if they are to be continually made more and more unfit for motherhood by the pitfalls into which their ignorance of the science life leads them? Because of the Comstockery which has its felt grip upon our throats we may not instruct the little child in the way of health; or if it be said that there is nothing to prevent the parent from instructing the child, yet it must be insisted that the parent has no means of knowing since Comstockery prescribes ignorance as the only way to innocence; and innocent our girls must be at any cost. Besides, the average mother, if she will but admit the truth, is ashamed to talk with her daughter about Comstockery things. We all know that this is so. Our parents treated us in such fashion, and we are so treating our children.

The knowledge which each generation acquires at the cost of health, yes, at the cost of life even, dies with it, for the most part. The one thing we most need to know is how to live; the science of life begins with sex, goes on with sex, ends with sex; but sex we may not discuss; thus we go on in ignorance of life. Shall it remain so? Is Comstockery to be our best expression of the most vital matter of existence? Life, sex, should be and is when we recognize it, the purest, sweetest, simplest subject of discussion; and we make of it a filthy jest. We will not tell our sons the things we have learned through bitter experience, because we cannot bear the shame of discussing sex subjects with them, because of the accursed Comstockery that is within us; but we will go to the club and the bar room, or anywhere behind locked doors in the the select company of our fellows, and there pour out the real essence of our Comstockery in stories which make a filthy jest of sex. Every man knows this is the truth. Perhaps women, in their Comstockery, know it too. As has been already said, treat digestion as sex is treated, and it will be sniggered over behind locked doors in precisely the same way.

Let us rid ourselves of the fatal, prurient restrictions on sex discussion and in a marvellously short time we shall have a store of sweet knowledge on the subject that will enable us to live well ourselves and fit us to bring into the world such children as will amaze us with their health of body and purity of mind. No alteration of the facts of life is necessary, but only a change of attitude. Why, when Trilby brought the bare foot into prominence, it was gravely debated whether or not such an indecency should be permitted. It was assumed that a naked foot was indecent. Why a foot more than a hand? Why any one part of the body more than another? Comstockery! Comstockery!

DON QUIXOTE AND HAMLET

In Peter Kropotkin's Book: "Russian Literature" (published by McClure, Phillips & Company), there is a quotation from Turgenieff's works, which shows the Russian poet's genius and psychological insight in all its wonderful depth. Here it is:

"Don Quixote is imbued with devotion towards his ideal, for which he is ready to suffer all possible privations, to sacrifice his life; life itself he values only so far as it can serve for the incarnation of the ideal, for the promotion of truth, of justice on earth.... He lives for his brothers, for opposing the forces hostile to mankind: the witches, the giants--that is, the oppressors.... Therefore he is fearless, patient; he is satisfied with the most modest food, the poorest cloth: he has other things to think of. Humble in his heart, he is great and daring in his mind.... And who is Hamlet? Analysis, first of all, and egotism, and therefore no faith. He lives entirely for himself, he is an egotist; but to believe in one' self--even an egotist cannot do that: we can believe only in something which is outside us and above us. . . . As he has doubts of everything, Hamlet evidently does not spare himself; his intellect is too developed to remain satisfied with what he finds in himself; he feels his weakness, but each self-consciousness is a force wherefrom results his irony, the opposite of the enthusiasm of Don Quixote.... Don Quixote, a poor man, almost a beggar, without means and relations, old, isolated - undertakes to redress all the evils and to protect oppressed strangers over the whole world. What does it matter to him that his first attempt at freeing the innocent from his oppressor falls twice as heavy upon the head of the innocent himself? . . . What does it matter that, thinking that he has to deal with noxious giants, Don Quixote attacks useful windmills? . . . Nothing of the sort can ever happen with Hamlet: how could he, with his perspicacious, refined, sceptical mind, ever commit such a mistake! No, he will not fight with windmills, he does not believe in giants . . . but he would not have attacked them even if they did exist.... And he does not believe in evil. Evil and deceit are his inveterate enemies. His scepticism is not indifferentism. . . . But in negation, as in fire, there is a destructive power, and how to keep it in bounds, bow to tell it where to stop, when that which it must destroy, and that which it must spare are often inseparably welded together? Here it is that the oftennoticed tragical aspect of human life comes in: for action we require will, and for action we require thought; but thought and will have parted from each other, and separate every day more and more...
"And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sickled o'er by the pale cast of thought...."

ON THE BANKS OF ACHERON

By Edwin Bjorkman

THE air was still and full of a gray meloncholy light, yet the waters of the river boiled angrily as if touched by a raging tempest. The billows rose foaming above its surface, all white with the whiteness of fear. When they sank back again, they were black -black as despair that knows of no hope.

Steep hills mounted abruptly on either side of the river until they touched the sullen, colorless cloudbanks overhead. Their sides were seamed with numberless paths, running on narrow ledges, one above the other, from the river's edge to the crest of the hill. Men were moving along those paths; they swarmed like ants across the hillside, but I could not see whence they were coming nor whither they were going. All were pushing and jostling and scratching and howling and fighting. Every one's object seemed to be to raise himself to the path above his own and to preven all others from doing the same.

Down at the water's edge, they moved in a solid mass, arms pinned down, shoulder to shoulder and chest to back. At times a man got an arm out of the press and began to claw the up-turned, tear-stained faces of his neighbors in wild endeavors to lift his whole body. But soon his madness subsided, the writhing arm sank back, and the man vanished out of sight. The mass once more moved stolidly, solidly onward. Once in a great while its surface of heads would begin to boil like the waters of the river near by, and a man would be spouted into the air, landing on one of the paths above. Then each face would be turned toward him for a breathless moment, at the end of which the mass glided slowly onward as before.

The crush on paths higher up on the hillside was not so great, but the fighting of man against man was incessant and bitter. I could see them clambering up the steep sides of the ledges, with bleeding nails, distorted features and locked teeth. Waving arms and clutching fingers pursued them from below; ironshod heels trampled them from above. Ninety-nine out of the hundred ended their struggles with a fall, and in their rapid descent they swept others with them. But rising of falling, they all pushed onward, onward -from nowhere to nowhere, as it seemed to me. I watched them for hours, for days, for years -always the same wandering, the same scrambling, the same tumbling, without apparent purpose or result. Then my blood rose hotly to my heart and head. A scarlet mist floated before my eyes and my soul swelled within me almost unto bursting.

"Why?" I cried, and the word rolled back and forth between the hillsides until its last echo was swallowed by the murmur that hovered over the wrathful river. The strugglers on the hillside paths, each and all, turned toward me. On every face I read astonishment.

"Why?" I yelled at them again, and the sound of my voice lingered above the waters like a distant thunder. Gradually the expression on all those staring faces changed from wonder to scorn. A man on one of the paths near the crest of the hill laughed aloud. Two more joined him. It became contagious and spread like wildfire. All those millions were laughing into my face, laughing like demons rather than men.

My frown only increased the mirth of that grinning multitude. I shook my clenched, up-stretched fists against them. And when at last their ghastly merriment ceased, I raised my voice once more in defiance.

"Why?"

As when on a bleak winter day the black snow clouds suddenly begin to darken the sky, so hatred and rage spread over their faces. Crooked, bony fingers were pointed at me. Men leaned recklessly from their narrow ledges to shout abuse at me. Stones and mud were flung at me. A hundred arms seized me and tossed my body in a wide curve from the hillside out over the river. For one long minute I struggled to keep myself above the yawning waters. Then I sank. All grew dark about me. A strange fullness in my chest seemed to rise up toward my head. There was a last moment of consciousness in which I heard a single word uttered by a ringing, bell-like voice that came from within myself. That last word was:

"Why?"

The British Elections and the Labor Parties

By H. KELLY

We are a left-center country; we live by compromise."

The above statement was made by an aged member of Parliament to Kropotkin some years ago, and the present elections testify strongly to the truth of that remark. For a country which produced the father of political economy, Adam Smith--for Scotland is included in our generalization--Robert Owen, the father of libertarian Socialism, which in the forties stood almost at the head of the Socialist movement in Europe, which has been the scene of so many Socialist and workingmen's congresses and has furnished a refuge for so many distinguished exiles, it is passing strange, to say the least, that up to the present no one has been elected to Parliament on a purely Socialist platform; this notwithstanding that, in the elections just past, of forty-three labor members elected nineteen are members of the Independent Labor Party and one of the Social Democratic Federation. John Burns was elected to Parliament just after the great Dock Strike on his trade-union record and has been elected regularly ever since, although he has long since ceased to be a Socialist. Keir Hardie was elected for West Ham as a Radical, and when he stood for re-election as a Socialist was defeated. In 1900 he was elected again as member for Merthyr Tydfill, a radical mining district in Wales, on a trade union-Socialist platform, and undoubtedly received a large number of votes on the ground of having been a miner once himself. R. B. Cunningham-Graham, probably the ablest Socialist who has yet sat in the British Parliament, was elected as a Radical, announcing himself a Socialist some time after his election.

The British workman, true to his traditions, has consistently demanded compromise before electing anyone, and where that has been refused, the candidates have gone down to defeat. Hyndman, founder of the Social Democratic Federation and the ablest Socialist in public life; Quelch, editor of "Justice," the official organ of that party, for more than a decade, and Geo. Lansbury, one of their oldest, ablest and most respected members, refused to compromise in the recent election, and paid the inevitable penalty. Hyndman's case was really remarkable, he is a man of exceptional ability, has devoted himself for twenty-five years to the Socialist and labor movement, was endorsed by all the labor bodies of Burnley, and Mr. Phillip Stanhope, recently created a lord and one of the ablest Liberal politicians in the country, did him the honor of declining to stand against him. Still he was defeated-while politicians of an inferior stamp like John Burns, Keir Hardie, J. R. MacDonald and two score of others were triumphantly elected on a labor platform. Therein lies the secret, they were elected on a "Labor Platform!" Eight-hour day, trade-union rate of wages, better factory legislation, secular education, annual sessions of Parliament, paid members, one man, one vote, etc. All excellent things in themselves, but not Socialism and in no way disputing the right of one man to exploit another and leaving untouched the basic principle of Socialism, real Socialism, the right of labor to the fruits of its toil.

Under conditions such as those described, is it to be wondered at that many Anarchists are frankly cynical as to the benefits labor will derive from the labor parties? There will be at least two, that have suddenly forced the gilded doors of the "Mother of Parliaments" and about which the guilty middle class grew nervous. We know that men like T. Burt, H. Broadhurst, W. Abraham, F. Madison and a score of others are but nominal labor men not having worked at their various trades for years and are middle class by training and income, that others like Keir Hardie, J. R. MacDonald, John Ward and many more are at best labor politicians so steeped in political bargaining and compromising that the net results to labor from them will be very small indeed. It is not necessary nor would it be just to question the honesty or well-meaning of many of the forty-three labor members, to prove that a distinct disappointment. awaits those who elected them. Past history foretells the future clearly enough. We have seen John Burns, hero of the Dock Strike, who entered Parliament as a Revolutionary Socialist, becoming in a few short years as docile as a lamb to those above him in power and as autocratic as a Russian provincial governor to those who needed his assistance, finally enter a Liberal Cabinet with the "hero of Featherstone," H. H. Asquith, by whose orders striking miners were shot down in real American fashion, Sir Edward Grey, and other Jingo Imperialists--and the end is not yet. There are our other friends (?). H. Broadhurst, special favorite of the King; W. Abraham, ex-coal miner, who so endeared himself to the coal operators of Wales in his capacity as official of the Miners' Union and Scale Committee that when his daughter was married several years ago she received a cheque for £100 from one of the aforesaid operators, and others whom space forbids in mentioning. Such is the material of which the labor parties now in the House of Commons is formed, and it requires a violent stretch of imagination to see any real, lasting benefit can accrue from the forty-three men now sitting there as representatives of the oppressed masses. An inability to see this, however, by no means implies a lack of inherent good in the formation of the Labor Representation Committee and the Miners' Federation, their fraternization with the Socialists and the forces which impelled that organization and fraternization. It is the agitation which preceded it, and we hope will continue, and the growing desire on the part of the workers for a larger share of the product of their toil and a part in the management of industry that we see hope. The form that movement has taken or the beneficial results from the efforts of the elected are details. It is scarcely five years since the Labor Representation Committee sprang into existence, and it says much for the solidarity of labor that over a million trade unionists, thirteen thousand members of the Independent Labor Party and eight hundred Fabians could be got together on a political program in so short a time.

For good or ill the British workingman has gone in for political action and will have a try at that before he listens to the Anarchists. Slow of thought and used to compromise, he is a stern taskmaker and will exact a rigid account of the stewardship entrusted to those who sought his suffrage. When the disillusionment comes, as it surely will, real progress may come. The process of disillusionment does not come with geometrical precision. To some it comes over night, to others it is a process of years, and to some it is denied altogether. For years the Anarchists have been scoffed at as impossible dreamers for advocating the General Strike as the only effective means of overthrowing the present system. The glorious fight of the Russian people for freedom has changed all this, and we find even Bebel threatening the German Government with a general strike if they attempt to withdraw the franchise; and Hyndman, who opposed it for years, has finally admitted its effectiveness. The effect has been felt in Great Britain in the shape of the unemployed agitations and demonstrations, and although temporarily allayed by the elections, it will blossom forth again.

If the advent of the Liberal party to power, backed by the Home Rule and Labor parties, causes an undoing of the harm of the Balfour-Chamberlain government, it will be more than can reasonably be expected. The trade unions can never be restored to quite the same legal immunity they had previously. The forty thousand Chinese imported into South Africa to take the places of white miners will remain even if no more are brought in. The Education Act, passed with the assistance of the Irish Archbishops and attacking secular education, will be amended and not repealed. The endowment of the brewers will continue, and my Lords Bass, Burton and the rest will merely await future opportunities to plunder the British public. In short, little constructive legislation, even of that mild and tentative character one might expect from a Liberal party, made up of capitalistic units can be expected after the ten years of corrupt and extravagant rule of this band of modern pirates.

They who advocate the complete reconstruction of society are under no illusions as to the time and trouble required to overcome the superstitions of the past. Being imbued, however, with the belief in what Christians call "the eternal righteousness of their cause," they meet the future with smiling face; and far from being downcast over the turn of events in Great Britain, see hope in the formation of the Labor Parties.

AND YOU?

BOLTON HALL

"What would you do," asked the Idealist, "if you
were Czar of Russia?"
"I would first abolish monopoly of land, for that is
fundamental," said the Reformer, "and then resign.
What would you do?"
"I would first resign, and then teach the people to
abolish monopoly of land, the same as now," answered
the Idealist. "But what would you do, Teacher?"
"I would teach the people from the throne that they
were oppressed by their system of monopoly--and by
their Czar."

NATIONAL ATAVISM

By Internationalist

THE Jewish circles in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and other cities in America are aroused over the visit of a spectre called Nationalism, alias Territorialism. Like all spectres, it is doing a lot of mischief and causing much confusion in the heads of the Jewish population.

The spirit of our ancestor, Abraham, has come to life again. Like Abraham, when Jehovah commanded him to go in quest of the promised land, the Jewish Nationalists make themselves and others believe that they long for themoment, when with wife and child and all possessions, they will migrate to that spot on earth, which will represent the Jewish state, where Jewish traits will have a chance to develop in idyllic peace.

Natural science calls retrogression of species, which shows signs of a former state already overcome, atavism. The same term may be applied to the advanced section of the Jewish population, which has listened to the call of the Nationalists. They have retrogressed from a universal view of things to a philosophy fenced in by boundary lines; from the glorious conception that "the world is my country" to the conception of exclusiveness. They have abridged their wide vision and have made it narrow and superficial.

The Zionism of Max Noreau and his followers never was more than a sentimental sport for the well-to-do in the ranks of the Jews. The latter-day Nationalists, however, are bent on reaching those circles of the Jewish race that have so far followed the banner of Internationalism and Revolution; and this at a moment when revolutionists of all nationalities and races are most in need of unity and solidarity. Nothing could be more injurious to the Russian revolution, nothing prove a lack of confidence in its success, so much as the present nationalistic agitation.

The most encouraging and glorious feature of revolutions is that they purify the atmosphere from the thick, poisonous vapors of prejudices and superstition.

From time immemorial revolutions have been the only hope and refuge of all the oppressed from national and social yokes. The radical nationalistic elements seem to have forgotten that all their enthusiasm, their faith and hope in the power of a great social change, now falters before the question: Will it give us our own territory where we can surround ourselves with walls and watch-towers? Yes, the very people, who once spoke with a divine fire of the beauty of the solidarity of all individuals and all peoples, now indulge in the shallow phrases that the Jew is powerless, that he is nowhere at home, and that he owns no place on earth, where he can do justice to his nature, and that he must first obtain national rights, like all nations, ere he can go further.

These lamentations contain more fiction than truth, more sentimentality than logic.

The Poles have their own territory; still this fact does not hinder Russia from brutalizing Poland or from flogging and killing her children; neither does it hinder the Prussian government from maltreating her Polish subjects and forcibly obliterating the Polish language. And of what avail is native territory to the small nations of the Balkans, with Russian; Turkish and Austrian influences keeping them in a helpless and dependent condition. Various raids and expeditions by the powerful neighboring states forced on them, have proven what little protection their territorial independence has given them against brutal coercion. The independent existence of small peoples has ever served powerful states as a pretext for venomous attacks, pillage and attempts at annexation. Nothing is left them but to bow before the superior powers, or to be ever prepared for bitter wars that might, in a measure, temporarily loosen the tyrannical hold, but never end in a complete overthrow of the powerful enemy.

Switzerland is often cited as an example of a united nation which is able to maintain itself in peace and neutrality. It might be advisable to consider what circumstances have made this possible.

It is an indisputable fact that Switzerland acts as the executive agent of European powers, who consider her a foreign detective bureau which watches over, annoys and persecutes refugees and the dissatisfied elements.

Italian, Russian and German spies look upon Switzerland as a hunting ground, and the Swiss police are never so happy, as when they can render constable service to the governments of surrounding states. It is nothing unusual for the Swiss police to carry out the order of Germany or Italy to arrest political refugees and forcibly take them across the frontier, where they are given over into the hands of the German or Italian gendarmes. A very enticing national independence, is it not?

Is it possible that former revolutionists and enthusiastic fighters for freedom, who are now in the nationalistic field, should long for similar conditions? Those who refuse to be carried away by nationalistic phrases and who would rather follow the broad path of Internationalism, are accused of indifference to and lack of sympathy with the sufferings of the Jewish race. Rather it is far more likely that those who stand for the establishment of a Jewish nation show a serious lack of judgment.

Especially the radicals among the Nationalists seem to be altogether lost in the thicket of phrases. They are ashamed of the label "nationalist" because it stands for so much retrogression for so many memories of hatred, of savage wars and wild persecutions, that it is difficult for one who claims to be advanced and modern to adorn himself with the name. And who does not wish to appear advanced and modern? Therefore the name of Nationalist is rejected, and the name of territorialist taken instead, as if that were not the same thing. True, the territorialists will have nothing to do with an organized Jewish state; they aim for a free commune. But, if it is certain that small states are subordinated to great powers and merely endured by them, it is still more certain that free communes within powerful states, built on coercion and land robbery, have even less chance for a free existence. Such cuckoos' eggs the ruling powers will not have in their nests. A community, in which exploitation and slavery do not reign, would have the same effect on these powers, as a red rag to a bull. It would stand an everlasting reproach, a nagging accusation, which would have to be destroyed as quickly as possible. Or is the national glory of the Jews to begin after the social revolution?

If we are to throw into the dust heap our hope that humanity will some day reach a height from which difference of nationality and ancestry will appear but an insignificant speck on earth, well and good! Then let us be patriots and continue to nurse national characteristics; but we ought, at least, not to clothe ourselves in the mantel of Faust, in our pretentious sweep through space. We ought at least declare openly that the life of all peoples is never to be anything else but an outrageous mixture of stupid patriotism, national vanities; everlasting antagonism, and a ravenous greed for wealth and supremacy.

Might it not be advisable to consider how the idea of a national unity of the Jews can live in the face of the deep social abysses that exist between the various ranks within the Jewish race?

It is not at all a mere accident that the Bund, the strongest organization of the Jewish proletariat, will have nothing to do with the nationalistic agitation. The social and economic motives for concerted action or separation are of far more vital influence than the national.

The feeling of solidarity of the working-people is bound to prove stronger than the nationalistic glue. As to the remainder of the adherents of the nationalistic movement, they are recruited from the ranks of the middle Jewish class.

The Jewish banker, for instance, feels much more drawn to the Christian or Mohammedan banker than to his Jewish factory worker, or tenement house dweller. Equally so will the Jewish workingman, conscious of the revolutionizing effect of the daily struggle between labor and money power, find his brother in a fellow worker, and not in a Jewish banker.

True, the Jewish worker suffers twofold: he is exploited, oppressed and robbed as one of suffering humanity, and despised, hated, trampled upon, because he is a Jew; but he would look in vain toward the wealthy Jews for his friends and saviors. The latter have just as great an interest in the maintainance of a system that stands for wage slavery, social subordination, and the economic dependence of the great mass of mankind, as the Christian employer and owner of wealth.

The Jewish population of the East side has little in common with the dweller of a Fifth Avenue mansion. He has much more in common with the workingmen of other nationalities of the country -he has sorrows, struggles, indignation and longings for freedom in common with them. His hope is the social reconstruction of society and not nationalistic scene shifting. His conditions can be ameliorated only through a union with his fellow sufferers, through human brotherhood, and not by means of separation and barriers. In his struggles against humiliating demands, inhuman treatment, economic pressure, he can depend on help from his non-Jewish comrades, and not on the assistance of Jewish manufacturers and speculators. How then can he be expected to co-operate with them in the building of a Jewish commonwealth?

Certain it is that the battle which is to bring liberty, peace and well-being to humanity is of a mental, social, economic nature and not of a nationalistic one. The former brightens and widens the horizon, the latter stupefies the reasoning faculties, cripples and stifles the emotions, and sows hatred and strife instead of love and tenderness in the human soul. All that is big and beautiful in the world has been created by thinkers and artists, whose vision was far beyond the Liliputian sphere of Nationalism. Only that which contains the life's pulse of mankind expands and liberates. That is why every attempt to establish a national art, a patriotic literature, a life's philosophy with the seal of the government attached thereto is bound to fall flat and to be insignificant.

It were well and wholesome if all works dealing with national glory and victory, with national courage and patriotic songs could be used for bonfires. In their place we could have the poems of Shelley and Whitman, essays of Emerson or Thoreau, the Book of the Bees, by Maeterlink, the music of Wagner, Beethoven and Tschaikovsky, the wonderful art of Eleanore Duse.

I can deeply sympathize with the dread of massacres and persecutions of the Jewish people; and I consider it just and fair that they should strain every effort to put a stop to such atrocities as have been witnessed by the civilized world within a few years. But it must be borne in mind that it is the Russian government, the Russian reactionary party, including the Russian Church, and not the Russian people, that are responsible for the slaughter of the Jews.

Jewish, Socialists and Anarchists, however, who have joined the ranks of the Nationalists and who have forgotten to emphasize the fundamental distinction between the people of Russia and the reactionary forces of that country, who have fought and are still fighting so bravely for their freedom and for the liberation of all who are oppressed, deserve severe censure. They have thrown the responsibility of the massacres upon the Russian people and have even blamed the Revolutionists for them, whereas it is an undisputed fact that the agitation against the Jews has been inaugurated and paid for by the ruling clique, in the hope that the hatred and discontent of the Russian people would turn from them, the real criminals, to the Jews. It is said, "we have no rights in Russia, we are being robbed, hounded, killed, let the Russian people take care of themselves, we will turn our backs on them."

Would it not show deeper insight into the condition of affairs if my Jewish brethren were to say, "Our people are being abused, insulted, ill-treated and killed by the hirelings of Russian despotism. Let us strengthen our union with the intellectuals, the peasants, the rebellious elements of the people for the overthrow of the abominable tyranny; and when we have accomplished that let us co-operate in the great work of building a social structure upon which neither the nation nor the race but Humanity can live and grow in beauty."

Prejudices are never overcome by one who shows himself equally narrow and bigoted. To confront one brutal outbreak of national sentiment with the demand for another form of national sentiment means only to lay the foundation for a new persecution that is bound to come sooner or later. Were the retrogressive ideas of the Jewish Nationalists ever to materialize, the world would witness, after a few years, that one Jew is being persecuted by another.

In one respect the Jews are really a "chosen people." Not chosen by the grace of God, nor by their national peculiarities, which with every people, as well as with the Jews, merely prove national narrowness. They are "chosen" by a necessity, which has relieved them of many prejudices, a necessity which has prevented the development of many of those stupidities which have caused other nations great efforts to overcome. Repeated persecution has put the stamp of sorrow on the Jews; they have grown big in their endurance, in their comprehension of human suffering, and in their sympathy with the struggles and longings of the human soul.

Driven from country to country, they avenged themselves by producing great thinkers, able theoreticians, heroic leaders of progress. All governments lament the fact that the Jewish people have contributed the bravest fighters to the armies for every liberating war of mankind.

Owing to the lack of a country of their own, they developed, crystallized and idealized their cosmopolitan reasoning faculty. True, they have not their own empire, but many of them are working for the great moment when the earth will become the home for all, without distinction of ancestry or race. That is certainly a greater, nobler and sounder ideal to strive for than a petty nationality.

It is this ideal that is daily attracting larger numbers of Jews, as well as Gentiles; and all attempts to hinder the realization thereof, like the present nationalistic movement, will be swept away by the storm that precedes the birth of the new era-mankind clasped in universal brotherhood.

Mine Owners' Revenge

By M.B.

Charles H. Moyer, President of the Western Federation of Miners, William D. Haywood, Secretary of that organization, and G. A. Pettibone, former member of the same, were arrested in Denver, February 17th.

They are accused of having participated in the murder of the ex-Governor of Idaho, Mr. Steunenberg. Various other arrests have taken place in Cripple Creek and Haines, Oregon.

The events during and after the arrest leave no doubt that the authorities of Colorado and Idaho are in the most beautiful accord in their attempt to kill the Miners' Union. This accord and harmony is so apparent that thoughtful citizens cannot fail to see that the governments of Colorado and Idaho are aiding in the conspiracy of the mine owners against the miners

Requisition papers and a special train in seem to have been prepared in advance, for immediately after the arrest they were expelled and taken to Boise City, Idaho, and within a few moments the whole matter was settled by the authorities of Colorado, not even pretending to show the slightest fairness. Nor did they display the least desire to investigate the grounds upon which requisition papers were granted. This process usually takes several days. In the case of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone a few moments sufficed to close the whole proceedings.

Since the papers were issued before the arrest, it is not at all unlikely that the death sentence has already been decided upon. Optimists in the labor movement maintain that a repetition of the legal murder of 1887, that has caused shame and horror even in the ranks of the upper ten thousand, is impossible-that the authorities would shrink from such an outrage, such an awful crime. That which has happened in Colorado and Idaho warrants no such hope.

The evidence against the leaders of the Western Federation of Miners consists largely of one individual, who is supposed to have known and witnessed everything. The gentleman seems to fairly long for the moment when he can take the witness stand and furnish the material that the District Attorney needs to prove the guilt of the accused. An expert perjurer, it seems.

The Governor of Idaho, Mr. Gooding, has already given him a good character. The man acknowledged his firm belief in the existence of a Supreme Being, which touched the governor's heart deeply. Does he not know that it has ever been the mission of the Supreme Being to serve as Impresario to Falsehood and Wretchedness?

The accusation against the three prisoners is the best affidavit of the miner magnates of the courageous stand of the Western Federation of Miners during the reign of terror of the money powers. For years everything was done to disrupt them, but without results, The latest outrage is a renewed and desperate attack on that labor organization. Are the working people of America going to look on coolly at a repetition of the Black Friday in Chicago? Perhaps there will also be a labor leader, á la Powderly, who will be willing to carry faggots to the stake? Or are they going to awaken from their lethargy, ere America becomes thoroughly Russified?

"TO THE GENERATION KNOCKING AT THE DOOR."

By John Davidson.

Break—break it open; let the knocker rust;

Consider no "shalt not," nor no man's "must";

And, being entered, promptly take the lead,

Setting aside tradition, custom, creed;

Nor watch the balance of the huckster's beam;

Declare your hardiest thought, your proudest dream;

Await no summons; laugh at all rebuff;

High hearts and you are destiny enough.

The mystery and the power enshrined in you

Are old as time and as the moment new;

And none but you can tell what part you play,

Nor can you tell until you make assay,

For this alone, this always, will succeed,

The miracle and magic of the deed.

OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS.

Whoever severs himself from Mother Earth and her flowing sources of life goes into exile. A vast part of civilization has ceased to feel the deep relation with our mother. How they hasten and fall over one another, the many thousands of the great cities; how they swallow their food, everlastingly counting the minutes with cold hard faces; how they dwell packed together, close to one another, above and beneath, in dark gloomy stuffed holes, with dull hearts and insensitive heads, from the lack of space and air! Economic necessity causes such hateful pressure. Economic necessity? Why not economic stupidity? This seems a more appropriate name for it. Were it not for lack of understanding and knowledge, the necessity of escaping from the agony of an endless search for profit would make itself felt more keenly.

Must the Earth forever be arranged like an ocean steamer, with large, luxurious rooms and luxurious food for a select few, and underneath in the steerage, where the great mass can barely breathe from dirt and the poisonous air? Neither unconquerable external nor internal necessity forces the human race to such life; that which keeps it in such condition are ignorance and indifference.

Since Turgenieff wrote his "Fathers and Sons" and the "New Generation," the appearance of the Revolutionary army in Russia has changed features. At that time only the intellectuals and college youths, a small coterie of idealists, who knew no distinction between class and caste, took part in the tremendous work of reconstruction. The revolutionist of those days had delicate white hands, lots of learning, æstheticism and a good portion of nervousness. He attempted to go among the people, but the people understood him not, for he did not speak the people's tongue. It was a great effort for most of those brave ones to overcome their disgust at the dirt and dense ignorance they met among the peasants, who absolutely lacked comprehension of new ideas; therefore, there could be no understanding between the intellectuals, who wanted to help, and the sufferers, who needed help. These two elements were brought in closer touch through industrialism. The Russian peasant, robbed of the means to remain on his soil, was driven into the large industrial centres, and there he learned to know those brave and heroic men and women who gave up their comfort and career in their efforts for the liberation of their people.

These ideas that have undergone such great changes in Russia within the last decade should serve as good material for study for those who claim the Russian Revolution is dead.

Nicholas Tchaykovsky, one of Russia's foremost workers in the revolutionary movement, and one who, through beauty of character, simplicity of soul and great strategical ability, has been the idol of the Russian revolutionary youth for many years, is here as the delegate of the Russian Revolutionary Socialist party, to raise funds for a new uprising. He was right when he said, at the meeting in Grand Central Palace, "The Russian Revolution will live until the decayed and cowardly regime of tyranny in Russia is rooted out of existence."

Decorative separator

The French have a new President. Loubet was succeeded by Fallières. The father of the new one was a great gormandizer of Pantagruelian dimensions. He died of overloading his stomach. The son made his career like a cautious upstart. He is well enough acquainted with himself to know that he is not a Machiavelli. Therefore, he does not boast of his sagacity, but rather of his integrity. A politician is irresistible to a crowd when he cries out to them: "My opponents express the suspicion that I am a numskull. I do not care to argue the point with them, but this I will say by the way of explanation, fellow citizens, that I am a thoroughly honest man to the very roots of my hair." By this method one can attain the presidency of a republic.

As Secretary of the Interior, Fallières caused the arrest of the Socialist poet, Clovis Hugues. At another time he declared: "As long as I am in office, I will not tolerate the red flag on the open street."

The French bourgeois have found in Fallières their fitting man of straw for seven years.

The only genuine Democrat of these times is Death. He does not admit of any class distinctions. He mows down a proletarian and a Marshall Field with the same scythe. How imperfectly the world is arranged. It should be possible to shift the bearing of children and the dying from the rich to the poor—for good pay, of course.

Whosoever believes that the law is infallible and can bring about order in the chaotic social conditions, knows the curative effect of law to the minutest detail. The question how things might be improved is met with this reply: "All criminals should be caught in a net like fish and put away for safe keeping, so that society remains in the care of the righteous." Hallelujah!

People with a capacity to judge for themselves think differently. Mr. Charlton T. Lewis, President of the National Prison Association, maintains:

"Our county jails everywhere are the schools and colleges of crime. In the light of social science it were better for the world if every one of them were destroyed than that this work should be continued. Experience shows that the system of imprisonment of minor offenders for short terms is but a gigantic measure for the manufacture of criminals. Freedom, not confinement, is the natural state of man, and the only condition under which influences for reformation can have their full efficiency.... Prison life is unnatural at best. Man is a social creature. Confinement tends to lower his consciousness of dignity and responsibility, to weaken the motives which govern his relations to his race, to impair the foundations of character and unfit him for independent life. To consign a man to prison is commonly to enrol him in the criminal class.... With all the solemnity and emphasis of which I am capable, I utter the profound conviction, after twenty years of constant study of our prison population, that more than nine-tenths of them ought never to have been confined."

Government and authority are responsible for the conditions in the western mining districts.

Is not the existence of government considered as a necessity on the grounds that it is here to maintain peace, law and order? This is an oft-repeated song.

Let us see how the government of Colorado has lived up to its calling within the last few years. It has permitted that the labor protective laws that have passed the legislature should be broken and trampled upon by the mine owners.

The money powers care little for the eight-hour law, and when the mine workers insisted upon keeping that law, the authorities of Colorado immediately went to the rescue of the exploiters. Not only were police and soldiers let loose upon the Western Federation of Miners; but the government of Colorado permitted the mine owners to recruit an army to fight the labor organizations. Hirelings were formed into a so-called citizens' committee, that inaugurated a reign of terror. These legal lawbreakers invaded peaceful homes during the day and night, and those that were in the least suspected of belonging to or sympathizing with the Western Federation of Miners were torn out of bed, arrested and dragged off to the bull pen, or transported into the desert, without food or shelter, many miles from other living beings. Some of these victims were crippled for life and died as a result thereof.

When it became known that the W. F. M. continued to stand erect, regardless of brutal attacks, it was decided to strike the last violent blow against it.

Orchard, the man of honor, confessed, and the lawbreakers appealed to the law against Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone.

This time the government did not hesitate. The eight-hour and protective labor law was too insignificant to enforce, but to bring the officers of the W. F. M. to account, that, of course, is the duty and the function of the State.

There is not the slightest hope that the authorities who, for a number of years, have permitted the violation of the law, will be put on trial, but the crime they have perpetrated is a weighty argument in favor of those who maintain that the State is not an independent institution, but a tool of the possessing class.

Many radicals entertain the queer notion that they cannot arrange their own lives, according to their own ideas, but that they have to adapt themselves to the conditions they hate, and which they fight in theory with fire and sword.

Anything rather than arouse too much public condemnation! The lives they lead are dependent upon the opinion of the Philistines. They are revolutionists in theory, reactionists in practice.

The words of Louis XIV, "I am the State," have been taken up as a motto by the American policeman. One of the New York papers contains the following account:

"In discharging some seventy prisoners in the Jefferson Market Police Court yesterday morning, the Magistrate said to the police in charge of the cases: 'I am amazed that you men should bring these prisoners before me without a shred of evidence on which they can be held.'"

Such is the blessing of this republic. We are not confronted by one czar of the size of an elephant, but by a hundred thousand czars, as small as mosquitoes, but equally disagreeable and annoying.

Friends of Mother Earth in various Western cities have proposed a lecture tour in behalf of the magazine. So far I have heard from Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis and Chicago. Those of other cities who wish to have me lecture there, will please communicate with me as to dates at once. The tour is to begin May 12th and last for a month or six weeks.

Emma Goldman,
Box 217, Madison Square Station.

THE CHILD AND ITS ENEMIES.

By Emma Goldman.

Is the child to be considered as an individuality, or as an object to be moulded according to the whims and fancies of those about it? This seems to me to be the most important question to be answered by parents and educators. And whether the child is to grow from within, whether all that craves expression will be permitted to come forth toward the light of day; or whether it is to be kneaded like dough through external forces, depends upon the proper answer to this vital question.

The longing of the best and noblest of our times makes for the strongest individualities. Every sensitive being abhors the idea of being treated as a mere machine or as a mere parrot of conventionality and respectability, the human being craves recognition of his kind.

It must be borne in mind that it is through the channel of the child that the development of the mature man must go, and that the present ideas of the educating or training of the latter in the school and the family—even the family of the liberal or radical—are such as to stifle the natural growth of the child.

Every institution of our day, the family, the State, our moral codes, sees in every strong, beautiful, uncompromising personality a deadly enemy; therefore every effort is being made to cramp human emotion and originality of thought in the individual into a straight-jacket from its earliest infancy; or to shape every human being according to one pattern; not into a well-rounded individuality, but into a patient work slave, professional automaton, tax-paying citizen, or righteous moralist. If one, nevertheless, meets with real spontaneity (which, by the way, is a rare treat,) it is not due to our method of rearing or educating the child: the personality often asserts itself, regardless of official and family barriers. Such a discovery should be celebrated as an unusual event, since the obstacles placed in the way of growth and development of character are so numerous that it must be considered a miracle if it retains its strength and beauty and survives the various attempts at crippling that which is most essential to it.

Indeed, he who has freed himself from the fetters of the thoughtlessness and stupidity of the commonplace; he who can stand without moral crutches, without the approval of public opinion—private laziness, Friedrich Nietzsche called it—may well intone a high and voluminous song of independence and freedom; he has gained the right to it through fierce and fiery battles. These battles already begin at the most delicate age.

The child shows its individual tendencies in its plays, in its questions, in its association with people and things. But it has to struggle with everlasting external interference in its world of thought and emotion. It must not express itself in harmony with its nature, with its growing personality. It must become a thing, an object. Its questions are met with narrow, conventional, ridiculous replies, mostly based on falsehoods; and, when, with large, wondering, innocent eyes, it wishes to behold the wonders of the world, those about it quickly lock the windows and doors, and keep the delicate human plant in a hothouse atmosphere, where it can neither breathe nor grow freely.

Zola, in his novel "Fecundity," maintains that large sections of people have declared death to the child, have conspired against the birth of the child,—a very horrible picture indeed, yet the conspiracy entered into by civilization against the growth and making of character seems to me far more terrible and disastrous, because of the slow and gradual destruction of its latent qualities and traits and the stupefying and crippling effect thereof upon its social well-being.

Since every effort in our educational life seems to be directed toward making of the child a being foreign to itself, it must of necessity produce individuals foreign to one another, and in everlasting antagonism with each other.

The ideal of the average pedagogist is not a complete, well-rounded, original being; rather does he seek that the result of his art of pedagogy shall be automatons of flesh and blood, to best fit into the treadmill of society and the emptiness and dulness of our lives. Every home, school, college and university stands for dry, cold utilitarianism, overflooding the brain of the pupil with a tremendous amount of ideas, handed down from generations past. "Facts and data," as they are called, constitute a lot of information, well enough perhaps to maintain every form of authority and to create much awe for the importance of possession, but only a great handicap to a true understanding of the human soul and its place in the world.

Truths dead and forgotten long ago, conceptions of the world and its people, covered with mould, even during the times of our grandmothers, are being hammered into the heads of our young generation. Eternal change, thousandfold variations, continual innovation are the essence of life. Professional pedagogy knows nothing of it, the systems of education are being arranged into files, classified and numbered. They lack the strong fertile seed which, falling on rich soil, enables them to grow to great heights, they are worn and incapable of awakening spontaneity of character. Instructors and teachers, with dead souls, operate with dead values. Quantity is forced to take the place of quality. The consequences thereof are inevitable.

In whatever direction one turns, eagerly searching for human beings who do not measure ideas and emotions with the yardstick of expediency, one is confronted with the products, the herdlike drilling instead of the result of spontaneous and innate characteristics working themselves out in freedom.

"No traces now I see

Whatever of a spirit's agency.

'Tis drilling, nothing more."

These words of Faust fit our methods of pedagogy perfectly. Take, for instance, the way history is being taught in our schools. See how the events of the world become like a cheap puppet show, where a few wire-pullers are supposed to have directed the course of development of the entire human race.

And the history of our own nation! Was it not chosen by Providence to become the leading nation on earth? And does it not tower mountain high over other nations? Is it not the gem of the ocean? Is it not incomparably virtuous, ideal and brave? The result of such ridiculous teaching is a dull, shallow patriotism, blind to its own limitations, with bull-like stubbornness, utterly incapable of judging of the capacities of other nations. This is the way the spirit of youth is emasculated, deadened through an over-estimation of one's own value. No wonder public opinion can be so easily manufactured.

"Predigested food" should be inscribed over every hall of learning as a warning to all who do not wish to lose their own personalities and their original sense of judgment, who, instead, would be content with a large amount of empty and shallow shells. This may suffice as a recognition of the manifold hindrances placed in the way of an independent mental development of the child.

Equally numerous, and not less important, are the difficulties that confront the emotional life of the young. Must not one suppose that parents should be united to children by the most tender and delicate chords? One should suppose it; yet, sad as it may be, it is, nevertheless, true, that parents are the first to destroy the inner riches of their children.

The Scriptures tell us that God created Man in His own image, which has by no means proven a success. Parents follow the bad example of their heavenly master; they use every effort to shape and mould the child according to their image. They tenaciously cling to the idea that the child is merely part of themselves—an idea as false as it is injurious, and which only increases the misunderstanding of the soul of the child, of the necessary consequences of enslavement and subordination thereof.

As soon as the first rays of consciousness illuminate the mind and heart of the child, it instinctively begins to compare its own personality with the personality of those about it. How many hard and cold stone cliffs meet its large wondering gaze? Soon enough it is confronted with the painful reality that it is here only to serve as inanimate matter for parents and guardians, whose authority alone gives it shape and form.

The terrible struggle of the thinking man and woman against political, social and moral conventions owes its origin to the family, where the child is ever compelled to battle against the internal and external use of force. The categorical imperatives: You shall! you must! this is right! that is wrong! this is true! that is false! shower like a violent rain upon the unsophisticated head of the young being and impress upon its sensibilities that it has to bow before the long established and hard notions of thoughts and emotions. Yet the latent qualities and instincts seek to assert their own peculiar methods of seeking the foundation of things, of distinguishing between what is commonly called wrong, true or false. It is bent upon going its own way, since it is composed of the same nerves, muscles and blood, even as those who assume to direct its destiny. I fail to understand how parents hope that their children will ever grow up into independent, self-reliant spirits, when they strain every effort to abridge and curtail the various activities of their children, the plus in quality and character, which differentiates their offspring from themselves, and by the virtue of which they are eminently equipped carriers of new, invigorating ideas. A young delicate tree, that is being clipped and cut by the gardener in order to give it an artificial form, will never reach the majestic height and the beauty as when allowed to grow in nature and freedom.

When the child reaches adolescence, it meets, added to the home and school restrictions, with a vast amount of hard traditions of social morality. The cravings of love and sex are met with absolute ignorance by the majority of parents, who consider it as something indecent and improper, something disgraceful, almost criminal, to be suppressed and fought like some terrible disease. The love and tender feelings in the young plant are turned into vulgarity and coarseness through the stupidity of those surrounding it, so that everything fine and beautiful is either crushed altogether or hidden in the innermost depths, as a great sin, that dares not face the light.

What is more astonishing is the fact that parents will strip themselves of everything, will sacrifice everything for the physical well-being of their child, will wake nights and stand in fear and agony before some physical ailment of their beloved one; but will remain cold and indifferent, without the slightest understanding before the soul cravings and the yearnings of their child, neither hearing nor wishing to hear the loud knocking of the young spirit that demands recognition. On the contrary, they will stifle the beautiful voice of spring, of a new life of beauty and splendor of love; they will put the long lean finger of authority upon the tender throat and not allow vent to the silvery song of the individual growth, of the beauty of character, of the strength of love and human relation, which alone make life worth living.

And yet these parents imagine that they mean best for the child, and for aught I know, some really do; but their best means absolute death and decay to the bud in the making. After all, they are but imitating their own masters in State, commercial, social and moral affairs, by forcibly suppressing every independent attempt to analyze the ills of society and every sincere effort toward the abolition of these ills; never able to grasp the eternal truth that every method they employ serves as the greatest impetus to bring forth a greater longing for freedom and a deeper zeal to fight for it.

That compulsion is bound to awaken resistance, every parent and teacher ought to know. Great surprise is being expressed over the fact that the majority of children of radical parents are either altogether opposed to the ideas of the latter, many of them moving along the old antiquated paths, or that they are indifferent to the new thoughts and teachings of social regeneration. And yet there is nothing unusual in that. Radical parents, though emancipated from the belief of ownership in the human soul, still cling tenaciously to the notion that they own the child, and that they have the right to exercise their authority over it. So they set out to mould and form the child according to their own conception of what is right and wrong, forcing their ideas upon it with the same vehemence that the average Catholic parent uses. And, with the latter, they hold out the necessity before the young "to do as I tell you and not as I do." But the impressionable mind of the child realizes early enough that the lives of their parents are in contradiction to the ideas they represent; that, like the good Christian who fervently prays on Sunday, yet continues to break the Lord's commands the rest of the week, the radical parent arraigns God, priesthood, church, government, domestic authority, yet continues to adjust himself to the condition he abhors. Just so, the Freethought parent can proudly boast that his son of four will recognize the picture of Thomas Paine or Ingersoll, or that he knows that the idea of God is stupid. Or that the Social Democratic father can point to his little girl of six and say, "Who wrote the Capital, dearie?" "Karl Marx, pa!" Or that the Anarchistic mother can make it known that her daughter's name is Louise Michel, Sophia Perovskaya, or that she can recite the revolutionary poems of Herwegh, Freiligrath, or Shelley, and that she will point out the faces of Spencer, Bakunin or Moses Harmon almost anywhere.

These are by no means exaggerations; they are sad facts that I have met with in my experience with radical parents. What are the results of such methods of biasing the mind? The following is the consequence, and not very infrequent, either. The child, being fed on one-sided, set and fixed ideas, soon grows weary of re-hashing the beliefs of its parents, and it sets out in quest of new sensations, no matter how inferior and shallow the new experience may be, the human mind cannot endure sameness and monotony. So it happens that that boy or girl, over-fed on Thomas Paine, will land in the arms of the Church, or they will vote for imperialism only to escape the drag of economic determinism and scientific socialism, or that they open a shirt-waist factory and cling to their right of accumulating property, only to find relief from the old-fashioned communism of their father. Or that the girl will marry the next best man, provided he can make a living, only to run away from the everlasting talk on variety.

Such a condition of affairs may be very painful to the parents who wish their children to follow in their path, yet I look upon them as very refreshing and encouraging psychological forces. They are the greatest guarantee that the independent mind, at least, will always resist every external and foreign force exercised over the human heart and head.

Some will ask, what about weak natures, must they not be protected? Yes, but to be able to do that, it will be necessary to realize that education of children is not synonymous with herdlike drilling and training. If education should really mean anything at all, it must insist upon the free growth and development of the innate forces and tendencies of the child. In this way alone can we hope for the free individual and eventually also for a free community, which shall make interference and coercion of human growth impossible.

HOPE AND FEAR.[A]

(Translated from the Jewish of L. I. Peretz.)

....My heart is with you.

My eye does not get weary looking at your flaming banner; my ear does not get tired listening to your powerful song....

My heart is with you; man's hunger must be appeased, and he must have light; he must be free, and he must be his own master, master over himself and his work.

And when you snap at the fist which is trying to strangle you, your voice, and your ardent protest, preventing you from being heard—I rejoice, praying that your teeth may be sharpened. And when you are marching against Sodom and Gomorrah, to tear down the old, my soul is with you, and the certainty that you must triumph fills and warms my heart and intoxicates me like old wine....

And yet....

And yet you frighten me.

I am afraid of the bridled who conquer, for they are apt to become the oppressors, and every oppressor transgresses against the human soul....

Do you not talk among yourselves of how humanity is to march, like an army in line, and you are going to sound for it the march on the road?

And yet humanity is not an army.

The strong are going forward, the magnanimous feel more deeply, the proud rise higher, and yet will you not lay down the cedar in order that it may not outgrow the grass?

Or will you not spread your wings over mediocrity, or will you not shield indifference, and protect the gray and uniformly fleeced herd?

* * *

You frighten me.

As conquerors you might become the bureaucracy: to dole out to everybody his morsel, as is the usage in the poor-house; to arrange work for everybody as it is done in the galleys. And you will thus crush the creator of new worlds—the free human will, and fill up with earth the purest spring of human happiness—human initiative, the power which braves one against thousands, against peoples, and against generations? And you will systematize life and bid it to remain on the level of the crowd.

And will you not be occupied with regulations: registrating, recording, estimating—or will you not prescribe how fast and how often the human pulse must beat, how far the human eye may look ahead, how much the ear may perceive, and what kinds of dreams the languishing heart may entertain?

* * *

With joy in my heart I look at you when you tear down the gates of Sodom, but my heart trembles at the same time, fearing that you might erect on its ruins new ones—more chilling and darker ones.

There will be no houses without windows; but fog will envelop the souls....

There will be no empty stomachs, but souls will starve. No ear will hear cries of woe, but the eagle—the human intellect—will stand at the trough with clipped wings together with the cow and the ox.

And justice, which has accompanied you on the thorny and bloody path to victory, will forsake you, and you will not be aware of it, for conquerors and tyrants are always blind. You will conquer and dominate. And you will plunge into injustice, and you will not feel the quagmire under your feet.... Every tyrant thinks he stands on firm ground so long as he has not been vanquished.

And you will build prisons for those who dare to stretch out their hands, pointing to the abyss into which you sink; you will tear out the tongues of the mouths that warn you against those who come after you, to destroy you and your injustice....

Cruelly will you defend the equality of rights of the herd to use the grass under its feet and the salt in the ground,—and your enemies will be the free individuals, the overmen, the ingenious inventors, the prophets, the saviors, the poets and artists.

* * *

Everything that comes to pass occurs in space and time.... The present is the existing: the stable, the firm, and therefore the rigid and frozen—the to-day, which will and must perish....

Time is change—it varies and develops; it is the eternally sprouting, the blossoming, the eternal morning....

And as your "morning," to which you aspire, will become the "to-day," you will become the upholders of the "yesterday," of that which is lifeless—dead. You will trample the sproutings of to-morrow and destroy its blossoms, and pour streams of cold water upon the heads that nestle your prophecies, your dreams, and your new hopes.

The to-day is unwilling to die, bloody is every sunset....

I yearn and hope for your victory, but I fear and tremble for your victory.

You are my hope, and you are my fear.

Nietzsche—Zarathustra spake thus: "He who wishes to say something should be silent a long while." If the makers of public opinion would only carry out this hint for about a lifetime!

According to the latest researches, it has been brought to light that the grim angel who drove Adam and Eve out of Paradise was named Comstock.

As long as there are women who must fear to become mothers on account of economic difficulties or moral prejudices, the emancipation of woman is only a phrase.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] This sketch the writer had addressed to Jewish Social Democrats.

JOHN MOST.

By M. B.

JOHN MOST suddenly died in Cincinnati, March 17. He was on an agitation trip, and when he reached Cincinnati he took sick with erysipelas and died within a few days, surrounded by his comrades.

Shortly before that he had the fortune to taste of the kindness and good breeding of the police once more. Some friends in Philadelphia arranged a meeting to celebrate Most's sixtieth birthday. He was one of the speakers; but the police of that city interpreted the American Constitution, which speaks of the right to free speech and assembly, as giving the right to forcibly disperse the meeting.

Conscious misrepresentation and ignorance, the twin angels that hover over the throne of the newspaper kingdom of this country, have made John Most a scarecrow. Organized police authorities and police justices that can neither be accused of a surplus of intelligence nor even of the shadow of love of fairness, made him their target whenever they felt the great calling to save their country from disaster. Naturally the mob of law-abiding citizens must be assured from time to time that their masters have a sacred duty to perform, that they earn the right of graft.

Most was born at Augsburg, Bavaria, February 5, 1846. According to his memoirs, he early found it necessary to resist the tyranny of a stepmother and the miserable treatment of his master. As a bookbinder apprentice, at a very early age, he took to his heels and went on the road of the world, where he soon came in contact with revolutionary ideas in the labor movement that greatly inspired him and urged him to read and study. It might be more appropriately said that he developed a ravenous appetite for knowledge and research of all the works of human science.

At that time socialistic ideas had just begun to exercise great influence upon the thinking mind of the European continents. The zeal and craving for knowledge displayed by the working people of those days can hardly be properly estimated, especially by the proletariat of this country, whose literature and source of knowledge chiefly consists of the daily papers. Workingmen, who worked ten and twelve hours in factories and shops, spent their evenings in study and reading of economic, political and philosophic works—Ferdinand Lassalle, Karl Marx, Engels, Bakunin and, later, Kropotkin; also Henry George's "Progress and Poverty." Added to these were the works of the materialistic-natural science schools, such as Darwin, Huxley, Molleschot, Karl Vogt, Ludwig Buechner, Haeckel, that constituted the mental diet of a large number of workingmen of that period. Just as the revolutionary economists were hailed as the liberators of physical slavery, so were the materialistic, naturalistic sciences accepted as the saviors from mental narrowness and darkness.

Most was untiring in his work of popularizing these ideas, and as he could quickly grasp things he was tremendously successful in simplifying scientific books into pamphlets and essays, accessible to the ordinary intelligence of the working people. He possessed a marvelous memory, and once he got hold of an amount of data he could easily avail himself of it at any moment. This was particularly true in the domain of history, with its compilation of bloodcurdling events, from which he drew his conclusions of how the human race ought not to live.

Together with his journalistic activity, he combined oral propaganda. His power of delivery was marvelous, and those who heard him in his early days will understand why the powers of the world stood in awe before him. He not only had a very convincing way, but he succeeded in keeping his audiences spellbound or to bring them up to the highest pitch of enthusiasm.

The scene of his first great activity was in Vienna, where he was soon met with many indictments and persecutions from the authorities, who mercilessly pursued him for the rest of his life. After a term of imprisonment in several American prisons, he went to Germany, where he became the editor of the "Free Press" in Berlin, but his original and biting criticism of bureaucracy again brought him in conflict with the powers that be. The Berlin prison, Ploetzensee, soon closed its doors on the culprit. Even to-day those who visit that famous institution of civilization are still shown Most's cell.

At that time Bismarck carried an unsuccessful battle against the power of the Catholic Church, eager to subordinate her to the State authority. It happened that the famous leader of the Catholic party, Majunke, was sent for a term of imprisonment to Ploetzensee. When the prisoners were led out for their daily walk, the leader of the Reds, John Most, met the leader of the Blacks, Majunke. The situation was comical enough to cause amusement to both; both being brilliant, they found enough interesting material for conversation, which helped them over the dreariness and monotony of prison life.

Several years later Bismarck succeeded in enacting the muzzle law against Social Democracy, which destroyed the freedom of the press and assembly. The question arose then what could be done.

Most had been elected to the Reichstag, representing the famous factory town Chemnitz, but his experience in Parliament only served him to despise the representative system and professional lawmaking more than ever.

When leaders of Social Democracy, like Bebel and Liebknecht, thought it more expedient to adapt themselves to conditions, Most went to London, where he continued his revolutionary literary crusade in the "Freiheit." He came in contact with Karl Marx, Engels and various other refugees who lived in England. Marx assured Most that his sharp pen in the "Freiheit" was not likely to cause him any trouble in England so long as the Conservative party was in power, but that nothing good was to be expected of a Liberal government. Marx was right. Shortly after Most's arrival in London his paper was seized and he was arrested on the indictment for inciting to murder because he paid a glowing tribute to the revolutionists of Russia, who, on the first of March, 1881, executed Alexander II. He was tried and sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment to one of the barbarous English prisons.

Most gradually developed into an Anarchist, representing Communist Anarchism, the organization of production and consummation, based on free industrial groups, and which would exclude State and bureaucratic interference. His ideas were related to those of Kropotkin and Elisée Reclus. He often assured me that he considered Kropotkin his teacher, and that he owed much of his mental development to him.

The next aim of the hounded man was America, but it does not appear that he was followed across the ocean by his lucky star. He soon was made to feel that free speech and free press in this great republic was but a myth. Time and again he was arrested, brutally treated by the police, and sentenced to serve time in the penitentiary. Added to this came the fearful attacks and misrepresentations of Most and his ideas by the press, many of the articles making him appear as a wild beast ever plotting destruction. The last sentence inflicted upon him was after the Czolgosz act. He was arrested for an article by the Radical Karl Heinzen, that had been written many years ago and the author of which had been dead a long time. The article had not the slightest relation to the act, did not contain a single reference to the conditions of this country, and treated altogether of European conditions of fifty years ago. In the face of this sentence one cannot but help think of Tolstoi's "Power of Darkness." Only the Power of Darkness in the minds of the judges before whom Most was tried and the newspaper men, who helped in arousing public opinion against him, were responsible for the sentence inflicted upon him.

Taking Most's life superficially, it would appear that his road was hard and thorny, but looking at it from a thorough view point, one will realize that all his hardships and injustices had made of him a relentless, uncompromising rebel, who continued to wage war against the enemies of the people.

With but few exceptions the American journalists censure the immoral profession of "Mrs. Warren." Is it not heavenly irony that God pressed the headman's sword of morals into the hands of the newspaper writers? Perhaps the great God Pan thought they would be the fittest to handle the sword, since they are so intimately associated with mental prostitution.

CIVILIZATION IN AFRICA.

A large, strong man, dressed in a uniform and armed to the teeth, knocked at the door of a hut on the west coast of Africa.

"Who are you and what do you want?" said a voice from the inside.

"In the name of civilization, open your door or I'll break it down for you and fill you full of lead."

"But what do you want here?"

"My name is Christian Civilization. Don't talk like a fool, you black brute; what do you suppose I want here but to civilize you and make a reasonable human being out of you if it is possible."

"What are you going to do?"

"In the first place you must dress yourself like a white man. It is a shame and disgrace the way you go about. From now on you must wear underclothing, a pair of pants, vest, coat, plug hat, and a pair of yellow gloves. I will furnish them to you at reasonable rates."

"What shall I do with them?"

"Wear them, of course. You did not expect to eat them, did you? The first step to civilization is in wearing proper clothes."

"But it is too hot here to wear such garments. I'm not used to them. I'll perish from the heat. Do you want to murder me?"

"Not particularly. But if you do die you will have the satisfaction of being a martyr to civilization."

"How kind!"

"Don't mention it. What do you do for a living?"

"When I am hungry I eat a banana; I eat, drink or sleep just as I feel like it."

"What horrible barbarity! You must settle down to some occupation, my friend. If you don't it will be my duty to lock you up as a vagrant."

"If I have to follow some occupation I think I'll start a coffee house. I've got a considerable amount of coffee and sugar stored here and there."

"Oh, you have, have you? Why, you are not such a hopeless case as I thought you were. In the first place you want to pay me the sum of fifty dollars."

"What for?"

"As an occupation tax, you ignorant heathen. Do you expect all the blessings of civilization for nothing?"

"But I have no money."

"That makes no difference. I'll take it out in tea and coffee. If you don't pay up like a Christian man, I'll put you in jail for the rest of your life."

"What is jail?"

"Jail is a progressive word. You must be prepared to make some sacrifices for civilization, you know."

"What a great and glorious thing is civilization."

"You cannot possibly realize the benefits of it, but you will before I get through with you, my fine fellow."

The unfortunate native took to the woods and has not been seen since—Waverly Magazine.

OUR PURPOSE.
By Mary Hansen.

I come, not with the blaring of trumpet,
To herald the birth of a king;
I come, not with traditional story,
The life of a savior to sing;
I come, not with jests for the silly,
I come, not to worship the strong,
But to question the powers that govern,
To point out a world-old wrong.
To kiss from the starved lips of childhood
The lies that are sapping its breath,
And brighten the brief cheerless valley
That leads to the darkness of death;
With reason and sympathy blended,
And a hope that all mankind shall see,
Untrammeled by Creed, Law or Custom—
The attainable goal of the Free.

MARRIAGE AND THE HOME.

By John R. Coryell.

YOU remember Punch's advice to the young man about to be married—don't. There is a jest nearly half a century old, and yet ever fresh and poignant. Why? Can it be that the secret, serious voice of mankind proclaims the jest truth in masquerade? Can it be that marriage, as an institution, has indeed proved itself in experience such a terrible failure?

We worship many fetishes, we of the superior civilization, and the institution of marriage is the chief of them. Few of us but bow before that; before that and the home of which it is the foundation. And I know what scorn and obloquy and denunciation await that man who stands unawed before it, seeing in it but an ugly little idol. And I guess what will be dealt out to him who not only refuses to bow the head, but openly scoffs. And yet I am going to scoff and say ugly words about this fetish of ours. I am going to say that it represents ignorance, hides and causes hypocrisy, stands in the way of progress, drags low the standard of individual excellence, perpetuates many foul practices.

Let me admit at the outset that I recognize in the institution of marriage a perfectly legitimate result of the working of the law of evolution. Of course it is; and the same may be said of everything that exists whether good or evil. Every vile and filthy thing, crime, disease, misery, are all equally legitimate products of the working of this law. Evolution is simply the process of the logical working of things; it explains how things come to be; and there is nothing in the nature of the law to enable it to give to its results the hall mark of sterling. A thing is because of something else that was. Marriage is because of a primeval club. Man craved woman and he procured her. Considering the beginnings of the institution of marriage, it is interesting, if nothing more, to consider the efforts of the priest to give it an attribute of sanctity, to call it a sacrament. In truth, marriage is the most artificial of the relations which exist in the social body. It is a device of man at his worst—a mixture of slavery, savage egotism and priestcraft. It is indicated[24] by nothing in the physical constitution of either male or female. It is an anomaly; a contract which can be freely entered into by the most unfit, but which cannot be broken, though both parties wish it, though absolute unfitness be patent, though hell on earth be its result. The pretense must be abandoned that men and women marry in order to reproduce their kind. Nothing could be less true. Marriage legalizes reproduction, but is not caused by desire for it. Marriage is the hard and fast tying together of a man and a woman without the least regard to moral or physiological conditions. Marriage may be for pecuniary gain, or for social advancement; it may be at the will of a controlling parent, or, more commonly for St. Paul's reason, that it is better to marry than to burn; but never for the reason that the parties to it are fitted to each other for parenthood. That supreme consideration not only does not enter into either the preliminary or after-thought of the matter, but is even held to be an indecent topic of conversation between persons not already married to each other.

The constituents of the average marriage are a man over-stimulated sexually by mystery and ignorance, and a woman abnormally undersexed by the course of self-repression and self-mutilation which have been taught her from her earliest childhood as necessities of modesty, purity and virtue. And then out of the carefully cultivated repugnance of the woman and the savage, exulting, unrelenting passion of the man are produced children, frequently welcome, seldom premeditated. And we are asked to believe that out of such elements are created the best foundation for a race or nation. Surely, surely, that combination of conditions is the best for a race or a nation which produces the best individuals; and quite as surely we should strive to bring about those conditions which tend to produce the best individuals.

Then there is home. Home, sweet home! the perfect flower, we are told, that blooms on the fair stem of marriage. Yet it is the very citadel of ignorance, when it should be the school in which are taught the beautiful phenomena of physical life. Home! where the simplest, purest facts of life are converted into a nasty mystery and deliberately endowed with the characteristics of impurity and sin; for what else is the meaning of that solemn formula, which most of us have been taught, that we were conceived in sin? What else is the meaning of the hush and blush that go to any reference to sex, sign or manifestation of sex? Is it not awful beyond the power of words to express that a man and a woman come together in ignorance and beget children who are not even to obtain the benefit of such knowledge as their unfortunate parents pick up by the way, but must themselves begin the most responsible functions of life, not only in equal ignorance, but with an added load of misconceptions, sex-superstitions, immoral dogmas and probably physical disabilities? A short time since a father was speaking to me of his son, fourteen years of age, and plainly at an age when some of the beautiful phenomena of sex-life were beginning to crowd upon him for notice. I asked the man if he had talked with his son about the matter. His answer was peculiar only in that he put into words a description of the attitude of the average parent: "Talked to him about that? Not I. Let him learn as I did. No one ever told me." But some one had told him, as his unpleasantly reminiscent smile advised me! He had been told by ignorant companions, by ignorant servants, and, quite likely, by books, whose grossness would have been harmless but for the child's piteous ignorance. No, the man would not talk with his son about such things, but he would go into his club and talk into the small hours over a glass of whiskey with his friends there, turning the beauty and purity of sex manifestation into shabby jest and impure ridicule. He would exchange stories based on sex relation with any stranger with whom he might ride for two hours in a smoking car. Every man knows that I speak well within bounds.

And the girl child! what of her? Does her mother, the victim of misinformation and no information, of misuse and self-mutilation, in the sweet privacy of this home, which is called the cradle of peace and the nestling place of purity, save her by taking warning of her own ruined life and giving her the benefit of such little knowledge as she has gained in physical, mental and moral misery? We know she does not. On the contrary, the same terrible old lies are told, the same hideous practices are resorted to; and another poor creature is launched into that awful life of legalized prostitution which is called marriage.

Motherhood is woman's highest function, and, moreover, it is a function which it is unwise not to exercise; for it is infinitely more perilous for a healthy woman not to be a mother than it is for her to bear children. Motherhood, too, is the most markedly indicated function of a woman's body. She is specialized for it; it is the thing indicated. And yet we never say to a woman, Be a mother when you will; we hold up our hands in horror at the very thought of motherhood itself, and we say, Marry; marry anything; get another name for yourself; merge your very identity into that of some man; get a home; never mind about children; you don't have to have them; they have nothing to do with your respectability. Is it not so? Is it not so that that woman who prefers her own name and her freedom, and who exercises her highest function of motherhood, thereby becomes a thing of scorn and contumely?

And yet, how in this world can a woman do a finer, wiser, braver, truer thing than to bear a child in freedom by a carefully chosen father? It is true that we have moralists who urge wives to breed for the good of the country, but even they, while declaring that it is the duty of women to have large families, roll their eyes in horror at the thought of a woman exercising her plainest right, without first having some man, whose only interest in the matter is his fee, say some magic words over her and her master.

Oh, that marriage ceremony! And is it not pathetic to hear the women, dimly conscious of their backbones, declaring that they will not promise to obey? They will promise vehemently to love and honor, which they absolutely cannot be sure of doing, but they refuse to obey—the only thing they could safely promise to do, and which, in fact, most of them do. For, writhe and twist as they may, defy never so bravely, the conventions of the world are against them, and conform they must. Down, down they sink until they are on their knees in the mire of tradition, their heads bowed to the ugly little fetish. A woman may be a thousand times the superior of her husband, and yet she must be his slave.

And what puerile fables, what transparent lies are told to reconcile the poor slave to her lot! A man's rib! And she is the weaker vessel! Nevertheless, she is the power behind the throne. And if the man possess her, does she not equally possess him? Is not monogamy the mainstay of our morals? Is not God to be thanked that he has given us light to see the horrors of polygamy? Oh, that shocking thing, polygamy! How the husbands of the land rise up to defend their firesides from it! No Smoots shall get into our Senate. That virtuous Senate!

Why if every practising polygamist went home from the Congress there would not be a quorum left to do business. Monogamy! Why it is the most shocking phase of the hypocrisy due to marriage. There is no such condition known in this country. Of course, there may be sporadic cases of it, but that is all. If monogamy be the practice of the men of this country, why the hundreds of thousands of prostitutes, why divorces for adultery, why those secret establishments where unhappily married men indemnify themselves for the appearance of monogamy by an association which can be ended at will? Whence come the mulattoes and the half-breeds of all sorts? Who so credulous as to believe the fable of monogamy?

What has monogamy or polygamy or polyandry to do with this matter? I assume that it is undeniable that motherhood is woman's most manifest function. If that be so, how can there be any more immorality in the exercise of it than in the process of digestion? What can be clearer than that a woman has the inherent right to bear children if she wish? And there is nothing in experience or morals which demands one father for all her children. It should be for her to say whether she will have one father for all her children or one for each. And if the question be asked how, under such conditions, the interests of the children would be safe-guarded, I ask if they are safe-guarded now. The right-minded man provides as he can for them; as would be the case always; while the wrong-minded man does not now provide properly for them. Besides, is the mother not to be considered? Do we not all know of women who in widowhood take care of their families? Do we not know of women who take care of their husbands as well as of their children? Women, of course, should, in any case, be economically free. But at least let them be sex free; let them decide for themselves whether they will have many or few or no children. Teach woman to be economically independent, give her the opportunity for full knowledge of all that pertains to motherhood; make the motherhood a pure and beautiful manifestation of physical activity if you will, but without forgetting that it is only simple and natural; avoiding that hysterical glorification of the function in poetry and the hiding of it in actual life as if it were an unclean thing. But the important matter is to understand that a woman has a right to bear a child if she wish. Nothing is more distinctly pointed out by the constitution of her body, and therefore it is impossible that there can be any immorality in the exercise of the function. To put my idea in as few and as bold words as I can: Motherhood is a right and has no proper relation to marriage. Marriage is a purely artificial relation, and not only is it not justified by its results, but distinctly it is discredited by them. By it a man becomes a vile hypocrite since he loudly avows a moral standard and a course of conduct which in private by his acts he denies and puts to scorn; by it a woman becomes a slave, giving up her rights in her own body; submitting to ravishment, and becoming the accidental mother to unwished, unwelcome children; by it children are robbed of their plain right to the best equipment that can be given them; and which cannot be given them under the prevailing system. It is only when a woman is free to choose the father of her child that the child can hope for even a partial payment of the debt that was due it from its parents from the moment they took the responsibility of calling it from the nowhere into the here. This doctrine of the responsibility of the parent to the child is comparatively new and goes neither with marriage nor with the home. The old and current notion is that the child is a chattel.

Abraham never offers an apology for making little Isaac carry wood and then mount the sacrificial pile. Indeed we are asked to marvel at the heroism of the father. Then we are told that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. As if the child were the property of the parent. And yet there must always have been naughty children asking pointed questions, for it was long ago found necessary to try to scare them by a divine fulmination. Honor thy father and thy mother[29] that thy days may be long! It seems that even so long ago parents were afraid they could not win honor from their children. Abraham's place was on the pile, just as it is the place of the modern parent who looks upon his child as his chattel; disposing of him as he will; arbitrarily making rules for his conduct which he would not dream of observing for himself; stifling his natural demands for knowledge; converting what is pure and most beautiful in the world into a mire of filth and ignorance; wilfully robbing him of his birthright of individuality by forcing him to conform to methods of thought and conduct which his own experience tells him no man can or does conform to from the moment he wins his freedom or learns the hideous lesson of that hypocrisy which he is sure in the end to discover that his father practices. What right has any father to make a sacrifice of his child? What is his title to the love or gratitude or self-abnegation of his child? Is it that the child is the unconsidered consequence of the legal rape of some poor woman who has been unfitted for the office forced upon her, by a life mentally dwarfed, morally twisted and physically mutilated? Is it that the child is haled out of nothingness to be inoculated, perhaps, with germs of disease in the first instance and then half nourished for nine months in a body which has been robbed of its vitality by the mutilation and torture to which it has been subjected at the behest of fashion?

The highest duty of a parent is to so treat his child that it will enter upon the struggle of life prepared to obtain the utmost happiness from it.

If anyone fancies I have been too severe in my strictures I would ask him to read what Mrs. Gilman has to say on the subject of home. It is true that she does not come to the same conclusion that I do. She would have women economically independent, and she would have children taken care of by those especially fitted for the task, leaving mothers and fathers free to go their separate ways. But how could there be separate ways so long as the slavery of marriage remained? Woman must be not only economically free, but altogether free. As I have said, motherhood is not an affair of morals; it is a function. Marriage, on the other hand, is a matter of morals; and hideously immoral it is, too. Then why not have motherhood without its immoral, artificial adjunct, marriage?

You see I do not ask for easy divorce as a solution of the problem of marriage. I set my face sternly against divorce. I am one with the church in that. I only demand that there shall be no marriage at all, that there shall be no fastening of life-long slavery on woman. Let woman mother children or not, as she will. Let her say who shall be the father of her child and of each child. Let motherhood be deemed not even honorable, but only natural.

Can anyone believe that if men and women were free to decide whether or not they would be parents, they would not in the end, seeing their duty in the light of their knowledge, fit themselves for parenthood before taking upon themselves its responsibilities?

I would like to say that I have no fear of the odium of the designation of iconoclast. Nor do I quake lest some one triumphantly ask me what I will put in the place of marriage and the home. As well might one demand what I would give in the place of smallpox if I were able to eradicate it. I am not concerned to find a substitute for such perversion of sex activity. If men and women choose to live together in freedom, fathering and mothering their children according to a rule grown out of freedom, and directed by expediency, I fancy they would be, at least, as happy as they can be now, tied together by a hard, unpleasant knot. And if an economically free woman chose to have six children by six different fathers, as a wise woman might well do, I believe she could be trusted to secure those children from want quite as well as the mother-slave of to-day, who bears her children at the will of an irresponsible man, and then, often enough, has to take care of them and him too.

"Wealth protects and animates art and literature, as the dew enlivens the fields."

Nonsense! Wealth animates art and literature, as the whistle of the master animates the dog and makes him wag his tail.

THE MODERN NEWSPAPER.

Let me describe to you, very briefly, a newspaper day.

Figure first, then, a hastily erected, and still more hastily designed, building in a dirty, paper-littered back street of London, and a number of shabbily dressed men coming and going in this with projectile swiftness. Within this factory companies of printers, tensely active with nimble fingers—they were always speeding up the printers—ply their typesetting machines, and cast and arrange masses of metal in a sort of kitchen inferno, above which, in a beehive of little, brightly lit rooms, disheveled men sit and scribble. There is a throbbing of telephones and a clicking of telegraph instruments, a rushing of messengers, a running to and fro of heated men, clutching proofs and copy. Then begins a roar of machinery catching the infection, going faster and faster, and whizzing and banging. Engineers, who have never had time to wash since their birth, fly about with oil cans, while paper runs off its rolls with a shudder of haste. The proprietor you must suppose arriving explosively on a swift motor car, leaping out before the thing is at a standstill, with letters and documents clutched in his hand, rushing in, resolute to "hustle," getting wonderfully in everybody's way. At the sight of him even the messenger boys who are waiting get up and scamper to and fro. Sprinkle your vision with collisions, curses, incoherencies. You imagine all the parts of this complex, lunatic machine working hysterically toward a crescendo of haste and excitement as the night wears on. At last, the only things that seem to travel slowly in those tearing, vibrating premises, are the hands of the clock.

Slowly things draw on toward publication, the consummation of all those stresses. Then, in the small hours, in the now dark and deserted streets comes a wild whirl of carts and men, the place spurts paper at every door; bales, heaps, torrents of papers, that are snatched and flung about in what looks like a free fight, and off with a rush and clatter east, west, north and south. The interest passes outwardly; the men from the little rooms are going homeward, the printers disperse, yawning, the roaring presses slacken. The paper exists. Distribution follows manufacture, and we follow the bundles.

Our vision becomes a vision of dispersal. You see those bundles hurling into stations, catching trains by a hair's breadth, speeding on their way, breaking up, smaller bundles of them hurled with a fierce accuracy out upon the platforms that rush by, and then everywhere a division of these smaller bundles into still smaller bundles, into dispersing parcels, into separate papers. The dawn happens unnoticed amidst a great running and shouting of boys, a shoving through letter-slots, openings of windows, spreading out upon book-stalls. For the space of a few hours, you must figure the whole country dotted white with rustling papers. Placards everywhere vociferate the hurried lie for the day. Men and women in trains, men and women eating and reading, men by study fenders, people sitting up in bed, mothers and sons and daughters waiting for father to finish—a million scattered people are reading—reading headlong—or feverishly ready to read. It is just as if some vehement jet had sprayed that white foam of papers over the surface of the land.

Nonsense! The whole affair is a noisy paroxysm of nonsense, unreasonable excitement, witless mischief, and waste of strength—signifying nothing.

—From H. G. Wells "In the Days of the Comet."

A VISIT TO SING SING.

By A Moralist.

I WAS ennuyé; the everlasting decency and respectability of my surroundings bored me. On whichever side of me I looked, I saw people doing the same things for the same reasons; or for the same lack of reasons. And they were uninteresting.

"Oh," said I to myself, "these are the people of the ruts; they go that way because others have gone; they are conforming. But there must be some persons who do not conform. Where are they?"

Now you can understand why it was that my thoughts turned toward that monument of our civilization on the Hudson River, and why finally I made up my mind to visit it.

I knew that neither my citizenship, nor yet my philosophic and human interest in the working of that great school would avail to obtain me entrance there, so I sought out one of the politicians of my district, who at that time at least exercised his activities outside of the walls of the building, and I exchanged with him a five-dollar bill for an order to admit me.

"I suppose," I said to the attendant who did the honors of the place for me, "that these persons who are garbed alike and who affect the same tonsorial effect are those who have been unskillful in their non-conformity."

"They are prisoners," he replied. I bit my lip and looked as smug as I remembered one should who as yet has the right of egress as well as ingress in an institution of that character.

At that moment my eyes fell on a face that seemed familiar to me, and as I studied it I saw with surprise that I had come upon a man who had once been a schoolmate of mine.

Now I had always believed that if a person had done wrong, he would be conscious of it; and that if he were found out he would at least try to appear penitent. But in this case my theory did not seem to be working; for my former chum, whom I remembered as a quiet, unobtrusive fellow, met my startled glance with a twinkle of suppressed humor. I confess that such a blow to my theory filled me with indignation.

I stepped toward him, all my moral superiority betraying itself in the self-satisfied smirk which fixed itself on my face in accordance with the sense of duty which the Philistine feels so keenly in his relations with others.

"Why are you here?" I asked him.

"Are you not a little impertinent?" he asked. "I do not inquire of you why you are here."

"That is obvious, to say the least," I answered loftily.

"Obvious from your pharisaical expression, perhaps," he said good-naturedly. "But never mind! We look at the matter from different points of view. To me it is a greater indiscretion to annoy a helpless prisoner with 'holier-than-thou' questions than it would be to attend[34] the Charity Ball in pajamas. But of course you do not see it in the same light."

"Pardon me if I annoyed you," I said stiffly.

"Don't mention it," he replied, with the humorous twinkle still playing in his eyes. "And to prove that I bear no hard feeling, I will ask you some questions."

Naturally I was embarrassed at such an exhibition of hardihood in one in his situation, but I said I would be pleased to answer him to the best of my ability.

"It is some time since I was away from this retreat on a vacation," he said, with an easy assurance that was indescribably shocking to one of correct principles, "and I would like to know if all the rascals have yet been put in prison."

I pushed my insurance policy a little deeper into my pocket and replied, with conviction:

"Certainly not; but you must not forget that no man is guilty until he has been proven so."

"Ah, yes," he said; "and that a man may pride himself on his honesty on the secure ground that he has not yet reached the penitentiary. Yes, of course, you are right. But, tell me, is it true, according to a rumor which has reached us in our seclusion, that these good Christians pro tem, are considering the advisability of having rat poison served to us in place of the delicious stale bread and flat water which now comprise our bill of fare?"

"Oh," I answered vaguely, "there are still reformers of all sorts in the world."

"Reformers!" he cried, his face lighting up with a new interest. "Ah! you mean those profound thinkers who seek to cure every disease of the social body by means of legislation. Yes, yes! tell me about them! Society still believes in them?"

"Believes in them!" I cried indignantly. "Surely it does. Why, the great political parties are responding to the cry of the downtrodden masses, and—"

"Oh," he said dreamily, "they are still responding?"

"What do you mean by still responding?" I demanded curtly.

"Why, I remember that in my time, too, the people always responded. The party leaders would say to them that they were in a bad way and needed help. The people would cry out in joy to think their leaders had discovered this. Then the leaders would wink at each other and jump upon the platforms and explain to the people that what was needed was a new law of some sort. The people would weep for happiness at such wisdom and would beg their leaders to get together and make the law. And the law that the leaders would make when they got together was one that would put the people still more in their power. So that is still going on?"

I recognized that he was ironical, but I answered with a sneer:

"The people get what they deserve, and what they wish. They have only to demand through the ballot box, you know."

"Ah, yes," he murmured with a grin, "I had forgotten the ballot box. Dear me! how could I have forgotten the ballot box?"

Providentially the keeper came to notify me that my time was up, and I turned away.

"One thing more," cried the prisoner; "is it still the case that the American people enjoy their freedom best when they are enslaved in some way?"

"You are outrageous," I exclaimed; "the American people are not enslaved in any way. It is true they are restricted for their own good by those more capable of judging than they. That must always be the case."

"I don't know about must," he sighed, "but I am sure it will always be the case as long as a man's idea of freedom is his ability to impose some slavish notion on his brother."

"Good-bye," I said, with a recurrence to my smirk of pharisaical pity, "I am sorry to see you here."

"Oh, don't be troubled on my account," he answered; "on the whole, I am satisfied."

"Satisfied! Impossible!" I cried.

"Why impossible? Consider that I shall never again be compelled to associate with decent, honest folk. Oh, I have cause to be satisfied; I am here on a life sentence."

THE OLD AND THE NEW DRAMA.

By Max Baginski.

THE inscription over the Drama in olden times used to be, "Man, look into this mirror of life; your soul will be gripped in its innermost depths, anguish and dread will take possession of you in the face of this rage of human desire and passion. Go ye, atone and make good."

Even Schiller entertained this view when he called the Stage a moral institution. It was also from this standpoint that the Drama was expected to show the terrible consequences of uncontrolled human passion, and that these consequences should teach man to overcome himself. "To conquer oneself is man's greatest triumph."

This ascetic tendency, incidentally part of chastisement and acquired resignation, one can trace in every investigation of the value and meaning of the Drama, though in different forms. The avenging Nemesis, always at the heels of the sinner, may be placated by means of rigid self-control and self-denial. This, too, was Schopenhauer's idea of the Drama. In it, his eye perceived with horror that human relation became disastrously interwoven; that guilt and atonement made light of the human race, which merely served as a target for the principles of good and evil. Guilt and atonement reign because the blind force of life will not resign itself, but, on the contrary, is ever ready to yield itself to the struggle of the passions. Mountains of guilt pile themselves on the top of each other, while purifying fires ever flame up into the heavens.

In the idea that Life in itself is a great guilt, Schopenhauer coincides with the teachings of Christ, though otherwise he has little regard for them. With Christ, he recognized in the chastisement of the body a purification of the mind; the inner man, who thus escapes from close physical intimacy, as if from bad company. The spiritual man appears before the physical as a saint and a Pharisee. In reality, he is the intellectual cause of the so-called bad deeds of the human body, its path indicator and teacher. But, once the mischief is accomplished, he puts on a pious air and denies all responsibility for the deed. Wherever the idea of guilt, the fear of sin prevails, the mind becomes traitor to the body: "I know him not and will have nothing to do with him." Whenever man entertains the belief in good and evil, he is bound to pretend the good and do the evil. And yet the understanding of all human occurrences begins, as with the Zarathustra philosopher, beyond good and evil.

The modern drama is, in its profoundest depths, an attempt to ignore good and evil in its analysis of human manifestations. It aims to get at a complete whole, out of each strong, healthy emotion, out of each absorbing mood that carries and urges one forward from the beginning to the end. It represents the World as it reflects itself in each passion, in each quivering life; not trying to confine and to judge, to condemn or to praise; not acting merely in the capacity of a cold observer; but striving to grow in oneness with Life; to become color, tone and light; to absorb universal sorrow as one's own; universal joy as one's own; to feel every emotion as it manifests itself in a natural way; to be one's self, yet oblivious of self.

The modern dramatist tries to understand and to explain. Goodness is no longer entitled to a reward, like a pupil who knows his lesson; nor is evil condemned to an eternal Hell. Both belong together in the sphere of all that is human. Often enough it is seen that evil triumphs over good, while virtue, ever highly praised in words, is rarely practiced. It is set aside to become dusty and dirty in some obscure corner. Only at some opportune moment is it brought forward from its hiding place to serve as a cover for some vile deed. We can no longer believe that beyond and above us there is some irrevocable, irresistible Fate, whose duty it is to punish all evil and wrong and to reward all goodness; an idea so fondly cherished by our grandfathers.

To-day we no longer look for the force of fate outside of human activity. It lives and weaves its own tragedies and comedies with us and within us. It has its roots in our social, political and economic surroundings, in our physical, mental and psychic capacities. (Did not the fate of Cyrano de Bergerac lie in his gigantic nose?) With others, fate lies in their vocation in life, in their mental and emotional tendencies, which either submerge[38] them into the hurry and rush of a commonplace existence, or bring them into the most annoying conflicts with the dicta of society. Indeed, it is often seen that a human being, apparently of a cheerful nature, but who has failed to establish a durable relation with society, often leads a most tragic inner life. Should he find the cause in his own inclinations, and suffer agonizing reproaches therefrom, he becomes a misanthrope. If, however, he feels inwardly robust and powerful, living truly, if he crave complete assertion of a self that is being hampered by his surroundings at every step, he must inevitably become a Revolutionist. And, again, his life may become tragic in the struggle with our powerful institutions and traditions, the leaden weight of which will, apparently, not let him soar through space to ever greater heights. Apparently, because it sometimes occurs that an individual rises above the average, and waves his colors over the heads of the common herd. His life is that of the storm bird, anxiously making for distant shores. The efforts of the deepest, truest and freest spirits of our day tend toward the conscious formation of life, toward that life which will make the blind raging of the elements impossible; a life which will show man his sovereignity and admit his right to direct his own world.

The old conception of the drama paid little or no attention to the importance of the influences of social conditions. It was the individual alone who had to carry the weight of all responsibility. But is not the tragedy greater, the suffering of the individual increased, by influences he cannot control, the existing social and moral conditions? And is it not true that the very best and most beautiful in the human breast cannot and will not bow down to the commands of the commonplace and everyday conditions? Out of the anachronisms of society and its relation to the individual grow the strongest motives of the modern drama. Pure personal conflicts are no longer considered important enough to bring about a dramatic climax. A play must contain the beating of the waves, the deep breath of life; and its strong invigorating breeze can never fail in bringing about a dramatic effect upon our emotions. The new drama means reproduction of nature in all its phases, the social and psychological included. It embraces, analyzes and enriches all life. It goes hand in hand with the longing for materially and mentally harmonious institutions. It rehabilitates the human body, establishes it in its proper place and dignity, and brings about the long deferred reconciliation between the mind and the body.

Full of enthusiasm, with the pulse of time throbbing in his veins, the modern dramatist compiles mountains of material for the better understanding of Man, and the influences that mould and form him. He no longer presents capital acts, extraordinary events, or melodramatic expressions. It is life in all its complexity, that is being unfolded before us, and so we come closer to the source of the forces that destroy and build up again, the forces that make for individual character and direct the world at large. Life, as a whole, is being dealt with, and not mere particles. Formerly our eyes were dazzled by a display of costumes and scenery, while the heart remained unmoved. This no longer satisfies. One must feel the warmth of life, in order to respond, to be gripped.

The sphere of the drama has widened most marvellously in all directions, and only ends where human limitations begin. Together with this, a marked deepening of the inner world has taken place. Still there are those who have much to say about the vulgarity contained in the modern drama, and how its inaugurators and following present the ugly and untruthful. Untrue and ugly, indeed, for those who are buried under a mass of inherited views and prejudices. The growth of the scope of the drama has increased the number of the participants therein. Formerly it was assumed that the fate of the ordinary man, the man of the masses, was altogether too obscure, too indifferent to serve as material for anything tragic; since those who had never dwelt in the heights of material splendor could not go down to the darkest and lowest abyss. Because of that assumption, the low and humble never gained access to the center of the stage; they were only utilized to represent mobs. Those that were of importance were persons of high position and standing, persons who represented wealth and power with superiority and dignity, yet with shallow and superficial airs. The ensemble was but a mechanism and not an organism; and each participant was stiff and lifeless; each movement was forced and strained. The old fate[40] and hero drama did not spring from within Man and the things about him; it was merely manufactured. Most remarkable incidents, unheard of situations had to be invented, if only to produce, externally, an appearance of coinciding cause and effect; and not a single plot could be without secret doors and vaults, terrible oaths and perjury. If Ibsen, Gorky, Hauptmann, Gabrielle D'Annunzio and others had brought us nothing else but liberation from such grotesque ballast, from such impossibilities as destroy every illusion as to the life import of a play, they would still be entitled to our gratitude and the gratitude of posterity. But they have done more. Out of the confusion of trap doors, secret passages, folding screens, they have led us into the light of day, of undisguised events, with their simple distinct outlines. In this light, the man of the heap gains in life force, importance and depth. The stage no longer offers a place for impossible deeds and the endless monologues of the hero, the important feature is harmonious concert of action. The hero, on a stage that conscientiously stands for real art and aims to produce life, is about as superfluous as the clown who amused the audience between the acts. After all the spectacle of one star display, one cannot help but hail the refreshing contrast, shown in the "Man of Destiny," by the clever Bernard Shaw, where he presents the legend-hero, Napoleon, as a petty intriguer, with all the inner fear and uneasiness of a plotter. In these days of concerted energy, of the co-operation of numerous hands and brains; in the days when the most far-reaching effect can only be accomplished through the summons of a manifold physical and mental endeavor, the existence of these loud heroes is circumscribed within rather limited lines.

Previous generations could never have grasped the deep tragedy in that famous painting of Millet that inspired Edwin Markham to write his "Man with the Hoe." Our generation, however, is thrilled by it. And is there not something terribly tragic about the lives of the great masses who pierced the colossal stone cliffs of the Simplon, or who are building the Panama Canal? They have and are performing a task that may safely be compared with the extraordinary achievements of Hercules; works which, according to human conception, will last into eternity. The names and the characters of these workmen are unknown. The historians, coldly and disinterestedly, pass them by.

The new drama has unveiled this kind of tragedy. It has done away with the lie that sought to produce a violent dramatic effect through a plunge from the sublime to the ridiculous. Those who understand Tolstoy's "Power of Darkness," wherein but those of the lowest strata appear, will be overwhelmed by the terrible tragedy in their lives, in comparison with which the worries of some crowned head or the money troubles of some powerful speculator will appear insignificant indeed. That which this master unfolds before us is no longer a plunge from heaven to hell; the entire life of these people is an Inferno. The terrible darkness and ignorance of these people, forced on them by the social misery of dull necessity, produces greater soul sensations in the spectator than the stilted tragedy of a Corneille. Those who witness a performance of Gerhart Hauptmann's "Hannele" and fail to be stirred by the grandeur and depth of that masterpiece, regardless of its petty poorhouse atmosphere, deserve to see nothing else than the "Wizard of Oz." And again is not the long thunderous march of hungry strikers in Zola's "Germinal" as awe-inspiring to those who feel the heart beat of our age even as the heroic deeds of Hannibal's warriors were to his contemporaries?

The world stage ever represents a change of participants. The one who played the part of leading man in one century, may become a clown in another. Entire social classes and casts that formerly commanded first parts, are to-day utilized to make up stage decorations or as figurantes. Plays representing the glory of knighthood or minnesingers would only amuse to-day, no matter how serious they were intended to appear. Once anything lies buried under the bulk of social changes, it can affect coming generations only so far as the excavated skeleton affects the geologist. This must be borne in mind by sincere stage art, if it is not to remain in the stifling atmosphere of tradition, if it does not wish to degrade a noble method, that helps to recognize and disclose all that is rich and deep in the human into a commonplace, hypocritical and stupid method. If the artist's creation is to have any effect, it must contain elements of real life, and must turn its gaze toward the dawn of the morn of a more beautiful and joyous world, with a new and healthy generation, that feels deeply its relationship with all human beings over the universe.

In a report of the Russian government, it is stated that the conduct of the soldiers in the struggles of the streets was such, that in no instance did they transgress the limit which is prescribed to them in their oath as soldiers. This is true. The soldier's oath prescribes murder and cruelty as their patriotic duty.

If government, were it even an ideal Revolutionary government, creates no new force and is of no use whatever in the work of demolition which we have to accomplish, still less can we count on it for the work of reorganization which must follow that of demolition. The economic change which will result from the Social Revolution will be so immense and so profound, it must so change all the relations based to-day on property and exchange, that it is impossible for one or any individual to elaborate the different social forms, which must spring up in the society of the future. This elaboration of new social forms can only be made by the collective work of the masses. To satisfy the immense variety of conditions and needs which will spring up as soon as private property shall be abolished, it is necessary to have the collective suppleness of mind of the whole people. Any authority external to it will only be an obstacle, only a trammel on the organic labor which must be accomplished, and beside that a source of discord and hatred.

Kropotkine.

A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.—POLICE PROTECTION.

CHICAGO'S pride are the stockyards, the Standard Oil University, and Miss Jane Addams. It is, therefore, perfectly natural that the sensibility of such a city would suffer as soon as it became known that an obscure person, by the common name of E. G. Smith, was none other than the awful Emma Goldman, and that she had not even presented herself to Mayor Dunne, the platonic lover of Municipal Ownership. However, not much harm came of it.

The Chicago newspapers, who cherish the truth like a costly jewel, made the discovery that the shrewd Miss Smith compromised a number of Chicago's aristocracy and excellencies, among others also Baron von Schlippenbach, consul of the Russian Empire. We consider it our duty to defend this gentleman against such an awful accusation. Miss Smith never visited the house of the Baron, nor did she attend any of his banquets. We know her well and feel confident that she never would put her foot on the threshold of a representative of a government that crushes every free breath, every free word; that sends her very best and noblest sons and daughters to prison or the gallows; that has the children of the soil, the peasants, publicly flogged; and that is responsible for the barbarous slaughter of thousands of Jews.

Miss Jane Addams, too, is quite safe from Miss Smith. True, she invited her to be present at a reception, but, knowing the weak knees of the soup kitchen philanthropy from past experience, Miss Smith called her up on the 'phone and told her that E. G. S. was the dreaded Emma Goldman. It must have been quite a shock to the lady; after all, one cannot afford to hurt the sensibilities of society, so long as one has political and public aspirations. Miss E. G. Smith, being a strong believer in the prevention of cruelty, preferred to leave the purity of the Hull House untouched. After her return to New York, E. G. Smith sent Smith about its business, and started on a lecture tour in her own right, as Emma Goldman.

Cleveland. Dear old friends and co-workers: The work you accomplished was splendid, also the comradely spirit of the young. But why spoil it by bad example of applying for protection from the city authorities? It does not behoove us, who neither believe in their right to prohibit free assembly, nor to permit it, to appeal to them. If the authorities choose to do either, they merely prove their autocracy. Those who love freedom must understand that it is even more distasteful to speak under police protection than it is to suffer under their persecution. However, the meetings were very encouraging and the feeling of solidarity sweet and refreshing.

Buffalo. The shadow of September 6 still haunts the police of that city. Their only vision of an Anarchist is one who is forever lying in wait for human life, which is, of course, very stupid; but stupidity and authority always join forces. Capt. Ward, who, with a squad of police, came to save the innocent citizens of Buffalo, asked if we knew the law, and was quite surprised that that was not our trade; that we had not been employed to disentangle the chaos of the law,—that it was his affair to know the law. However, the Captain showed himself absolutely ignorant of the provisions of the American Constitution. Of course, his superiors knew what they were about when they set the Constitution aside, as old and antiquated, and, instead, enacted a law which gives the average officer a right to invade the head and heart of a man, as to what he thinks and feels. Capt. Ward added an amendment to the anti-Anarchist law. He declared any other language than English a felony, and, since Max Baginski could only avail himself of the German language, he was not permitted to speak. How is that for our law-abiding citizens? A man is brutally prevented from speaking, because he does not know the refined English language of the police force.

Emma Goldman delivered her address in English. It is not likely that Capt. Ward understood enough of that language. However, the audience did, and if the police of this country were not so barefaced, the saviour of Buffalo would have wished himself anywhere rather than to stand exposed as a clown before a large gathering of men and women.

The meeting the following evening was forcibly dispersed before the speakers had arrived. Ignorance is always brutal when it is backed by power.

Toronto. King Edward Hotel, Queen Victoria Manicuring Parlor. It was only when we read these signs that we realized that we were on the soil of the British Empire.

However, the monarchical authorities of Canada were more hospitable and much freer than those of our free Republic. Not a sign of an officer at any of the meetings.

The city? A gray sky, rain, storms. Altogether one was reminded of one of Heine's witty, drastic criticisms in reference to a well-known German university town. "Dogs on the street," Heine writes, "implore strangers to kick them, so that they may have some change from the awful monotony and dulness."

Rochester. The neighborly influence of the Buffalo police seems to have had a bad effect upon the mental development of the Rochester authorities. The hall was packed with officers at both meetings. The government of Rochester, however, was not saved—the police kept themselves in good order. Some of them seem to have benefited by the lectures. That accounts for the familiarity of one of Rochester's "finest," who wanted to shake Emma Goldman's hand. E. G. had to decline. Baron von Schlippenbach or an American representative of law and disorder,—where is the difference?

Syracuse. The city where the trains run through the streets. With Tolstoy, one feels that civilization is a crime and a mistake, when one sees nerve-wrecking machines running through the streets, poisoning the atmosphere with soft coal smoke.

What! Anarchists within the walls of Syracuse? O horror! The newspapers reported of special session at City Hall, how to meet the terrible calamity.

Well, Syracuse still stands on its old site. The second meeting, attended largely by "genuine" Americans, brought by curiosity perhaps, was very successful. We were assured that the lecture made a splendid impression, which led us to think that we probably were guilty of some foolishness, as the Greek philosopher, when his lectures were applauded, would turn to his hearers and ask, "Gentlemen, have I committed some folly?"

Au revoir.

E. G. and M. B.

THE MORAL DEMAND.

A Comedy, in One Act, by Otto Erich Hartleben.

Translated from the German for "Mother Earth."

CAST.

Rita Revera, concert singer.

Friedrich Stierwald, owner of firm of "C. W. Stierwald Sons" in Rudolstadt.

Bertha, Rita's maid.

Time.—End of the nineteenth century.

Place.—A large German fashionable bathing resort.

Scene.—Rita's boudoir. Small room elegantly furnished in Louis XVI. style. In the background, a broad open door, with draperies, which leads into an antechamber. To the right, a piano, in front of which stands a large, comfortable stool.

Rita (enters the antechamber attired in an elaborate ball toilette. She wears a gray silk cloak, a lace fichu, and a parasol. Gaily tripping toward the front, she sings): "Les envoyées du paradis sont les mascottes, mes amis...." (She lays the parasol on the table and takes off her long white gloves, all the while singing the melody. She interrupts herself and calls aloud) Bertha! Bertha! (Sings) O Bertholina, O Bertholina!

Bertha (walks through the middle): My lady, your pleasure?

(Rita has taken off her cloak and stands in front of the mirror. She is still humming the melody absentmindedly).

(Bertha takes off Rita's wraps.)

Rita (turns around merrily): Tell me, Bertha, why does not the electric bell ring? I must always sing first, must always squander all my flute notes first ere I can entice you to come. What do you suppose that costs? With that I can immediately arrange another charity matinée. Terrible thing, isn't it?

Bertha: Yes. The man has not yet repaired it.

Rita: O, Bertholina, why has the man not yet repaired it?

Bertha: Yes. The man intended to come early in the morning.

Rita: The man has often wanted to do so. He does not seem to possess a strong character. (She points to her cloak) Dust it well before placing it in the wardrobe. The dust is simply terrible in this place ... and this they call a fresh-air resort. Has anybody called?

Bertha: Yes, my lady, the Count. He has——

Rita: Well, yes; I mean anyone else?

Bertha: No. No one.

Rita: Hm! Let me have my dressing gown.

(Bertha goes to the sleeping chamber to the left.)

Rita (steps in front of the mirror, singing softly): "Les envoyées du paradis...." (Suddenly raising her voice, she asks Bertha) How long did he wait?

Bertha: What?

Rita: I would like to know how long he waited.

Bertha: An hour.

Rita (to herself): He does not love me any more. (Loudly) But during that time he might have at least repaired the bell. He is of no use whatever. (She laughs.)

Bertha: The Count came directly from the matinée and asked me where your ladyship had gone to dine. Naturally I did not know.

Rita: Did he ask—anything else?

Bertha: No, he looked at the photographs.

Rita (in the door): Well? And does he expect to come again to-day?

Bertha: Yes, certainly. At four o'clock.

Rita (looks at the clock): Oh, but that's boring. Now it is already half-past three. One cannot even drink coffee in peace. Hurry, Bertha, prepare the coffee.

(Bertha leaves the room, carrying the articles of attire.)

(Rita, after a pause, singing a melancholy melody.)

(Friedrich Stierwald, a man very carefully dressed in black, about thirty years of age, with a black crêpe around his stiff hat, enters from the rear into the antechamber, followed by Bertha.)

Bertha: But the lady is not well.

Friedrich: Please tell the lady that I am passing through here, and that I must speak with her about a[48] very pressing matter. It is absolutely necessary. Please! (He gives her money and his card.)

Bertha: Yes, I shall take your card, but I fear she will not receive you.

Friedrich: Why not? O, yes! Just go——

Bertha: This morning she sang at a charity matinée and so——

Friedrich: I know, I know. Listen! (Rita's singing has grown louder) Don't you hear how she sings? Oh, do go!

Bertha (shaking her head): Well, then—wait a moment. (She passes through the room to the half-opened door of the sleeping apartment, knocks) Dear lady!

Rita (from within): Well? What's the matter?

Bertha (at the door): Oh, this gentleman here—he wishes to see you very much. He is passing through here.

Rita (within; laughs): Come in.

(Bertha disappears.)

(Friedrich has walked up to the middle door, where he remains standing.)

Rita: Well. Who is it? Friedrich—— Hmm—— I shall come immediately.

Bertha (comes out and looks at Friedrich in surprise): My lady wishes you to await her. (She walks away, after having taken another glance at Friedrich.)

(Friedrich looks about embarrassed and shyly.)

(Rita enters attired in a tasteful dressing gown, but remains standing in the door.)

Friedrich (bows; softly): Good day.

(Rita looks at him with an ironical smile and remains silent.)

Friedrich: You remember me? Don't you?

Rita (quietly): Strange. You—come to see me? What has become of your good training? (Laughs.) Have you lost all sense of shame?

Friedrich (stretches out his hand, as if imploring): Oh, I beg of you, I beg of you; not this tone! I really came to explain everything to you, everything. And possibly to set things aright.

Rita: You—with me! (She shakes her head.) Incredible! But, please, since you are here, sit down. With what can you serve me?

Friedrich (seriously): Miss Hattenbach, I really should——

Rita (lightly): Pardon me, my name is Revera. Rita Revera.

Friedrich: I know that you call yourself by that name now. But you won't expect me, an old friend of your family, to make use of this romantic, theatrical name. For me you are now, as heretofore, the daughter of the esteemed house of Hattenbach, with which I——

Rita (quickly and sharply): With which your father transacts business, I know.

Friedrich (with emphasis): With which I now am myself associated.

Rita: Is it possible? And your father?

Friedrich (seriously): If I had the slightest inkling of your address, yes, even your present name, I should not have missed to announce to you the sudden death of my father.

Rita (after pause): Oh, he is dead. I see you still wear mourning. How long ago is it?

Friedrich: Half a year. Since then I am looking for you, and I hope you will not forbid me to address you now, as of yore, with that name, which is so highly esteemed in our native city.

Rita (smiling friendly): Your solemnity—is delightful. Golden! But sit down.

Friedrich (remains standing; he is hurt): I must confess, Miss Hattenbach, that I was not prepared for such a reception from you. I hoped that I might expect, after these four or five years, that you would receive me differently than with this—with this—how shall I say?

Rita: Toleration.

Friedrich: No, with this arrogance.

Rita: How?

Friedrich (controlling himself): I beg your pardon. I am sorry to have said that.

Rita (after a pause, hostile): You wish to be taken seriously? (She sits down, with a gesture of the hand) Please, what have you to say to me?

Friedrich: Much. Oh, very much. (He also sits down.) But—you are not well to-day?

Rita: Not well? What makes you say so?

Friedrich: Yes, the maid told me so.

Rita: The maid—she is a useful person. That makes me think. You certainly expect to stay here some time, do you not?

Friedrich: With your permission. I have much to tell you.

Rita: I thought so. (Calling loudly) Bertha! Bertha! Do you suppose one could get an electric bell repaired here? Impossible.

Bertha (enters): My lady?

Rita: Bertha, when the Count comes—now I am really sick.

Bertha (nods): Very well. (She leaves.)

Rita (calls after her): And where is the coffee? I shall famish.

Bertha (outside): Immediately.

Friedrich: The—the Count—did you say?

Rita: Yes, quite a fine fellow otherwise, but—would not fit in now. I wanted to say: I am passionately fond of electric bells. You know they have a fabulous charm for me. One only needs to touch them softly, ever so softly, with the small finger, and still cause a terrible noise. Fine—is it not? You wanted to talk about serious matters. It seems so to me.

Friedrich: Yes. And I beg of you, Miss Erna——

Rita: Erna?

Friedrich: Erna!

Rita: Oh, well!

Friedrich (continuing): I beg of you; be really and truly serious. Yes? Listen to what I have to say to you. Be assured that it comes from an honest, warm heart. During the years in which I have not seen you, I have grown to be a serious man—perhaps, too serious for my age—but my feelings for you have remained young, quite young. Do you hear me, Erna?

Rita (leaning back in the rocking chair, with a sigh): I hear.

Friedrich: And you know, Erna, how I have always loved you from my earliest youth, yes, even sooner than I myself suspected. You know that, yes?

(Rita is silent and does not look at him.)

Friedrich: When I was still a foolish schoolboy I already called you my betrothed, and I could not but think otherwise than that I would some day call you my wife. You certainly know that, don't you?

Rita (reserved): Yes, I know it.

Friedrich: Well, then you ought to be able to understand what dreadful feelings overcame me when I discovered, sooner than you or the world, the affection of my father for you. That was—no, you cannot grasp it.

Rita (looks at him searchingly): Sooner than I and all the world?

Friedrich: Oh, a great deal sooner ... that was.... That time was the beginning of the hardest innermost struggles for me. What was I to do? (He sighs deeply.) Ah, Miss Erna, we people are really——

Rita: Yes, yes.

Friedrich: We are dreadfully shallow-minded. How seldom one of us can really live as he would like to. Must we not always and forever consider others—and our surroundings?

Rita: Must?

Friedrich: Well, yes, we do so, at least. And when it is our own father! For, look here, Erna, I never would have been able to oppose my father! I was used, as you well know, from childhood to always look up to my father with the greatest respect. He used to be severe, my father, proud and inaccessible, but—if I may be permitted to say so, he was an excellent man.

Rita: Well?

Friedrich (eagerly): Yes, indeed! You must remember that it was he alone who established our business by means of his powerful energy and untiring diligence. Only now I myself have undertaken the management of the establishment. I am able to see what an immense work he has accomplished.

Rita (simply): Yes, he was an able business man.

Friedrich: In every respect! Ability personified, and he had grown to be fifty-two years of age and was still, still—how shall I say?

Rita: Still able.

Friedrich: Well, yes; I mean a vigorous man in his best years. For fifteen years he had been a widower,[52] he had worked, worked unceasingly, and then—the house was well established—he could think of placing some of the work upon younger shoulders. He could think of enjoying his life once more.

Rita (softly): That is——

Friedrich (continuing): And he thought he had found, in you, the one who would bring back to him youth and the joy of life.

Rita (irritated): Yes, but then you ought to—(Breaks off.) Oh, it is not worth while.

Friedrich: How? I should have been man enough to say: No, I forbid it; that is a folly of age. I, your son, forbid it. I demand her for myself. The young fortune is meant for me—not for you?——No, Erna, I could not do that. I could not do that.

Rita: No.

Friedrich: I, the young clerk, with no future before me!

Rita: No!

Friedrich: My entire training and my conceptions urged me to consider it my duty to simply stand aside and stifle my affection, as I did—as I already told you even before any other person had an idea of the intentions of my father. I gradually grew away from you.

Rita (amused): Gradually—yes, I recollect. You suddenly became formal. Indeed, very nice!

Friedrich: I thought——

(Bertha comes with the coffee and serves.)

Rita: Will you take a cup with me?

Friedrich (thoughtlessly): I thought——(Correcting himself) pardon me! I thank you!

Rita: I hope it will not disturb you if I drink my coffee while you continue.

Friedrich: Please (embarrassed). I thought it a proper thing. I hoped that my cold and distant attitude would check a possible existing affection for me.

Rita: Possible existing affection! Fie! Now you are beginning to lie! (She jumps up and walks nervously through the room.) As though you had not positively known that! (Stepping in front of him) Or what did you take me for when I kissed you?

Friedrich (very much frightened, also rises): O, Erna, I always——

Rita (laughs): You are delightful! Delightful! Still the same bashful boy—who does not dare—(she laughs and sits down again.) Delightful.

Friedrich (after a silence, hesitatingly): Well, are you going to allow me to call you Erna again, as of yore?

Rita: As of yore. (She sighs, then gaily) If you care to.

Friedrich (happy): Yes? May I?

Rita (heartily): O, yes, Fritz. That's better, isn't it? It sounds more natural, eh?

Friedrich (presses her hand and sighs): Yes, really. You take a heavy load from me. Everything that I want to say to you can be done so much better in the familiar tone.

Rita: Oh! Have you still so much to say to me?

Friedrich: Well—but now tell me first: how was it possible for you to undertake such a step. What prompted you to leave so suddenly? Erna, Erna, how could you do that?

Rita (proudly): How I could? Can you ask me that? Do you really not know it?

Friedrich (softly): Oh, yes; I do know it, but—it takes so much to do that.

Rita: Not more than was in me.

Friedrich: One thing I must confess to you, although it was really bad of me. But I knew no way out of it. I felt relieved after you had gone.

Rita: Well, then, that was your heroism.

Friedrich: Do not misunderstand me. I knew my father had——

Rita: Yes, yes—but do not talk about it any more.

Friedrich: You are right. It was boyish of me. It did not last long, and then I mourned for you—not less than your parents. Oh, Erna! If you would see your parents now. They have aged terribly. Your father has lost his humor altogether, and is giving full vent to his old passion for red wine. Your mother is always ailing, hardly ever leaves the house, and both, even though they never lose a word about it, cannot reconcile themselves to the thought that their only child left them.

Rita (after a pause, awakens from her meditation, harshly): Perhaps you were sent by my father?

Friedrich: No—why?

Rita: Then I would show you the door.

Friedrich: Erna!

Rita: A man, who ventured to pay his debts with me——

Friedrich: How so; what do you mean?

Rita: Oh—let's drop that. Times were bad. But to-day the house of Hattenbach enjoys its good old standing, as you say, and has overcome the crisis. Then your father must have had some consideration—without me. Well, then.——And Rudolstadt still stands—on the old spot. That's the main thing. But now let us talk about something else, I beg of you.

Friedrich: No, no, Erna. What you allude to, that——do you really believe my father had——

Rita: Your father had grown used to buy and attain everything in life through money. Why not buy me also? And he had already received the promise—not from me, but from my father. But I am free! I ran away and am my own mistress! (With haughtiness.) A young girl, all alone! Down with the gang!

(Friedrich is silent and holds his head.)

Rita (steps up to him and touches his shoulder, in a friendly manner): Don't be sad. At that time your father was the stronger, and——Life is not otherwise. After all, one must assert oneself.

Friedrich: But he robbed you of your happiness.

Rita (jovially): Who knows? It is just as well.

Friedrich (surprised): Is that possible? Do you call that happiness, this being alone?

Rita: Yes. That is MY happiness—my freedom, and I love it with jealousy, for I fought for it myself.

Friedrich (bitterly): A great happiness! Outside of family ties, outside the ranks of respectable society.

Rita (laughs aloud, but without bitterness): Respectable society! Yes. I fled from that—thank Heaven. (harshly) But if you do not come in the name of my father, what do you want here? Why do you come? For what purpose? What do you want of me?

Friedrich: Erna, you ask that in a strange manner.

Rita: Well, yes. I have a suspicion that you—begrudge me my liberty. How did you find me, anyway?

Friedrich: Yes, that was hard enough.

Rita: Rita Revera is not so unknown.

Friedrich: Rita Revera! Oh, no! How often I have read that name these last years—in the newspapers in Berlin, on various placards, in large letters. But how could I ever have thought that you were meant by it?

Rita (laughs): Why did you not go to the "Winter Garden" when you were in Berlin?

Friedrich: I never frequent such places.

Rita: Pardon me! Oh, I always forget the old customs.

Friedrich: Oh, please, please, dear Erna; not in this tone of voice!

Rita: Which tone?

Friedrich: Erna! Do not make matters so difficult for me. See, after I had finally discovered, through an agency in Berlin, and after hunting a long time, that you were the famous Revera, I was terribly shocked at first, terribly sad, and, for a moment, I thought of giving up everything. My worst fears were over. I had the assurance that you lived in good, and as I now see, in comfortable circumstances. But, on the other hand, I had to be prepared that you might have grown estranged to the world in which I live—that we could hardly understand each other.

Rita: Hm! Shall I tell you what was your ideal—how you would have liked to find me again? As a poor seamstress, in an attic room, who, during the four years, had lived in hunger and need—but respectably, that is the main point. Then you would have stretched forth your kind arms, and the poor, pale little dove would have gratefully embraced you. Will you deny that you have imagined it thus and even wished for it?

Friedrich (looks at her calmly): Well, is there anything wrong about it?

Rita: But how did it happen that, regardless of this, of this disappointment, you, nevertheless, continued to search for me?

Friedrich: Thank goodness, at the right moment I recollected your clear, silvery, childlike laughter. Right[56] in the midst of my petty scruples it resounded in my ears, as at the time when you ridiculed my gravity. Do you still remember that time, Erna?

(Rita is silent.)

Bertha (enters with an enormous bouquet of dark red roses): My lady—from the Count.

Rita (jumps up, nervously excited): Roses! My dark roses! Give them to me! Ah! (She holds them toward Friedrich and asks) Did he say anything?

Bertha: No, said nothing, but——

Friedrich (shoves the bouquet, which she holds up closely to his face, aside): I thank you.

Rita (without noticing him, to Bertha): Well?

Bertha (pointing to the bouquet): The Count has written something on a card.

Rita: His card? Where? (She searches among the flowers) Oh, here! (She reads; then softly to Bertha) It is all right.

(Bertha leaves.)

Rita (reads again): "Pour prendre congé." (With an easy sigh) Yes, yes.

Friedrich: What is the matter?

Rita: Sad! His education was hardly half finished and he already forsakes me.

Friedrich: What do you mean? I do not understand you at all.

Rita (her mind is occupied): Too bad. Now he'll grow entirely stupid.

Friedrich (rises importantly): Erna, answer me. What relationship existed between you and the Count?

Rita (laughs): What business is that of yours?

Friedrich (solemnly): Erna! Whatever it might have been, this will not do any longer.

Rita (gaily): No, no; you see it is already ended.

Friedrich: No, Erna, that must all be ended. You must get out of all this—entirely—and forever.

Rita (looks at him surprised and inquiringly): Hm! Strange person.

Friedrich (grows more eager and walks up and down in the room): Such a life is immoral. You must recognize it. Yes, and I forbid you to live on in this fashion. I have the right to demand it of you.

Rita (interrupts him sharply): Demand? You demand something of me?

Friedrich: Yes, indeed, demand! Not for me—no—in the name of morals. That which I ask of you is simply a moral demand, do you understand, a moral demand, which must be expected of every woman.

Rita: "Must!" And why?

Friedrich: Because—because—because—well, dear me—because—otherwise everything will stop!

Rita: What will stop? Life?

Friedrich: No, but morals.

Rita: Ah, I thank you. Now I understand you. One must be moral because—otherwise morality will stop.

Friedrich: Why, yes. That is very simple.

Rita: Yes—now, please, what would I have to do in order to fulfill your demand? I am curious like a child now, and shall listen obediently. (She sits down again.)

Friedrich (also sits down and grasps her hand, warmly): Well, see, my dear Erna, everything can still be undone. In Rudolstadt everybody believes you are in England with relatives. Even if you have never been there——

Rita: Often enough. My best engagements.

Friedrich: So much the better. Then you certainly speak English?

Rita: Of course.

Friedrich: And you are acquainted with English customs. Excellent. Oh, Erna. Your father will be pleased, he once confessed to me, when he had a little too much wine. You know him: he grows sentimental then.

Rita (to herself): They are all that way.

Friedrich: How?

Rita: Oh, nothing. Please continue. Well—I could come back?

Friedrich: Certainly! Fortunately, during these last years, since you have grown so famous, nobody has——

Rita: I have grown notorious only within a year.

Friedrich: Well, most likely nobody in Rudolstadt has ever seen you on the boards. In one word, you must return.

Rita: From England?

Friedrich: Yes, nothing lies in the way. And your mother will be overjoyed.

Rita: Nay, nay.

Friedrich: How well that you have taken a different name.

Rita: Ah, that is it. Yes, I believe that. Then they know that I am Rita Revera.

Friedrich: I wrote them. They will receive you with open arms. Erna! I beg of you! I entreat you; come with me! It is still time. To-day. You cannot know, but anybody from Rudolstadt who knows might come to the theatre and——

Rita (decidedly): No one from Rudolstadt will do that. They are too well trained for that. You see it by your own person. But go on! If I would care to, if I really would return—what then?

Friedrich: Then? Well, then, you would be in the midst of the family and society again—and then——

Rita: And then?

Friedrich: Then, after some time has elapsed and you feel at home and when all is forgotten, as though nothing had ever happened——

Rita: But a great deal has happened.

Friedrich: Erna, you must not take me for such a Philistine that I would mind that. At heart I am unprejudiced. No, really, I know (softly) my own fault, and I know Life. I know very well, and I cannot ask it of you, that you, in a career like yours, you——

Rita: Hm?

Friedrich: Well, that you should have remained entirely faultless. And I do not ask it of you either.

Rita: You do well at that.

Friedrich: I mean, whatever has happened within these four years—lies beyond us, does not concern me—but shall not concern you any longer either. Rita Revera has ceased to be—Erna Hattenbach returns to her family.

Rita: Lovely, very lovely. Hm!—but then, what then? Shall I start a cooking school?

Friedrich (with a gentle reproach): But, Erna! Don't you understand me? Could you think of anything else than—— Of course, I shall marry you then.

(Rita looks at him puzzled.)

Friedrich: But that is self-evident. Why should I have looked you up otherwise? Why should I be here? But, dear Erna, don't look so stunned.

Rita (still stares at him): "Simply—marry." Strange. (She turns around towards the open piano, plays and sings softly) Farilon, farila, farilette.

Friedrich (has risen): Erna! Do not torment me!

Rita: Torment? No. That would not be right. You are a good fellow. Give me a kiss. (She rises.)

Friedrich (embraces and kisses her): My Erna! Oh, you have grown so much prettier! So much prettier!

(Rita leans her head on his shoulder.)

Friedrich: But now come. Let us not lose one moment.

(Rita does not move.)

Friedrich: If possible let everything be.... Come! (He pushes her with gentle force) You cry?

Rita (hastily wipes the tears from her eyes, controls herself): O, nonsense. Rita Revera does not cry—she laughs. (Laughs forcedly.)

Friedrich: Erna, do not use that name. I do not care to hear it again!

Rita: Oh—you do not want to hear it any more. You would like to command me. You come here and assume that that which life and hard times have made of me you can wipe out in a half hour! No! You do not know life and know nothing of me. (Harshly) My name is Revera, and I shall not marry a merchant from Rudolstadt.

Friedrich: How is that? You still hesitate?

Rita: Do I look as though I hesitated? (She steps up closer to him.) Do you know, Fred, that during the years after my escape I often went hungry, brutally hungry? Do you know that I ran about in the most frightful dives, with rattling plate, collecting pennies and insults? Do you know what it means to humiliate oneself for dry bread? You see; that has been my school. Do you understand that I had to become an entirely different person or go to ruin? One who owes everything to himself, who is proud of himself, but who no longer respects anything, above all, no conventional measures and weights? And do you understand, Fred, that it would be base on my part were I to follow you to the Philistine?

Friedrich (after a pause, sadly): No, I do not understand that.

Rita (again gaily): I thought so. Shall I dread there every suspicion and tremble before every fool, whereas I can breathe free air, enjoy sunshine and the best conscience. You know that pretty part in the Walküre? (She sings):

"Greet Rudolstadt for me,

Greet my father and mother

And all the heroes....

I shall not follow you to them!"

Now you know. (She sits down at the piano again.)

Friedrich (after silence): Even if you have lived through hard times, that still does not give you the right to disregard the duties of morals and customs.

Rita (plays and sings): "Farilon, farila, farilette—"

Friedrich: I cannot understand how you can refuse me, when I offer you the opportunity of returning to ordered circumstances.

Rita: I do not love the "ordered" circumstances. On the contrary, I must have something to train.

Friedrich: And I? I shall never be anything to you any more? You thrust me also aside in your stubbornness.

Rita: But not at all. Why?

Friedrich: How so? Did you not state just now that you would never marry a merchant from Rudolstadt.

Rita: Certainly——

Friedrich: Do you see? You cannot be so cold and heartless towards me? (Flattering) Why did you kiss me before? I know you also yearn in your innermost heart for those times in which we secretly saw and found each other. You also, and, even if you deny it, I felt it before when you cried. (Softly) Erna! Come along, come along with me! Come! Become my dear wife!

Rita (looks at him quietly): No, I shall not do such a thing.

Friedrich (starts nervously; after a pause): Erna! Is that your last word?

Rita: Yes.

Friedrich: Consider well what you say!

Rita: I know what I am about.

Friedrich: Erna! You want—to remain what you are?

Rita: Yes. That's just what I want.

Friedrich (remains for some time struggling, then grasps his hat): Then—adieu! (He hurries toward the left into the bedroom.)

Rita (calls smiling): Halt! Not there.

Friedrich (returns, confused): Pardon me, I——

Rita: Poor Fred, did you stray into my bedroom? There is the door. (Long pause. Several times he tries to speak. She laughs gently. Then she sings and plays the song from "Mamselle Nitouche"):

A minuit, après la fête,

Rev'naient Babet et Cadet;

Cristi! la nuit est complète,

Faut nous dépêcher, Babet.

Tâche d'en profiter, grosse bête!

Farilon, farila, farilette.

J'ai trop peur, disait Cadet—

J'ai pas peur, disait Babet—

Larirette, larire,

Larirette, larire.— — —

(Friedrich at first listens against his will, even makes a step toward the door. By and by he becomes fascinated and finally is charmed. When she finishes, he puts his stiff hat on the table and walks toward her with a blissful smile.)

Rita: Now? You even smile? Did I impress you?

Friedrich (drops down on his knees in front of her): Oh, Erna, you are the most charming woman on earth. (He kisses her hands wildly.)

Rita (stoops down to him, softly and merrily): Why run away? Why? If you still love me, can you run off—you mule?

Friedrich: Oh, I'll remain—I remain with you.

Rita: It was well that you missed the door.

Friedrich: Oh, Erna——

Rita: But now you'll call me Rita—do you understand? Well? Are you going to—are you going to be good?

Friedrich: Rita! Rita! Everything you wish.

Rita: Everything I wish. (She kisses him.) And now tell me about your moral demand. Yes? You are delightful when you talk about it. So delightful.

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Tidings of May

The month of May is a grinning satire on the mode of living of human beings of the present day.

The May sun, with its magic warmth, gives life to so much beauty, so much value.

The dead, grayish brown of the forest and woods is transformed into a rich, intoxicating, delicate, fragrant green.

Golden sun-rays lure flowers and grass from the soil, and kiss branch and tree into blossom and bloom.

Tillers of the soil are beginning their activity with plough, shovel, rake, breaking the firm grip of grim winter upon the Earth, so that the mild spring warmth may penetrate her breast and coax into growth and maturity the seeds lying in her womb.

A great festival seems at hand for which Mother Earth has adorned herself with garments of the richest and most beautiful hues.

What does civilized humanity do with all this splendor? It speculates with it. Usurers, who gamble with the necessities of life, will take possession of Nature's gifts, of wheat and corn, fruit and flowers, and will carry on a shameless trade with them, while millions of toilers, both in country and city, will be permitted to partake of the earth's riches only in medicinal doses and at exorbitant prices.

May's generous promise to mankind, that they were to receive in abundance, is being broken and undone by the existing arrangements of society.

The Spring sends its glad tidings to man through the jubilant songs that stream from the throats of her feathered messengers. "Behold," they sing, "I have such wealth to give away, but you know not how to take. You count and bargain and weigh and measure, rather than feast at my heavily laden tables. You crawl about on the ground, bent by worry and dread, rather than drink in the free balmy air!"

The irony of May is neither cold nor hard. It contains a mild yet convincing appeal to mankind to finally break the power of the Winter not only in Nature, but in our social life,—to free itself from the hard and fixed traditions of a dead past.

ENVY.

By Walt Whitman.

When I peruse the conquered fame of heroes, and the victories of mighty generals, I do not envy the generals,
Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great house;
But when I hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them,
How through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging, long and long
Through youth, and through middle and old age, how unfaltering, how affectionate and faithful they were,
Then I am pensive—I hastily walk away, filled with the bitterest envy.

OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS.

A young man had an Ideal which he cherished as the most beautiful and greatest treasure he had on earth. He promised himself never to part with it, come what might.

His surroundings, however, repeated from morn till night that one can not feed on Ideals, and that one must become practical if he wishes to get on in life.

When he attempted the practical, he realized that his Ideal could never become reconciled to it. This, at first, caused him deep suffering, but he soon conceived a pleasant thought: "Why should I expose my precious jewel to the vulgarity, coarseness and filth of a practical life? I will put it into a jewel case and hide it in a secluded spot."

From time to time, especially when business was bad, he stole over to the case containing his Ideal, to delight in its splendor. Indeed, the world was shabby compared with that!

Meanwhile he married and his business began to improve. The members of his party had already begun to discuss the possibility of putting him up as a candidate for Alderman.

He visited his Ideal at longer intervals now. He had made a very unpleasant discovery,—his Ideal had lessened in size and weight in proportion to the practical opulence of his mind. It grew old and full of wrinkles, which aroused his suspicions. After all, the practical people were right in making light of Ideals. Did he not observe with his own eyes how his Ideal had faded?

It had been overlooked for a long time. Once more he stole over to the safety vault containing his Ideal. It was at a time when he had suffered a severe business loss. With great yearning in his breast, he lifted the cover of the case. He was worn from practical life and his heart and head felt heavy. He found the case empty. His Ideal had vanished, evaporated!—It dawned upon him that he had proven false to the Ideal, and not the Ideal to him.

Pity and sympathy have been celebrating a great feast within the last few weeks. When they look into the mirror of public opinion they find their own reflex touchingly beautiful, big, very human. Want was about to commit self-destruction in abolishing poverty, tears and the despair of suffering humanity forever.

The "heart" of New York, the "heart" of the country, the "heart" of the entire world throbs for San Francisco. The press says so, at least.

No doubt a large amount in checks and banknotes was sent to the city of the Golden Gate. Money, in these days, is the criterion of emotions and sentiments; so that the pity of one who gives $10,000 must appear incomparably greater than the pity of one who contributes a small sum which was perhaps intended to buy shoes for the children, or to pay the grocery bill. A large sum is always loud and boastful in the way it appears in the newspapers. The delicate tact and fine taste of the various editors see to it that the names of the donors of large sums be printed in heavy type.

After all, can not one every day and in every large city observe the same phenomenon that has followed the disaster in San Francisco? Surely there were homeless, starved, despaired, wretched beings in San Francisco before the earthquake and the fire, yet the public's pity and sympathy haughtily passed them by; and official sympathy and compassion had nothing but the police station and the workhouse to give them.

And now,—what is really being done now? Humanitarianism is exhibiting itself in a low and vulgar manner, and superficiality and bad taste are stalking about in peacock fashion.

The newspapers are full of praise for the bravery of the militia in their defense of property. A man was instantly shot as he walked out of a saloon with his arms full of champagne bottles, and another was shot for carrying off a sack of coffee, etc. How strange that the "brave boys" of the militia,—who, by the way, had to be severely disciplined because of their beastly drunkenness,—showed so much noble indignation against a few clumsy thieves! During the strikes and labor conflicts it is usually their mission to protect the property of skillful thieves,—legal thieves, of course.

Finally what is going to be the end of the great display of superficial sentimentality for the stricken city? An all-around good deal: Moneyed people, contractors, real estate speculators will make large sums of money. Indeed it is not at all unlikely that within a few months good Christian capitalists will secretly thank their Lord that he sent the earthquake.

As an employer, the United States Government is certainly tolerant and liberal, especially so far as the highly remunerative offices are concerned.

The President, for instance, loves to deliver himself of moral sermons. Recently he spoke of the people who criticise government and society and breed discontent. He considers them dangerous and entertains little regard for them. He ought not be blamed for that, since, as the first clerk of the State, it is his duty to represent its interests and dignity.

The most ordinary business agent, though he may be convinced of the corruption of his firm, will take good care to keep this fact from the public. Business morals demand it.

Besides, no one will expect or desire that the President should become a Revolutionist. This would certainly be no gain of ours, nor would the State suffer harm. Surely there are enough professional politicians who do not lack talent for the calling of doorkeepers on a large scale.

As to the moral sermons against the undesirable and obnoxious element, all that can be said, from a practical standpoint, is, that their originality and wisdom are in no proportion to the salary the sermonizer receives. Competition among preachers of penitence and servility is almost as great as among patent medicine quacks. Four or five thousand a year can easily buy the services of a corpulent, reverend gentleman of some prominence.

The dangers of the first of May, when France was to be ruined by the "mob" of socialists and anarchists, was very fantastically described by the Paris correspondents of the American newspapers. These gentlemen seem to have known everything. They discovered that the cause of the threatened revolution was to be found in the irresponsible good nature and kindness of the French government.

Just show "Satan" Anarchy a finger, and straightway he will seize the entire arm. Especially M. Clemenceau was severely censured as being altogether too good a fellow to make a reliable minister. There he is with France near the abyss of a social revolution! That is the manner in which history is being manufactured for boarding-school young ladies.

The social revolution may come, but surely not because of the kindness or good nature of the government. France needed a newspaper boom for her elections: "The republic is in danger; for goodness' sake give us your vote on election day!"

In order that the citizens might feel the proper horror, trade-union leaders, anarchists and even a few royalistic scare-crows were arrested; at the same time the sympathy and devotion of the government for its people manifested itself in the reign of the military terror in the strike regions.

The real seriousness of the situation, the correspondents failed to grasp. How could they? since they got their wisdom in the ante-chamber of the ministry.

The revolutionary labor organizations care little for the good will or the Jesuit kindness of the authorities. They continue with their work, propagate the idea of direct action, and strengthen the anti-military movement, the result of which is already being felt among the soldiers and officers.

The officer who jumped upon the platform at the Bourse du Travail, expressing his solidarity with the workers and declaring that he would not fire on them, was immediately arrested; but this will only influence others to follow the good example.

In the old fables the lion is described as supreme judge and not the mule or the wether.

In Cleveland things are different. Several weeks ago Olga Nethersole gave a performance of Sappho there. Whereupon the police felt moved to perform an operation on the play, for moral reasons, of course. The staircase scene was ordered to be left out altogether.

Ye poor, depraved artists, how low ye might sink, were the police and Comstock not here to watch over the moral qualities of your productions!

If one observes one of these prosaic fellows on the corner, terribly bored, and with his entire intellect concentrated on his club, and how out of pure ennui he is constantly recapitulating the number of his brass buttons, one can hardly realize that such an individual has been entrusted with the power to decide the fate of an artistic production.

1792 the French people marched through the streets singing:

O, what is it the people cry?
They ask for all equality.
The poor no more shall be
In slavish misery;
The idle rich shall flee.
O, what is it the people need?
They ask for bread and iron and lead.
The iron to win our pay,
The lead our foes to slay,
The bread our friends to feed.
The soldiers at Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, who were ordered by their superiors to fire into a crowd of strikers and wounded and killed innocent men and women, do not sing the Carmagnole; they sing:

"My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of Liberty!"
If the ruling powers continue to maintain peace and order with iron and blood it may happen that the meaningless national hymn may be drowned by the Carmagnole, pealing forth like thunder from the throats of the masses.

To the credit of human nature be it said, it is not altogether hopeless. Since tyranny has existed, human nature has ever rebelled against it.

Real slavery exists only when the oppressed consider their fate as something normal, something self-evident.

There is greater security for tyranny in slavish thoughts, indifference and pettiness than in cannons and swords.

"THIS MAN GORKY."

By Margaret Grant.

THE women of America are aroused as never before. They always are aroused to the defense of their firesides. Even those women who live in flats are awake to the need for defending their radiators or their gas stoves; it is inherent in the nature of woman, it seems.

Most of the women's societies and clubs have spoken in no uncertain terms concerning the outrage that has been put upon the civilization of this great country by the conduct of this man Gorky. And, in fact, it is a thing not to be borne.

As for me, I belong to the Woman's Association for the Regulation of the Morals of Others, a society which is second to none in its activity and usefulness, but which has seen fit to defer its own discussion of this man Gorky's conduct until most of the other women's societies have spoken.

We have just had our meeting, and I think that if this man Gorky should read an account of our proceedings, he would certainly get out of this outraged country with all the celerity of which he is capable. But, of course, he is only a foreigner after all and probably will not comprehend the exquisite purity of our morals.

I want to say that in our meetings we do not slavishly follow those parliamentary rules which men have made for their guidance, but allow ourselves some latitude in discussion. And we do not invite some man to come and do all the talking, as is the case in some women's clubs.

Mrs. Blanderocks was in the chair. We began with an informal discussion of the best way of preventing the common people from dressing so as not to be distinguished from the upper classes, but there was no heart in the talk, for we all felt that it was only preliminary. It was my friend Sarah Warner who changed the subject.

"The Woman's State Republican Association held its annual meeting at Delmonico's yesterday," she said, quietly drawing a newspaper clipping from her pocket-book.

"And had some men there to amuse them and to tell them what to do," said Mrs. Blanderocks with cutting irony.

We all laughed heartily. We meet at Mrs. Blanderocks' house, and she always provides a beautiful luncheon.

"But Mrs. Flint said some things that I would like to read to you," said Sarah. "It won't take long. I cut this out of the 'Times' this morning."

"What is it about?" some one asked.

"Gorky," Sarah answered, closing her eyes in a way to express volumes.

You could hear all the members catch their breath. This was what they had come for. I broke the oppressive silence.

"I foresee," I said, "that in the discussion of this subject there will be said things likely to bring a blush to the cheek of innocence, and I move that all unmarried women under the age of twenty-five be excluded from the meeting for as long as this man is under discussion."

A fierce cry of rage rose from all parts of the crowded room. I did not understand. I could see no one who would be affected by the rule. Mrs. Blanderocks raised her hand to command silence and said coldly:

"The motion is out of order. By a special provision of our constitution it is the inalienable right of all unmarried women to be under twenty-five. We will be as careful in our language as the subject will permit. Mrs. Warner will please read the words of Mrs. Flint."

I was shocked to think I had made such a mistake. Sarah rose and read in a clear, sharp voice from the clipping:

"Should not we as women take some action against this man? People of such character should not be allowed in this country. Of course when he arrived it was not known how he was living, but he came here and expected to be received; and I think he should be deported. Gorky is the embodiment of Socialism."

Everybody applauded violently. I was puzzled and asked a question as soon as I could make myself heard.

"Suppose Gorky is a Socialist," I said; "what has that to do with his morals?"

"Everything," replied Mrs. Blanderocks, haughtily.

"Socialists don't believe in marriage," said Sarah Warner, taking another clipping from her pocket-book and reading: "'Mrs. Cornelia Robinson said: When the question of uniform divorce law is taken up, we shall find that the Socialists are against it as a body. It is not that they are opposed to divorce, but they do not believe in marriage.'"

"And does she know?" I asked.

"Would she say it publicly if it were not true?" demanded Mrs. Blanderocks, glaring disapprovingly at me.

I rose to my feet. I will say for myself that my desire for knowledge is greater even than my shyness, and usually overcomes it.

"I want to make a motion," I said, "that this man Gorky be deported—" (loud applause)—"but before doing so I would like some one to explain in as plain words as the nature of the subject will permit, just what he has been guilty of." Dead silence broken by a voice saying: "He's a foreigner."

"I'll tell you what he has done," cried Sarah Warner; "he came into this country pretending that the woman who was with him was his wife; he allowed her to be registered at the hotel as his wife; he permitted her to sleep under the same roof with pure men and women—"

"I would like to ask Mrs. Warner," said a lady in a remote corner of the room, "if she will vouch for the purity of the men?"

"Perhaps," said Mrs. Blanderocks, gravely, "it will be better if the word men be stricken from the record. Do you object, Mrs. Warner?"

"It was a slip of the tongue," Sarah answered, "and I am grateful to the member who called attention to it; though I will say that I think there are some pure men."

"We are discussing Gorky now," said Mrs. Blanderocks with an indulgent smile.

"True," answered Sarah, beaming back at the chairwoman; "and I was saying that he had subjected the pure women of the hotel to the unspeakable indignity of having to sleep under the same roof with the woman he called his wife."

"I would like to ask," I interposed timidly, "if it is right for a woman to sleep under the same roof with an impure man, or is it only an impure woman who is injurious?"

"A woman has to sleep under some roof," came in the voice of the woman in the corner.

"I think Mrs. Grant would show better taste if she did not press such a question," said another voice. "Will Mrs. Warner be good enough to describe the exact status—I think status is right—of the woman he tried to pass as his wife?"

"She was his——" Sarah had a fit of coughing, "she was not his wife. I do not care to be more explicit."

"Perhaps," I said, groping for light, "it would be better if I made my motion read that she should be deported from the country, since it is her immorality that counts."

"And let those Republican Association women stand for more morality than we do?" cried Mrs. Blanderocks. "No, you cannot make your motion too strong."

"Oh, then," I said, with a sigh of relief, "I will move that Gorky and all other men, immoral in the same way, shall be deported from the country."

"Then who is to take care of us women?" demanded the voice in the corner.

"Do be reasonable, Margaret," said Sarah Warner, "we can't drive all the men out of the country, and don't want to, but we can fix a standard of morals to astonish the world, and there could be no better way than by making an example of this man Gorky. Don't you see that he is a foreigner and can't very well know that our men are just as bad as he is? Besides, isn't he a Socialist? We would have been willing to condone his relations with that woman if only he'd hid them respectably as our men do, but to come here with his free ideas—— Well, I'm willing to let the Russians have all the freedom they want, and I would have given my mite toward stirring up trouble over there, but we have all the freedom we want over here, and a little more, too, if I know anything about it."

"Very well," I replied, "I will withdraw the motion and make one to have a committee appointed to investigate the matter and find out the whole truth about it."

"What is there to find out?" demanded Sarah, aghast.

"Well, you know he insists that she is his wife. Maybe she is by Russian law or custom."

"Perfectly absurd! His own wife and he separated because they couldn't be happy together. Was ever anything more ridiculous?"

"As if happiness had anything to do with marriage!" said the voice from the corner.

Everybody laughed and applauded as if something very funny had been said.

"Well, anyhow," I insisted, for I can be obstinate when a thing isn't clear to me, "if they both thought they were justified in calling themselves man and wife, and if the people in Russia thought so, too, why should we make any fuss about it?"

"Pardon me, Mrs. Grant," said Mrs. Blanderocks, suavely, "if I say that your words are very silly. In the first place, the Russians are barbarians, as we all know; and, in the next place, the law is the law, and the law says that a man may not have two wives. A man who does is a bigamist. A man who has a wife and yet lives with another woman is an adulterer. Pardon me for using such a word, but it was forced from me. Now, this man Gorky, who may be a very great genius for all I know—I never read any of his stuff—but he isn't above the law: not above the moral law anyhow, and the moral law is the same all over the world. He says he and his wife parted because they were unhappy together, which is a very flimsy excuse for immorality. Then he says that his wife is living now with a man she loves and is happy with."

"Which makes a bad matter worse," interposed Sarah Warner. "No one has any business to be happy in immorality."

"What is morality for," demanded the voice from the corner, "if it isn't to make people unhappy?"

Everybody screamed with laughter over that, and Mrs. Blanderocks went so far as to raise her eyebrows at Sarah Warner, who bit her lip to keep from smiling.

"But," said I, for I had been reading the papers, too, "he says the reason they were not divorced was because the Church would not permit it."

"If the laws of his country were opposed to this divorce," said Mrs. Blanderocks, triumphantly, "all the more reason why he should be ashamed of living with this actress in such an open, defiant way."

"The Church has nothing to do with divorces in this country," I said, "yet many of our best people are divorced."

"The law permits it," said Mrs. Blanderocks curtly.

"Who makes the law?" I asked, determined to get at the bottom of the thing if I could.

"The people through the Legislature," was the prompt answer.

"Well," I said, very timidly, not knowing but I was quite in the wrong, "it seems that the people of Russia not being able to make laws nevertheless recognize the separation of a man and his wife as proper, and permit them to take other husbands and wives without loss of standing."

"A law's a law," said Sarah, sternly; "and a law should be sacred. The very idea of anybody pretending to be above the law like this man Gorky! I would like to know what would become of the holy institution of matrimony if it could be trifled with in such a fashion?"

"You want Russia to be free from the rule of the Tsar, don't you?" I asked.

"Certainly, he is a tyrant and an irresponsible weakling, unfit to govern a great people. Of course, we want Russia to be free. The people of Russia are entitled to be free, to govern themselves."

"Do you think they ought to be allowed to make their own laws?" I asked.

"Of course."

"Then, why do you say that Gorky is not properly divorced from his first wife and married to his second? The people of Russia approve."

"Margaret Grant!" cried Sarah, outraged and voicing the horror of the other members, "I sometimes wonder if you have any respect at all for the law. How can you speak as you do? If men and women could dispense with the law in that way what would become of society?"

"But this state used to permit men and women to live together without any ceremony and so become man and wife," I said.

"Well, we don't permit it now," retorted Sarah, grimly.

"If they want to live together now," cried the voice from the corner, "they must pretend they don't, even if everybody knows they do."

Some of the members laughed at that, but Mrs. Blanderocks thought that was going too far and said so in her coldest manner.

"I see nothing funny in that. We cannot change the natures of men, but we can insist upon their hiding their baser conduct and the degraded portions of their lives from our view."

"But," said I, "Gorky evidently considers this woman his wife, and had no idea that anybody would think otherwise."

"The point is," said Sarah Warner, in exasperation, "and I think I voice the sentiments of this organization, that he was not legally divorced from his first wife and that, therefore, he cannot be legally married to this woman. A law is a law, no matter who makes it. The law is sacred and must not be tampered with."

"How about the Supreme Court on divorces in Dakota?" demanded the voice from the corner.

A dead silence fell on the meeting. Some of the members looked at each other and showed signs of hysterics. Mrs. Blanderocks flashed a withering glance at the corner, but rose to the occasion.

"Ladies," she said in a solemn tone, "I deeply regret that this subject has been touched upon in a spirit of levity. It was my intention, at the proper time, to introduce a resolution of sympathy for those ladies who have been so summarily and I may say brutally unmarried by the unfeeling wretches who sit upon the bench of the Supreme Court. It is awful to think that our highly respected sisters, whose wealth alone should have protected them, have been told by the highest court in the land that they have been living in shame all this time, and that their children are not legitimate. Ladies, I call your attention to the fact that many of our own members are thus branded by those judges. It is infamous. It is more than infamous—it is a reason why women should sit on the judicial bench."

"Yes," I said, "it seems impossible for men to comprehend the mental or emotional processes of women."

"True, too true," murmured our President, giving me a look of gratitude. "I remember how the men of this country cried out against us a few years ago because they could not understand why we send flowers and tender letters to a poor, handsome negro who had first outraged and then murdered a woman."

"Yes," I said, "and no doubt they will pretend not to understand our indignation against this man Gorky, who thinks the customs of his own country justify him his terrible conduct. But we must be careful how we word our condemnation of this man lest he should somehow learn of what our Supreme Court has so wickedly done and retort on us that these, our wealthiest and most respected citizens, not being legally divorced and hence not being legally married again, are no better than he and his so-called wife."

The ladies looked at each other in consternation. Evidently the thought had not suggested itself to them. Mrs. X. Y. Z. Asterbilt (née Clewbel) rose and in a voice choked with emotion said:

"Speaking for myself as well as for some of the other ladies, members of this organization, who are temporarily déclassée, so to speak, by this decree of the Supreme Court, I beg that you will do nothing to call undue attention to us, until we have arranged matters so that our wealth will enable us to have that legislation which is necessary to make us respectable women again."

"Is it true," I asked, "that you have sent an invitation to Madame Andreieva to meet you to discuss the steps to be taken to reinstate yourselves?"

"It is true, but the extraordinary creature returned word that as a lady of good standing in her own country she did not feel that she could afford to associate with women whom the courts of this country held to be living in shame."

"Did you ever!" cried Mrs. Blanderocks. "But it shows us that we must be careful. Mrs. Grant, you have had experience in such matters, suppose you retire and draw up a set of resolutions that will not expose us to the ribald and unseemly comments of the light-minded."

Of course I accepted the task, fully realizing its gravity, and following is the resolution I brought back with me:

"Whereas, Maxim Gorky, recognized in the world of letters as a man of genius, and in the world at large as a man of great soul, high purpose and pure nature, having come to this country accompanied by a lady whom he considers and treats as his wife; and

"Whereas, The wealthy, and therefore the better classes, tumbled all over themselves in order to exploit him as a lion; and

"Whereas, He had not the wisdom and craft and sense of puritanical respectability to pretend that he did not know the lady he believed his wife, and to whom he believes himself united by a law higher than that of man; and

"Whereas, He was guileless enough to believe he had come to a free country where purity of motive and of conduct would take precedence of hollow and rotten forms; and

"Whereas, He did not know that the American people practise polygamy secretly, while condemning it in words, and that the United States Senate has been nearly two years in pretending to try to find a polygamist in their midst; and

"Whereas, He was so injudicious as to come here with a defective divorce just at a time when our Supreme Court was making the divorce of some of us, the gilded favorites of fortune, defective; and

"Whereas, He had the audacity to proclaim himself a Socialist, which is the same thing as saying that he is opposed to special privilege, and is in favor of the abolition of property in land and in the tools of labor—in other and plainer words, is against Us; and

"Whereas, He is only a foreigner, anyhow, and no longer available as a toy and plaything for us; therefore be it

"Resolved, That this man, Gorky, be used as a means of proclaiming our extraordinary virtue to the world at large, as a robber cries stop thief in order to direct attention from himself; that accordingly he be treated with the utmost outrageous discourtesy and hounded from hotel to hotel on the ground that such places by no chance harbor men and women unless they have passed through the matrimonial mill; that we withdraw our patronage from the revolution in Russia—not being seriously interested in it anyhow—and that we will show our contempt for revolutionary patriots by entertaining the rottenest grand duke in Russia if only he will come over to us, bringing his whole harem if he wish; that he is a reproach to us while he remains in this country, and that it is the sense of this great organization that he and the lady who is his wife in the highest sense shall be deported."

The resolution was not passed.

I have been expelled from the association.

COMRADE.

By Maxim Gorky.

Translated from the French translation by S. Persky, published in "L'Aurore," Paris.

ALL in that city was strange, incomprehensible. Churches in great number pointed their many-tinted steeples toward the sky, in gleaming colors; but the walls and the chimneys of the factories rose still higher, and the temples were crushed between the massive façades of commercial houses, like marvelous flowers sprung up among the ruins, out of the dust. And when the bells called the faithful to prayer, their brazen sounds, sliding along the iron roofs, vanished, leaving no traces in the narrow gaps which separated the houses.

They were always large, and sometimes beautiful, these dwellings. Deformed people, ciphers, ran about like gray mice in the tortuous streets from morning till evening; and their eyes, full of covetousness, looked for bread or for some distraction; other men placed at the crossways watched with a vigilant and ferocious air, that the weak should, without murmuring, submit themselves to the strong. The strong were the rich: everyone believed that money alone gives power and liberty. All wanted power because all were slaves. The luxury of the rich begot the envy and hate of the poor; no one knew any finer music than the ring of gold; that is why each was the enemy of his neighbor, and cruelty reigned mistress.

Sometimes the sun shone over the city, but life therein was always wan, and the people like shadows. At night they lit a mass of joyous lights; and then famishing women went out into the streets to sell their caresses to the highest bidder. Everywhere floated an odor of victuals, and the sullen and voracious look of the people grew. Over the city hovered a groan of misery, stifled, without strength to make itself heard.

Every one led an irksome, unquiet life; a general hostility was the rule. A few citizens only considered themselves just, but these were the most cruel, and their ferocity provoked that of the herd. All wanted to live; and no one knew or could follow freely the pathway of his desires; like an insatiable monster, the Present enveloped in its powerful and vigorous arms the man who marched toward the future, and in that slimy embrace sapped away his strength. Full of anguish and perplexity, the man paused, powerless before the hideous aspect of this life: with its thousands of eyes, infinitely sad in their expression, it looked into his heart, asking him for it knew not what,—and then the radiant images of the future died in his soul; a groan out of the powerlessness of the man mingled in the discordant chorus of lamentations and tears from poor human creatures tormented by life.

Tedium and inquietude reigned everywhere, and sometimes terror. And the dull and somber city, the stone buildings atrociously lined one against the other, shutting in the temples, were for men a prison, rebuffing the rays of the sun. And the music of life was smothered by the cry of suffering and rage, by the whisper of dissimulated hate, by the threatening bark of cruelty, by the voluptuous cry of violence.

In the sullen agitation caused by trial and suffering, in the feverish struggle of misery, in the vile slime of egoism, in the subsoils of the houses wherein vegetated Poverty, the creator of Riches, solitary dreamers full of faith in Man, strangers to all, prophets of seditions, moved about like sparks issued from some far-off hearthstone of justice. Secretly they brought into these wretched holes tiny fertile seeds of a doctrine simple and grand;—and sometimes rudely, with lightnings in their eyes, and sometimes mild and tender, they sowed this clear and burning truth in the sombre hearts of these slaves, transformed into mute, blind instruments by the strength of the rapacious, by the will of the cruel. And these sullen beings, these oppressed ones, listened without much belief to the music of the new words,—the music for which their hearts had long been waiting. Little by little they lifted up their heads, and tore the meshes of the web of lies wherewith their oppressors had enwound them. In their existence, made up of silent and contained rage, in their hearts envenomed by numberless wrongs, in their consciences encumbered by the dupings of the wisdom of the strong, in this dark and laborious life, all penetrated with the bitterness of humiliation, had resounded a simple word:

Comrade.

It was not a new word; they had heard it and pronounced it themselves; but until then it had seemed to them void of sense, like all other words dulled by usage, and which one may forget without losing anything. But now this word, strong and clear, had another sound; a soul was singing in it,—the facets of it shone brilliant as a diamond. The wretched accepted this word, and at first uttered it gently, cradling it in their hearts like a mother rocking her new-born child and admiring it. And the more they searched the luminous soul of the word, the more fascinating it seemed to them.

"Comrade," said they.

And they felt that this word had come to unite the whole world, to lift all men up to the summits of liberty and bind them with new ties, the strong ties of mutual respect, respect for the liberties of others in the name of one's own liberty.

When this word had engraved itself upon the hearts of the slaves, they ceased to be slaves; and one day they announced their transformation to the city in this great human formula:

I will not.

Then life was suspended, for it is they who are the motor force of life, they and no other. The water supply stopped, the fire went out, the city was plunged in darkness. The masters began to tremble like children. Fear invaded the hearts of the oppressors. Suffocating in the fumes of their own dejection, disconcerted and terrified by the strength of the revolt, they dissimulated the rage which they felt against it.

The phantom of Famine rose up before them, and their children wailed plaintively in the darkness. The houses and the temples, enveloped in shadow, melted into an inanimate chaos of iron and stone; a menacing silence filled the streets with a clamminess as of death; life ceased, for the force which created it had become conscious of itself; and enslaved humanity had found the magic and invincible word to express its will; it had enfranchised itself from the yoke; with its own eyes it had seen its might,—the might of the creator.

These days were days of anguish to the rulers, to those who considered themselves the masters of life; each night was as long as thousands of nights, so thick was the gloom, so timidly shone the few fires scattered through the city. And then the monster city, created by the centuries, gorged with human blood, showed itself in all its shameful weakness; it was but a pitiable mass of stone and wood. The blind windows of the houses looked upon the street with a cold and sullen air, and out on the highway marched with valiant step the real masters of life. They, too, were hungry, more than the others perhaps; but they were used to it, and the suffering of their bodies was not so sharp as the suffering of the old masters of life; it did not extinguish the fire in their souls. They glowed with the consciousness of their own strength, the presentiment of victory sparkled in their eyes. They went about in the streets of the city which had been their narrow and sombre prison, wherein they had been overwhelmed with contempt, wherein their souls had been loaded with abuse, and they saw the great importance of their work, and thus was unveiled to them the sacred right they had to become the masters of life, its creators and its lawgivers.

And the lifegiving word of union presented itself to them with a new face, with a blinding clearness:

"Comrade."

There among lying words it rang out boldly, as the joyous harbinger of the time to come, of a new life open to all in the future;—far or near? They felt that it depended upon them whether they advanced towards liberty or themselves deferred its coming.

The prostitute who, but the evening before, was but a hungry beast, sadly waiting on the muddy pavement to be accosted by some one who would buy her caresses, the prostitute, too, heard this word, but was undecided whether to repeat it. A man the like of whom she had never seen till then approached her, laid his hand upon her shoulder and said to her in an affectionate tone, "Comrade." And she gave a little embarrassed smile, ready to cry with the joy her wounded heart experienced for the first time. Tears of pure gaiety shone in her eyes, which, the night before, had looked at the world with a stupid and insolent expression of a starving animal. In all the streets of the city the outcasts celebrated the triumph of their reunion with the great family of workers of the entire world; and the dead eyes of the houses looked on with an air more and more cold and menacing.

The beggar to whom but the night before an obol was thrown, price of the compassion of the well-fed, the beggar also heard this word; and it was the first alms which aroused a feeling of gratitude in his poor heart, gnawed by misery.

A coachman, a great big fellow whose patrons struck him that their blows might be transmitted to his thin-flanked, weary horse, this man imbruted by the noise of wheels upon the pavement, said, smiling, to a passer-by: "Well, Comrade!" He was frightened at his own words. He took the reins in his hands, ready to start, and looked at the passer-by, the joyous smile not yet effaced from his big face. The other cast a friendly glance at him and answered, shaking his head: "Thanks, comrade; I will go on foot; I am not going far."

"Ah, the fine fellow!" exclaimed the coachman enthusiastically; he stirred in his seat, winking his eyes gaily, and started off somewhere with a great clatter.

The people went in groups crowded together on the pavements, and the great word destined to unite the world burst out more and more often among them, like a spark: "Comrade." A policeman, bearded, fierce, and filled with the consciousness of his own importance, approached the crowd surrounding an old orator at the corner of a street, and, after having listened to the discourse, he said slowly: "Assemblages are interdicted ... disperse...." And after a moment's silence, lowering his eyes, he added, in a lower tone, "Comrades."

The pride of young combatants was depicted in the faces of those who carried the word in their hearts, who had given it flesh and blood and the appeal to union; one felt that the strength they so generously poured into this living word was indestructible, inexhaustible.

Here and there blind troops of armed men, dressed in gray, gathered and formed ranks in silence; it was the fury of the oppressors preparing to repulse the wave of justice.

And in the narrow streets of the immense city, between the cold and silent walls raised by the hands of ignored creators, the noble belief in Man and in Fraternity grew and ripened.

"Comrade."—Sometimes in one corner, sometimes in another, the fire burst out. Soon this fire would become the conflagration destined to enkindle the earth with the ardent sentiment of kinship, uniting all its peoples; destined to consume and reduce to ashes the rage, hate and cruelty by which we are mutilated; the conflagration which will embrace all hearts, melt them into one,—the heart of the world, the heart of beings noble and just;—into one united family of workers.

In the streets of the dead city, created by slaves, in the streets of the city where cruelty reigned, faith in humanity and in victory over self and over the evil of the world grew and ripened. And in the vague chaos of a dull and troubled existence, a simple word, profound as the heart, shone like a star, like a light guiding toward the future: Comrade.

ALEXANDER BERKMAN.

By E. G.

ON the 18th of this month the workhouse at Hoboken, Pa., will open its iron gates for Alexander Berkman. One buried alive for fourteen years will emerge from his tomb. That was not the intention of those who indicted Berkman. In the kindness of their Christian hearts they saw to it that he be sentenced to twenty-one years in the penitentiary and one year in the workhouse, hoping that that would equal a death penalty, only with a slow, refined execution. To achieve the feat of sending a man to a gradual death, the authorities of Pittsburg at the command of Mammon trampled upon their much-beloved laws and the legality of court proceedings. These laws in Pennsylvania called for seven years imprisonment for the attempt to kill, but that did not satisfy the law-abiding citizen H. C. Frick. He saw to it that one indictment was multiplied into six. He knew full well that he would meet with no opposition from petrified injustice and the servile stupidity of the judge and jury before whom Alexander Berkman was tried.

In looking over the events of 1892 and the causes that led up to the act of Alexander Berkman, one beholds Mammon seated upon a throne built of human bodies, without a trace of sympathy on its Gorgon brow for the creatures it controls. These victims, bent and worn, with the reflex of the glow of the steel and iron furnaces in their haggard faces, carry their sacrificial offerings to the ever-insatiable monster, capitalism. In its greed, however, it reaches out for more; it neither sees the gleam of hate in the sunken eyes of its slaves, nor can it hear the murmurs of discontent and rebellion coming forth from their heaving breasts. Yet, discontent continues until one day it raises its mighty voice and demands to be heard:

Human conditions! higher pay! fewer hours in the inferno at Homestead, the stronghold of the "philanthropist" Carnegie!

He was far away, however, enjoying a much needed rest from hard labor, in Scotland, his native country. Besides he knew he had left a worthy representative in H. C. Frick, who could take care that the voice of discontent was strangled in a fitting manner,—and Mr. Carnegie had judged rightly.

Frick, who was quite experienced in the art of disposing of rebellious spirits (he had had a number of them shot in the coke regions in 1890), immediately issued an order for Pinkerton men, the vilest creatures in the human family, who are engaged in the trade of murder for $2 per day.

The strikers declared that they would not permit these men to land, but money and power walk shrewd and cunning paths. The Pinkerton blood-hounds were packed into a boat and were to be smuggled into Homestead by way of water in the stillness of night. The amalgamated steel workers learned of this contemptible trick and prepared to meet the foe. They gathered by the shores of the Monongahela River armed with sticks and stones, but ere they had time for an attack a violent fire was opened from the boat that neared the shore, and within an hour eleven strikers lay dead from the bullets of Frick's hirelings.

Every beast is satisfied when it has devoured its prey,—not so the human beast. After the killing of the strikers H. C. Frick had the families of the dead evicted from their homes, which had been sold to the workingmen on the instalment plan and at the exorbitant prices usual in such cases.

Out of these homes the wives and children of the men struggling for a living wage were thrown into the street and left without shelter. There was one exception only. A woman who had given birth to a baby two days previous and who, regardless of her delicate condition, defended her home and succeeded in driving the sheriff from the house with a poker.

Everyone stood aghast at such brutality, at such inhumanity to man, in this great free republic of ours. It seemed as if the cup of human endurance had been filled to the brim, as if out of the ranks of the outraged masses some one would rise to call those to account who had caused it all.

And some one rose in mighty indignation against the horrors of wealth and power. It was Alexander Berkman!

A youth with a vision of a grand and beautiful world based upon freedom and harmony, and with boundless sympathy for the suffering of the masses. One whose deep, sensitive nature could not endure the barbarisms of our times. Such was the personality of the man who staked his life as a protest against tyranny and iniquity; and such has Alexander Berkman remained all these long, dreary fourteen years.

Nothing was left undone to crush the body and spirit of this man; but sorrow and suffering make for sacred force, and those who have never felt it will fail to realize how it is that Alexander Berkman will return to those who loved and esteemed him, to those whom he loved so well, and still loves so well,—the oppressed and down-trodden millions—with the same intense, sweet spirit and with a clearer and grander vision of a world of human justice and equality.

UT SEMENTEM FECERIS, ITA METES.

By Voltairine De Cleyre

(To the Czar, on a woman, a political prisoner, being flogged to death in Siberia.)

How many drops must gather to the skies
Before the cloud-burst comes, we may not know;
How hot the fires in under hells must glow
Ere the volcano's scalding lavas rise,
Can none say; but all wot the hour is sure!
Who dreams of vengeance has but to endure!
He may not say how many blows must fall,
How many lives be broken on the wheel,
How many corpses stiffen 'neath the pall,
How many martyrs fix the blood-red seal;
But certain is the harvest time of Hate!
And when weak moans, by an indignant world
Re-echoed, to a throne are backward hurled,
Who listens hears the mutterings of Fate!

THE WHITE TERROR.

I.—The Flogging of a Student.

(By an Eye-Witness—M. Kirilov, of the "Russ.")

December 18th. Near the Gorbaty Bridge, Moscow. A group of soldiers of various arms and an officer. Great animation, jokes, cries, gesticulation, contented faces. A student has fallen into their hands.

"Well, boys, make room," says the officer. "The performance begins!"

"Take off your trousers," says the officer, turning to the student. The latter is pale, silent, and does not move.

"Trousers off!" cries the officer, in rage; but the student, without a drop of blood in his face, whiter than the snow, does not move, but only looks around in silence with horrified eyes and meets everywhere the triumphant faces of his tormentors. He drops his head and remains silent as before.

"Well, then, boys, we must assist our dear student; his hands, poor thing, are frost bitten and do not obey."

The voice of the officer changes; it becomes sweet and smooth. He looks at the student with pleasure.

"Take off his dear little trousers!" he orders his soldiers. The latter unbutton and tear down his trousers. The student does not resist. Then he is thrown on the ground.

"Give him beans, boys!"

Two powerfully-built soldiers step forward, holding whips in their hands.

The flogging begins. It lasts a long time, accompanied by loud laughter, jokes and noise. The student is silent all the time and lies with his face buried in the snow. He is constantly being asked whether he feels allright, and is kicked with the boots on his head.

"Halt!" cries the officer at last, when the whole body of the student has been covered with blood. The excited soldiers do not leave off at once, but continue for some time. At last they stop.

"Please, sir, won't you allow us, too, to have a little game?" smilingly ask a couple of artillery soldiers, saluting the officer.

"Well, have a go at him," says the officer kindly.

The second shift gets to work, and turning up their sleeves, takes over the bloody whips and resumes the flogging of the student, who still, as before, is lying in the snow without uttering a word. Only his body still thrills instinctively as the soldiers get more and more excited and the blows become more and more frequent.

"Sir, we, too, want some of the lark," impatiently interfered some of the dragoons, and having received the permission of the officer, substituted themselves for the artillery men and with new force and zeal began to flog the student, who still lay strictly as before, only his body scarcely moving.

"Well, here you are, you got your higher education—all the three faculties!" somebody joked as the flogging at last stopped and the student lay motionless in the snow.

But he was not flogged to death. He was taken to the other side of the river and there shot.

II.—Lieutenant Schmidt, of the Sevastopol Mutiny, after being captured.

(From a letter received by Prof. Miliukov from a lady correspondent who saw Schmidt in the Fortress and had the tale from his own lips.)

....He only remembers how the officers of the "Rostislavl" posted him naked, with a broken leg, between two sentries in their mess-room and approached him in turns, shaking their fists in his face and abusing him in the vilest terms. Schmidt's son, who, for some unaccountable reason, had been kept in fortress for two months, said to me: "I cannot tell you how they abused my father, the terms are unpronounceable." Schmidt himself spoke to me sobbingly of the painful treatment meted out to him by the officers.... For twenty-four hours the two of them, father and son, were kept stark naked and without food, under a fierce electric light, on the open deck. They lay together, pressing against each other so as to warm themselves, and everyone who passed looked at them, and those who wanted, abused them. When Schmidt, being wounded, asked for a drop of water, the senior officer shouted at him: "Silence, or I'll stop your gullet with my fist."

PATERNALISTIC GOVERNMENT.

By Theodore Schroeder.

HISTORY serves no purpose to those who cannot, or do not avail themselves of it as a means of learning helpful lessons, for present use. From a few sources not readily accessible to the masses, I have copied a partial summary of paternalistic legislation which even the most devout devotees to mass or ruling class wisdom would now decline to defend.

It is helpful, perhaps, to look back to the persistent fallacious assumption that men can be made frugal and useful members of society by laws and edicts. Every thoughtful student feels sure that future generations will look upon our present efforts to regulate the self-regarding activities of humans with the same cynical leer as that which now flits over our faces as we read the following:—

The earliest sumptuary law was passed 215 B. C., enacted that no woman should own more than half an ounce of gold or wear a dress of different colors, or ride in a carriage in the city or in any town or within a mile of it, unless on occasion of public sacrifices. This law was repealed in twenty years. In 181 B. C. a law was passed limiting the number of guests at entertainments. In 161 B. C. it was provided that at certain festivals named the expense of entertainments should not exceed 100 asses, and on ten other days of each month should not exceed 10 asses. Later on it was allowed that 200 asses, valued at about $300, be spent upon marriage days.

A statute under Julian extended the privileges of extravagance on certain occasions to the equivalent of $10, and $50 upon marriage feasts. Under Tiberius, $100 was made the limit of expense for entertainments. Julius Cæsar proposed another law by which actual magistrates, or magistrates elect, should not dine abroad except at certain prescribed places.

Sumptuary laws, that is to say, laws which profess to regulate minutely what people shall eat and drink, what guests they shall entertain, what clothes they shall wear, what armor they shall possess, what limit shall be put to their property, what expense they shall incur at their funerals, were considered by the Early and Middle Ages as absolutely necessary for the proper government of mankind.

Tiberius issued an edict against people kissing each other when they met and against tavern keepers selling pastry. Lycurgus even prohibited finely decorated ceilings and doors. In England the statutes of laborers, reciting the pestilence and scarcity of servants, made it compulsory on every person who had no merchandise, craft or land on which to live, to serve at fixed wages, otherwise to be committed to gaol till he found sureties. At a latter day, all men between twelve and sixty not employed were compelled to hire themselves as servants in husbandry; and unmarried women between twelve and forty were also liable to be hired, otherwise to be imprisoned. All this, of course, was to compel people of modest wealth to remain among the laboring class purely for their own good. (?) But they were quite impartial in enforcing benefits, since the Star Chamber also assumed to fine persons for not accepting knighthood.

Compulsion was also used at the time of the Reformation, to uphold the Protestant faith and keep people in the right way. Refusing to confess or receive the sacrament was first made subject to fine or imprisonment, and a second offense was a felony punishable by death, and involved forfeiture of land and goods. Those who, having no lawful excuse, failed to attend the parish church, in the time of Elizabeth, were fined twelve pence—at that time a considerable sum. This penalty was afterwards altered to twenty pounds a month, but those were exempted who did not obstinately refuse. The penalty on all above sixteen who neglected to go for a month was abjuration of the realm; and to return to the realm thereafter was felony. And two-thirds of the rent of the offender's lands might also be seized till he conformed.

An ordinance of Edward III., in 1336, prohibited any man having more than two courses at any meal. Each mess was to have only two sorts of victuals, and it was prescribed how far one could mix sauce with his pottage, except on feast days, when three courses, at most, were allowable.

The Licinian law limited the quantity of meat to be used. The Orcian law limited the expense of a private entertainment and the number of guests. And for like reasons, the censors degraded a senator because ten pounds weight of silver plate was found in his house. Julius Cæsar was almost as good a reformer as our modern Puritans. He restrained certain classes from using litters, embroidered robes and jewels; limited the extent of feasts; enabled bailiffs to break into the houses of rich citizens and snatch the forbidden meats from off the tables. And we are told that the markets swarmed with informers, who profited by proving the guilt of all who bought and sold there. So in Carthage a law was passed to restrain the exorbitant expenses of marriage feasts, it having been found that the great Hanno took occasion of his daughter's marriage to feast and corrupt the Senate and the populace, and gained them over to his designs.

The Vhennic Court established by Charlemagne in Westphalia put every Saxon to death who broke his fast during Lent. James II. of Arragon, in 1234, ordained that his subjects should not have more than two dishes, and each dressed in one way only, unless it was game of his own killing.

The Statute of Diet of 1363 enjoined that servants of lords should have once a day flesh or fish, and remnants of milk, butter and cheese; and above all, ploughmen were to eat moderately. And the proclamations of Edward IV. and Henry VIII. used to restrain excess in eating and drinking. All previous statutes as to abstaining from meat and fasting were repealed in the time of Edward VI. by new enactments, and in order that fishermen might live, all persons were bound under penalty to eat fish on Fridays or Saturdays, or in Lent, the old and the sick excepted. The penalty in Queen Elizabeth's time was no less than three pounds or three months' imprisonment, but at the same time added that whoever preached or taught that eating of fish was necessary for the saving of the soul of man, or was the service of God, was to be punished as a spreader of false news. And care was taken to announce that the eating of fish was enforced not out of superstition, but solely out of respect to the increase of fishermen and mariners. The exemption of the sick from these penalties was abolished by James I., and justices were authorized to enter victualing houses and search and forfeit the meat found there. All these preposterous enactments were swept away in the reign of Victoria.

Of all the petty subjects threatening the cognizance of the law, none seems to have given more trouble to the ancient and mediæval legislatures than that of dress. * * * Yet views of morality, of repressing luxury and vice, of benefiting manufacturers, of keeping all degrees of mankind in their proper places, have induced the legislature to interfere, where interference, in order to be thorough, would require to be as endless as it would be objectless.

Solon prohibited women from going out of the town with more than three dresses. Zaleucus is said to have invented an ingenious method of circuitously putting down what he thought bad habits, namely, by prohibiting things with an exception, so that the exception should, in the guise of an exemption, really carry out the sting and operate as a deterrent. Thus he forbade a woman to have more than one maid, unless she was drunk; he forbade her to wear jewels or embroidered robes, or go abroad at night, except she was a prostitute; he forbade all but panders to wear gold rings or fine cloth. And it was said that he succeeded admirably in his legislation. The Spartans had such a contempt for cowards that those who fled in battle were compelled to wear a low dress of patches and shape, and, moreover, to wear a long beard half shaved, so that any one meeting them might give them a stroke. The Oppian law of Rome restricted women in their dress and extravagance, and the Roman knights had the privilege of wearing a gold ring. The ancient Babylonians held it to be indecent to wear a walking stick without an apple, a rose, or an eagle engraved on the top of it. The first Inca of Peru is said to have made himself popular by allowing his people to wear ear-rings—a distinction formerly confined to the royal family. By the code of China, the dress of the people was subject to minute regulation, and any transgression was punished by fifty blows of the bamboo. And he who omitted to go into mourning on the death of a relation, or laid it aside too soon, was similarly punished. Don Edward of Portugal, in 1434, passed a law to suppress luxury in dress and diet, and with his nobles set an example. In Florence a like law was passed in 1471. And in Venice, laws regulating nearly all the expenses of families, in table, clothes, gaming and traveling. A law of the Muscovites obliged the people to crop their beards and shorten their clothes. In Zurich a law prohibited all except strangers to use carriages, and in Basle no citizen or inhabitant was allowed to have a servant behind his carriage. About 1292, Philip the Fair, of France, by edict, ordered how many suits of clothes, and at what price, and how many dishes at table should be allowed, and that no woman should keep a cur.

The Irish laws regulated the dress, and even its colors, according to the rank and station of the wearer. And the Brehon laws forbade men to wear brooches so long as to project and be dangerous to those passing near. In Scotland, a statute enacted that women should not come to Kirk or market with their faces covered, and that they should dress according to their estate. In the City of London, in the thirteenth century, women were not allowed to wear, in the highway or the market, a hood furred with other than lamb-skin or rabbit-skin. In the Middle Ages, it was not infrequent to compel prostitutes to wear a particular dress, so that they might not be mistaken for other women. And this was the law in the City of London, as appears from records of 1351 and 1382.

The views and objects of English legislators as to the general subject of dress, however preposterous in our eyes, were grave and serious enough. They were so confident of their ground that it was recited that "wearing inordinate and excessive apparel was a displeasure to God, was an impoverishing of the realm and enriching other strange realms and countries, to the final destruction of the husbandry of the realm, and leading to robberies."

The Statute of Diet and Apparel in 1363, and the later statutes, minutely fixed the proper dress for all classes according to their estate, and the price they were to pay; handicraftsmen were not to wear clothes above forty shillings, and their families were not to wear silk or velvet. And so with gentlemen and esquires, merchants, knights and clergy, according to graduations. Ploughmen were to wear a blanket and a linen girdle. No female belonging to the family of a servant in husbandry was to wear a girdle garnished with silver. Every person beneath a lord was to wear a jacket reaching to his knees, and none but a lord was to wear pikes to his shoes exceeding two inches. (1463.) Nobody but a member of the royal family was to wear cloth of gold or purple silk, and none under a knight to wear velvet, damask or satin, or foreign wool, or fur of sable. It is true, notwithstanding all these restrictions, that a license of the king enabled the licensee to wear anything. For one whose income was under twenty pounds, to wear silk in his night-cap was to incur three months' imprisonment or a fine of ten pounds a day. And all above the age of six, except ladies and gentlemen, were bound to wear on the Sabbath day a cap of knitted wool. These statutes of apparel were not repealed till the reign of James I.

Sometimes, though rarely, a legislature has gone the length of suddenly compelling an entire change of dress among a people, for reasons at the time thought urgent.

In China a law was passed to compel the Tartars to wear Chinese clothes, and to compel the Chinese to cut their hair, with a view to unite the two races. And it was said there were many who preferred martyrdom to obedience.

So late as 1746, a statute was passed to punish with six months' imprisonment, and on a second offense with seven years' transportation, the Scottish Highlanders, men or boys, who wore their national costume or a tartan plaid, it being conceived to be closely associated with a rebellious disposition. After thirty-six years the statute was repealed. While the act was in force it was evaded by people carrying their clothes in a bag over their shoulders. The prohibition was hateful to all, as impeding their agility in scaling the craggy steeps of their native fastnesses. In 1748 the punishment assigned by the act of 1746 was changed into compulsory service in the army.

Plato says it is one of the unwritten laws of nature that a man shall not go naked into the market-place or wear woman's clothes. The Mosaic law forbade men to wear women's clothes, which was thought to be a mode of discountenancing the Assyrian rites of Venus. The early Christians, following a passage of St. Paul (1 Cor. xi.), treated the practice of men and women wearing each other's clothes as confounding the order of nature, and as liable to heavy censure of anathema.

There was formerly rigorous punishment of persons poaching game with blackened faces. Those who hunted in forests with faces disguised were declared to be felons. And as disguises led to crime, and mummers often were pretenders, all who assumed disguise or visors as mummers, and attempted to enter houses or committed assaults in highways, were liable to be arrested and committed to prison for three months, without bail.

The Mosaic law prohibited the practice of using alhenna, or putting an indelible color on the skin, as was done on occasions of mourning, or in resemblance of the dead, or in honor of some idol. And two fashions of wearing the beard and hair were prohibited, as has been supposed, on account of idolatrous association. Even Bacon said he wondered there was no penal law against painting the face.

(To be Continued.)

 

LIBERTY IN COMMON LIFE.

By Bolton Hall.

IT seems to me that none of us see how far-reaching freedom will be.

The Socialists have abundantly shown that if only the wastes of production and distribution were saved, two or three hours' labor per day would produce all that we produce now. If, in addition to this saving, the land, including all the resources of nature, were opened to labor, so that all workers would use the best parts of the earth to the best advantage, wealth would be so abundant that interest would disappear.

Even now, with increased production, and notwithstanding the restrictions on the issue of money and our crazy banking system, interest is decreasing so that we find it hard to get 4 per cent. here.

Suppose to-day the mortgages and railroad bonds, which are forms of ownership of land, were taken out of the market, what interest could we get? Certainly not one per cent.

Were the restrictions on production of the tariff, taxes on products of labor, patent monopolies, hindrances to the making of money through franchise privileges done away with, and above all were private appropriation of rent abolished, wealth would not be so abundant and so easy to obtain that it would not be worth anyone's while to keep account of what he had "lent" to another. With the disappearance, at once, of interest and of the fear of poverty the motive for accumulations of more than would be sufficient to provide against disability or old age will disappear, while such small but universal accumulations made available by a system of mutual banking will provide ample capital for all needed enterprises.

Co-operation will spring up as a labor-saving device, and the great abilities of the trust managers will be turned to public service instead of public plunder.

Henry George is wrong in thinking that the increased demand for capital due to free opportunities for labor would increase interest. If it did, it would perpetuate a form of slavery. He omits to notice that the very use of the capital would reproduce wealth and capital so much more abundantly that it would destroy the motive for accumulation.

The time will come—it is even now at hand—when dollars and meals and goods will be given to those who ask these as freely as candies or water or cigars are offered to visitors. If I am wrong in this, then I am wasting my efforts, as far as sincere efforts can be wasted.

If Socialism or Anarchism is needed to insure voluntary communism of goods, then it is for Socialism or Anarchism that we should work; and for me, if I could see, I would turn from single tax to either of them as readily as I would turn down hill if I found that up hill was the wrong road.

At present, hardly any one favors these views—of course, not plutocrats, because the doctrine is dangerous; not Socialists, because they think that its words turn Socialists into land reformers; nor Anarchists, because they regard compulsory payment of a fair price for the land one uses as a form of tax; not even single taxers, as yet, because they are wedded to the theory of Henry George.

My only fear, if there be room for fear, is that the new liberty and leisure will come too soon for the sordid people to make a wise use of it. Yet such a fear is like that of a man who should fear that his jaw would grind so hard as to destroy his teeth.

The world is moved by one Spirit, which everlastingly adjusts action against reaction, so that all is and always must be well.

Do not shy at truth for fear of its logical consequence.

STATISTICS.

By H. Kelly.

(Special Cable Despatch to "The Sun.")

"London.—The result of the first organized census of the British Empire is issued in a Blue Book. It shows that the empire consists of an approximate area of 11,908,378 square miles, or more than one-fifth of the entire land area of the world.

"The population is about 400,000,000, of whom 54,000,000 are whites. The population is roughly distributed as follows: In Asia, 300,000,000; Africa, 43,000,000; Europe, 42,000,000; America, 7,500,000, and Australasia, 5,000,000.

"The most populous city after London is Calcutta. The highest proportion of married persons is in India, Natal, Cyprus and Canada. The lowest is in the West Indies. Depression in the birth rate is general almost everywhere, but is most remarkable in Australasia. The proportion of insane persons in the colonies is much below that in the United Kingdom. Insanity is markedly decreasing in India, despite consanguineous marriages. Indeed, the theory that such marriages produce mental unsoundness is little supported by these statistics."

To those who read without preconceived notions, the figures given above show how history repeats itself. The British Empire is decaying at the centre, and the census just taken proves it conclusively. The proportion of insane in the colonies, even in poor famine-stricken India, is "much below" that in the United Kingdom. Striking as these figures on insanity are, they convey but a part of the truth as to the real condition of the people of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, as all reference to their material well-being (if we were Christians we would add and spiritual, for over one million people in these countries never heard of God) is carefully omitted. Charles Booth, author of that truly great work, "Life and Labor in London," seventeen volumes, estimates that 30 per cent. of the population of the United Kingdom live in a state of poverty, and Seebohm Rowntree, author of "Poverty, A Study of Town Life," puts it at 27.84 per cent. Mr. Rowntree also states that an average of one person in five, or 20 per cent. of the population, die in some public institution, i. e., prison, poor-house, hospital or insane asylum. These statements are depressing enough as they are, but they become worse when we learn that the standard of living upon which they are based are those enjoyed—we use the word advisedly—by poor-house inmates. Think of this, ye Pharisees, Christian and otherwise, 30 per cent. of the population of the British Isles living under such conditions! These are not the idle statements of long-haired reformers or yellow journalists, but of two very estimable Christian gentlemen, both of them manufacturers and successful business men. They are different from the ordinary exploiter only in the sense of being honest and humane enough to recognize that something is radically wrong with modern civilization and make an earnest attempt to remedy it.

In this connection it is worthy of note that when the proprietors of the London "Daily News" had a systematic canvas and investigation made into the housing conditions in London, some six or seven years ago, it was found that 900,000 people, one-fifth of the population, were living in violation of the law. This was the case notwithstanding that the law says 400 cubic feet of air space for each adult and 200 cubic feet for each child must be provided, whereas Professor Huxley, who at one time was a physician in the East End of London, said at least 800 cubic feet for an adult and 400 cubic feet for a child was absolutely necessary to keep the air in a fair state of purity.

It was and is the proud boast of millions of people that they are co-inheritors of this glorious empire, an empire the greatest the world has ever seen: 400,000,000 souls and an area so vast that the sun never sets on all its parts at one time. Pete Curran, the Trade Unionist and Socialist, once remarked he knew parts of the empire upon which the sun never shone, and Pete knew.

Glory and aggrandizement based upon injustice brings its own reward, and when a people subjugate and exploit another, they must inevitably pay the price of their own brutality and injustice. The handwriting is on the wall in the shape of the present census report. Decaying at the centre, the British Empire is rapidly going the way of the Persian, Greek and Roman Empires, and her name will be synonymous with injustice as theirs are. Nations no more than individuals can thrive, expand and develop their best faculties unless their lives are based upon freedom and justice. Not freedom to exploit a weaker person or people, not justice before the law which is a mockery and a sham, but freedom for each to live his own life in his own way, and justice to all in the shape of equal opportunity to the earth and all it may contain.

This lesson applies equally to America, and if any of my countrymen are so blind as not to see it, they deserve pity rather than censure, and it is to be hoped their awakening will not long be delayed.

GERHART HAUPTMANN WITH THE WEAVERS OF SILESIA.

By Max Baginski.

WHEN I look at the last engraving in the illustrated edition of "Hannele," at the Angel of Death with the impenetrable brow, over whom Hannele passes into the region of beauty, I have the consciousness, that that is Gerhart Hauptmann, such is the inexhaustible wealth of his inner world.

The stress of the life effort and the certainty of death, groping forth from delicate intimacies, ripened the fineness and sweetness of this man's soul. The picture contains transitoriness, finiteness, yet also a vista of new formation, new land.

Of Gerhart Hauptmann one can say, his art has given meaning to the idea of human love, which in this period is looked upon with suspicious eyes as a bad coin, a new impetus, the reality and symbolic depth of which grips the heart. Out of his books one can draw life more than literature. A strong soul-similarity with Tolstoi might be observed, I think, if Hauptmann were a fighting spirit.

I met the poet among the weavers of the Eulengebirge, Silesia, in the districts of greatest human misery, February, 1891, in Langenbielau, the large Silesian weaving village. One evening, on my return from a journey, I was informed that a tall gentleman in black had inquired for me. The name of the stranger was Gerhart Hauptmann, who came to study the conditions of the weaving districts. The visitor had taken lodgings in the "Preussischen Hof," where I called on him the same evening, with joyous expectation. The name of Gerhart Hauptmann in those days seemed to contain a watchword, a battle call: not only against the unimportant thrones of literature at that time but also against social oppression, prejudices and moral crippling. Hauptmann's first drama, "Vor Sonnenaufgang," had just appeared and been produced by the Free Stage in Berlin; and had operated like an explosive. It was followed by a flood of vicious and vile criticism. The literary clique little imagined that the future held great success for such "stuff" both in book form and on the stage.

This lamentable lack of judgment misled the various pot-boiler writers to attack the new tendency with the most repulsive arguments. One leading paper of those days wrote of Hauptmann as an individual of a pronounced criminal physiognomy, of whom one could expect nothing else but dirty, appalling things.

Such literary highway assaults made one feel doubly happy over the fact, that together with Hauptmann were a few splendidly armed fighters, like the aged Fontane, with his great poise and fine exactness.

The first impression of Hauptmann was that he was not a man of easy social carriage, rather discreet, almost shy, and uncommunicative. An absorbed, deep dreamer, yet a keen observer of the human all too human, not easily led astray, not Goethe, rather Hoelderlin.

The guest room of the "Preussischen Hof" contained many empty benches. The keeper thereof had ample time to meditate over the mission of the strange gentleman, in the weaving districts. I learned the next morning that he had quite decided that Hauptmann was some government emissary, intrusted with examining the prevailing distress of the weavers. One thing, however, appeared suspicious, the man associated with the "Reds," who, according to the government newspaper, only exaggerated the need and poverty to incite the people for their own political ends.

Whether or not the misery of the weavers that winter had reached such a point as to warrant an official investigation, had been the topic of discussion for weeks. The State Attorney, too, had taken an active part in the matter. The criticism in the labor paper, "The Proletarian," of which I was the editor, that the exorbitant profit-making methods of the manufacturers, which left the workers nothing to live on, were met with a number of indictments against the paper on the following grounds: "It was indictable to incite the public at the moment when the prevailing poverty was in itself sufficient to arouse the people and cause danger; that this was criminal, and therefore punishable. The distress was thereby officially acknowledged; was that not sufficient? Why then hold the conditions up before the special attention of the people?"

We mapped out a tour through the home-weaving settlements. At Langenbielau, the textile industry had to a large extent been carried on in mills and factories and at a higher wage. Misery was not so appalling and hopeless there, as in the huts of the home weavers.

The following days unrolled a horrible picture before the eyes of the poet. The figures of Baumann and Ansorge from his play "The Weavers" became real.

With mute accusation on their lips, they moved before the human eye in tangible shape; yet one longed to believe they were only phantoms. They lived, but how they lived was a burning shame to civilization. Huts, standing deep in the snow, like whitened sepulchres, and despair staring from every nook, in these days of paternal care, just as at the time of the famine that swept across the district in 1844.

Strewn among the hills and valleys lay bits of industry that had been passed by technical progress, as so many damned, spooklike spots; and yet those, who vegetated, worked and gradually perished here, were compelled to compete with the great productive giants of steel and iron machinery.

The poet entered these homes not with the spirit of a cool observer, nor as a samaritan,—he came as man to man, with no appearance of one stooping to poor Lazarus. Indeed, it seemed as though Hauptmann walked with a much steadier gait in the path of human misery, than on the road of conventionality.

Steinseifersdorf, situated beyond Peterswaldau. A bare snow field, spread about huts of clay, shingles and branches, without a sign of life. Neither a cat, dog nor sparrow, not even chimney smoke, to indicate the activity of the inhabitants. Heated dwellings in this stretch of land are luxuries, difficult of achievement; and how is one to prepare a warm meal out of nothing?

We attempted to enter one of the huts to the right; there was no path leading to it, so that we were compelled to work our way through the deep snow. Was it possible that human beings breathed within? The old weather-worn shanty looked as if the slightest breeze would tumble it over. The few wooden steps, leading to the entrance, creaked underneath our steps, and our knock was met with dead silence. We knocked again, and this time heard a faint step slowly moving toward the door; a heavy wooden bolt was moved aside, and we perceived a human face, with the expression of a wounded, frightened animal. Like a delinquent, caught at the offense, the human being at the door stared at the invaders. Not a ray of hope enlivened the dead expression. No doubt the man had long ceased to expect amelioration of his needs from his fellow beings. The figure was covered with rags, and what rags! Not the kind of rags, that tramps wear and which they throw off when luck strikes them, but eternal rags, that seemed to have grown to the skin, to have mingled with it so long that they had become part of it,—disgustingly filthy, but the only cover he had and that he could not throw away.

The man, about fifty years of age, was silent and led us through a dirty, cold gray entry into a room. In front of the loom we observed the drooping figure of a woman, a cold oven, four dirty, wet walls, at one of them a wooden bunk also covered with rags that served as bedding; nothing else. The man murmured something to the woman, she rose; both had inflamed eyes, water dripping from them with the same monotony as from the walls.

Hauptmann began to speak hesitatingly, depressed by the sight of such misery. He received a few harsh replies. The last piece of cloth had been delivered some time since; there was neither bread, flour, potatoes, coal nor wood in the house; in fact, no food or fuel of any sort. This was said in a subdued, fearful voice, as if they expected severe censure or punishment. Hauptmann gave the woman some money. The thought of going without leaving sufficient for a supply of food at least for the next few days, was agony.

On the widening of the road stood the village inn. The guest room showed little comfort, the innkeeper looked worn and in bad spirits. No trade. Innkeepers of factory towns are better off. They can afford guest rooms of a higher order, since they enjoy the patronage of bookkeepers, clerks and teachers. In Steinseifersdorf one had to depend on the weavers, and that did not bring enough for a square meal, especially in the winter. The wife of the innkeeper assured us that the misery in Kaschbach, a neighboring village, was even greater, even more awful. It was getting late, so we decided to go there the following day.

Our conversation on our ride homeward dwelt on the fate of these unfortunates, condemned by modern industrialism to a life of the Inferno. I asked Hauptmann what an effect an artistic, dramatic representation of such a fate could possibly have. He replied that his inclinations were more for summernight's dreams toward sunny vistas, but that an impelling inner force urged him to use this appalling want as an object of his art. As for the hoped-for effect, human beings are not insensible; even the most satisfied, the most comfortable or rich must be gripped in his innermost depths when pictures of such terrible human wretchedness are being unrolled before him. Every human being is related to another.

My remark that the right of possession has the tendency to blind those who are part of it, Hauptmann would not accept as generally true. He was anxious to bring the sympathies of the wealthy into energetic activity; sympathies that would, of course, bring to the poor real relief from their hideous conditions. He added that the poverty of the masses had at times tortured him to such an extent that he was unable to partake of his meals, which were meager enough, especially during his student life in Zurich; yet he had felt ashamed of partaking of such a luxury as a cup of coffee even. I had to admit that I could not share his hopes of the influence of an artistic portrayal of the sufferings of the weavers upon the people of wealth. Self-satisfied virtue is hard to move. Rather did I believe that a great work of art, treating of the life of the masses, was bound to rouse their consciousness to their own conditions.

At that time, I believe, Hauptmann had already completed his "Weavers." His journey into the weaving district was not to collect material for the structure of that tremendous play, rather than it was devoted to details, localities and landscapes. He had already drawn up the outline for his other play, "College Crampton," portraying a genial and joyous man, of whom narrowness and miserableness of surroundings make a caricature and who is finally wrecked.

Langenbielau, after our journey through the Golgatha of poverty, seemed a place of relief. The mills, with the increasing noise of machines that dulls the ears and racks the nerves, are by no means an elevating sight, but they bring the workingmen together and awaken their feeling and understanding of solidarity and the necessity for concerted action. Here, in spite of sunken chests, great fatigue, poor nourishment, one felt the breeze of the struggling proletarian mind that indicated a new land of regeneration, beyond the misery of our times.

For one of the evenings a gathering of the older weavers was arranged. Hauptmann had a plate set for each one. During the meal a lively discussion developed. There was one weaver, Mathias, very bony, and with a skin like parchment, very poor, but blessed with many children. He related of a bet he had won. The owner of the tavern where we were having our feast had expressed doubt as to the ability of Mathias to consume three pounds of pork at once. He volunteered to do it, if the meat would be paid for and a quantity of beer added to it. A neighbor was intrusted with the preparation of the roast. At the appointed hour Mathias appeared, together with two other men as witnesses of the contest. The prize eating began, when Mathias was confronted by an obstacle: Five children belonging to the neighbor surrounded the table, with their eyes widely opened at the unusual sight of a roast. Their little faces expressed great desire and their mouths began to water. The prize eater felt very uncomfortable before the longing look of the children. He imagined himself a hard-hearted guzzler, only concerned about his own stomach. He forgot the bet, cut up some of the meat and was about to place it before the children, when a howl of protest arose. This was not permitted, if he wanted to win he would have to eat the entire roast himself. Mathias submitted, but dropped his eyes in shame before the children. Time and again he involuntarily passed portions of meat to them, but his attempts were frustrated by renewed protests. He could not continue, however, until the little ones were taken out into the cold. There was no other place, since the only room was taken up by the parties concerned in the contest. They might have been put into the cold, dark garret, but that would have been too cruel and would have made Mathias unable to carry out the feat. The undertaking was finished, but the winner felt quite wretched; he was conscious of having committed a great sin against the simplest of human demands.

The conversation turned to the uprising of the weavers in 1844. Many incidents of those days were related. Various legend-like and fantastic stories told. Also names of people of the neighborhood who had participated in that historic event.

The entire affair was very informal and simple, and not an atom of the oppressive atmosphere one feels in the relations between the members of the upper and lower stations of life.

The next morning we started for Kaschbach. The place looked even more dismal than the one we had visited the day previous. In one of the huts a weaver, with a swollen arm in a sling, led us into a corner of the room. On a bunk covered with straw and rags lay a woman with a little baby near her. Its body was covered with a terrible rash, perfectly bare, almost hidden within the floor rags. The shy father, himself in pain, stood near, the personification of helplessness. If only there were food in the house! The district physician? He would have been compelled to prescribe food, light, warmth and sanitation for every hut he visited, if he did not wish his science to prove a mockery. He could not do that, so he came but rarely. Humanitarianism, thus far your name is impotency! All that could be done was to leave money and hurry out into the air.

The next abode might be considered pleasant compared with the previous one. Two elderly people, not so worn and wan, and not so ragged. The man was weaving, still having some work at times; his wife, very pleasant and amiable, was almost ready to praise the good fortune of their home. "We are better off than our neighbors," she said with some pride. She pointed to a freshly cut loaf of bread, to the fire in the oven, to a table and a real bed—a great fortune, indeed. The walls were covered with some colored prints, representing virtue, patience, endurance to the end. One picture showed the return of the prodigal son, one the ejection of Hagar from the house of Abraham. Our hostess could boast of the luxury of a coffee mill even, and, after she had ground and brewed the coffee, we were invited to partake of it, which we gratefully did. Local and general affairs were talked over; the man, quite talkative, but careful and reticent in his remarks, especially when religious and political questions were approached. His remarks were kept within careful lines so as not to offend. Hauptmann said afterwards that he had noticed such cautiousness in all weavers. No doubt it had grown out of the great poverty that often brought out diffidence and reticence toward strangers.

Hauptmann sat on a low stool, and, while we were sipping our coffee, the woman petted him tenderly on the brow. "Yes, yes, young man, Want, the awfulness of Want, but we cannot complain." At our departure, she pointed to a hut nearby and said: "The people in there are nearly starved." It was not exaggerated. When we entered, we saw a woman in the dismal gray of the room, surrounded by a number of crying children. Two or three of the maturer girls, thin and pale and drawn out by the Procrustean bed of poverty, secretly wiped the last drops of tears from their suffering faces. Hunger reigned supreme within these walls. The woman, in the last stage of pregnancy, suffered the keenest under the lamentations of the younger children, to whom she could give no food. The husband had been gone two days on a begging tramp. He would surely bring home something, though it was very difficult to get anything in this neighborhood. One must tramp a long distance for a piece of bread. Yesterday they could still obtain a few potatoes, but to-day she had nothing more to give, nor did she know what to tell the children. She had implored the minister to let her have something to eat, if only a few morsels, but he had nothing himself, he said. The tightly pressed lips of the older girls trembled violently, every breath of the family was despair. Our presence had silenced the cries of the children with the frost-bitten faces, but when we left, they again would tear the heart of their mother, their weak little voices calling for bread.

No one could expect such fatalism from these starving little ones, that they should coolly and philosophically analyse the "economic necessity" that condemned their parents to a desperate battle with hunger. The only thing that could perform miracles here was a coin. The poor woman did not dare to believe that she actually held one in her hand. That which was to secure these unfortunates relief from death, at the same moment fostered elsewhere conceit, corruption and extravagance, and is being used for the conversion of heathen to brotherly love. The terrible sight of this mother and her little ones conjured up the heartlessness and emptiness of all philanthropy and charity for dumb misery. Greatest of all social crimes, that makes the possibility of stilling the hunger of the little children dependent on money.

One morning Hauptmann and I went on foot to Reichenbach, where I introduced him to an old weaver, a Socialist, who had participated in the co-operative scheme proposed by Bismarck. The old man had much of interest to relate of this venture, that had been very meagerly assisted by the government. He said that the association could have survived, had it not been for the conspiracy of the manufacturers, who had a large capital at their disposal. The result of this, for the co-operative movement, was the closing of the market. At one time all the weaving products sent to the Leipzig Fair had to be transported back; a clandestine but effective boycott had made the sale thereof impossible. With much more gusto he related the days of Lassalle's agitation—that had brought life into the still limbs of the masses, a great change had seemed to be at hand. The wife of our old friend, too, had hoped for the change; but now, she remarked somewhat resigned, "we old people would rejoice if we were confident that the young generation would live to bring about the change."

In this house we met a widow with a thirteen-year-old daughter. Hauptmann found the child very striking. She had beautiful, soft, golden-blond hair, deep-set eyes and a very delicate, pale complexion. I learned later that he sent her occasional gifts. And when I read "Hannele" I could not rid myself of the thought that the vision of this child from Reichenbach must have haunted him when he created this drama.

That was my last outing with Hauptmann in the textile regions. A few months later I visited him at his home, located in the woods, close to the edge of a mountain.

Still later, when I was serving a term of imprisonment at the Schweidnitzer prison for my sins in exercising too much freedom of the press, I was overjoyed one morning by the news that Hauptmann had sent me a box of books. Through his kindness, Gottfried Keller, Konrad Ferdinand Meyer and other authors have illumined many dreary days of my cell life.

All the books reached me safely but the "Weavers," which had just been published at that time, and that I could not get hold of, in spite of every effort. The inspector had strict orders to consider that book as contraband.

Every time I went into the office to change one book for another, I saw the "Weavers" on the table. The temptation to shove the book under my jacket at an opportune moment was very great and trying, but unfortunately the State Attorney had instilled the idea into the head of the inspector that it was a very dangerous work; he never took his eyes from it.

Gerhart Hauptmann remained to the Schweidnitzer prison administration the most dangerous, prohibited author.

DISAPPOINTED ECONOMISTS.

Teachers and economists represent the bees as models of diligence. Behold how these little hard workers gather the honey together! Not a sign of obstinacy. They never insist on a certain number of hours for their workday, nor do they crave time for leisure, meditation or rest. Indeed, they employ all their energies, so that the owner of the beehive shall gain high profits.

No matter if they gather a thousandfold as much honey as they can consume, they never seek iniquity. Man takes all their wealth from them, and in the spring, in the beautiful month of May, when the flower cups begin to fill, the little hustlers resume their work again without complaint and without murmur.

Probably some economists regret that workmen are not endowed by nature with such an instinct for work as would let them feel nothing else but the desire to accumulate wealth for others.

It is too bad, indeed, that house builders, railroad workers, miners, garment workers and farmers are creatures with thinking faculties. That they should be able to analyze, to compare, to draw conclusions is really very unfortunate for the "Captains of Industry."

Next to the bee, the Asiatic coolie is the favorite ideal of the every-day economist. In one respect he surpasses the bee—he does not destroy drones.

VITAL ART.

Anny Mali Hicks.

IN order to estimate the value of any movement, whether social, economic, ethical or esthetic, it must be studied in its relation and attitude to general progress. Its effectiveness should be judged by what it contributes to the growth of the universal conscience. That "no man liveth unto himself alone" is never so true as now, because now it is more generally realized. Therefore, any expression which concerns itself solely with its own special field of action finds itself soon set aside, and presently becoming divorced from reality, ends as a sporadic type. Any expression, however, which responds to the larger life gains a vitality which insures its continuance.

Thus, the effort to apply certain truths not new in themselves, is a tendency to work in harmony with progress. The effort to apply principle, however imperfectly expressed, is important, not because of its results, but because of the desire to relate theory and action in a conduct of life. Almost every type of expression is undergoing its phase of application. Esthetics have somewhat aligned themselves to the others, but at last there is a movement, known as the arts and crafts movement, more properly called applied esthetics, which is the effort to relate art to life. The old banality, "Art for Art's sake," is obsolete, and the vital meaning of art is in a more rational and beautiful expression of life, as it were, the continent art of living well.

This is the ideal and educational aspect of applied esthetics. Within the limits of its exclusive circle and within the radius of its special activities there is a trend to contentment with the production of objects of "worth and virtue." The object of luxury, which in fact has no vital meaning to either the producer or consumer. Were the production of such things to be its only aim, it would soon defeat its own end. But this movement has in reality wider and more democratic ideals. Because of its power to stimulate self-expression and the creative impulses, its greatest and most vital influence is more social than artistic. It principally concerns itself with the desire of the worker to express in his work whatever impulse for beauty may be his. There is no surer way of feeling the pressure of present economic conditions. The value of applied esthetics is as a medicine to stir up social unrest and discontent. Its keynote is self-expression, and it is when men and women begin to think and act for themselves that they most keenly feel social and economic restrictions, and are made to suffer under them. But if suffering is necessary to growth, let us have it and have it over with by all means. No sane being will stand much of it without making an effort to get at its cause. It has been said that the most important part of progress is to make people think; it is vastly more important that they should feel. The average individual is not discontented with his surroundings, else he would go to work to change them. As a product of them he is benumbed by their mechanical influence, and consequently expresses himself within their limits. He is the mouthpiece of existing conditions, and, accordingly, acts in law-abiding fashion.

The larger emotional life, or inner social impulse emanates from those pioneers who, living beyond existing conditions, are the dynamics of society. Through them life pushes onward. The inner impulse becomes public opinion, public opinion becomes custom, custom crystallizes into law. Now the fresh impulse is needed for new growth; where shall it be sought if not in the expression of the emotional life? What form shall the expression take unless it be the purest and most spontaneous form of art, which is without purpose other than the expression of an impulse? This alone fosters the growth of the emotions.

Art, like justice, has many crimes committed in its name, and much called so that is merely a methodical and imitative performance. It is in no wise that spontaneous expression of life which, coming simply and directly as an impulse, takes a decorative or applied form. All the beginnings of art grew up in this way. In primitive peoples it is the first expression of emotional life, which comes after the material need is satisfied. The savage makes his spade or fish spear from the necessity of physical preservation. Thus from the joy of living he applies to it his feeling for beauty.

The earliest forms of art were all applied. Stone carving was applied to architecture, thus colored stones, called mosaics, as wall decorations; from these to the fresco; from the fresco to the pictorial form of painting. To-day the final degeneration of art is in the easel picture, which as an object detached and disassociated from its surroundings, takes refuge in the story-telling phase to justify its raison d'être. But, alas for the easel picture! alas, also, for the usual illustration, without which most literature would be so difficult to understand. In each case the one is there to help out the other's deficiency. Two important expressions of art, in a state of insubordination. It is the opera over again, where music and drama keep up an undignified race for prominence. Supposing an illustration were decorative in character echoing in a minor manner the suggested theme, would that not be a fitting background for the story-telling art? The Greeks knew very well what they were about when they introduced the relatively subordinate but decoratively important chorus into their dramas. This as well expresses their sense of relative proportion as does their sculpture and architecture.

What is decorative art, if not a sense of beauty applied to objects of use? That these need the emotional element as well as their element of service is as essential as the life breath in the body. It is the spark of divine fire which relates the actual to the ideal, resulting in the reality. It removes from our surroundings any influence which is solely mechanical. Applied art is alike because of its association with that which is necessary to life.

The test is necessity, not alone the physical, but likewise the emotional necessity, for all sides of our nature must be developed if life is to have full meaning and come to its maturity. The influence of applied esthetics is more vital because it is unconsciously absorbed through constant association. Imagine surroundings where everything which did not have a distinct use were eliminated and where everything else was distinctly fitted to its use. If this were put into practice in the usual household, a certain simplicity would be the result, to say the least. Most things with which we surround ourselves are neither useful nor beautiful. They are either so absurdly over-ornamented as to have their usefulness completely impaired, or else they are the usual mechanical device equally complicated and hideous. Ornament is usually an anomaly, added to cover structural defect. If the relation of the parts to the whole is perfect, beauty is there. But being accustomed to the over-ornamented and wholly mechanical, we do not resent their presence. For what, indeed, is habit not responsible? Even such innocent objects as pictures hang on our walls until they are scarcely noticed by us. Why not change them to suit our moods? Why not, indeed? There are so many of them, in the first place—and one remembers the time and trouble, even the family dissension which it took to hang them. But no one cares much, no one is alive enough to care much—the economic struggle which deadens our other senses is responsible for this also.

No unit of the social body can disentangle itself from existing conditions. Each is affected by all its influences. Some are more, some less, some are so much a part that they are not conscious. These last also suffer, but without knowing why. Vital education would show them. But the factory system pervades the school and art school as well as the factory.

What if the underlying force of education were spontaneous expression, instead of the limited method or system? The cry of the teacher is always, "It is very well to be spontaneous, but we must deal with the child en masse." The remedy for that is simple, because there is no real necessity to deal with children en masse. It is so much easier to apply the same system to each varied unit of a mass than to discover and help the individual expression of each. The basis of vital art, of vital education, is self-expression; from it and through it comes self-control. Self-repression is as socially uneconomic as jails and standing armies. If, instead of building prisons where human life is entombed, libraries where literature moulds, museums where art becomes archaic, why not establish centers of education, where spontaneous expression is encouraged, and where the soul, mind, and hand are simultaneously developed.

Think of a state where each individual working out from its own standpoint, truly without hypocrisy, would contribute his quota of individual life to the life of the whole. Pleasing himself in his work without fear. Then would come the true democracy, possible only under just economic conditions, where each has equal opportunity for self-expression. Then can the higher emotional life develop necessary to all human growth.
How smoothly everything might run along in this world of material supremacy, if only the workers were made up of such a desirable mixture as the bees and coolies.

Fortunately, Fate hath not willed it so.

KRISTOFER HANSTEEN.

By Voltairine De Cleyre.

"OF the earth, unearthly—"

The sentence remained unfinished as I had written it two years and a half ago when Disease laid its hand on me, and all my MSS. ended in a dash. It was a description of Kristofer Hansteen, an explanation of his work in Norway. And now that I am ready to pick up the thread of life again, I read that he is dead—of the earth no more, he who hardly ever belonged to it. At this moment the most insistent memory I have of that delicate, half-aërial personality are the words: "When the doctors told me that I might perhaps not live longer than spring, I thought: 'If I die, what will become of Anarchism in Norway?'" He had no other idea of his meaning in life than this.

Somewhere fluctuant in my memory runs broken music—you have heard it?—"an ineffectual angel, beating his luminous wings within the void,"—something like that,—words descriptive of Shelley—they haunt me whenever I would recall Kristofer Hansteen. Perhaps to those who had known him in his youth, before his body was consumed like a half-spent taper, he might have seemed less spirit-like; but when I met him, three years ago this coming August, his eyes were already burning with ethereal fires, the pallor of waste was on the high, fine forehead, the cough racked him constantly, and there was upon the whole being the unnameable evanescence of the autumn leaf; only—his autumn came in summer.

The utter incapacity of the man before the common, practical requirements of life would have been irritating to ordinary individuals. The getting of a meal or the clothing of the body with reference to the weather, were things that he thought of vaguely, uncomfortably, only with forced attention. What he saw clearly, entranced by the vision, was the future—the free future. He had been touched by the wan wizard of Olive Schreiner's Dream of Wild Bees, and "the ideal was real to him." The things about him, other people's realities, were shadows—oppressive shadows, indeed, but they did not concern him deeply. It was the great currents of life he saw as real things, and among all the confusion of world-movements he could trace the shining stream that ran towards liberty; and with his hectic face and burning eyes he followed it, torn by the cough and parched by the fever.

The Hansteens are a well-known family in Norway, clever and often eccentric, Kristofer's aunt, Aosta Hansteen, at the time of my visit an old lady over eighty, having fought many a battle for the equality of woman both in Norway and America. Artist, linguist, and literary woman of marked ability, but, after the manner of her cotemporaries, rather outlandish and even outrageous in her attacks on masculine prerogative, she is a target for satirists and wits, few of whom, however, approach her virility of intellect. Her father, Kristofer's grandfather, was an astronomer and mathematician. In his youth Kristofer had gone afoot through the "dals" of Norway, and when he took me through the art galleries of Kristiania he was a most interesting guide, through his actual acquaintance with the scenes and the characters of the dalesmen depicted. He knew the lights upon the snow and rocks, just what time of the year shone on the leaves, where the wood-paths wound, the dim glories of the mist upon the fjords, the mountain stairways in their craggy walls, and the veiled colors of the summer midnight. And he knew the development of Norwegian art life and literary life, as one who wanders always in those paths, mysteriously lit.

Our hours of fraternization were few but memorable. He was a frequent visitor at the house of Olav Kringen, the editor of the daily Social Democrat, a big, kindly Norseman, who had remembered me from America, and who had defended me in his paper against the ridiculous charge in the ordinary press that I had come there to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm. Through the efforts of Hansteen and the kindliness and largemindedness of Kringen and his Socialistic comrades, I spoke before the Socialistic League of Youth in their hall in Kristiania. The hall was crowded, over eight hundred being present, and there was some little money in excess of expenses, which was given to me. I shared it with Hansteen, and he looked up with a bright flash in his dark eyes: "Now," said he, "'Til Frihet' will come out one month sooner." "Til Frihet" (Towards Freedom) was his paper; and would you know how it came out? He set it up in his free moments, he did the mechanical work; and then, being too poor to pay for its delivery through the post, except the few copies that were sent abroad, he took it from house to house himself, over the hills of Kristiania!—he, a consumptive, the cough rending him!

There was a driving rain the night I left the city; he wore no rubbers or gum-coat. I was in hopes that he might think the propaganda deserved that its one active worker should get a pair of rubbers, since he must carry papers through the rain. I reminded him that he should keep his feet dry; he only glanced at them as if they were no concern of his, and—"'Til Frihet' will come out one month sooner."

It was in "Til Frihet" that he had been guilty of high treason. It happened once that King Oscar, in temporary retirement from public king-business, had left over to the Crown Prince the execution of certain matters, which according to the "Ground Law" of Norway could not be so left; whereupon Comrade Hansteen printed an editorial saying, "Oscar has broken the ground-law, and there is no more a King in Norway." For this he was charged with high treason, and to escape imprisonment he went to England, where he remained about a year among the London comrades. On his return, there was some threat of carrying out the prosecution, but, probably to avoid wider publication of the king's "treason," the matter was dropped. Previous to that Comrade Hansteen had had experience of prison life. In a May-day procession, ostensibly to include all labor reform or revolutionary parties, he, declaring that Anarchists should be given place too, marched, carrying a red flag. The chief of police directed a subordinate to take the flag away from him. Easily enough done, but not, as an evidence of unwilling submission, before he had struck the official in the face with his hand. That little hand, weak and delicate as a woman's! An ordinary man would have pushed it aside like a feather and thought no more of it; but the official paid tribute to the big will behind the puny flesh by sentencing him to seven months in prison.

My ignorance of Norwegian prevents my giving any adequate idea of his work. I know he was the author of a little pamphlet, "Det frie samfund" (Free Society), and that he had translated and published one of Krapotkin's works (whether "The State" or "The Conquest of Bread," I do not now remember), which he had issued in a series of instalments, intended ultimately to be bound together. As I recall the deep earnestness of his face in speaking of the difficulties he had had in getting it out, and the unsolved difficulties still facing its completion, I find myself wanting to pray that he saw that precious labor finished. It was so much to him. And I prophecy that the time will come when young Norwegians will treasure up those sacrificial fragments as dearer than any richer and fuller literature. They are the heart's blood of a dying man—the harbinger of the anarchistic movement in Norway.

I cannot say good-bye to him forever without a word concerning his personal existence, as incomprehensible to the practical as his social dreams perhaps. He had strong love of home and children; and once he said, the tone touched with melancholy: "It used to pain me to think that I should die and have no son; but now I am contented that I have no son." One knew it was the wrenching cough that made him "contented." A practical man would have rejoiced to be guiltless of transmitting the inheritance, but one could see the dreamer grieved. His eyes would grow humid looking at his little daughters; and indeed they were bright, beautiful children, though not like him. In his early wanderings he had met and loved a simple peasant woman, unlettered, but with sound and serviceable common sense, and with the beauty of perfect honesty shining in her big Norse-blue eyes. It was then and it is now a wonder to me how in that mystical brain of his, replete with abstractions, generalizations, idealizations, he placed his love for wife and children; strong and tender as it was, one could appreciate at once that he had no sense of the burden of practical life which his wife seemed to have taken up as naturally hers. The whole world of the imagination wherein he so constantly moved seemed entirely without her ken, yet this did not seem to trouble either. Nor did the fact that his unworldliness doubled her portion of responsibility seem to cause him to reflect that she was kept too busy, like Martha of old, to "choose that good part" which he had chosen. Thinking of it now, still with some sense of puzzlement, I believe his love for human creatures, and especially within the family relation, were of that deep, still, yearning kind we feel towards the woods and hills of home; the silent, unobtrusive presence fills us with rest and certainty, and we are all unease when we miss it; yet we take it for granted, and seldom dwell upon it in our active thoughts, or realize the part it plays in us; it belongs to the dark wells of being.

Dear, falling star of the northland,—so you have gone out, and—it was not yet morning.

FIFTY YEARS OF BAD LUCK.

By Sadakichi Hartmann.

EVERY occupant of the ramshackle, old-fashioned studio building on Broadway knew old Melville, the landscape painter, who had roughed life within its dilapidated walls for more than a score of years. In former years the studio building had been quite fashionable and respectable; there is hardly a painter of reputation in New York to-day who has not, once in his life, occupied a room on the top floor. But in these days of "modern improvements," of running water and steam heat, of elevators and electric lights, it has lost its standing and is inhabited by a rather precarious and suspicious clan of pseudo artists, mountebanks who vegetate on the outskirts of art; "buckeye painters," who turn out a dozen 20x30 canvases a day for the export trade to Africa and Australia; unscrupulous fabricators of Corots and Daubignys, picture drummers who make such rascality profitable, illustrators of advertising pamphlets, and so-called frescoe painters, who ornament ceilings with sentimental clouds, with two or three cupids thrown in according to the price they extort from ignorant parvenues.

And yet, no matter on what by-roads these soldiers of fortune wandered to earn their dubious livelihood, they all respected the white-bearded tenant, in his shabby gray suit, a suit which he wore at all seasons, and which time seemed to have treated just as unkindly as the bent and emaciated form of its wearer. Old Melville gave offense to nobody, and always had a pleasant word for everybody, but, as he was not talkative, and the other tenants were too busy to bother an old man painting, nobody knew much about his mode of living, the standard of his art, or his past history.

Very few had ever entered his studio—he had neither patrons nor intimate friends—and very likely they would not have enjoyed their visit. A peculiar gloomy atmosphere pervaded the room, almost sickening in its frugality, and as its skylight lay north, the sun never touched it. It had something chilly and uncanny about it even in summer. The floor was bare, furniture there was none, except an old worn-out kitchen table and chair, an easel and an old box which served as a bookcase for a few ragged unbound volumes. The comfort of a bed was an unknown luxury to him; he slept on the floor, on a mattress which in daytime was hidden with his scant wardrobe and cooking utensils in a corner, behind a gray faded curtain. His pictures, simple pieces of canvas with tattered edges, nailed to the four walls, leaving hardly an inch uncovered, were the only decoration and furnished a most peculiar wall paper, which heightened the dreariness of the room.

There was after all a good deal of merit to old Melville's landscapes; on an average they were much better than many of those hung "on the line"; the only disagreeable quality was their sombreness of tone. He invariably got them hopelessly muddy in color, despite their resembling the color dreams of a young impressionist painter at the start. He worked at them so long until they became blurred and blotchy, dark like his life, a sad reflection of his unprofitable career.

It was nearly thirty years ago that he had left his native town and had come to New York as a boy of sixteen. He already knew something of life then; at an early age he had been obliged to help to support his family, and had served an apprenticeship as printer and sign painter. In New York he determined to become an artist: a landscape painter, who would paint sunshine as had never been done before; but many years elapsed before he could pursue his ambition. Any amount of obstacles were put in his way. He had married and had children, and could only paint in leisure hours, all his other time being taken up in the endeavor to provide for his family, by inferior work, inferior decoration, etc. Not before years of incessant vicissitudes, heart-rending domestic troubles and sorrow, not before his poor wife had died of consumption—that awful day when he had to run about all day in the rain to borrow money enough to bury her!—and his children had been put in a charitable institution, he took up painting as a profession. Then the hard times, which are proverbial with struggling artists without means, began; only they were easier to bear, as he was suffering alone. In days of dispossess and starvation he had at least his art to console him, and he remained true to her in all those years of misery, and never degraded himself again to "pot boiling." In hours of despair, he also tried his hand at it, but simply "couldn't do it." Now and then he had a stroke of luck, a moderate success, but popularity and fame would not come. His pictures were steadily refused by the Academy. Every year he made a new effort, but in vain.

One day, when one of his large pictures was exhibited in the show window of a fashionable art store, a rich collector stepped out of his carriage and, entering the store, asked, "How much do you want for the Inness you have in the window?" The picture dealer answered, "It is no Inness, but just as good a piece of work." "No Inness!" ejaculated the man who wanted to buy a name, "then I don't want it," and abruptly left the store. This event, trifling as it was, threw a pale halo over old Melville's whole life and gave him strength to overcome many a severe trial. He hoped on, persevering in his grim fight for existence, despite failures and humiliation.

But the years passed by, and he still sat there in his studio, and in its emptiness, its walls covered with his dark and unsold pictures, whose tone seemed to grow darker with every year. He was one of those sensitive beings who continually suffer from the harsh realities of life, who are as naive as children, and therefore as easily disillusionized, and nevertheless cannot renounce their belief in the ideal. Not a day passed that he did not sit several hours before his easel, trying to paint sunshine as it really is. Nobody in this busy world, however, took notice of his efforts or comprehended the pathos of old Melville's life, those fifty years of bad luck. And yet such martyr-like devotion to art, such a glorious lifelong struggle against fate and circumstances, is so rare in modern times that one might expect the whole world to talk about it in astonished admiration.

And how did he manage to get along all this time, these twenty-five years or more, since "pot boiling" had become an unpardonable crime to him? Now and then he borrowed a dollar or so, that lasted him for quite a while, as his wants were almost reduced to nothing. Of course he was always behind in the rent, but as he sometimes sold a sketch, he managed somehow to keep his studio. He did not eat more than once a day. "Too much eating is of no use," he consoled himself, and in this respect he had many colleagues in the fraternity of art, as more than one-half of our artists do not manage to get enough to eat, which fact may explain why many paint so insipidly.

A few days before his sudden death, an old gentleman, a chance acquaintance, was talking with him about the muddy coloring of the pictures. Old Melville's eyes wandered over the four walls representing a life's work; at first he ardently argued in their favor, but finally gave in that they, perhaps, were a little bit too dark. "Why do you not take a studio where you can see real sunlight; there is one empty now with Southern exposure, right in this building." Old Melville shook his head, murmuring some excuses of "can't afford it," of "being used so long to this one," but his visitor insisted, "he would pay the rent and fix matters with the landlord." The good soul did not understand much about painting, about tones and values, but merely wanted to get the old man into a more cheerful room.

It was difficult for old Melville to take leave of his studio, in which he had seen a quarter of a century roll by, which he had entered as a man in the best years of his life, and now left as an old man; but when he had moved into the new room, the walls of which were an agreeable gray, he exclaimed, "How nice and light!" After arranging his few earthly possessions, he brought out a new canvas, opened a side window, sat down once more before his easel, and gazed intently at the sunshine streaming in and playing on the newly painted and varnished floor.

For years he had wielded the brush every day, but on this day he somehow could not paint; he could not find the right harmony. He at first attributed it to a cold which he had contracted, but later on, irritated and somewhat frightened, he mumbled to himself, "I fear I can't paint in this room." And thus he sat musing at his easel with the blank canvas before him, blank as once his youth had been, full of possibilities of a successful career, when suddenly an inspiration came upon him. He saw before him the orchard of his father's little Canadian farm, with the old apple trees in bloom, bathed in the sweet and subtle sunlight of spring, a scene that for years had lain hidden among the faint, almost forgotten memories of his childhood days, but now by some trick of memory was conjured up with appalling distinctiveness. This he wished to realize in paint, and should he perish in the effort!

Feverishly he seized his palette and brushes, for hours and hours he painted—the sunlight had long vanished from his studio floor, a chill wind blew through the open window and played with his gray locks—and when the brush at last glided from his hand he had accomplished his lifelong aim—he had painted sunshine.

Slowly he sank back in his chair, the arms hanging limp at his sides, and his chin falling on his chest, an attitude a painter might adopt gazing at a masterpiece he had just accomplished—in this case old Melville's painting hours were over for evermore, his eyes could no longer see the colors of this world. Like a soldier he had died at his post of duty, and serene happiness over this final victory lay on his features. In every life some ideal happiness is hidden, which may be found, and for which we should prospect all our days. Old Melville had attained his little bit of sunshine rather late in life, but he had called it his own, at least for however short a moment, while most of us others, whom life treats less scurvily, blinded by foolish and selfish desire, cannot even succeed in grasping material happiness, which crosses our roads quite often enough and stands at times right near us, without being recognized.

And the fate of old Melville's pictures? Who knows if they may not some day, when their colors have mellowed, be discovered in some garret, and re-enter the art world in a more dignified manner? True enough, they will not set the world on fire, yet they may be at least appreciated as the sincere efforts of a man who loved his art above all else, and, despite deficiencies, had a keen understanding for nature and considerable ability to express it. Whatever their future may be, his work has not been in vain. It is the cruel law of human life that hundreds of men must drudge their whole lives away in order that one may succeed, not a bit better than they; in the same way in art, hundreds of talents must struggle and suffer in vain that one may reach the cloud-wrapped summit of popularity and fame. And that road is sure to lead over many corpses, and many of the nobler altruistic qualities of man have to be left far behind in the valley of unknown names.

Life was brutal to you, old Melville! But this way or that way, what is the difference?

There was a time when in the name of God and of true faith in Him men were destroyed, tortured, executed, beaten in scores and hundreds of thousands. We, from the height of our attainments, now look down upon the men who did these things.

But we are wrong. Amongst us there are many such people, the difference lies only here—that those men of old did these things then in the name of God, and of His true service, whilst now those who commit the same evil amongst us do so in the name of "the people," "for the true service of the people."—Leo Tolstoy.

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American Communities: New and Old Communistic, Semi-Communistic, and Co-Operative. By W. A. Hinds  .  .   $1.00

History of the French Revolution. (An excellent work for students. It begins with a sketch of history of the earliest times; the decline of the ancient empires, the rise of the French monarchy, and traces the causes which made the Revolution inevitable. The philosophic conclusion is unsurpassed, and the position taken, laying a foundation for the philosophy of freedom, is bound to attract the attention of thinkers.) By C. L. James. Reduced to  .  .   50c.

Origin of Anarchism. By C. L. James  .  .   5c.

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Anarchist Morality. By P. Kropotkin  .  .   5c.

History of Civilization In England. By Henry Thomas Buckle  .  .   $2.00

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Garrison the Non-Resistant. 16mo, cloth, 144 pages, with photogravure portrait, 50c.; by mail  .  .   55c.

Plain Talk In Psalm and Parable. A collection of chants in the cause of justice and brotherhood. 12mo, cloth, 188 pages, $1.50; by mail, $1.62. Paper, 40c.; by mail  .  .   44c.

Captain Jinks, Hero. A keen satire on our recent wars, in which the parallel between savagery and soldiery is unerringly drawn. Profusely illustrated by Dan Beard. 12mo, cloth, 400 pages, postpaid  .  .   $1.50

Swords and Plowshares. A collection of poems filled with the hatred of war and the love of nature. (Not sold by us in Great Britain.) 12mo, cloth, 126 pages, $1.20; by mail  .  .   $1.29

Tolstoy and His Message. "A concise and sympathetic account of the life, character and philosophy of the great Russian."—New York Press. "A genuinely illuminative interpretation of the great philosopher's being and purpose."—Philadelphia Item. (Not sold by us in Great Britain.) 16mo, cloth, 93 pages, 50c.; by mail  .  .   54c.

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Broad-Cast. New chants and songs of labor, life and freedom. This latest volume of poems by the author of "Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable" and "Swords and Plowshares" conveys the same message delivered with equal power. 12mo, cloth, 128 pages, 50c.; by mail  .  .   54c.

Edward Carpenter, Poet and Prophet. An illuminative essay, with selections and portrait of Carpenter. 12mo, paper, 64 pages, with portrait of Carpenter on cover, postpaid  .  .   20c.

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Even as You and I. This is a presentation, by means of popular and simple allegories, of the doctrine of Henry George and the principle which underlies it. A part of the volume is an account of Tolstoy's philosophy, drawn largely from the Russian's difficult work, "Of Life." This section is called "True Life," and follows a series of thirty-three clever parables. Count Tolstoy wrote to Mr. Hall: "I have received your book, and have read it. I think it is very good, and renders in a concise form quite truly the chief ideas of my book." 16mo, cloth, ornamental, gilt top, 50 c.; by mail  .  .   54c.

MRS. GRUNDY.

By Viroqua Daniels.

Her will is law. She holds despotic sway.
Her wont has been to show the narrow way
Wherein must tread the world, the bright, the brave,
From infancy to dotard's gloomy grave.

"Obey! Obey!" with sternness she commands.
The high, the low, in great or little lands.
She folds us all within her ample gown.
A forward act is met with angry frown.

The lisping babes are taught her local speech;
Her gait to walk; her blessings to beseech.
They laugh or cry, as Mistress says they may,
- In everything the little tots obey.

The youth know naught save Mrs. Grundy's whims.
They play her games. They sing her holy hymns.
They question not; accept both truth and fiction,
(The OLD is right, within her jurisdiction!).

Maid, matron, man unto her meekly bow.
She with contempt or ridicule may cow.
They dare not speak, or dress, or love, or hate,
At variance with the programs on her slate.

Her subtle smile, e'en men to thinkers grown,
Are loath to lose; before its charm they're prone.
With great ado, they publicly conform-
Vain, cowards, vain; revolt MUST raise a storm!

The "indiscreet," when hidden from her sight,
Attempt to live as they consider "right."
Lo! Walls have ears! The loyal everywhere
The searchlight turn, and loudly shout, "Beware!"

In tyranny the Mistress is supreme.
"Obedience," that is her endless theme.
Al countries o'er, in city, town and glen,
Her aid is sought by bosses over men.

Of Greed, her brain is cunningly devised.
From Ignorance, her bulky body body's sized.
When at her ease, she acts as judge and jury.
But she's the Mob when 'roused to fighting fury.

Dame Grundy is, by far, the fiercest foe
To ev'ry kind of progress, that we know,
So Freedom is, to her, a poison thing.
Who heralds it, he must her death knell ring.

A GREETING.

By Alexander Berkman.

Dear Friends:-

I am happy, inexpressibly happy to be in your midst again, after an absence of four teen long years, passed amid the horrors and darkness of my Pennsylvania nightmare. * * * Methinks the days of miracles are not past. They say that nineteen hundred years ago a man was raised from the dead after having been buried for three days. They call it a great miracle. But I think the resurrection from the peaceful slumber of a three days grave is not nearly so miraculous as the actual coming back to life from a living death of fourteen years duration;-'tis the twentieth century resurrection, not based on ignorant credulity, nor assisted by any Oriental jugglery. No travelers ever return, the poets say, from the Land of Shades beyond the river Styx-and may be it is a good thing for them that they don't-but you can see that there is an occasional exception even to that rule, for I have just returned from a hell, the like of which, for human brutality and fiendish barbarity, is not to be found even in the fire-and-brimstone creeds of our loving Christians.

It was a moment of supreme joy when I felt the heavy chains, that had bound me so long, give way with the final clang of the iron doors behind me and I suddenly found myself transported, as it were, from the dreary night of my prison-existence into the warm sunshine of the living day; and then, as I breathed the free air of the beautiful May morning-my first breath of freedom in fourteen years-it seemed to me as if a beautiful nature had waved her magic wand and marshalled her most alluring charms to welcome me into the world again; the sun, bathed in a sea of sapphire, seemed to shed his golden-winged caresses upon me; beautiful birds were intoning a sweet paean of joyful welcome; green-clad trees on the banks of the Allegheny were stretching out to me a hundred emerald arms, and every little blade of grass seemed to lift its head and nod to me, and all Nature whispered sweetly. "Welcome Home!" It was Nature's beautiful Springtime, the reawakening of Life, and Joy, and Hope, and the spirit of Springtime dwelt in my heart.

I had been told before I left the prison that the world had changed so much during my long confinement that I would practically come back into a new and different world. I hoped it were true. For at the time when I retired from the world, or rather when I was retired from the world-that was a hundred years ago, for it happened in the nineteenth century-at that time, I say, the footsteps of the world were faltering under the heavy cross of oppression, injustice and misery, and I could hear the anguish-cry of the suffering multitudes, even above the clanking of my own heavy chains. * * * But all that, is different now-I thought as I left the prison-for have I not been told that the world had changed, changed so much that, as they put it, "its own mother wouldn't know it again." And that -thought made me doubly happy: happy at the recovery of my own liberty, and happy in, the fond hope that I should find my own great joy mirrored in, and heightened by the happiness of my fellowmen.

Then I began to look around, and indeed, I found the world changed; so changed, in fact, that I am now afraid to cross the street, lest lightning, in the shape of a horseless car, overtake me and strike me down; I also found a new race of beings, a race of red devils-automobiles you call them-and I have been told about the winged children of thought flying above our heads-talking through the air, you know, and sometimes also through the hat, perhaps-and here in New York you can ride on the ground, overground, above ground, underground, and without any -ground at all.

These and a thousand and one other inventions and discoveries have considerably changed the face of the world. But alas! its face only. For as I looked further, past the outer trappings,. down into the heart of the world, I beheld the old, familiar, yet no less revolting sight of Mammon, enthroned upon a dias of bleeding hearts, and I saw the ruthless wheels of the social Juggernaut slowly crushing the beautiful form of liberty lying prostrate on the ground. * * * I saw men, women and children, without number, sacrificed on the altar of the capitalistic Moloch, and I beheld a race of pitiful creatures, stricken with the modern St. Vitus's dance at the shrine of the Golden Calf.

With an aching heart I realized what I had been told in prison about the changed condition of the world was but a miserable myth, and my fond hope of returning, into a new, regenerated world lay shattered at my feet. . . .

No, the world has not changed during my absence; I can find no improvement in the twentieth-century society over that of the nineteenth, and in truth, it is not capable of any real. improvement, for this society is the product of a civilization so self-contradictory in its essential qualities, so stupendously absurd in its results, that the more we advance in this would-be civilization the less rationel, the less human we become. Your twentieth-century civilization is fitly characterized by the fact that that, paradoxical as it may seem, the more we produce, the less we have, and the richer we get, the poorer we are. Your pseudo-civilization is of that quality which defeats its own ends, so that notwithstanding the prodigious mechanical aids we possess in the production of all forms of wealth, the struggle for existence is more savage, more ferocious to-day than it has been ever since the dawn of our civilization.

But what is the cause of all this, what is wrong with our society and our civilization?

Simply this:-a lie can not prosper. Our whole social fabric, our boasted civilization rests on the foundations of a lie, a most gigantic lie-the religious, political and economic lie, a triune lie, from whose fertile womb has issued a world of corruption, evils, shams und unnameable able crimes. There, denuded of its tinsel trappings, your civilization stands revealed in all the evil reality of its unadorned shame; and 'tis a ghastly sight, a mass of corruption, an ever-spreading cancer. Your false civilization is a disease, and capitalism is its most malignant form; 'tis the acute stage which is breeding into the world a race of cowards, weaklings and imbeciles; a race of mannikins, lacking the physical courage and mental initiative to think the thought and do the deed not inscribed in the book, of practice; a race of pigmies, slaves to tradition and superstitiion, lacking all force of individuality and rushing, like wild maniacs, toward the treacherous eddies of that social cataclysm which has swallowed the far mighter and greater nation of the ancient world.

It is because of these thing that I address myself to you, fellow-men. Society has not changed during my absence, and yet, to be saved, it needs to be changed. It needs, above all, real men, men and women of originality and individuality; men and women, not afraid to brave the scornful contempt of the conventional mob, men and women brave enough to break from the ranks of custom and lead into new paths, men and women strong enough to smash the fatal social lock-step and lead us into new and happier ways.

And because society has not changed, neither will I. Though the bloodthirsty hyena of the law has, in its wild revenge, despoiled me of the fourteen most precious blossoms in the garden of my life, yet I will, henceforth as heretofore, consecrate what days are left to me in the service of that grand ideal, the wonderful power of which has sustained me through those years of torture; and I will devote all my energies and whatever ability I may have to that nobelest of all causes of a new, regenerated and free humanity; and it shall be more than my sufficient reward to know that I have added, if ever so little, in breaking the shackles of superstition, ignorance and tradition, and helped to turn the tide of society from the narrow lane of its blind selfishness and self-sufficient arrogance into the broad, open road leading toward a true civilization, to be new and brighter day of Freedom in Brotherhood.

HENRIK IBSEN

M.B.

I SHALL not attempt to confine him within the rigid lines of any literary circle; nor shall I press him into the narrow frame of school or party; nor stamp upon him the distinctive label of any particular ism. He would break such fetters; his free spirit, his great individuality would overflow the arbitrary confines of "the sole Truth," "the only true principle." The waves of his sould would break down all artificial barriers and rush out to join the ever-moving currents of life.

He carried the flaming torch of his art behind the scenes of society—he found there nothing but corruption. He tested the strength of our social foundations—its pillars shook: they were rotten.

The rays of his genius penetrated the darkness of popular ideals; the hollow pretences of Philistinism filled his ardent soul with disgust, and pain. In this mood he wrote "The League of Youth," in which he exposed the pettiness of bourgeois aspirations and the poverty of their ideals.

In "The Enemy of the People" Ibsen thunders his powerful protest against the democracy of stupidity, the tyrannous vulgarity of majority rule. Doctor Stockmann—that is Ibsen himself. How willing and eager the pigmies and yahoos would have been to stone him.

"What shameless unconventionality, what shocking daring!" cried the Philistines when they beheld the characters portrayed in "Nora" (The Doll's House), "Wild Duck," and in "The Ghosts"—living pictures revealing all the evil hidden by the mask of "our sacred institutions," "our holy hearthstone." In "Rosmersholm" Ibsen ignored even the inviolability of conscience; for there Ibsen showed how the sick conscience of Rosmer worked the ruin of Rebecca and himself, by robbing them of the joy of life.

The moralists howled long and loud.

"Has Ibsen no ideals? Does the accursed Midas-touch of his mind dissolve everything, one very Holy of Holies, into the ashes of nothing?"

Thus spoke self-sufficient arrogance.

But can one read "Brand" or "Peer Gynt" and ask such questions? No heart so overflowed with human yearning, no soul ever breathed grander, nobler ideals than Henrik Ibsen. True, he did not prostrate himself before the idols of the conventional mob, nor did his sacrificial fires burn on the altar of mediocrity and cretinism. He did not bow the proud head before the craven images that the State and Church have created for the subjugation of the masses. To Ibsen's free soul the morality of slaves was a nightmare.

His ideal was Individuality, the development of character. He loved the man that was brave enough to be himself. He immeasurably hated all that was false; he abhorred all that was petty and small. He loved that true naturalness which, when most real, requires no effort.

The most severe critic of Ibsen and his art was Ibsen himself. His attitude towards himself in his last work, "When We Dead Awaken," is that of the most unprejudiced judge.

What is the result?

We long for life; yet we are eternally chasing will-o'-the-wisps. We sacrifice ourselves for things which rob us of our Self. The castles we build prove houses made of cards, upon the first touch falling down. Instead of living, we philosophize. Our life is an esthetic counterfeit.

A mind of great depth, a soul of prophetic vision has passed away; yet not without leaving its powerful impress—for Henrik Ibsen stood upon the heights, and from their loftiest peaks we beheld, with him, the heavy fogs of the present, and through the rifts we saw the bright rays of a new sun, the promise of the dawn of a freer, stronger Humanity.

OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS.

Schopenhauer's advice to ignore fools and knaves and not to speak to them, as the best method of keeping them at a distance, does not seem drastic enough in these days of the modern newspaper-reporter nuisance. One may throw them out of the house, nail all the doors and windows, and stuff up all key-holes; still he will come; he will slide down through the chimney, squeeze through the sewer-pipes—which, by the way, is the real field of activity of the journalistic profession.

We Anarchists are usually poor business men, with a few "happy" exceptions, of course; still, we shall have to form an insurance company against the slugging system of the reporters.

Alexander Berkman barely had a chance to breathe free air, when the newspaper scarecrows were let loose at his heels. Every suspicious-looking man, woman and child in New York was assailed as to Berkman's whereabouts, without avail. Finally these worthy gentlemen hit upon 210 East Thirteenth street—there the reporters made some miraculous discoveries. Two lonely hermits, utterly innocent of the ways of the world and the impertinence of reporters, were marked by the latter. They triumphed. Never before had they hit upon such simpletons, of whom they could so easily learn all the secrets of the fraternity of the Reds.

"Is it not the custom of your clan to delegate every three days one of your members to take the life of some ruler?" they asked.

One of the Reds smiled, knowingly. "Only one insignificant life in three days?! How little you know the Anarchists. I want you to understand, sirs, it is our wont to use just five minutes for each act, which means 864 lives in three days."

This was more than the most hardened press detective could stand. They fled in terror.

Carl Schurz, politician and career hunter by profession, died May 14th. He was met at the gate of Hell by the secretary of that institution with the following question, "Were you not one of the enthusiasts for the battle of freedom, in your young days?"

"If the reports of my men are correct—and I am confident my men are more reliable than the majority of the newspaper men on your planet—you were even a Revolutionist?"

Carl Schurz nodded.

"And why have you thrown your ideals and convictions overboard?"

"There was no money in them," Carl replied, sulkily.

The Satanic Secretary nodded to one of his stokers, saying, "Add 5,000 tons of hard coal to our fires. Here we have a man that sold his soul for money. He deserves to roast a thousand times more than the ordinary sinner."

No one considers a thief the patron saint of honesty, nor is a liar expected to champion the truth. The hangman is not elected as president of a society for the preservation of human life; why, then, in the name of common sense, do people continue to see in the State the seat of justice and the patron saint of those whom it wrongs and outrages daily?

If people would only look closer into the elements of the State, they would soon behold this trinity—the thief, the liar, and the hangman.

Free love is condemned; prostitution flourishes. The moralist, who is the best patron of the dens of prostitution, loudly proclaims the sanctity and purity of monogamy. The free expression of life's greatest force—love—must never be tolerated. On the other hand, it is perfectly respectable to receive a large sum of money from a millionaire father-in-law for marrying his daughter.

Rudolph von Jhering, one of the most distinguished theoreticians of jurisprudence in Europe, wrote, many years ago, "The way in which one utilizes his wealth is the best criterion of his character and degree of culture. The purpose that prompts the investment of his money is the safest characterization of him. The accounts of expenditures speak louder of a man's true nature than his diary." How well these words apply to the richest of the rich and to their methods of disposing of their capital!

Take philanthropy, for instance, with its loud and common display. How it humiliates those that receive, and how it overestimates the importance of those that give.

Philanthropy that steals in large quantities and returns of its bounty in medicine drops, that snatches the last bite from the mouth of the people and graciously gives them a few crumbs or a gnawed bone!

Again, philanthropy as a money mania—in one instance it feeds the clergy on fat salaries, so that they might proclaim the virtue of self-denial, sobriety and prudence; in another instance it builds Sunday schools for young numbskulls and political aspirants who pretend to listen to the commonplace discourse about our Father in Heaven who gives every true Christian an opportunity to make money; rather would these milk-sops appreciate the advice of the young nabob as to how to turn a hundred-dollar bill into a thousand.

Philanthropy, establishing scientific societies for the investigation of the mode of life of fleas, or philanthropy excremating libraries, maintaining missionaries in China or fostering the research of breeding sea horses.

Mrs. Vanderbilt has the heels of her shoes set in diamonds, while another great philanthropist has established a pension for aged parrots. Indeed, the stupidity and sad lack of imagination of our philanthropists are pitiful. However, when one realizes that they are responsible for the distress, the poverty, and despair of the great masses of humanity, pity turns into anger and disgust with a society that will endure it all.

The Chicago papers report a blood-curdling story, which has affected the Philistines like red affects a turkey. Knowing the keen sense of humor of our readers, we herewith reprint the story:

"Treason and blasphemy as an outburst of Anarchism all but broke up a meeting held last night in the Masonic Temple under the auspices of the Spencer-Whitman Center, at which the subject of "Crime in Chicago" was discussed by various speakers. The Rev. John Roach Straton, pastor of the Second Baptist Church, was in the midst of the discourse detailing his theories with reference to the subject in hand when a voice from the doorway shouted out a blasphemous expression.

The cry was greeted by hisses, but it was only a moment later that the same voice called:

"Down with America! Up with Anarchy!"

There was a rush for the door. A tall young man was the first to reach the offender, who is said to have been Carl Havel, associate editor of a German newspaper. There was a blow and the blasphemer reeled and fell against the wall. At the same moment a man, said to be Terence Carlin, a member of a prominent Chicago family, struck Havel's assailant. He in turn was seized by Parker H. Sercombe, chairman of the meeting, and a man who gave the name of Ben Bansig.

The party struggled back and forth in the doorway, and the disturbers were forced back to an ante-room. Blows were struck in a lusty fashion and cries of "Police!" "They're murdering them!" "Help!" rang out.

Finally the two disturbers made as if to get out, and the arrival of a watchman in uniform quieted them and their pursuers. It was, however, with ill grace that the disturbers of the meeting were allowed to leave, and as they passed through a door, cursing the law, the country, and God, a girl, still in her teens, broke through the crowd and turning to Havel, said:

"That's all right, father."

Ben Bansig saved Chicago,—there can be no dispute about that. As to Sercombe, the editor of To-Morrow, he deserves recognition. I suggest that he be awarded a tooth brush at the expense of City Hall.

Our three friends, Terence Carlin, Havel, Mary Latter—who, as I can authentically prove, is not the daughter of Hyppolite Havel—can console themselves with the fact that their protest has done the names of Whitman and Spencer more honor than the gas of the Baptist preacher.

That the suspiciously-red noses of the newspaper men should have smelt the "immoral conduct" of Maxim Gorky, was really very fortunate for the latter. He is now relieved from the impertinence of interviewers and prominent personages. He must feel as if he had recovered from some loathsome disease. Immorality has after all many desirable qualities. What if chickens gaggle, pharisaic goats piously turn up their eyes, and the dear little piggies grunt!

Well-meaning people are horrified that justice is making use of such creatures as Orchard and McParland against Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone. There is nothing unusual in that. The record of the American government in its persecution against Socialists and Anarchists is by no means so clean that one need be astonished that it employs spies and perjurers as its helpmates.

The Lord has developed from a good Christian into a good banker: He destroyed more churches than vaults in San Francisco.

A LETTER.

Chicago, June 2nd, 1906.

Dear Editor:—I hope you have not been trying to relieve your feelings by using language dangerous to your soul's salvation. I can sympathize with you, though. However, it was impossible for me to send the promised article for "M. E." Who, indeed, could expect a bride of two weeks to waste time upon magazine articles?! I hope you have read the reports of my marriage, though your silence would indicate that you have either neglected to read the important news, or that your usual lack of faith in the truth and honesty of the press has not permitted you to credit the story.

It is high time, dear friend, that you get rid of your German skepticism; you know, I esteem your judgment, but when it comes to doubting anything the newspapers say, I draw the line. What reporters do not know about Anarchists, and especially about your publisher, is not worth knowing. According to their great wisdom I not only incited men to remove the crowned heads of various countries, but I have done worse—I have incited them to marry me, and when they proved unwilling to love, honor and obey the order of our secret societies to blow up all sacred institutions, I sent them about their business.

Much as I realize the importance of my articles for Mother Earth, you cannot expect me to sacrifice my wifely duty to my lord and master for Earth's sake.

I have always held to the opinion that there must be absolute confidence between publisher and editor on all matters except the receipts; therefore I have to confess that my newly-wedded husband, who has just graduated from the University of the Western Penitentiary—the curriculum of which is lots of liberty, leisure and enjoyment—objects to the drudgery of an agitator and publisher. In justice to him, I dare not do more than write letters all day, address meetings every evening, and enjoy the love and kindness of the comrades till early morning hours. Where, then, shall I find time to write articles for "Mother Earth?"

But to be in keeping with the serious and dignified tone of our valuable magazine, and especially with you dear Editor, I want to say that my meetings were very successful, and that Mother Earth is being received with great favor in every city. Nearly 500 copies were sold here.

After reading the brilliant reports in the Chicago papers and seeing the handsome, refined policemen at the various meetings, I am not surprised that our magazine is being appreciated. Apropos of the Chicago police, just fancy, I have actually forced them out of their uniforms. I hope this will not conjure up the horrible picture of Chicago's finest parading the city in Adam's costume. Not that! Only, Chief of Police Collins was so outraged over my gentle criticism of his dear little boys at one of the woodworkers' meetings, that he gave strict orders, "No officer should again appear at a public meeting in uniform where that awful Emma Goldman is humiliating and degrading the emblem of authority and law."

After this, I hope you will never again doubt the importance of public meetings and the great and far-reaching influence of my speaking.

I shall soon be with you, if I survive my tour, the police, and the press. I shall then try to make up for my sins, in the July number of Mother Earth, provided you will let me recuperate in your editorial care and affection.

Emma Goldman.

LIBERTARIAN INSTRUCTION.

By Emile Janvion.

AMONG the important duties of Anarchists libertarian instruction should occupy the first place. As revolutionary propaganda it is the most effective. Tolstoi in Yasnaia-Poliana, Reclus at Bruxelles, Paul Robin at Cempius, the group of the Free School at Paris have inaugurated attempts during the period of daring we have witnessed of late years.

Far from mixing education with instruction, the former should be considered as the natural consequence of the latter.

Our ideas should never be imposed by an education too specialized, narrow or sectarian, but by means of full and all-round instruction which opens the mind to criticism and makes it accessible to the power of truth which is our strength and which will complete the forming of the character.

Our instruction should be integral, rational, and mixed.

Integral—Because it will tend to develop the whole being and make a complete, free ensemble, equally progressive in all knowledge, intellectual, physical, manual and professional, and this from the earliest age.

Rational—Because it will be based on reason and in conformity with actual science and not on faith; on the development of personal Freedom and independence and not on that of piety and obedience; on the abolition of the fiction God, the eternal and absolute cause of subjection.

Mixed—Because it favors the coeducation of the sexes in a constant, fraternal, familiar company of children, boys and girls, which gives to the character of their manners a special earnestness.

To the scientific instruction must be added manual apprenticeship, instruction with which it is in a constant connection of balance and reciprocity, and also esthetic instruction (music, art, etc.), which in point of view of an integral development has certainly not a small importance.

To turn our attention towards the child, to encourage the development of its initiative, to impress it with a sentiment of its dignity, to preserve it from cowardice and falsehood, to make it observe the pros and cons of all social conceptions, to educate it for the struggle, that is the great work, scarcely yet begun, which awaits us.

That will be the task of the nearest future if we will act logically and firmly.

THE ANTICHRIST.

From "The Antichrist," by Friedrich Nietzsche. Edited by Alexander Title, translated by Thomas Common. Publishers: Macmillan & Co. New York.

I make war against this theological instinct: I have found traces of it everywhere. Whoever has thenlogical blood in his veins is from the very beginning ambiguous and disloyal with respect to everything. The pathos which develops therefrom calls itself belief: the closing of the eye once for all with respect to one's self, so as not to suffer from the sight-of incurable falsity. A person makes for himself a morality, a virtue, a sanctity out of this erroneous perspective towards all things, he unites the good conscience to the false mode of seeing,-he demands that no other mode of perspective be longer of sacrosanct any value, after he has made his own with the names of "God," "salvation," and "eternity." I have digged out the theologist-instinct everywhere; it is the most diffused, the most peculiarly subterranean form of falsity that exists on earth. What a theologian feels as true, must needs be false: one has therein almost a criterion of truth. It is his most fundamental self-preservative instinct which forbids reality to be held in honor, or even to find expression on any point. As far as theologist-influence extends, the judgment of value is turned right about, the concepts of "true" and "false" are necessarily reversed: what is most injurious to life is here called "true," what raises, elevates, affirms, justifies, and makes it triumph is called "false."

Let us not underestimate this: we ourselves, we free spirits, are already a "Transvaluation of all Values," an incarnate declaration of war against and triumph over all old concepts of "true" and "untrue." The most precious discernments into things are the latest discovered: the most precious discernments, however, are the methods. All methods, all presuppositions of our present-day science, have for millenniums been held in the most profound contempt: by reason of them a person was excluded from intercourse with "honest" men-he passed for an "enemy of God," a despiser of truth, a possessed" person. As a scientific man, a person was a Chandala . . . We have had the entire pathos of mankind against us-their concept of that which truth ought to be, which the service of truth ought to be: every thou shalt" has been hitherto directed against us. Our objects, our practices, our quiet, prudent mistrustful mode all appeared to mankind as absolutely unworthy and contemptible. -In the end one might, with some reasonableness, ask one's self if it was not really an esthetic taste which kept mankind in such long blindness: they wanted a picturesque effect from truth, they wanted in like manner the knowing ones to operate strongly on their senses. Our modesty was longest against the taste of mankind . . . Oh how they made that out, these turkey-cocks of God---.

The Christian concept of God-God as God of the sick, God as cobweb-spinner, God as spirit-is one of the most corrupt concepts of God ever arrived at on earth; it represents perhaps the gauge of low water in the descending development of the God-type. God degenerated to the contradiction of life, instead of being its transfiguration and its eternal yea, In God, hostility announced to life, to nature, to the will to life! God as the formula for every calumny of "this world," for every lie of "another world!" In God nothingness deified, the will to nothingness declared holy!

That the strong races of Northern Europe have not thrust from themselves the Christian God, is verily no honor to their religious talent, not to speak of their taste. They ought to have. got the better of such a sickly and decrepit product of decadence. There lies a curse upon them, because they have not got the better of it: they have incorporated sickness, old age and contradiction into all their instincts-they have created no God since! Two millenniums almost, and not a single new God! But still continuing, and as if persisting by right, as an ultimatum and maximum of the God-shaping force, of the creator spiritus in man, this pitiable God of Christian monotone-theism! This hybrid image of ruin, derived from nullity, concept and contradiction in which all decadence instincts, all cowardices and lassitudes of soul have their sanction!

Has the celebrated story been really understood which stands at the commencement of the Bible-the story of God's mortal terror of science? It has not been understood. This priest-book par excellence begins appropriately with the great inner difficulty of the priest: he has only one great danger, consequently "God" has only one great danger.-

The old God, entire "spirit," entire high priest, entire perfection, promenades in his garden: he only wants pastime. Against tedium even Gods struggle in vain. What does he do? He contrives man-man is entertaining . . . But behold, man also wants pastime. The pity of God for the only distress which belongs to all paradises has no bounds: he forthwith created other animals besides. The first mistake of God: man did not find the animals entertaining-he ruled over them, but did not even want to be an "animal"-God consequently created woman. And, in fact, there was now an end of tedium-but of other things also! Woman was the second mistake of God.-"Woman is in her essence a serpent, Hera"-every priest knows that: "from woman comes all the mischief in the world"-every priest knows that likewise. Consequently, science also comes from her . . . Only through woman did man learn to taste of the tree of knowledge.-What had happened? The old God was seized by a mortal terror. Man himself had become his greatest mistake, he had created a rival, science makes godlike; it is at an end with priests and Gods, if man becomes scientific!-Moral: science is the thing forbidden in itself-it alone is forbidden. Science is the first sin, the germ of all sin, original sin. This alone is morality.-"Thou shalt not know;"-the rest follows therefrom.-By his mortal terror God was not prevented from being shrewd. How does one defend one's self against science? That was for a long time his main problem. Answer: away with man, out of paradise! Happiness and leisure lead to thoughts,-thoughts are bad thoughts . . Man shall not think-and the "priest in himself'; contrives distress, death, the danger of life in pregnancy, every kind of misery, old age, weariness, and above all sickness,-nothing but expedients in the struggle against science! Distress does not permit man to think, . . . And nevertheless! frightful! the edifice of knowledge towers aloft, heaven-storming, dawning on the Gods,-what to do!The old God contrives war, he separates the peoples, he brings it about that men mutually annihilate one another (the priests have always had need of war . . . ).

War, among other things, a great disturber of science!-Incredible! Knowledge, the emancipation from the priest, augments even in spite of wars.-And a final resolution is arrived at by the old God: "man has become scientific,-- there is no help for it, he must be drowned!"

--I have been understood. The beginning of the Bible contains the entire psychology of the priest.-The priest knows only one great danger: that is science, -the sound concept of cause and effect. But science flourishes on the whole only under favorable circumstances,-one must have superfluous time, one must have superfluous intellect in order to "perceive" . . . Consequently man must be made unfortunate,-this has at all times been the logic of the priest. -One makes out what has only thereby come into the world in accordance with this logic:-"sin" . . . The concepts of guilt and punishment, the whole "moral order of the world," have been devised in opposition to science, -in opposition to a severance of man from the priest . . . Man is not to look outwards, he is to look inwards into himself, he is not to look prudently and cautiously into things like a learner, he is not to look at all, he is to suffer . . . And he is so to suffer as to need the priest always. A Saviour is needed.-The concepts of guilt and punishment, inclusive of the doctrines of "grace," of "salvation," and of "forgiveness"- lies through and through, and without any psychological reality-have been contrived to destroy the causal sense in man, they are an attack on the concepts of cause and effect!-And not an attack with the fists, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! But springing from the most cowardly, most deceitful, and most ignoble instincts! A priest's attack! A parasite's attack! A vampirism of pale, subterranean blood-suckers! When the natural consequences of a deed are no longer "natural," but are supposed to be brought about by the conseptual spectres of superstition, by "God," by "spirits," by "souls," as mere "moral" consequences, as reward, punishment, suggestion, or means of education, the pre-requisite of perception has been destroyed-the greatest crime against mankind has been committed. Sin, repeated once more, this form of human self-violation par excellence, has been invented for the purpose of making impossible science, culture, every kind of elevation and nobility of man; the priest rules by the invention of sin.

I condemn Christianity, I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all accusations that ever an accuser has taken into his mouth. It is to me the greatest of all imaginable corruptions, it has had the will to the ultimate corruption that is at all possible. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched with its depravity, it has made a worthlessness out of every value, a lie out of every truth, a baseness of soul out of every straight-forwardness. Let a person still dare to speak to me of its "humanitarian" blessings! To do away with any state of distress whatsoever was counter to its profoundest expediency, it lived by states of distress, it created states of distress in order to perpetuate itself eternally . . . The worm of sin for example; it is only the Church that has enriched mankind with this state, of distress! ...-"Humanitarian" blessings of Christianity! To breed out of humanitas a self-contradiction, an art of self-violation, a will to the lie at any price, a repugnance, a contempt for all good and straight-forward instincts! Those are for me blessing of Christianity! -Parasitism as the sole praxis of the Church; drinking out all blood, all love, all hope for life, with its anaemic ideal of holiness; the other world as the will to the negation of every reality; the cross as the rallying sign for the most subterranean conspiracy that has ever existed,-against healthiness, beauty, well-constitutedness, courage, intellect, benevolence of soul, against life itself . . .

This eternal accusation of Christianity I shall write on all walls, wherever there are walls,-I have letters for making even the blind see . . . I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge for which no expedient is, sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, mean,-I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind!

BRAIN WORK AND MANUAL WORK.

By PETER KROPOTKIN.

IN olden times men of science, and especially those who have done most to forward the growth of natural philosophy, did not despise manual work and handicraft. Galileo made his telescopes with his own hands. Newton learned in his boyhood the art of managing tools; he exercised his young mind in contriving most ingenious machines, and when he began his researches in optics he was able himself to grind the lenses for his instruments, and himself to make the well-known telescope, which, for its time, was a fine piece of workmanship. Leibnitz was fond of inventing machines: windmills and carriages to be moved without horses preoccupied his mind as much as mathematical and philosophical speculations. Linnaeus became a botanist while helping his father-a practical gardener-in his daily work. In short, with our great geniuses handicraft was no obstacle to abstract researches-it rather favored them. On the other hand, if the workers of old found but few opportunities for mastering science, many of them had, at least, their intelligences stimulated by the very variety of work which was performed in the then unspecialized workshops; and some of them had the benefit of familiar intercourse with men of science. Watt and Rennie were friends with Professor Robinson; Brindley, the road-maker, despite his fourteen-pence-a-day wages, enjoyed intercourse with educated men, and thus developed his remarkable engineering faculties; the son of a well-to-do family could "idle" at a wheelwright's shop, so as to be come later on a Smeaton or a Stephenson.

We have changed all that. Under the pretext of division of labor, we have sharply separated the brain worker from the manual worker. The masses of the workmen do not receive more scientific education than their grandfathers did; but they have been deprived of the education of even the small workshop, while their boys and girls are driven into a mine or a factory from the age of thirteen, and there they soon forget the little they may have learned at school. As to the men of science, they despise manual labor. How few of them would be able to make a telescope, or even a plainer instrument? Most of them are not capable of even designing a scientific instrument, and when they have given a vague suggestion to the instrument-maker they leave it with him to invent the apparatus they need. Nay, they have raised the contempt of manual labor to the height of a theory. "The man of science," they say, "must discover the laws of nature, the civil engineer must apply them, and the worker must execute in steel or wood, in iron or stone, the patterns devised by the engineer. He must work with machines invented for him, not by him. No matter if he does not understand them and cannot improve them: the scientific man and the scientific engineer will take care of the progress of science and industry."

It may be objected that nevertheless There is a class of men who belong to none of the above three divisions. When young they have been manual workers, and some of them continue to be; but, owing to some happy circumstances, they have succeeded in acquiring some scientific knowledge, and thus they have combined science with handicraft. Surely there are such men; happily enough there is a nucleus of men who have escaped the so-much-advocated specialization of labor, and it is precisely to them that industry owes its chief recent inventions. But in old Europe at least, they are the exceptions; they are the irregulars-the Cossacks who have broken the ranks and pierced the screens so carefully erected between the classes. And they are so few, in comparison with the ever-growing requirements of industry-and of science as well, as I am about to prove-that all over the world we hear complaint about the scarcity of precisely such men.

What is the meaning, in fact, of the outcry for technical education which has been raised at one and the same time in England, in France, in Germany, in the States, and in Russia, if it does not express a general dissatisfaction with the present division into scientists, scientific engineers, and workers? Listen to those who know industry, and you will see that the substance of their complaint is this: "The worker whose task has been specialized by the permanent division of labor has lost the intellectual interest in his labor, and it is especially so in the great industries: he has lost his inventive powers. Formerly, he invented very much. Manual workers-not men of science nor trained engineers-have invented, or brought to perfection, the prime motors and all that mass of machinery which has revolutionized industry for the last hundred years. But since the great factory has been enthroned, the worker, depressed by the monotony of his work, invents no more. What can a weaver invent who merely supervises four looms, without knowing anything either about their complicated movements or how the machines grew to be what they are? What can a man invent who is condemned for life to bind together the ends of two threads with the greatest celerity, and knows nothing beyond making a knot?

"At the outset of modern industry, three generations of workers have invented; now they cease to do so. As to the inventions of the engineers, specially trained for devising machines, they are either devoid of genius or not practical enough. Those "nearly to nothings," of which Sir Frederick Bramwell spoke once at Bath, are missing in their inventions-those nothings which can be learned in the workshop only, and which permitted a Murdoch and the Soho workers to make a practical engine of Watt's schemes. None but he who knows the machine-not in its drawings and models only, but in its breathing and throbbings- who unconsciously thinks of it while standing by it, can really improve it. Smeaton and Newcomen surely were excellent engineers; but in their engines a boy had to open the steam valve at each stroke of the piston; and it was one of those boys who once managed to connect the valve with the remainder of the machine, so as to make it open automatically, while he ran away to play with other boys. But in the modern machinery there is no room left for naive improvements of that kind. Scientific education on a wide scale has become necessary for further inventions, and that education is refused to the workers. So that there is no issue out of the difficulty unless scientific education and handicraft are combined together-unless integration of knowledge takes the place of the present divisions." Such is the real substance of the present movement in favor of technical education. But, instead of bringing to public consciousness the, perhaps, unconscious motives of the present discontent, instead of widening the views of the discontented and discussing the problem to its full extent, the mouth-pieces of the movement do not mostly rise above the shopkeeper's view of the question. Some of them indulge in jingo talk about crushing all foreign industries out of competition, while the others see in technical education nothing but a means of somewhat improving the flesh-machine of the factory and of transferring a few workers into the upper class of trained engineers.

Such an ideal may satisfy them, but it cannot satisfy those who keep in view the combined interests of science and industry, and consider both as a means for raising humanity to a higher level. We maintain that in the interests of both science and industry, as well as of society as a whole, every human being, without distinction of birth, ought to receive such an education as would enable him, or her, to combine a thorough knowledge of science with a thorough knowledge of handicraft. We fully recognize the necessity of specialization of knowledge, but we maintain that specialization must follow general education, and that general education must be given in science and handicraft alike. To the division of society into brain-workers and manual workers we oppose the combination, of both kinds of activities; and instead of "technical education," which means the maintenance of the present division between brain work and manual work, we advocate the education integrale, or complete education, which means the disappearance of that pernicious distinction. Plainly stated, the aims of the school under this system ought to be the following: To give such an education that, on leaving school at the age of eighteen or twenty, each boy and each girl should be endowed with a thorough knowledge of science--such a knowledge as might enable them to be useful workers in science-and, at the same time, to give them a general knowledge of what constitutes the bases of technical training, and such a skill in some special trade as would enable each of them to take his or her place in the grand world of the manuel production of wealth. I know that many will find that aim too large, or even impossible to attain, but I hope that if they have the patience to read the following pages, they will see that we require nothing beyond what can be easily attained. In fact, it has been attained; and what has been done on a small scale could be done on a wider scale, were it not for the economical and social causes which prevent any serious reform from being -accomplished in our miserably organized society. . .

The experiment has been made at the Moscow Technical School for twenty consecutive years with many hundreds of boys; and, according to the testimonies of the most competent judges at the exhibitions of Brussels, Philadelphia, Vienna and Paris, the experiment has been a success. The Moscow school admits boys not older than fifteen, and it requires from boys of that age nothing but a substantial knowledge of geometry and algebra, together with the usual knowledge of their mother tongue; younger pupils are received in the preparatory classes. The school is divided into two sections-the mechanical and the chemical; but as I personally know better the former, and as it is also the more important with reference to the question before us, so I shall limit my remarks to the education given in the mechanical seetion. After a five or six years' stay at the school, the students leave it with a thorough knowledge, of higher mathematics, physics, mechanics, and connected sciences -so thorough, indeed, that it is not second to that acquired in the best mathematical faculties of the most eminent European universities. When myself a student of the mathematical faculty of the St. Petersburg University, I had the opportunity of comparing the knowledge of the students at the Moscow Technical School with our own. I saw the courses of higher geometry some of them had compiled for the use of their comrades; I admired the facility with which they applied the integral calculus to dynamical problems, and I came to the conclusion that while we, University students, had more knowledge of a general character, they, the students of the Technical School, were much more advanced in higher geometry, and especially in the applications of higher mathematics to the most intricate problems of dynamics, the theories of heat and elasticity. But while we, the students of the University, hardly knew the use of our hands, the students of the Technical School fabricated with their own hands , and without the help of professional workmen, fine steam-engines, from the heavy boiler to the last finely turned screw, agricultural machinery, and scientific apparatus-all for the trade-and they received the highest awards for the work of their hands at the international exhibitions. They were scientifically educated skilled workers-workers with university education -highly appreciated even by the Russian manufacturers who so much distrust science.

Now, the methods by which these wonderful results were achieved were these: In science, learning from memory was not in honor, while independent research was favored by all means. Science was taught hand in hand with its applications, and what was learned in the schoolroom was applied in the workshop. Great attention was paid to the highest abstractions of geometry as a means for developing imagination and research. As to the teaching of handicraft, the methods were quite different from those which proved a failure at the Cornell University, and differed, in fact, from those used in most technical schools. The student was not sent to a workshop to learn some special handicraft and to earn his existence as soon as possible, but the teaching of technical skill was prosecuted-according to a scheme elaborated by the founder of the school, M. Dellavos, and now applied also at Chicago and Boston-in the same systematical way as laboratory work is taught in the universities. It is evident that drawing was considered as the first step in technical education. Then the student was brought, first, to the carpenter's workshop, or rather laboratory, and there he was thoroughly taught to execute all kinds of carpentry and joinery. No efforts were spared in order to bring the pupil to a certain perfection in that branch-the real basis of all trades. Later on, he was transferred to the turner's workshop, where he was taught to make in wood the patterns of those things which he would have to make in metal in the following workshops. The foundry followed, and there he was taught to cast those parts of machines which he had prepared in wood; and it was only after he had gone through the first three stages that he was admitted to the smith's and engineering workshops. As for the perfection of the mechanical work of the students I cannot do better than refer to the reports of the juries at the above-named exhibitions.

In America the same system has - been introduced, in its technical part, first, in the Chicago Manual TrainingSchool, and later on in the Boston Technical School the best, I am told, of the sort; and in this country, or rather in Scotland, I found the system applied with full success, for some years, under the direction of Dr. Ogilvie at Gordon's College in Aberdeen. It is the Moscow or Chicago system on a limited scale. While receiving substantial scientific education, the pupils are also trained in the workshops-but not for one special trade, as it unhappily too often is the case. They pass through the carpenter's workshop, the casting in metals, and the engineering workshop; and in each of these they learn the foundations of each of the three trades sufficiently well for supplying the school itself with a number of useful things. Besides, as far as I could ascertain from what I saw in the geographical and physical classes, as also in the chemical laboratory, the system of "through the hand to the brain," and vice versa, is in full swing, and it is attended with the best success. The boys work with the physical instruments, and they study geography in the field, instruments in hands, as well as in the class-room, Some of their surveys filled my heart, as an old geographer, with joy. It is evident that the Gordon's College industrial department is not a mere copy of any foreign school; on the contrary, I cannot help thinking that if Aberdeen has made that excellent move towards combining science with handicraft, the move was a natural outcome of what has been practised long since, on a smaller scale, in the Aberdeen daily schools.

The Moscow Technical School surely is not an ideal school. 1 It totally neglects the humanitarian education of the young men. But we must recognize that the Moscow experiment-not to speak of hundreds of other partial experiments-has perfectly well proved the possibility of combining a scientific education of a very high standard with the education which is necessary for becoming an excellent skiled laborer. It has proved, moreover, that the best means for producing really good skilled laborers is to seize the bull by the horns, and to grasp the educational problem in its great features, instead of trying to give some special skill in some handicraft, together with a few scraps of knowledge in a certain branch of some science. And it has shown also what can be obtained, without over-pressure, if a rational economy of the scholar's time is always kept in view, and theory goes hand in hand with practice. Viewed in this light, the Moscow results do not seem extraordinary at all, and still better results may be expected if the same principles are applied from the earliest years of education. Waste of time is the leading feature of our present education. Not only are we taught a mass of rubbish, but what is not rubbish is taught so as to make us waste over it as much time as possible. Our present methods of teaching originate from a time when the accomplishments required from an educated person were extremely limited; and they have been maintained, notwithstanding the immense increase of knowledge which must be conveyed to the scholar's mind since science has so much widened its former limits. Hence the over-pressure in schools, and hence, also, the urgent necessity of totally revising both the subjects and the methods of teaching, according to the new wants and to the examples already given here and there, by separate schools and separate teachers.

It is evident that the years of childhood ought not to be spent so uselessly as they are now. German teachers have shown how the very plays of children can be made instrumental in conveying to the childish mind some concrete knowledge in both geometry and mathematics. The children who have made the squares of the theorem of Pythagoras out of pieces of colored cardboard, will not took at the theorem, when it comes in geometry, as on a mere instrument of torture devised by the teachers; and the less so if they apply it as the carpenters do. Complicated problems of arithmetic, which so much harassed us in our boyhood, are easily solved by children seven and eight years old if they are put in the shape of interesting puzzles. And if the Kindergarten--German teachers often make of it a kind of barrack in which each movement of the child is regulated beforehand-has often become a small prison for the little ones, the idea which presided at its foundation is nevertheless true. In fact, it is almost impossible to imagine, without having tried it, how many sound notions of nature, habits of classification, and taste for natural sciences can be conveyed to the children's minds; and, if a series of concentric courses adapted to the various phases of development of the human being were generally accepted in education, the first series in all sciences, save sociology, could be taught before the age of ten or twelve, so as to give a general idea of the universe, the earth and its inhabitants, the chief physical, chemical, zoological, and botanical phenomena, leaving the discovery of the laws of those phenomena to the next series of deeper and more specialised studies. On the other side, we all know how children like to make toys themselves how they gladly imitate the work of full-grown people if they see them at work in the workshop or the building-yard. But the parents either stupidly paralyze that passion, or do not know I-low to utilize it. Most of them despise manual work and prefer sending their children to the study of Roman history, or of Franklin's teachings about saving money, to seeing them at a work which is good for the "lower classes only." They thus do their best to render subsequent learning the more difficult.

* * * * * * * * *

The so-called division of labor has grown under a system which condemned the masses to toil all the day long, and all the life long, at the same wearisome kind of labor. But if we take into account how few are the real producers of wealth in our present society, and how squandered is their labor, we must recognize that Franklin was right in saying that to work five hours a clay would generally do for supplying each member of a civilized nation with the comfort now accessible for the few only, provided everybody took his due share in production. But we have made some progress since Franklin's times. More than one-half of the working day would thus remain to every one for the pursuit of art, or any hobby he might prefer; and his work in those fields would be the more profitable if he spent the other half of the day in productive work-if art and science were followed from mere inclination, not for mercantile purposes. Moreover, a community organized on the principles of all being workers would be rich enough to conclude that every man and woman, after having reached a certain age-say of forty or more-ought to be relieved from the moral obligation of taking a direct part in the performance of the necessary manual work, so as to be able entirely to devote himself or herself to whatever he or she chooses in the domain of art, or science, or any kind of work. Free pursuit in new branches of art and knowledge, free creation, and free development thus might be fully guaranteed. And such a community would not know misery amidst wealth. It would not know the duality of conscience which permeates our life and stifles every noble effort. It would freely take its flight towards the highest regions of progress compatible with human nature.

Footnote

1. What this school is now, I don't know. In the last years of Alexander II.'s reign it was wrecked, like so many other good institutions of the early part of his reign.

MOTHERHOOD AND MARRIAGE

By Henriette Fuerth.

(Translated from the German for Mother Earth by Anny Mali Hicks.)

Knowledge becomes under-
standing only when its scope
includes the origin, the develop-
ment and the conclusion of
things.—Bachofen, "Right to
Motherhood."

"THE future will endeavor to extend its power through its own ideas of facts and appearances, however unfamiliar these may seem, rather than to be influenced by a past and submerged civilization with a spirit far removed from its own."

There could hardly be a more appropriate introduction to our remarks on motherhood and marriage than these words of Bachofen's, for there are few human relations whose traditional stages, taking through outside causes and effects an established form, have become eternal law and sacrament, as is the case in the realm of sex relations. Motherhood and marriage! For most people these two conceptions are inseparably bound together, or, rather, are in ratio connected as their ideas of morality and religion are synonymous. Marriage in the Romish Church is a religious sacrament, and in the collective Christian and Jewish worlds the only sex relation acknowledged as customary and possible, is the one based on a monogamous union. To work out logically from this standpoint, the only condition of motherhood which is socially justified, is that one which is the result of marital relations. In consequence motherhood without the consent of the State or the benefit of the clergy is just as logically condemned. And they who thus sit in judgment, flatter themselves to be the prophets of an advanced and enlightened era,—ingrafting their personal feelings and rights on the religious and lawful order of the universe. Or, in common parlance, and as our introduction so aptly put it, these good people wish to intend the domination of the ideas of their own time over all the past and into all the future. Marriage seems to them an everlasting institution, a godly regulation, through which they can lend to their individual bias, the dignity of that which is humanly purest and highest. Consequently it also seems to them that the present form of marriage and its accompanying conditions for motherhood, resting as these do on the mutual consent of God and man, that these are to be in all eternity the permanent form of sex relation.

But when we stop one moment only, to free ourselves from preconceived and obsolete ideas, and look at motherhood and marriage from the calm and unprejudiced standpoint of historical development and growth, how differently do these in reality appear. Many advanced thinkers have done this, and their views have here and there found adherents. Not so, however, with the average seeker for light and truth, who if he wish to succeed must stem the tide of prejudiced opinion.

But the day has come when, if all signs do not fail, spring is here, and a thousand and one buds of promise are pushing toward the light, when a wider and saner understanding of motherhood and marriage is at hand. And it is not an untimely spring either, not one which the treacherous sun of January calls forth only to blight with later snow and frost. No, it is the real light and life-giving spring, which comes when the sap begins to run, when the sun calls up smoky mists from out the brown earth, ready to enclose the seed, which shall bring forth summer flowers and autumn fruits.

And this same brown, misty earth, what a different aspect shall she present to her children, for whom conditions are so changed, with truer sex relations, encompassing the ethical and spiritual needs of the free individual. Then only will it be possible to base these needs and demands on the surrounding world of realities filled with material and spiritual phenomena.

But first it must be proven that the present form of marriage and its effect on motherhood is not necessarily permanent, but, like all else, subject to natural development and change. What indeed is the much talked of marriage bond of to-day,—which is considered the cornerstone of both Church and State? Is it something towards which the steps of development in nature and history all go? No seriously minded person could in truth make such a statement. In the plant and animal kingdoms, whose species evoke as do those of the human race, we find no examples of sex relations to which the term marriage would apply. And this is also true of the historical development of man and social conditions. It is not marriage but motherhood which has given permanence to sex relations wherever they appear. Motherhood standing at the source of life with its creative and ever recreative force.

"Goddesses enthroned in solitude,

Surrounded not by time or place,

These are the mothers!

About them formed and formless,

Eternal stability and endless change

In images of all created life."

Thus does Goethe describe the depths of being which enclose the eternal mystery of motherhood, leading not into known, but unknown paths.

And truly, how far have we strayed from the path of true and natural feeling when we seek to justify motherhood from the standpoint of expediency and custom! It is something in itself holy, and is its own reason for being. I ask all mothers, all real mothers, when their child comes to them, with eyes brimming with childlike love and affection, against which all else counts for naught, I ask them do they think whether that child is legitimate or what is called an illegitimate child? No! the joy of motherhood completely fills the heart, there is no room for other feelings, and truly the answer comes, Nature does not discriminate between the legitimate and illegitimate mothers, any more than she labels the children brought into the world as such. And this alone is the foundation to which we must hold fast. Nature acknowledges motherhood only, wisely providing for its needs. Not so marriage, which is a form men have given their sex relations, and established from the standpoint of social and economic exigencies and considerations, it is consequently subject to limitations and changes. Motherhood is an eternal force lying at the root of life, not subjected to time or change.

OBJECT LESSON FOR ADVOCATES OF GOVERNMENTAL CONTROL.

By Arthur G. Everett, N—M.

THE best literary efforts possible have been exhausted in a vain effort to convey to those fortunately not in San Francisco on the morning of April 18, 1906, what terrible things resulted from the earthquake and the fire which left that city a complete ruin; likewise has the kodak and the camera—though busy at work while the flames roared around the operator driving him, from one vantage point to another, before its resistless power—failed to depict in its entirety the horrors, the tragedies that followed in the wake of the crumbling walls, the crackling flames that licked up alike palatial mansions and the squalid homes of the poor, not content to feast upon the products of the forests of California and the Eastern States alone, but, with the strategy of a warrior, surrounded and penned within four walls hundreds of human beings, stalwart men, delicate women, and babes at the breast, who were then slowly roasted to death upon the funeral pyre of San Francisco.

Upon the minds and hearts of the survivors, alone, who walked between the walls of fire those days, who escaped the frightful holocaust but by a miracle while loved ones perished before their eyes, are written, are recorded, too complete, too vivid, those terrible scenes, and fain would they efface from their mind's negative those pictures of horrors which now turn their dreams of the night into such a frightful nightmare that they dread to close their eyes in slumber.

While the horrors of the earthquake and fire were so terrible, yet there was something far worse, for the earthquake and fire were beyond human control, but the still worse acts of the soldiers into whose hands the control of the city were delegated could have been restrained by the authorities had they so chosen; now that the world is being made aware of the fact that the soldiers ruthlessly shot down men and women—yes, women as well as men; in one case a woman was shot down by a soldier because she dared to light a match to see where to lay her little sick baby down—and that without any justification other than the order of their superiors who likewise were so ordered by the authorities—a natural result of governmental control—hence they are doing all they can to controvert the facts regarding the brutal murders and worse of the soldiers. In one case they went so far as to threaten the confiscation of a printery if the editor did not call in and suppress an issue in which was printed an article by a marine telling of seeing the soldiers shoot down the inmates of a hotel so surrounded by fire it seemed they else must be burned up—the excuse the soldiers gave for shooting them—and so the soldiers shot them down to save (?) them. The marine in this article did not tell how many of those thus shot down by the soldiers were only wounded and writhed in agony on the increasing heated floor until the fiery fiend ended their misery from the gun shot wounds.

Brevity precludes going into details of what is already a matter of history; of the soldiers shooting the inmates of an improvised hospital that were unable to be moved when the fire surrounded the building; of the soldiers shooting an old man for refusing to work, though so infirm with age that he had to walk with a cane; of the shooting of a Red Cross man while in his auto on a deed of mercy bent; of the man shot in the back for talking back to a soldier, and that after he had turned away from the drunken brute; of the shooting of a man for having whisky in his possession and refusing to give it up—that the soldiers had plenty is in evidence from the fact that a large per cent. were so drunk that they could walk with but difficulty—of their insulting women, and even far worse than mere insult also; of shooting persons for looting while they themselves did the same; all this and much more and worse are known to be true, and, in the language of another writer on this same subject, "Strive as they may the authorities will never be able to whitewash the military abominations inflicted upon San Francisco and vicinity." In this regard the same writer says most truly:

"The rulers of the State furnished us an example of 'anarchy,' according to their own definition of the term."

In times like these it brings out what is in the man, and these murders and lesser brutalities of the soldiers while policing San Francisco tell us that the soldier is but an infuriated thug, ready to do murder and rapine at the first opportunity; the civic authorities of Oakland recognized this as a fact when they finally allowed the reopening of the saloons, for the barkeepers were specially interdicted from selling or giving liquor to soldiers; they were already loaded too heavy with murderous instincts and propensities and it would not do to run the risk of touching off that magazine of murder with the match of whisky.

These brutal butcheries and rapine by the soldiers while thus in control of San Francisco are the legitimate fruits of governmental control, and it would be well for those who are so strenuously advocating militarism—the true name for Governmental Control—to bear these things in mind, for such horrors would be the daily menu under such system, for there is lots of the savage in the most of us and it needs but to put a gun in the hands of some and decorate them with brass buttons with U. S. inscribed thereon to bring to the surface—like a plaster on a boil—all the native savagery there is in the man; personally, I would prefer to run my chances among the Head Hunters on the Isle of Borneo than among uniformed thugs protected and encouraged by martial law to carry out their natural murderous propensities as was the case in San Francisco, following the earthquake on the morning of April 18, 1906.

THE GENIUS OF WAR

By John Francis Valter.

I am the Genius of War.
My standard's the Skull and the Bones.
I raise my voice—I stamp my foot,
And legions rise out of the ground.
Armies advance and retreat,
Poisoned, diseased and maimed:
All that is left is a grewsome aspect
To the moonlight, the ghouls and Me.
All this to a laudable end:—
The general has his star;
Shylock his four per cent;
The contractor's wife a costly gem
To enhance her vulgar charms;
The mother a harvest of tears;
The wife a broken heart;
The unborn babe a prenatal curse;
While I have my surfeit of blood.

DIGNITY SPEAKS.

"Hark ye, millions, and tremble! I am more powerful than the Law. Together with my sister, Respectability, I reach far beyond the boundary of the authority of governments. I am supreme.

Behold the miserable criminal, desperately resisting the brutal treatment of the police officer. I shall force him to his knees. I shall subdue him. Enthroned upon the seat of Justice, robed in the solemn black of my sacred office, I shall break the rebel's spirit.

'Tis in this that the highest refinement of tyranny manifests itself—it enters into the very innermost depths of the human mind and there it ravages, till its foul breath has withered the last resistance of the unfortunate soul, and the consciousness of self is destroyed; this accomplished, the man himself is dead.

The Law! See how the timid masses cower at the mere mention of my name. See them tremble as I enter the arena of the Legislature.

The Majesty of the Law!

It must forever remain my great secret that the Law is the Cerberus that guards the portals of our earthly paradise against the common herd—we must not be disturbed in our orgies.

The Law! 'Tis our beastly greediness, our bloodthirsty rapacity expressed in statutes. 'Tis the insatiety of the human beasts of prey immortalized in jurisprudence, and I, Dignity, sanctify all that.

As a captain of industry, as a prince of commerce, or as a king of finance, I speak with solemn face of the heavy responsibilities that rest upon those to whose care God, in his infinite wisdom, has entrusted the wealth of the universe; I speak with zeal of the sacred duty of the rich to lend a helping hand to our less fortunate brothers; I never tire to emphasize the necessity of wise stewardship.

In the meantime, I exploit the "poor brothers" and I appropriate the lion's share of the fruit of his labor; he is made to pay me an usurious profit on my investments.

I fill my shops and factories with men, women and children, and I transmute the base metal of their bones into the noble coin of the realm; my coffers grow fat, my slaves grow lean, but I acquire the reputation of a public benefactor, a public-spirited citizen, a noble humanitarian.

As military commander, as a great general, I eulogize the heroism and self-sacrifice of my blind slaves and hirelings that have returned from a successful campaign against a weaker nation. I speak of the great benefit that the success of our arms will confer upon the people, I emphasize its stimulating effect upon the progress of our country and upon our civilization.

Yet while my anointed lips pour forth these solemn lies, my mind travels over the bloody fields of carnage; I behold the thousands of the slain, the mutilated bodies, the torn limbs, the streams of human blood....

I stand in the pulpit and call the faithful to prayer. I thunder eternal curses upon the heads of the unbelievers; I threaten the people with the torments of hell and I try to bribe them by the promise of heaven. Believe, live and be saved, I cry. Or else you will die and be damned!

For I am the visible representative on earth of those invisible, extra-mundane spirits whom man, in his fear and ignorance, created to his own continued mental enslavement.

Terrified, sin lies prostrate at my feet. It does not know that a sick conscience is a characteristic trait of all slaves. It is the universal self-accuser. Were the people—individually and collectively—to sin on a grand scale, were they to refuse to be the puppets of the man-made idols—were that to happen, masters and slaves would cease to be.

The tyrants of the world are under great obligations to me. They must not forget this. For if they should, I will unfold my solemn black robe, I will smooth the hypocritical lines on my face—then shall the world behold all the filth and corruption that I, Dignity, hide."

PATERNALISTIC GOVERNMENT.

By Theodore Schroeder.

(Continuation.)

HERE is paternal solicitude with a vengeance in a law I requote from Wordsworth Donisthorpe:

"They shall have bows and arrows, and use the same of Sundays and holidays; and leave all playing at tennis or foot-ball and other games called quoits, dice, casting of stone, kailes, and other such importune games. Forasmuch as labourers and grooms keep greyhounds and other dogs, and on the holidays when good Christians be at church hearing divine service, they go hunting in parks, warrens, and connigries, it is ordained that no manner of layman which hath not lands to the value of forty shillings a year, shall from henceforth keep any greyhound or other dog to hunt, nor shall he use ferrets, nets, heys, harepipes nor cords, nor any engines for to take or destroy deer, hares, nor conies, nor other gentlemen's game, under pain of twelve months imprisonment.

"For the great dearth that is in many places of the realm of poultry, it is ordained that the price of a young capon shall not pass threepence, and of an old fourpence, of a hen twopence, of a pullet a penny, of a goose fourpence.

"Esquires and gentlemen under the estate of a knight shall not wear cloth of a higher price than four and a half marks, they shall wear no cloth of gold nor silk nor silver, nor no manner of clothing embroidered, ring button nor brooch of gold nor of silver, nor nothing of stone nor no manner of fur; and their wives and daughters shall be of the same condition as to their vesture and apparel, without any turning-up or purfle or apparel of gold, silver nor of stone.

"Because that servants and labourers will not nor by long season would, serve and labour without outrageous and excessive hire, and much more than hath been given to such servants and labourers in any time past, so that for scarcity of the said servants and labourers the husbands and land-tenants may not pay their rent nor live upon their lands, to the great damage and loss as well of the Lords as of the Commons, it is accorded and assented that the bailiff for husbandry shall take by the years 13s. 3d. and his clothing once by the year at most; the master hind 10s., the carter 10s., the shepherd 10s., the oxherd 6s. 8d., the swineherd 6s., a woman labourer 6s., a dey 6s., a driver of the plough 7s. at the most, and every other labourer and servant according to his degree; and less in the country where less was wont to be given, without clothing, courtesy, or other reward by covenant. If any give or take by covenant more than is above specified, at the first that they shall be thereof attained, as well the givers as the takers, shall pay the value of the excess so taken, and at the second time of their attainer the double value of such excess, and at the third time the treble value of such excess, and if the taker so attained have nothing whereof to pay the said excess, he shall have forty days imprisonment."

Our puritan fathers had the same paternal solicitude as all other tyrants. They made it a crime to disregard the Sabbath, or to deny Scripture, or the truth of Christianity or of the Trinity. In the records of the colony for September 1639 it is written: "For as much as it is evident unto this court that the common custom of drinking one to another, is a mere useless ceremony, and draweth on that abominable practice of drinking healths, and is also an occasion of much waste of the good creatures, and of many other sin," etc. Then it declares that such is a reproach to a Christian commonwealth, "wherein the least evils are not to be tolerated."

In the instructions of the Massachusetts Company to Endicott and his Council, the trade in tobacco is only allowed to the "old planters," "if they conceive that they cannot otherwise provide for their livelihood." It is left to the discretion of Endicott and his Council "to give way for the present to their planting of it, in such manner and with such restrictions" as they may think fitting. "But," it is added, "we absolutely forbid the sale of it or the use of it by any of our own particular (private) men's servants, unless upon urgent occasion, for the benefit of health, and taken privately." In the Records of the Colony of Massachusetts for September 3, 1634, "it is ordered that victuallers or keepers of an ordinary shall not suffer any tobacco to be taken into their houses, under penalty of 5s. for every offence to be paid by the victualler, and 12d. by the party that takes it." "Further it is ordered that no person shall take tobacco publicly under the penalty of 2s. 6d., nor privately in his own house or in the house of another before strangers, and that two or more shall not take it together anywhere, under the aforesaid penalty for every offence."

The laws which our Colonial fathers enacted against "excess and bravery in apparel" are fitted to excite a smile. But there is something more than ludicrous in the aspect of grave lawmakers passing judgment on all the minutiæ of dress, and finding matter of offence in an extra "slash," or a needless garniture of "lace." Against this last-named article the zeal of our Puritan fathers seems to have been especially stirred up. In 1634 it was ordered "that no person, either man or woman, shall hereafter make or buy any apparel, either woolen, silk, or linen with any lace on it, silver, gold, silk, or thread, under the penalty of forfeiture of such clothes." In 1636 it was enacted "that no person, after one month, shall make or sell any bone-lace or other lace, to be worn upon any garment or linen, upon pain of 5s. the yard for every yard of such lace so made, or sold, or set on; neither shall< any tailor set any lace upon any garment, upon pain of 10s. for every offence,—provided that binding or small edging laces may be used upon garments or linen." Again, three years later, a new edict was launched at this obnoxious material, because "there is much complaint of the excessive wearing of lace and other superfluities, tending to little use or benefit, but to the nourishing of pride and the exhausting of men's estates, and also of evil example to others." The law of 1634 was indeed repealed in 1644; but in 1651 the Court, to their great grief, are compelled to try their hand at the work again, though frankly confessing the impotence of all previous legislation, and evidently awakening to a sense of the inherent difficulties of the subject. "We acknowledge it," say they, "to be a matter of much difficulty, in regard of the blindness of men's minds and the stubbornness of their wills, to set down exact rules to confine all sorts of persons"; and so, leaving the wealthier class to their own conscience of fancy, they undertake to prescribe for "people of mean condition." It was therefore ordered (in 1651) that no one whose estate is not of the value of £200 "shall wear any gold or silver lace, or gold or silver buttons, or any bone-lace above 2s. per yard or silk hoods or scarfs"; and moreover, the selectmen of the town are required to fine anybody whom "they shall judge to exceed their rank and ability in the costliness or fashion of their apparel, in any respect"! And finally, a law passed in 1662 forbids "children and servants" to wear any apparel "exceeding the quality and condition of their persons or estate," "the grand jury and country court of the shire" being judges of the offence.

One provision of the law of 1634 against "new and immodest fashions" is too remarkable to be omitted. It reads as follows: "Moreover, it is agreed, if any man shall judge the wearing of any the forenamed particulars, new fashions, or long hair, or anything of the like nature, to be uncomely or prejudicial to the common good, and the party offending reform not the same, upon notice given him, that then the next Assistant, being informed thereof, shall have power to bind the party so offending to answer it at the next Court, if the case so requires; provided, and it is the meaning of the Court, that men and women shall have liberty to wear out such apparel as they are now provided of (except the immoderate great sleeves, slashed apparel, immoderate great veils, long wings, etc.)." What intolerable tyranny of private surveillance is indicated in the phrase, "what any man shall judge to be uncomely"!

In the second letter of instructions (dated June, 1629) to Endicott and his Council, they are exhorted to prevent the sale of "strong waters" to the Indians, and to punish any of their own people who shall become drunk in the use of them. In the preamble to a law enacted in 1646, one is led to expect an enforcement of the modern principles of abstinence and prohibition; since, after declaring that "drunkenness is a vice to be abhorred of all nations, especially of those which hold out and profess the Gospel of Christ Jesus," it goes on to assert that "any strict laws against the sin will not prevail unless the cause be taken away." But it would seem that "the cause," in the eyes of our Puritan lawmakers, was an indiscriminate sale of spirituous drinks; for the law chiefly enacts that none but "vintners" shall have permission to retail wine and "strong water." It is also permitted to constables to search any tavern, or even any private house, "suspected to sell wine contrary to this order." Moreover, no person is "to drink or tipple at unseasonable times in houses of entertainment,"—the "unseasonable" time being declared to be after nine in the evening.

But these laws were of small avail, for, in 1648, the Court is grieved to confess: "It is found by experience that a great quantity of wine is spent, and much thereof abused to excess of drinking and unto drunkenness itself, notwithstanding all the wholesome laws provided and published for the preventing thereof." It therefore orders, that those who are authorized to sell wine and beer shall not harbor a drunkard in their houses, but shall forthwith give him up to be dealt with by the proper officer, under penalty of five pounds for disobedience.

In 1636 one "Peter Bussaker was censured for drunkenness to be whipped and to have twenty stripes sharply inflicted, and fined £5 for slighting the magistrates," etc. In March, 1634, it was ordered, "that Robert Coles, for drunkenness by him committed at Roxbury, shall be disfranchised, wear about his neck and so to hangg upon his outward garment a D made of red cloth and set upon white; to continue this for a year, and not to leave it off at any time when he comes amongst company, under penalty of 40s. for the first offence and £5 for the second." What was the efficacy of the whipping or the "scarlet letter," we are not informed.

Of course, people capable of such legislation must frame fantastic definitions of Liberty. Here is an old one whose sentiments have been often parroted by unthinking humans of modern times. It reads: "True Liberty consists in a freedom of doing and receiving good under the protection of a government solicitous for the people's good." Such has always been the tyrant's conception of freedom, and, strange to say, finds many endorsements even to this day.

It has recently been solemnly announced from the judicial bench that the only liberty an American has is the liberty to do the right thing, of course according to other people's conception of right. That is precisely the kind of tyranny or liberty that was enjoyed by the victims of the paternalistic laws above described.

Persons afflicted with newspaper intelligence express their conception that the individual has no rights that government may not invade, by that hollow phrase, "Liberty under the Law." Liberty under the law is what the government-ridden peasants of Russia enjoy. Liberty under the law was the pleasure of those who expired with indescribable agony on the rack and amid the flames. Liberty under the law was meted out to the millions of victims of the witchcraft delusion. Liberty under the law was also the liberty of our Southern chattel slaves before as well as after the war. Liberty under the law is the same old idea of liberty which every tyrant has ever advanced. As for myself, I shouldn't object to a little liberty in spite of the law, when that does not conform to the rule of liberty as laid down by Herbert Spencer in these words: "Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man."

AIM AND TACTICS OF THE TRADE-UNION MOVEMENT.

By MAX BAGINSKI.

TRADE unionism represents to the working man the most natural form of association with his fellow-brother. This medium became a necessity for him when he was confronted by modern industrialism and the power of capitalism. It dawned on him that the individual producer had not a shadow of a chance with the owner of the means of production, who, together with the economic power, enjoyed the protection of the State with its various weapons of warfare and coercion. In the face of such a giant master all the appeals of the workingman to the love of justice and common humanity went up into smoke.

The beginning of modern industry found the producer in abject slavery and without the understanding of an organized form of resistance. Exploitation reigned su preme, ever seeking to sap the last drop of strength of its victims. No mercy for the common man, nor any con sideration shown for his life, his health, growth and development. Capitalism's only aim was the accumulation of profits, of wealth and power, and to this moloch every thing else was ruthlessly sacrificed.

This spirit of accumulation did not admit of the right of the masses to think, feel, or demand; it merely con sidered them a class of coolies, specially created, as it were, for their masters' use.

This notion is still in vogue to-day, and if the con ditions of the workers at this moment are somewhat better, somewhat more endurable, it is not thanks to the milk of human kindness of the money power. Whatsoever the workingmen have achieved in the way of better human conditions, -- a higher standard of living, or a partial re cognition of their rights, -- they have wrenched from their enemies through a hard and bitter struggle that required great endurance, tremendous courage and many sacri fices.

The tendency to treat the people as a herd of sheep the purpose of which is to serve as food for parasites is still very strong; but this tendency no longer goes un challenged; it is being met with tremendous opposition; increased social knowledge and revolutionary ideas have taught the workingmen to unite their efforts against those who have been comfortably seated on their backs for centuries past.

The first unskilled attempt on the part of the people to gain a clear conception of their position brought out blind hatred against the technical methods of exploitation instead of hatred against the latter.

In England, for instance, the workingmen considered machinery their deadly foe, to be gotten rid of by all means. The simple axiom that machinery, factories, mines, land, together with every other means of produc tion, if only in the hands of the entire community, would serve for the comfort and happiness of all, instead of being a curse, was a book of seven seals for the people in those days. And even at this late hour this simple truth is entertained by a comparative few, though more than one decade of socialistic and anarchistic enlighten ment has passed.

The first trade-unionistic attempts have met with the same ferocious persecution that Anarchism is being met with to-day. Even as to-day capital avails itself of the strongest weapons of government in its attack upon labor. The authorities were not slow in passing laws against trade unionism and every effort for organi zation was at that time considered high treason, or ganizers and all those who participated in strikes were considered aides and abettors of crime and conspiracy, punishable with long years of imprisonment and, in many cases, even with death.

At the behest of Money, the State sent human blood hounds on the trail of the man who in any way was suspected in participating in the trade-union movement. The most villainous and brutal methods were employed to counteract the growth and success of labor organiza tions. The powers that be recognized the great force that is contained in organized labor as the means of the regeneration of society much quicker than the working men themselves. They felt this force hanging like a Da mocles sword over their heads, which danger made them dread the future, and nothing was left undone to nip this force in the bud.

The fundamental principle of trade unionism is of a revolutionary character and, as such, it never was and never can be a mere palliative for the adjustment of Labor to Capital. Hence, it must aim at the social and economic reconstruction of society.

Many labor leaders in this country, who consider their duty performed when they sit themselves at the table of wealth and authority, trying to bring about peace and harmony between Capital and Labor, might greatly profit by the history of trade-unionism and the various eco nomic struggles it has fought.

Only ignorance can account for the birth of such superficial stuff on the labor question as the book of John Mitchell that has been launched upon the market through loud and vulgar advertisement. Nothing could have disproved the fitness of Mr. Mitchell for a labor leader so drastically as this book.

As already stated, the violent attempt to kill trade unionism or its organizations have proven futile. The swelling tide of the labor movement could not be stopped. The social and economic problem brought to light by modern industry demanded a hearing, produced various theories and an extensive literature on the subject -- a literature that spoke with a tongue of fire of the awful existence of the oppressed millions, their trials, their tribulations, the uncertainty, the dangers surrounding them; it spoke of the terrible results of their conditions, of the lives crippled, of the hopes marred; a literature that demanded to know why it is that those who toil are condemned to want and poverty, while those who never produced were living in affluence and extravagance.

Well-meaning people have even attempted to prove that Capital and Labor are twins, and that in order to maintain their common interests they ought to live in harmony; or, that if Sister Labor had a grievance against its big brother it ought to be settled in a calm and peaceful way. Meanwhile the dear sister was fleeced and bled by Brother Capital, and every time the abused and slaved and outraged creature would turn to her brother for justice the dear fellow would whip the rebellious child into submission.

Along with the forcible subjection of organized labor, the minds of the people were confused and blurred by the sugar-coated promises of politicians who assured them that the trade unions ought to be organized by the law, and that all labor quarrels ought to be settled by political and legal means. Indeed, legislatures even discussed a few labor-protective laws that either never saw the light of day, or, if really enacted, were set aside or overridden by the possessing class as an obstacle to profit-making.

Every government, no matter what political basis it rests upon, acts in unison with wealth, and therefore it never passed any legislation in behalf of the producing element of the country that would seriously benefit the great bulk of the people or in any way aim at any change of wage-slaving or economic subjugation.

Every step of improvement the workingmen have made is due solely to their own economic efforts and not to any legal or political aid ever given them, and through their own endeavors only can ever come the reconstruction of the economic and social conditions of society. Just as little as the workingmen can expect from legislative methods can they gain from trade-unionistic efforts that attempt to better economic conditions along the basic lines of the present industrial system.

The cardinal fault of the trade-union movement of this country lies in the fact that its hopes and ideals rest upon the present social status; these ideals ever rotate in the same circle and, therefore, cannot bear intellectual and material fruit. Condemned to pasture in the lean meadows of capitalistic economy, trade-unionism drags on a mis erable existence, satisfied with the crumbs that fall from the heavily laden tables of their lordly masters.

True social science has amply proved the futility of a reconciliation between the two opposing forces; the existence of the one force representing possession, wealth and power inevitably has a paralizing effect upon its opposing force -- Labor.

Trade-unionistic tactics of to-day unfortunately still travel the path marked out for Labor by the powers that be, while the majority of the labor leaders waste the time paid for by their organizations in listening to or discussing with capitalists sweet nothings in the form of arbitration or reconciliation, and are apparently unaware of the fundamental difference between the body they represent and the powers they bow to. And thus it happens that labor organizations are being brutally attacked, that the militia and soldiers are maiming their brothers in the various strike regions while the leaders are being dined and wined. The American Federation of Labor is lobbying in Washington, begging for legal protection, and in return venal justice sends Winchester rifles and drunken militiamen into the disturbed labor districts. Recently the American Federation of Labor made an alleged radical step in deciding to put up labor candidates for Congress -- an old and threadbare political move -- thereby sacrificing whatever honest men and clear heads they may have in their ranks. Such tactics are not worth a single drop of sweat of the workingmen, since they are not only contradictory to the basic principles of trade unionism, but even useless and impractical.

Pity for and indignation against the workers fill one's soul at the spectacle of the ridiculous strike methods so often employed and that as often frustrate the possible success of every large labor war. Or is it not laughable, if it were not so deadly serious, that the producers publicly discuss for months in advance where and when they might strike, and therewith give the enemy a chance to prepare his means of combat. For months the papers of the money power bring long interviews with labor leaders, giving detailed descriptions of the ways and means of the proposed strikes, or the results of negotiations with this or that mine magnate. The more often these negotia tions are reported, the more glory to the so-called leaders, for the more often their names appear in the papers; the more "reasonable" the utterances of these gentlemen (which means that they are neither fish nor flesh, neither warm nor cold), the surer they grow of the sympathy of the most reactionary element in the country or of an in vitation to the White House to join the Chief Magistrate at dinner. Labor leaders of such caliber fail to consider that every strike is a labor event upon the success or failure of which thousands of lives depend; rather do they see in it an opportunity to push their own insig nificant personalities into prominence. Instead of leading their organized hosts to victory, they disclose their super ficiality in their zeal not to injure their reputation for "respectability."

The workingmen? Be it victory or defeat, they must take up the reins of every strike themselves; as it is, they play the dupes of the shrewd attorneys on both sides, unaware of the price the trickery and cunning of these men cost them.

As I said before, the unions negotiate strikes for days and weeks and months beforehand, even allowing their men to work overtime in order to produce all the commodities to continue business while the strike is going on.

The printers, for instance, worked late into the night on magazines that were being got ready four months in advance, and the miners who discussed the strike so long until every remnant of enthusiasm was gone.

What wonder, then, that strikes fail? As long as the employer is in a position to say, "Strike if you will; I do not need you; I can fill my orders; I know that hunger will drive you back into the mine and factory, I can wait," there is no hope for the success of the strike.

Such have been the results of the legal trade union methods.

The history of the labor struggle of this country shows an incident that warrants the hope for an energetic, revo lutionary trade union agitation. That is the eight-hour movement of 1886 which culminated in the death of five labor leaders. That movement contained the true element of the proletarian and revolutionary spirit, the lack of which makes organized labor of to-day a ball in the hands of selfish aspirants, know-nothings and politicians.

That which specifically characterized the event of 1886 as a revolutionary factor was the fact that the eight-hour workday could never be accomplished through lobbying with politicians, but through the direct and economic weapon, the general strike.

The desire to demonstrate the efficacy of this weapon gave birth to the idea of celebrating the first of May as an appropriate day for Labor's festival. On that day the workingmen were to give the first practical demon stration of the power of the general strike as an at least one-day protest against oppression and tyranny, and which day were gradually to become the means for the final overthrow of economic and social dependence.

One may suggest that the tragedy of the 11th of November of 1887 has stamped the general strike as a futile method, but this is not true. The battle of liberation cannot be put a stop to by the brutality and rascality of the ruling powers. The vicious anger and the wild hatred that strangled our brothers in Chicago are the safest guarantee that their activity struck a potentially fatal blow to government and capital.

Neither Mr. Mitchell nor Mr. Gompers run the risk of dying upon the gallows of sacred capitalistic Justitia; her ladyship is not at all as blind as some suppose her to be; on the contrary, she has a very keen eye for all that may prove beneficial or dangerous to the society that draws its subsistence from the lives' blood of its people. She has quite made up her mind that the gentle men in the ranks of Labor to-day lead the people about in a circle and never will urge them out into the open, towards liberation.

(To be continued.)

REFINED CRUELTY.

By Anna Mercy.

CIVILIZATION has eliminated none of the qualities that marked the age of savagery. The cruelties which especially characterized primitive man is exercised as much to-day as in the days of cannibalism.

Civilization has been the refining agent of our qualities. Just as a number of chemicals put into a crucible are refined by a certain acid, while yet the original substances remain, though in different forms, so has civilization refined and remolded the crude elements of our nature, leaving the essence of our primitive qualities the same.

The subtlety with which cruelty is exercised to-day makes of it a far-reaching and far more destructive force than formerly. Instead of attacking our neighbors with sticks and stones and tomahawks, and forcing them into captivity in order that they may work for us, we obtain the same or even better results by numerous subtle methods. We instill respect for law, wealth and morality. We withdraw the land and other natural resources from general use. With a show of generous sentiment, allow the lambs we have shorn to assist us in the shearing of other lambs.

Every morning and every evening we see a long procession of men and women going or coming from the work, at which they have given up their life force for the sake of a mere pittance. Look at these men and women! There they go, evidently free! No shackles are on their hands or feet, no overseer keeps them in check by club or gun. There they go voluntarily to their prison factories, offices, stores, in the morning; and in the evening, when the glorious sun is hidden from sight, they come out again, haggard and worn, to creep to their prison homes.

When the savage desires to rob you, he may attempt to strangle and maim you. But the civilized man scorns such crude methods. He builds cheap tenements in which you may gradually and surely choke to death; and not satisfied with that, he, with a great show of kindness, prepares your foods for you, that they may slowly, very slowly, but surely, hasten your deliverance. Babies are not frankly murdered any more, but they are served with nice, adulterated milk, which accomplishes the same purpose in a quieter way.

Under the name of law many atrocious crimes are committed. Imprisonment, capital punishment and war are yet crude in their methods. They are still susceptible of more refining. Here cruelty has rather a thin garment on and needs to be covered up a little more.

Even in our every-day relations with each other, we use many and varied forms of refined cruelty. When displeased, we no longer beat each other, but we use the subtler forces of sarcasm, irony, slander, neglect. We regard directness a rudeness, when in reality it is the greatest kindness imaginable. Instead of being positive and direct in our dealings with each other, we constantly exercise a passive cruelty, in other words, the cruelty of refinement. We are evasive, delusive, subdued, falsified. But we deceive with dignity, tell falsehoods fluently, use words and cold behavior as daggers.

To-day we do not turn away an unwelcome visitor, but we announce that we are not at home; or we slander him behind his back. When we love we pretend to be modest and indifferent, while, in an indirect way, we attempt to build walls around the person we love. There is nothing free in the expression of our emotions, for we are subdued, crushed; we are civilized!

Everything is sham and hypocrisy, and hidden daggers are everywhere, in one form or another. These daggers are concealed under kindness, charity, benevolence, morality, law, and are, therefore, difficult to deal with. The blades are thrust into the back; you can feel them, but you cannot grapple with them.

Our inherent cruelty is best illustrated in the treatment we give those who are absolutely in our power—little children and the dumb animals. With what authority do we elicit respect and obedience from our little people! With rod in hand and with venomous tongues we begin the process of subjugating and civilizing our little free, emotional people. In the name of "their highest good" do we mould them to be actors, that they may properly enact the tragedy of life as we had enacted it before them!

The dumb animals receive the cream of our refined cruelty. In order to appear civilized, we drive in carriages pulled by horses whose spinal columns have been docked, whose necks are held stiff by tight check reins, whose eyes are blinded by "fashionable" devices.

There used to be cannibalism and human sacrifices; there used to be religious prostitution and the murder of weak children and of girls; there used to be bloody revenge and the slaughter of whole populations, judicial tortures, quarterings, burnings at the stake, the lash, and slavery, which have disappeared. But if we have outlived these dreadful customs and institutions, this does not prove that there do not exist institutions and customs amongst us which have become as abhorrent to enlightened reason and conscience as those which have in their time been abolished and have become for us only a dreadful remembrance. The way of human perfecting is endless, and at every moment of historical life there are superstitions, deceits, pernicious and evil institutions already outlived by men and belonging to the past; there are others which appear to us in the far mists of the future; and there are some which we are now living through and whose over-living forms the object of our life. Such in our time is capital punishment and all punishment in general. Such is prostitution, such is the work of militarism, war, and such is the nearest and most obvious evil, private property in land.

"THE JUNGLE."

A Recension by Veritas.

"THE JUNGLE," a recent story by Upton Sinclair, is a nightmare of horrors, of which the worst horror is that it is not a phantom of the night, but claims to be true history of one phase of our twentieth-century civilization. Nothing but the book itself could represent its own tragic power. In my opinion it is the most terrible book ever written.

It is for the most part a tale of the abattoirs, those unspeakable survivals in our Christendom in which man reeks his savage and sensual will on the lesser animals; and indirectly it is a story of the moral abattoirs of politics, economics, society, religion and the home, where the victims are of the species human, and where man's inhumanity to man is as selfish and relentless as his age-long cruelty to his brothers and sisters just behind him in the great procession.

Possibly the title is inappropriate. There is a "law of the pack," which is observed in the genuine jungle, but these human beasts appear to have all of the jungle's vices and few of its virtues. The author might have called his history, "The Slaughter House," or, perhaps, plain "Hell."

It is a common saying about a packing house, "We use all of the hog except the squeal." This author uses the squeal, or, rather, the wild death shrieks of agony of the ten millions of living creatures tortured to death every year in Chicago and the other tens of millions elsewhere, to pander to the old brutal, inhuman thirst of humanity for a diet of blood. The billions of the slain have found a voice at last, and if I mistake not this cry of anguish from the "killing-beds" shall not sound on until men, whose ancestors once were cannibals, shall cease to devour even the corpses of their murdered animal relatives. But while "The Jungle" will undoubtedly make more vegetarians, it would take more than the practice of universal vegetarianism to cause the book to fulfil its mission; for this is a story of Civilization's Inferno and of the crisis of the world, a recital of conditions for which, when once comprehended, there can be no remedy but the revolution of revolutions, the event toward which the ages ran, the establishment of a genuine political, industrial and social democracy.[2]

If the story be dramatized and Mrs. Fiske take the part of Ona, her presentation will make Tess seem like a pastoral idyll in comparison.

The book is great even from a political standpoint.

But more than this, it is a great moral appeal. Not in Victor Hugo or Charles Dickens does the moral passion burn with purer or intenser light than in these pages.

I should not advise children or very delicately constituted women to read it.

I have said it is a book of horrors. I started to mark the passages of peculiar tragedy and found that I was marking every page, and yet it is a justifiable book and a necessary book.

The author tells as facts the story of "diseased meat," and worse, the preparation in the night time of the bodies of the cattle which have died from known and unknown causes before reaching the slaughter pens, and the distribution of the effects, with the rest of the intentional killing of the day; he describes the preparation of "embalmed beef" from cattle covered with boils; he even narrates the story of "men who fell into the vats," and "sometimes they would be overlooked for days till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard"; he writes of the making of smoked sausage out of waste potatoes by the use of chemicals and out of spoiled meat as well; and he further speaks of rats which were "nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shovelled into carts and the man who did the shovelling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one—there were things which went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit."

But the worst of the story is a tale of the condition of the workers at Packingtown and elsewhere. It is the story of strong men who justly hated their work; of men, for no fault of their own, cast out in middle life to die; of weeping children driven with whips to their ignoble toil; of disease-producing conditions in winter, only surpassed by the deadly summer; of people working with their feet upon the ice and their heads enveloped in hot steam; of the perpetual stench which infests their nostrils, the sores which universally covered their bodies; of the terrible pace set by the continual "speeding up" of the pace makers, goaded to a pitch of frenzy; of accidents commonplace in every family; of the garbage pile of refuse from the tables of more fortunate citizens, from which many were forced to satisfy their hunger; of the terrors of the black list, the shut-down, the strike and the lockout; and of the universal swindle, whether a man bought a house, or doctored tea, coffee, sugar or flour.

It is still further a story of the moral enormities and monstrosities of the almost universal graft, "the plants honeycombed with rottenness. The bosses grafted off the men and they grafted off each other, and some day the superintendent would find out about the boss, and then he would graft off the boss."

When the men were set to perform some peculiarly immoral act, they would say, "Now we are working for the church," referring to the benefactions of the proprietors to religious institutions.

It tells the story of the training of the children in vice, of girls forced into immorality, so that a girl without virtue would stand a better chance than a decent one. It is a tale of the terrible ending of old Antanas by saltpeter poisoning; of Jonas, no one knows how, possibly he fell into the vats; of little Kristoforas by convulsions; of little Antanas by falling into a pit before the door of his house; of Marija, in a house of shame; of Stanislovas, who was eaten by rats; and of beautiful little Ona, to the description of whose ending no other than the author's pen could do justice.

The book shows how men graft everywhere, not only in the packing house, but how the slime of the serpent is over almost all of our modern commercial and political practises.

No one can justly hold the meat kings responsible for all of this.

Nothing less than a thorough reconstruction of our whole social organism will suffice. Palliative philanthropy is, as the author says, "like standing upon the brink of the pit of hell and throwing snow balls in to lower the temperature."

"The Jungle" is the boiling over of our social volcano and shows us what is in it. It is a danger signal!

We are all indicted and must stand our trial. There rests upon us the obligation to ascertain the facts. The author of "The Jungle" lived in Packingtown for months, and the eminently respectable publishers who are now issuing the book sent a shrewd lawyer to Chicago to report as to whether the statements in it were exaggerated, and his report confirmed the assertions of the author.

This book is a call to immediate action.

The Lithuanian hero found his solution of the problems suggested in Socialism. The solution lies either in that direction or in something better, and it behooves those who warn us against Socialistic experiments to tell us if they know of any other effective remedy. Surely all thoughtful men should study these theories of social redemption and learn why their advocates claim that putting them in practice would modify or abolish the evils of our modern conditions.

"The masters, lords and rulers of all lands," the thinkers and workers of our time must speedily give themselves to the understanding and application of some adequate remedy, or there will be blood, woe and tears almost without end, "when this dumb terror shall reply to God, after the silence of the centuries."

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Genuine or not genuine: we live right now in a democracy. If, in spite of that, such diabolical crimes as Sinclair describes them are committed daily, then this only proves that democracy is no panacea for them. Why should it, if criminals of the Armour kind realize profits out of their wholesale poisoning of such dimensions that they can easily buy all the glory of the people's sovereignty.—Editor.

THE GAME IS UP.

By Sadakichi Hartmann.

"HELLO, Morrison, may I come in?" The door stood slightly ajar.

Morrison came to the door—the complexion of his face was sallow and his eyes had a peculiar look—he recognized his visitor, hesitated for a moment whether he should admit him, then opened the door and made a sort of mock courtesy.

"Cleaning up?" the tall, lean man asked as he entered the little hall room.

"Yes," and a wistful smile glided over Morrison's pale face; "cleaning up for good."

The room had a peculiar appearance. There was no disorder and yet a lot of things were lying about; it looked as if the lodger intended to go away on a long journey and had tried to straighten up matters previous to his departure. The visitor gazed curiously about the room. He had a strange foreboding, but forced himself to ask in a jocular mood: "Going to Egypt again?"

"Farther than that this time, but it won't take so long; the journey I am contemplating will be over by to-morrow evening, I hope."

"What do you mean?"

"The game is up."

The tall, lean man made no immediate reply, he merely gazed steadily into the face of his friend. He had always suspected that it would come to this some day. He really wondered that Morrison had not done it long ago. If any man had a right to dispose of his life it was surely Morrison. He had endured more than most human beings. His case was absolutely hopeless.

"Is there no way out of it?"

Morrison shook his head. He wanted to say something, but his voice failed him. He stepped to the dresser near the window, looked into the mirror and arranged his faded, threadbare tie. It was pitiful to see how shabbily he was dressed. He no longer set the fashion as in his days of success, years ago in Boston.

"Would money help you?" and the tall, lean visitor fumbled in his pockets. Although fairly well dressed, he was hard up most of the time and only ventured to broach the subject as he just happened to have a few dollars to spare that day.

"No, what good would the little do that you could give me?" and he continued to adjust matters and tuck things away in his trunk.

"There, you are right again, not much. But I won forty dollars on the track; I sometimes go out there," he added as a sort of excuse, "as it is impossible to live on literature alone. I could spare ten."

"Can you really spare them? I won't be able to return them, you know. I would like to have them. I suppose you will refuse to let me buy a revolver with them. I have all sorts of poisons," he pointed to some little bottles, "but I would prefer not to use them, it wouldn't be esthetical, and then I want to go away to some place where nobody knows me. I don't want to be identified."

The literary man slowly pulled a small roll out of his pocket. He thought of his wife and children who needed the money. It was really foolish to have made that offer. Well, it was probably the last service he could render his friend. Morrison was serious about his departure, there was no doubt about that. "Here!"

"Thanks," Morrison answered, though he did not take the money right away. He looked about absentmindedly, as in a dream. This was friendship indeed. He had not believed that anybody could so completely enter another man's state of mind. Not a word of opposition. This was glorious! They had known each other for more than seventeen years. They had often drifted apart and, somehow, had always met again. They had never been very intimate, they had merely respected each other for the work they had accomplished, each in his profession; although they differed largely in ideas. Morrison was a sculptor, and almost an ancient Greek in his feelings for the beauty of lines. The tall, lean man, on the other hand, was a strange mixture of a visionary and brutal realist. They both were cynics, however, that found life rather futile. With the literary man this was merely a theoretical view point, while Morrison was really embittered with life. The incidents of this afternoon had surprised him. He was deeply moved and felt as if he should give utterance to his emotions. He remembered that his attitude towards his friend had been rather arrogant at times. He now felt sorry for it, but somehow could not form his sentiments and thoughts into coherent sentences.

"Thanks," he simply repeated, "Has anybody seen you enter the house?"

"No, the door was open and I walked right up. Why do you ask?"

"I don't want anybody to be mixed up in this affair, as it only concerns me."

The literary man smiled: "Could any man influence you one way or another? As far as I can make out you are beyond mortal influence."

A pause ensued. Morrison threw the last thing into his trunk. "Well, I am ready. Everything is settled."

"How about your statues?"

"Pshaw!" Morrison shrugged his shoulders. "Nobody was interested in them while I lived. Why should I bother to think what might become of them after my death?"

The author nodded and scowled at the same time. He was not satisfied with the answer. But there were still other things on his mind. He was used to analyze everything to shreds and tatters. "Are you not afraid that you might make a botch out of the whole job?"

Morrison weighed the question in his mind, then shook his head and answered: "No, there is hardly a chance for it now. I have been tuned up to it, trained myself to it, so to speak. The fruit is ripe. It has to fall. It would be awful, though—" he added, with an after-thought. "Do you remember my emerald ring? I had to pawn it, but I kept the poison which was hidden under the stone. I will take that if anything goes wrong."

"Would you object to my company?" asked the tall, lean man, "I mean until all is over. I, myself, am not quite ready yet for any such heroical performances."

"Oh, don't think of it," the sculptor ejaculated; notwithstanding, the tone of his voice indicated that he would not object, that he would even prefer a traveling companion for the last few hours of his life.

"Well, I'll go with you. Where are you going?"

"To New Haven. It's a nice trip." Morrison carefully brushed his hair and clothes, there came a flush to his face as he realized how shabby his clothes really were. The tall, lean man was delicate enough to look away as if he had not noticed anything.

A few moments later they left the room. Morrison locked the door and they went out into the street. They did not talk much, merely commonplace phrases that did not bear upon the subject. Both were occupied with their own thoughts, and strange thoughts they must have been. They leisurely strolled to a store of sporting outfits, bought a revolver and cartridges, had their shoes shined at the next corner, and slowly wended their way toward the depot. Their actions were almost mechanical. Suicide is an attack of insanity, a sort of mental plague. If one has caught the fever, one is doomed. There is no escape from it. At the same time it is contagious. The literary man was somewhat infected by it. All his interests in life seemed to be dulled, obliterated as it were. He could only think the one thought, "Morrison is going to kill himself. But who knows, he may, after all, turn up next week with the excuse that he had changed his mind. No, not he!—it was really too bad!" Morrison, on the other hand, grew quite cheerful. With him the idea that he would do it, had become so matter-of-fact, that he ceased to think of it. Nothing could influence him any more. Even if some vague current of soul activity should revolt at the very last moment, he was certain that his hand would mechanically perform the task.

"Only one return ticket," he whispered as he approached the ticket office. "Oh, I almost forgot," replied his friend.

During the trip they silently sat opposite each other, smoking. Now and then Morrison pointed out the beautiful sights. He seemed to be familiar with the scenery. At their arrival in New Haven, at dusk, they at once adjourned to a hotel and sat down at a table in the bar-room. They began to talk about art, they discussed commercialism, the lack of appreciation and the vanity of all serious work, at least as far as art is concerned. They began to relate reminiscences of their student years, and reviewed the hopes and ambitions of their youth. If they had been realized, what wonders they would have accomplished!

"I gave the other side a chance. They never responded. I waited for ten long years, and now, it's all up. Let us have another drink, waiter, the last." They clinked glasses. "And now for a decent departure as in the good old times, when Hegesias, the Cyrenaic, preached suicide in Alexandria—"

They arose. It had grown dark. They sauntered forth into the night. Morrison seemed to know where he was going. "I once spent very pleasant days out here," he explained, "years, I hardly remember how many years ago." After that they did not converse any more. They finally arrived at a beautiful avenue of old elms that extended far into the country. Its deep, dark vista was lit up only by the shimmer of a distant lake.

Morrison stopped, seized his friend's hand, shook it, and said in a firm voice: "Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

And Morrison walked away. It was so dark that in a few moments his form became invisible. Only his footsteps could still be heard. They grew fainter and fainter. The tall, lean man stared after his friend into the blackness of the night. His eyes grew dim.

A few rain drops fell on his face and hands. "I hope it won't rain," he murmured, "it might make dying more difficult, but no—the sky is clear." Then he slightly bent forward and listened eagerly. Everything was calm, motionless, as in suspense. Nobody passed through the avenue. Only in the adjoining side streets pedestrians flitted by like ghosts.

So this was the end! After having struggled bravely for years, after living up to high ideals as well as one could, to go down a long, dark avenue—a falling star flashed across the tree tops.

The tall, lean man pressed his hand to his heart, although he was not certain of having heard a report, he felt, that his friend had arrived at the goal of his life's journey. The game was up!

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LIGHT!

BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

(From Songs Before Sunrise.)

Light, light, and light! to break and melt in sunder
All clouds and chains that in one bondage bind
Eyes, hands, and spirits, forged by fear and wonder,
And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind;
There goes no fire from heaven before their thunder
Nor are the links not malleable that wind
Round the snared limbs and souls that ache thereunder;
The hands are mighty were the head not blind
Priest is the staff of king,
And chains and clouds one thing,
And fettered flesh, with devastated mind
Open thy soul to see,
Slave! and thy feet are free;
Thy bonds and thy belief are one in kind,
And of thy fears thine irons wrought
Hang weights upon thee fashioned out of thine own
thought.

closed a few unpleasant features of the stockyards which really cannot be easily avoided in such a tremendous industry, but which will eventually be remedied.

People of this and other countries, you may now buy the stockyard products in good faith! The wisdom of paternal government stands sponsor for them.

In this way the good reputation of our national industry and commerce will be rescued from obloquy. The people will continue to be fed on carcasses and Government will again have proved itself the faithful agent and patron saint of Capitalism.

Too much common sense in this country! Common sense may suffice to discredit the story that the universe was created in six days or the legend of the Virgin Mary and the Child. Equally so may common sense be a necessary adjunct of horse-traders. But common sense is never sufficient to pave the way for great, liberating ideas. To accomplish the latter one must bear in mind the words of the father of Saint Simon. Every morning, when awakening his son, he greeted him with the following words, "Remember, my son, one must have enthusiasm to carry out great deeds."

Several years ago the Italian king lamented the fact that his is a very dangerous profession. The same plaint was uttered by the Spanish king during the recent excitement in Madrid. The poor young man seems to eternally see the terrible bombs flying about his long kingly ears. Why will these reigning gentlemen not withdraw from their dangerous profession? Their parasite existence is as useless as it is injurious; it is neither necessary nor beneficial; it is a burden and a curse to humanity.

They really should welcome every bomb-thrower as an Omen that their divine right has reached an end.

AUTHORITY.

BY SAMUEL BUTLER

Authority intoxicates,
And makes mere sots of magistrates;
The fumes of it invade the brain,
And make men giddy, proud and vain:
By this the fool commands the wise,
The noble-with the base complies,
The sot assumes the rule of wit,
And cowards make the brave submit.

THE REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA.

BY PETER KROPOTKIN

The Russian Revolution has lately entered into a new phase. Dark gloom hung about the country during the months of January to April. Now it is all bright hopes owing to the unexpected results of the Duma elections all turning in favor of the Radicals. But before speaking of the new hopes, let us cast a glance on that terrible gloomy period which the country has just lived through.

In every revolution a number of local uprisings is always required to prepare the great successful effort of the people. So it has been in Russia. We have had the local uprisings at Moscow, in the Baltic provinces, in the Caucasus and in the villages of Central Russia. And each of these uprisings, remaining local, was followed by a terrible repression.

The General Strike, declared at Moscow in January last, did not succeed. The working men had suffered too much during the great General Strike in October, 1905, and the partial strikes which followed . And when the provocations of the Government compelled the Moscow workingmen to strike, the movement did not generalize. Only a few factories on the Presnya and a few railway lines joined it. The Grand Trunk--Moscow to St. Petersburg--continued to work, and troops were brought on it to Moscow.

As to the troops stationed at Moscow itself they showed signs of deep discontent, and probably would have sided with the people if the strike had been general and a crowd of 300,000 workingmen had flooded the streets, as they did flood in October last. But when they saw that the General Strike had failed they obeyed their commanders.

And yet the week during which a handful of armed revolutionists--less than 2,000--and the workers on strike in the Presnya fought against the artillery and the soldiers, and when several miles of barricades were built by the crowd--by the man and the boy in the street-- this week proved how wrong were all the "fire-side revolutionists" when they proclaimed the impossibility of street warfare in a revolution.

As to the Letts and the Esthonians in the Baltic provinces, their uprising against their haughty and rapacious German landlords was a great movement. All over a large country the peasants and the artisans of the small towns rose up. They nominated their own municipalities, they sent away the German judges, refused to work for the landlords, paid no rents,--proceeded in short as if they were free. And if their uprising was finally drowned in blood, it has shown at least what the peasants must do all over Russia. In fact the latent insurrection continues still.

The repression which followed the uprising was terrible. The British press has not told one-tenth of the atrocities which were committed by the imperial troops in the Baltic provinces, along the Moscow to Kazan railway line, in the Caucasus, in Siberia, or in the Russian villages. And when we tried to tell the truth about these atrocities, either in some widely read English review, or before large public meetings, we always felt the dead wall of some inexplicable opposition rising against us. The treaty or agreement which has been concluded a few days ago between the Governments of Great Britain and Russia explains now the cause of the opposition to the divulgation in this country of facts which were openly published in the Russian papers, in Russia itself.

The repression was a story of a wholesale murder, accomplished by the troops systematically, in cold blood. Modern history knows only one similarly savage repression: the wholesale murders by the middle-class army at Paris after the defeat of the Commune, in May, 1871. And yet these murders were committed after a fierce fight, in the lurid light of burning Paris.

The detachment of the guard which was sent along the Moscow-Kazan line had not one single shot fired against it. The revolutionists had already left the line and disbanded when that regiment came. But at every station Colonel Minn, head of this detachment, and his officers, shot from ten to thirty men, simply taking their names from lists supplied to the troops by the secret police. They shot them without any simulation of a trial, or even of identification. They shot them in batches, without any warning. Shot anyhow, from behind, into the heap. Colonel Minn shot them simply with his revolver.

As to the peasants in the Baltic provinces it was still worse. Whole villages were flogged. Those men whom a local landlord would name as "dangerous" were shot on the spot, without any further inquiries--very often a son for his fattier, one brother for another, an Ivanovsky for an Ivanitsky. . . . It was such an orgy of flogging and killing that a young officer, having himself executed several men in this way, shot himself next day when he realized what he had done.

In Siberia, in the Caucasus, the horrors were even more revolting. And in the villages of Russia, where the peasants had shown signs of unrest, the same executions went on, sometimes with an unimaginable cruelty, as was, for instance, the case in Tamboff, with that governor's aid, Luzhenovsky, whom the heroic girl Spiridonova killed. "When I came to the villages and saw the old men who had grown insane after having been tortured under the whips, and when I had spoken to the mother of the girl who had flung herself into the well after the Cossacks had violated her, I felt that life was impossible so long as that man, Luzhenovsky, would go on unpunished." Thus spoke this heroic girl on her trial.

But worse than that was in store. All the world has shuddered when it learned the tortures to which Miss Spiridonova was submitted by the police officer Zhdanoff and the Cossack officer Abramoff after her arrest. The tortures of our Montjuich comrades and brothers fade before the sufferings which were inflicted upon this girl. And all over Russia there was lately a sigh of satisfaction when that Abramoff was killed and the revolutionist who killed that beast made his escape, and again the other day when it was known that the other beast, Zhdanoff, had met the same fate.

The gloominess which prevailed in Russia when the Witte-Durnovo ministry had inaugurated the wholesale shooting of the rebels could not be described without quoting pages from the Russian newspapers. Over 70, 000 people were arrested; the prisons were full to overflowing. Batches of exiles began to be sent, as of old, by mere order of the Administration, to Siberia. The old exiles, returning under the amnesty of November 2, 1905, meeting on their way home the batches of the Witte-Durnovo exiles. The revolutionists of all sections of the Socialist party, Revolutionary Socialists, Anarchists, and even Social Democrats, took to revolver and bomb, and every day one could read in the Russian papers that one, two, or more functionaries of the Crown had been killed by the revolutionists in revenge for the atrocities they had committed. Scores of men and women, like Spiridonova, the sisters lzmailovitch, and so many other heroic women and young men, felt sick of life under such a system of Asiatic rule, and made the vow of taking revenge upon the executioners.

It was under such conditions that the elections to the Duma took place. And now the few supporters of the Tsar had to discover that their satraps had overdone the oppression. Various measures were taken by the Government to manipulate the elections so as to have a crushing majority in their favor. The Liberal candidates were arrested, the meetings forbidden, the newspapers confiscated--every governor of a province acting as a Persian satrape on his own responsibility. Those who spoke or went about for the advanced candidates were most unceremoniously searched and sent to jail. . . . And all that was--labor lost!

The reaction had developed within these three months such a bitter hatred against the Government that none but opposition candidates had any chance of being listened to and elected. "Are you against these wild beasts or for them?" This was the only question that was asked.

And the Constitutional Democrats obtained a crushing majority in the Duma (pronounce Dooma), such a majority that the Russian Government is now perplexed as to what is to be done next.

The Revolutionary Socialists and the Social Democrats abstained from taking any part in the elections, and therefore there are very few avowed Socialists in the Duma. But apart from that the Duma contains all those middle-class Radicals whose names have come to the front during the last thirty years as foes of autocracy.

The most interesting element in the Duma are the peasants, who have nearly 120 representatives elected. With the exception of some thirty men, who are of unsettled opinion, the peasant representatives are absolutely and entirely with the most advanced Radicals in political matters, and with the Socialist workingmen in all the labor demands. But, in addition to that, they put forward the great question--the greatest of our century--the land question.

"No one who does not till the land himself has any right to the land. Only those who work on it with their own hands, and every one of those who does so, must have access to the land. The land is the nation's property, and the nation must dispose of it according to its needs." This is their opinion--their faith, and no economists of any camp will shake it.

"Eighty years ago we were settled in these prairies," one of those peasants said the other day. That land was a desert. "We have made the value of all this region; but half of it was taken by the landlords (in accordance with the law, of course; but we, peasants, do not admit that a law could be a law once it is unjust). It was taken by the landlords--we must have it back."

"But if you take that land, and there are other villages in the neighborhood which have no land but their poor allotments, what then ?"

"Then they have a right to it, just as we have. But not the landlords !"

There is all the Social Question, all the Socialist wisdom, in these plain words.

"If the peasants seize the land, then the factory hands will apply the same reasoning to the factories!" exclaim the terrified correspondents of the English papers in reporting such plain talk.
Yes, they will. Undoubtedly they will. They must. Because, if they don't do it all our civilization must go to wreck and ruin--like the Roman, the Greek, the Egyptian, the Babylonian civilizations went to the ground.

Another important feature. The Russian peasants don't trust their representatives. These men from the plough have understood the gist of parliamentarism better than those who have grown infected gradually by Parliament worship. Their election fell upon this or that man; but they knew they must not trust him. Election is somewhat of a piece of gambling. And therefore a number of private peasant delegates are now seen in the galleries of the Russian Duma, whom their villages have sent to keep watch over their representatives in Parliament. They know that these representatives will soon be spoiled and bribed one way or another. So they sent delegates--mostly old, respected peasants, not fine in words, not of the self-advertising class, men who never would be elected, but who will honestly keep their, eye upon the M.P.'s.

However, although the Duma has been only a few days together, a general feeling grows in Russia that all this electioneering is not yet the proper thing. "What can the Duma do?" they ask all over Russia. "If the Government doesn't want it they will send it away. How can 500 men resist the Government if they make up their minds to send them back to their homes?"

And so, all over Russia the feeling grows that the Parliament and its debates are not the right thing yet. It is only a preliminary to something else which is to come. "They will express our needs; they will agree upon. certain things" . . . but a feeling grows in Russia that the action will have to come from the people.

And the underground work, the slow work of maturing convictions and of grouping together, goes on all over Russia as a preparation to something infinitely more important than all the debates of the Duma.

They don't even pronounce the name of this more important thing. Perhaps most of them don't know its name. But we know it and we may tell it. It is the Revolution: the only real remedy for the redress of wrongs.

THE LAW OF THE "SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST."

BY EMMA LEE.

The law of the "Survival of the Fittest" is the Fetich with which every man who has succeeded in life at the expense of his less fortunate fellow-man conjures.

If he would only take the trouble to reason it out, he would find that this "law" is far from immutable. In prehistoric times, when the world was young, the "law" operated on the individual.

Learned men tell us that in this era of the world's youth men were born, lived and died with no companionship save that which the (immutable) law of Being necessitated.

Literally every men's hand was against that of every other man.

Then came the era of the Patriarch, in which the weaker members of a family were protected by the stronger. The "law" shifted. It was no longer man against man, but family against family.

Next we, find the Tribal era.

Again the "law" shifted to meet the growing demands of human advancement. No longer family against family, but tribe against tribe.

Following the Tribal era came that of nations--countries. Again the "law" shifted.

No longer was it tribe against tribe--but one nation against others.

This era is fast disappearing and the time is not far distant when the "law" will operate between but two classes in all the world--the class that hath and the class that hath not.

The ushering in of the dawn of the day when class distinctions no longer exist will sign the death warrant of that much vaunted "Law of the Survival of the Fittest."

Russell Sage EMMA GOLDMAN I
The Kingdom of Peace MILO A. TOWNSEND 3
Observations and Comments 4
A Hero of the Russian Revolution 7
Modern Science and Anarchism PETER KROPOTKIN 9
The Beggar IWAN TURGENJEFF 21
The Inheritors JOHN FRANCIS VALTER 22
Prisons and Crime ALEXANDER BERKMAN 23
Aphorisms J. M. GOTTESMAN 29
Modesty MARGARET GRANT 30
Zola's Vision of the Future 34
Morality as Antinaturalness FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE 41
The Revolutionary Spirit in French Literature(Continuation) ALVAN F. SANBORN 46
The Triumph of Youth 55
Advertisements 63

RUSSELL SAGE.

By EMMA GOLDMAN.

What an indictment against Society! Impure and poisonous, indeed, must have been the soil that nurtured such a plant.

The champions of the capitalistic system assert that the majority will ever have to live in poverty and misery, and that millions of backs are to remain forever bent, to sustain the magnificent structure called civilization.

Were we all to toil to produce the mere necessities of life-they say-who would foster art, poetry, and literature? Surely, there must be a select few. By their culture and aestheticism by their refinement and beauty, they illuminate and elevate those predestined to a life of darkness and despair.

Such is the philosophy of capitalism. But even this philosophy, absurd as it is, will fail to justify the life of Russell Sage. It would search in vain for even the faintest reflex of himself, or of his tremendous wealth, in the lives of those that dwell in the abyss.

Russell Sage! Accumulation, with him, was not a means, but rather the sole aim of life. The notion that the social mission of wealth is philanthropy and charity was brutally caricatured by the personality of this man. Not even his own life derived any benefit from his riches, let alone the lives of others. Indeed, he serves as the most striking proof of our social insanity, which suffers thousands to starve, that a, few calculating human machines may pile dividends upon dividends.

THE KINGDOM OF PEACE

By Milo A. Townsend

Within, are the Fountains of Peace,
Within, are the riches of soul-
The riches alone that can last,
While billows of ocean shall roll.
The riches which dwell in the mind
We may take wherever we go-
While money which men seek and hoard,
Proves often the soul's overthrow.
Though millions a man may possess,
Very poor he still may remain,
Poor in all that is noble and great-
Rich only in gewgaws and gain.
Within is the Kingdom of Peace,
Which only the true soul can know-
This kingdom enthroned in "the light,"
Truth alone can ever bestow.
Without are the deserts of Care,
Where Mammon sits brooding and grim-
Then seek for the Kingdom of Peace-
The world's lights are fleeting and dim.

OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS

The religion and philosophy of the enslaved lean towards fatalism. Self-humiliation is a source of satisfaction to those that see the cause of their misery in destiny or in some supreme power, rather than in their own cowardice and weakness.

We throw our responsibilities into the refuse of metaphysics, which are supposed to hide somewhere beyond the drawn draperies of this world.

Fatalism is the most convenient excuse for all those that are unable or unwilling to strive for freedom.

"But, surely, fatalism is not to be found here. Is it not rather an Oriental growth?"

"You are mistaken, ladies and gentlemen. We are much more fatalistic than the East. There, Allah is Providence; here, conditions are Almighty."

We continually prate about the inexorability of conditions; we assert that man is their product. What does he want? Liberty? Independence? How stupid! He is not a free agent, and therefore he must submit to conditions. But as the latter are notorious for their caprice, it often happens that they transform political mountebanks into presidents of the Republic, while genius and talent go begging at the doors.

This barbaric belief in the superiority of conditions and the helplessness of the individual is our greatest curse. It robs men of hope and strength; it deprives them of all power to hate and love. It makes submissive slaves of them.

Man must cease to look upon himself as a mere tool; he must break the fetters that leave him no space for initiative; thus he will become the creator, instead of the created.

Our highest aim should be to master conditions, rather than remain subservient to them.

* * *

Christ is the type of martyrs that burden and enslave, rather than liberate.

The gospel teaches that he suffered for humanity and that he died on the cross to save men from sin. Mankind has paid dearly for it since. In the name of the one that was crucified all have to do penance. His disciples carried his agony all over the world, preaching hatred of joy. How dared life's joy to raise its head! Has he not shed tears of blood ? Has he not called, in despair, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!"?

This Saviour disproves the idea that man can be redeemed through external forces. From the proclaimed redemption he has inherited only the duty to renounce and to chastise himself. If he dares to refuse participation in the martyrdom of the Nazarene, he is condemned as vicious, impure, and immoral.

There is no redemption; there is only sanctified selfabnegation, self-humiliation.

Only saints and puritans find satisfaction in ashes and sackcloth.

Was Christ really confident that his sacrifice would be appreciated? What if the sinners were proud, proud of having sinned? What if they disdained to listen to him who persisted in bearing the cross for all? What if they proclaimed their courage to be all-sufficient unto themselves?

A full and strong personality may succumb to its own rich and insatiable nature, to its inability to bow and submit; it never can break or crumble because of forces outside itself.

***

The attempt on the part of the Russian Government to appear modern by checking the Revolution through parliamentary methods has proved a dismal failure.

Edged in on all sides, her industrial and business life crippled, her financial heart deeply wounded, she deemed it diplomatic to throw a bone to the Revolution. This sumptuous meal might so elate the people, that they would cease to rebel.

There are the Liberals and the Constitutional Democrats, for instance, who really desire nothing more for Russia than a government according to the political pattern of Western Europe. A few concessions might enlist their co-operation, which would tend to isolate the Revolution and stamp it as a crime against the Government, so eager and ready to consider all modern political demands.

The intention, however, was to continue her despotic régime,--the Duma could prate to its heart's content, so long as it gave the monster on the Russian throne a chance to recuperate from the horrors of the barricades.

If the Duma could be used as a shield, to check the anger and hatred of the people, it will have served its purpose.

This speculation of the Russian autocracy was based upon the experience of other Governments with revolutions. The West-European revolutionary movement of 1848 failed miserably: then, too, the people were promised political rights; popular representation was the arena for acrobatic exercises; while the constituents searched for worthy men to represent the nation, the reactionaries prepared a counter revolution, which culminated in the forcible expulsion of the representatives of the people from the halls of Parliament. The autocracy hoped for a similar development of events. It failed to realize that economic and social motives of revolutions have grown more powerful within the last decades than the political.

The Russian revolution, unlike the revolution of '48, is not to be checked with a constitution on paper. It is much more concerned with the economic and social, rather than the political reconstruction of Russia. It is because of this that the Duma failed to enthuse the great majority of the revolutionists. The latter have grasped the truth that the Parliament is a hindrance, rather than an incentive, to the organization of society.

The battle between the old and the new social powers can not be fought in the Chamber of Deputies. The question is no longer, "Will the Conservatives or the Democrats triumph?" but rather, "Is the possessing class to continue to exploit society for its own benefit?" It would seem that the people have reached that stage of development which must end in the overthrow of the system of tyranny and robbery.

It is this spirit which carried the Duma far beyond the boundary line of their original intentions.

Had the Government to deal with the representatives only, a compromise might have been brought about. But beyond the Duma-by-the Grace-of-the-Tsar rose the revolutionary waves, the peasant, and the workingman. These care little for political theories: the one demands the land, the other the product of his labor-Socialism or Anarchist communism. They have no desire to patch up the sores on the social body with petty political court plaster, as was the ambition of Witte arid his colleagues. Their aim is the expropriation of the wealth stolen from them.

The Duma was compelled to flirt with the revolution. As the latter's child it could not very well aid Tsarism in its barbaric overthrow of the insurrection. Its popular leanings aroused the ire of the decaying autocracy and thus the Duma was abolished.

It was not a very clever move. It will only hasten the downfall of Tsarism with all its horrors.

A HERO OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION.

As to those who fought in the insurgent bands and those who were most compromised as members of the strike committee, their lives were saved by a courageous engine-driver, Ukhtomsky. At the last moment, when the insurrection was crushed and it seemed already impossible to pierce the ring of troops which held all the outlet from Moscow, Ukhtomsky offered to take the most compromised insurgents and strikers on a train and to break through the iron ring. This he did most successfully under a hail of bullets from the machine guns. He was arrested later on quite accidentally, having come to a railway station while a Semenovsk detachment was there. The officer looked through the portraits supplied to the troops by the spies, and at once recognized him. "You are the engine-driver Ukhtomsky," said he; "you will be shot." "So I thought," calmly replied the prisoner, and before dying he narrated the following: "When all roads leading out of Moscow were occupied by the troops, I undertook to take the insurgents and our strike committee men in a train through your ring. You had already placed machine guns in the orchards-menacing the line. In this dangerous--quite open-space on the railway curve I developed a speed of sixty miles per hour. I myself drove the engine. The pressure in the boiler I brought up to fifteen atmospheres--the very limit for the bolier. The danger was not from machine guns, but from the boiler bursting. I went not only with open draught doors, but also with an accelerated speed of the syphon. And as we ran at this speed along the curve the machine guns began to rattle. Still, the real danger lay in our speed, in the possibility of being thrown off the metals down the embankment. However, I regulated the steam with an experienced hand, feeling that I had on my responsibility the lives of those whom you tracked. You wounded six men, but nobody was killed. All are now safe and far away. You will not have them."

He quietly spoke before his death to the soldiers and won their sympathies. He stood upright and calmly looked on them. When the first volley was fired the three workers with whom he was shot fell dead, but not one single bullet had been fired at Ukhtomsky. None of the soldiers would kill him. The officer ordered a second volley to be fired--and then he fell on the snow with a terrible expression of agony in his eyes. The captain discharged a revolver at his head.

MODERN SCIENCE AND ANARCHISM

By Peter Kropotkin

(Continued.)

To predict what direction science will take in its further development is, evidently, impossible. As long as men of science depend upon the rich and the governments, so long will they of necessity remain subject to influence from this quarter; and this, of course, can again arrest for a time the development of science. But one thing is certain: in the form that science is now assuming there is no longer any need of the hypothesis which Laplace considered useless, or of the metaphysical "words" which Goethe ridiculed. The book of nature, the book of organic life, and that of human development, can already be read without resorting to the power of a creator, a mystical "vital force," an immortal soul, Hegel's trilogy, or the endowment of abstract symbols with real life. Mechanical phenomena, in their ever-increasing complexity, suffice for the explanation of nature and the whole of organic and social life. There is much, very much, in the world that is still unknown to us--much that is dark and incomprehensible; and of such unexplained gaps new ones will always be disclosed as soon as the old ones have been filled up. Butwe do not know of , and do not see the possibility of discovering, any domain in which the phenomena observed in the fall of a stone, or in the impact of two billiard balls, or in a chemical reaction--that is, mechanical phenomena--should prove inadequate to the necessary explanations.

III.

It was natural that, as soon as science had attained such generalizations, the need of a synthetic philosophy should be felt; a philosophy which, no longer discussing "the essence of things," "first causes," the "aim of life," and similar symbolic expressions, and repudiating all sorts of anthropomorphism (the endowment of natural phenomena with human characteristics), should be a digest and unification of all our knowledge; a philosophy which, proceeding from the simple to the complex, would furnish a key to the understanding of all nature, in its entirety, and, through that, indicate to us the lines of further research and the means of discovering new, yet unknown, correlations (so-called laws), while at the same time it would inspire us with confidence in the correctness of our conclusions, however much they may differ from current superstitions. ---- Such attempts at a constructive synthetic philosophy were made several times during the nineteenth century, the chief of them being those of Auguste Comte and of Herbert Spencer. On these two we shall have to dwell. The need of such a philosophy as this was admitted already in the eighteenth century--by the philosopher and economist Turgot and, subsequently, even more clearly by Saint-Simon. As has been stated above, the encyclopaedists, and likewise Voltaire in his "Philosophical Dictionary, " had already begun to construct it. In a more rigorous, scientific form which would satisfy the requirements of the exact sciences, it was now undertaken by Auguste Comte. It is well known that Comte acquitted himself very ably of his task so far as the exact sciences were concerned. He was quite right in including the science of life (Biology) and that of human societies (Sociology) in the circle of sciences compassed by his positive philosophy; and his philosophy has had a great influence upon all scientists and philosophers of the nineteenth century. But why was it that this great philosopher proved so weak the moment he took up, in his "Positive Politics," the study of social institutions, especially those of modern times? This is the question which most admirers of Comte have asked themselves. How could such a broad and strong mind come to the religion which Comte preached in the closing years of his life? Littre and Mill, it is well known, refused even to recognize Comte's "Politics" as part of his philosophy; they considered it the product of a weakened mind; while others utterly failed in their endeavors to discover a unity of method in the two works.1 And yet the contradiction between the two parts of Comte's philosophy is in the highest degree characteristic and throws a bright light upon the problems of our own time. When Comte had finished his "Course of Positive Philosophy," lie undoubtedly must have perceived that he had not yet touched upon the most important point--namely, the origin in man of the moral principle and the influence of this principle upon human life. He was bound to account for the origin of this principle, to explain it by the same phenomena by which he had explained life in general, and to show why man feels the necessity of obeying his moral sense, or, at least, of reckoning with it. But for this he was lacking in knowledge (at the time he wrote this was quite natural) as well as in boldness. So, in lieu of the God of all religions, whom man must worship and to whom he must appeal in order to be virtuous, he placed Humanity, writ large. To this new idol he ordered us to pray, that we might develop in ourselves the moral concept. But once this step had been takenonce it was found necessary to pay homage to something standing outside of and higher than the individual in order to retain man on the moral path-all the rest followed naturally. Even the ritualism of Comte's religion moulded itself very naturally upon the model of all the preceding positive religions. Once Conde would not admit that everything that is moral in man grew out of observation of nature and from the very conditions of men living in societies,-this step was necessary. He did not see that the moral sentiment in man is as deeply rooted as all the rest of his physical constitution inherited by him from his slow evolution; that the moral concept in man had made its first appearance in the animal societies which existed long before man had appeared upon earth; and that, consequently, whatever may be the inclinations of separate individuals, this concept must persist in mankind as long as the human species does not begin to deteriorate,--the anti-moral activity of separate men inevitably calling forth a counter-activity on the part of those who surround them, just as action causes reaction in the physical world. Comte did not understand this, and therefore he was compelled to invent a new idol-Humanity-in order that it should constantly recall man to the moral path. Like Saint-Simon, Fourier, and almost all his other contemporaries, Comte thus paid his tribute to the Christian education be had received. Without a struggle of the evil principles with the good--in which the two should be equally matched--and without man's application in prayer to the good principle and its apostles on earth for maintaining him in the virtuous path, Christianity cannot be conceived. And Comte, dominated from childhood by this Christian idea, reverted to it as soon as he found himself face to face with the question of morality and the means of fortifying it in the heart of man.

IV.

But it must not be forgotten that Comte wrote his Positivist Philosophy long before the years 1856-1862, which, as stated above, suddenly widened the horizon of science and the world-concept of every educated man. The works which appeared in these five or six years have wrought so complete a change in the views on nature, on life in general, and on the life of human societies, that it has no parallel in the whole history of science for the past two thousand years. That which had been but vaguely understood--sometimes only guessed at by the encyclopoedists, and that which the best minds in the first half of the nineteenth century had so much difficulty in explaining, appeared now in the full armor of science; and it presented itself so thoroughly investigated through the inductive-deductive method that every other method was at once adjudged imperfect, false and--unnecessary. Let us, then, dwell a little longer upon the results obtained in these years, that we may better appreciate the next attempt at a synthetic philosophy, which was made by Herbert Spencer. Grove, Clausius, Helmholtz, Joule, and a whole group of physicists and astronomers,--as also Kirchhoff, who discovered the spectroscopic analysis and gave us the means of determining the composition of the most distant stars,--these, in rapid succession at the end of the fifties, proved the unity of nature throughout the inorganic world. To talk of certain mysterious, imponderable fluids-calorific, magnetic, electrical--at once became impossible. It was shown that the mechanical motion of molecules which takes place in the waves of the sea or in the vibrations of a bell or a tuning fork, was adequate to the explanation of all the phenomena of heat, light, electricity and magnetism; that we can measure them and weigh their energy. More than this: that in the heavenly bodies most remote from us the same vibration of molecules takes place, with the same effects. Nay, the mass movements of the heavenly bodies themselves, which run through space according to the laws of universal gravitation, represent, in all likelihood, nothing else than the resultants of these vibrations of light and electricity, transmitted for billions and trillions of miles through interstellar space. The same calorific and electrical vibrations of molecules of matter proved also adequate to explain all chemical phenomena. And then, the very life of plants and animals, in its infinitely varied manifestations, has been found to be nothing else than a continually going on exchange of molecules in that wide range of very complex, and hence unstable and easily decomposed, chemical cornpounds from which are built the tissues of every living being,

Then, already during those years it was understood--and for the past ten years it has been still more firmly established-that the life of the cells of the nervous system and their property of transmitting vibrations from one to the other, afforded a mechanical explanation of the nervous life of animals. Owing to these investigations, we can now understand, without leaving the domain of purely physiological observations, how impressions and images are produced and retained in the brain, how their mutual effects result in the association of ideas (every new impression awakening impressions previously stored tip), and hence also--in thought. Of course, very much still remains to be done and to be discovered in this vast domain; science, scarcely freed yet from the metaphysics which so long hampered it, is only now beginning to explore the wide field of physical psychology. But the start has already been made, and a solid foundation is laid for further labors. The old-fashioned classification of phenomena into two sets, which the German philosopher Kant endeavored to establish,--one concerned with investigations "in time and space" (theworld of physical phenomena) and the other "in time only" (the world of spiritual phenomena),--now falls of itself. And to the question once asked by the Russian physiologist, Setchenov: "By whom and how should psychology be studied?" science has already given the answer: "By physiologists, and by the physiological method." And, indeed, the recent labors of the physiologists have already succeeded in shedding incomparably more light than all the intricate discussions of the metaphysicists, upon the mechanism of thought; the awakening of impressions, their retention and transmission. In this, its cheif stronghold, metaphysics was thus worsted. The field in which it considered itself invincible has now been taken possession of by natural science and materialist philosophy, and these two are promoting the growth of knowledge in this direction faster than centuries of metaphysical speculation have done. ----- In these same years another important step was made. Darwin's book on "The Origin of Species" appeared and eclipsed all the rest. Already in the last century Buffon (apparently even Linnaeus), and on the threshold of the nineteenth century Lamarck, had ventured to maintain that the existing species of plants and animals are not fixed forms; that they are variable and vary continually even now. The very fact of family likeness which exists between groups of forms- Lamarck pointed out-is a proof of their common descent from a common ancestry. Thus, for example, the various forms of meadow buttercups, water buttercups, and all other buttercups which we see on our meadows and swamps, must have been produced by the action of environment upon descendants from one common type of ancestors. Likewise, the present species of wolves, dogs, jackals and foxes did not exist in a remote past, but there was in their stead one kind of animals out of which, under various conditions, the wolves, the dogs, the jackals and the foxes have gradually evolved. But in the eighteenth century such heresies as these had to be uttered with great circumspection. The Church

was still very powerful then, and for such heretical views the naturalist had to reckon with prison, torture, or the lunatic asylum. The "heretics" consequently were cautious in their expressions. Now, however, Darwin and A. R. Wallace could boldly maintain so great a heresy. Darwin even ventured to declare that man, too, had originated, in the same way of slow physiological evolution, from some lower forms of ape-like animals; that his "immortal spirit" and his "moral soul" are as much a product of evolution as the mind and the moral habits of the ant or the chimpanzee. We know what storms then broke out upon Darwin and, especially, upon his bold and gifted disciple, Huxley, who sharply emphasized just those conclusions from Darwin's work which were most dreaded by the clergy. It was a fierce battle, but, owing to the support of the masses of the public, the victory was won, nevertheless, by the Darwinians; and the result was that an entirely new and extremely important science-Biology, the science of life in all its manifestations-has grown up under our very eyes during the last forty years. At the same time Darwin's work furnished a new key to the understanding of all sorts of phenomena-physical, vital, and social. It opened up a new road for their investigation. The idea of a continuous development (evolution) and a continual adaptation to changing environment, found a much wider application than the origin of species. It was applied to the study of all nature, as well as to men and their social institutions, and it disclosed in these branches entirely unknown horizons, giving explanations of facts which hitherto had seemed quite inexplicable. Owing to the impulse given by Darwin's work to all natural sciences, Biology was created, which, in Herbert Spencer's hands, soon explained to us how the countless forms of living beings inhabiting the earth may have developed, and enabled Haeckel to make the first attempt at formulating a genealogy of all animals, man included. In the same way a solid foundation for the history of the development of man's customs, manners, beliefs and institutions was laid down--a history the want of which was strongly felt by the eighteenth century philosophers and by Auguste Comte. At the present time this history can be written without resorting to either the formulae of Hegelean metaphysics or to "innate ideas" and "inspiration from without"--without any of those dead formulae behind which, concealed by words as by clouds, was always hidden the same ancient ignorance and the same superstition. Owing, on the one hand, to the labors of the naturalists, and, on the other, to those of Henry Maine and his followers, who applied the same inductive method to the study of primitive customs and laws that have grown out of them, it became possible in recent years to place the history of the origin and development of human institutions upon as firm a basis as that of the development of any form of plants or animals. It would, of course, be extremely unfair to forget the enormous work that was done earlier-already in the thirties-towards the working out of the history of institutions by the school of Augustin Thierry in France, by that of Maurer and the "Germanists" in Germany, and in Russia, somewhat later, by Kostomarov, Belyaev and others. In fact, the principle of evolution had been applied to the study of manners and institutions, and also to languages, from the time of the encyclopaedists. But to obtain correct, scientific deductions from all this mass of work became possible only when the scientists could look upon the established facts in the same way as the naturalist regards the continuous development of the organs of a plant or of a new species. The metaphysical formulae have helped, in their time, to make certain approximate generalizations. Especially did they stimulate the slumbering thought, disturbing it by their vague hints as to the unity of life in nature. At a time when the inductive generalizations of the encyclopaedists and their English predecessors were almost forgotten (in the first half of the nineteenth century), and when it required--some civic courage to speak of the unity of physical and spiritual nature-the obscure metaphysics still upheld the tendency toward generalization. But those generalizations were established either by means of the dialectic method or by means of a semi-conscious induction, and, therefore, were always characterized by a hopeless indefiniteness. The former kind of generalizations was deduced by means of really fallacious syllogisms--similar to those by which in ancient times certain Greeks used to prove that the planets must move in circles "because the circle is the most perfect curve"; and the meagerness of the premises would then be concealed by misty words, and, worse still, by an obscure and clumsy exposition. As to the semi-conscious inductionís which were made here and there, they were based upon a very limited circle of observations-similar to the broad but unwarranted generalization of Weissmann, which have recently created some sensation. Then, as the induction was unconscious, the generalizations were put forth in the shape of hard and fast laws, while in reality they were but simple supposition s--hypotheses, or beginnings only of generalizations, which, far from being "laws," required yet the very first verification by observation. Finally, all these broad deductions, expressed as they were in most abstract forms-as, for instance, the Hegelcan "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis,"--left full play for the individual to come to the most varied and often opposite practical conclusions, so that they could give birth, for instance, to Bakunin's revolutionary enthusiasm and to the Dresden Revolution, to the revolutionary Jacobinism of Marx and to the recognition of the "reasonableness of what exists," which reconciled so many Germans to the reaction then existing-to say nothing of the recent vagaries of the so-called Russian Marxists.

V

Since Anthropology--the history of man's physiological development and of his religious, political ideals, and economic institutions-came to be studied exactly as all other natural sciences are studied, it was found possible, not only to shed a new light upon this history, but to divest it for ever of the metaphysics which had hindered this study in exactly the same way as the Biblical teachings had hindered the study of Geology. It would seem, therefore, that when the construction of a synthetic philosophy was undertaken by Herbert Spencer, he should have been able, armed as lie was with all the latest conquests of science, to build it without falling into the errors made by Comte in his "Positive Politics." And yet Spencer's synthetic philosophy, though it undoubtedly represents an enormous step in advance (complete as it is without religion and religious rites), still contains in its sociological part mistakes as gross as are found in the former work. The fact is that, having reached in his analysis the psychology of societies, Spencer did not remain true to his rigorously scientific method, and failed to accept all the conclusions to which it had led him. Thus, for example, Spencer admits that the land ought not to become the property of individuals, who, in consequence of their right to raise rents, would hinder others from extracting front the soil all that could be extracted from it under improved methods of cultivation; or would even simply keep it out of use in the expectation that its market price will be raised by the labor of others. An arrangement such as this he considers inexpedient and full of dangers for society. But, while admitting this in the case of the land, be did not venture to extend this conclusion to all other forms of accumulated wealth--for example, to mines, harbors, and factories. Or, again, while protesting against the interference of government in the life of society, and giving to one of his books a title which is equivalent to a revolutionary programme, "The Individual vs. The State," he, little by little, tinder the pretext of the defensive activity of the State, ended by reconstructing the State in its entirety, such as it is to-day, only slightly limiting its attributes. These and other inconsistencies are probably accounted for by the fact that the sociological part of Spencer's philosophy was formulated in his mind (under the influence of the English, radical movement) much earlier than its natural--scientific part-namely, before 1851, when the anthropological investigation of human institutions was in its rudimentary stage. In consequence of this, Spencer like Comte, did not take up the investigation of these institutions by themselves, without preconceived conclusions. Moreover, as soon as he came in his work to social philosophy--to Sociology-lie began to make use of a new method, a most unreliable one-the method of analogies-which he, of course, never resorted to in the study of physical phenomena. This new method permitted him to justify a whole series of preconceived theories. Consequently, we do not possess as yet a philosophy constructed in both its parts-natural sciences and sociology -with the aid of the same scientific method. Then, Spencer, it must also be added, is the man least suited for the study of primitive institutions. In this respect he is distinguished even among the English, who generally do not enter readily into foreign modes of life and thought. "We are a people of Roman law, and the Irish are common-law people: therefore we do not understand each other," a very intelligent Englishman once remarked to me. The history of the Englishmen's relations with the "lower races" is full of like misunderstandings. And we see them in Spencer's writings at every step. He is quite incapable of understanding the customs and ways of thinking of the savage, the "blood revenge" of the Icelandic saga, or the stormy life, filled with struggles, of the mediaeval cities. The moral ideas of these stages of civilization are absolutely strange to him; and he sees in them only "savagery," "despotism," and "cruelty." Finally-what is still more important-Spencer, like Huxley and many others, utterly misunderstood the meaning of "the struggle for existence." He saw in it, not only a struggle between different species of animals (wolves devouring rabbits, birds feeding on insects, etc.), but also a desperate struggle for food, for living-room, among the different members within every species--a struggle which, in reality, does not assume anything like the proportions he imagined. How far Darwin himself was to blame for this misunderstanding of the real meaning of the struggle for existence, we cannot discuss here. But certain it is that when, twelve years after "The Origin of Species," Darwin published his "Descent of Man," he already understood struggle for life in a different sense. "Those communities," he wrote in the latter work, "which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best and rear the greatest number of offspring." The chapter devoted by Darwin to this subject could have formed the basis of an entirely different and most wholesome view of nature and of the development of human societies (the significance of which Goethe had already foreseen). But it passed unnoticed. Only in 1879 do we find, in a lecture by the Russian zoologist Kessler, a clear understanding of mutual aid and the struggle for life. "For the progressive development of a species," Kessler pointed out, citing several examples, "the law of mutual aid is of far greater importance than the law of mutual struggle." Soon after this Louis Buchner published his book "Love," in which he showed the importance of sympathy among animals for the development of moral concepts; but, in introducing the idea of love and sympathy instead of simple sociability, he needlessly limited the sphere of his investigations. To prove and further to develop Kessler's excellent idea, extending it to man, was an easy step. If we turn our minds to a close observation of nature and to an unprejudiced history of human institutions, we soon discover that Mutual Aid really appears, not only as the most powerful weapon in the struggle for existence against the hostile forces of nature and all other enemies, but also as the chief factor of progressive evolution. To the weakest animals it assures longevity (and hence an accumulation of mental experience), the possibility of rearing its progeny, and intellectual progress. And those animal species among which Mutual Aid is practiced most, not only succeed best in getting their livelihood, but also stand at the head of their respective class (of insects, birds, mammals) as regards the superiority of their physical and mental development. This fundamental fact of nature Spencer did not perceive. The struggle for existence within every species, the "free fight" for every morsel of food, Tennyson's "Nature, red in tooth and claw with ravine"--he accepted as a fact requiring no proof, as an axiom. Only in recent years did he begin in some degree to understand the meaning of mutual aid in the animal world, and to collect notes and make experiments in this direction. But even then he still thought of primitive man as of a beast who lived only by snatching, with tooth and claw, the last morsel of food from the mouth of his fellowmen. Of course, having based the sociological part of his philosophy on so false a premise, Spencer was no longer able to build tip the sociological part of his synthetic philosophy without falling into a series of errors.

(To be Continued.)

Footnotes

1 None that know the author's fairness of mind will be likely to accuse him of partiality in the scathing criticism he here makes of the Apostle of Positivism. Lest any reader be inclined to do so, however, it may not be amiss to cite on this point the opinion of a critic unquestionably conservative and. presumably, impartial-an opinion I came upon by mere chance while engaged on this translation. Scattered through pages 560 to 563 of Falckenberg's "History of Modern Philosophy" (Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1893), I find the following estimate of Comte and his uneven work: "The extraordinary character of which [Comte's philosophy] has given occasion to his critics to make a complete division between the second, ,subjective or sentimental period of his thinking, in which the philosopher is said to be transformed into the high priest of a new religion, and the first, the positivistic period. . . . Beneath the surface of the most sober inquiry mystical and dictatorial tendencies pulsate in Comte from the beginning. . . . The historical influence exercised by Comte through his later writings is extremely small in comparison with that of his chief work. . . . Comte's school divided into two groupsthe apostates, who reject the subjective phase and hold fast to the earlier doctrine, and the faithful. "-Translator.

THE STREAMLET.

From the Russian of Ezekiel Leavitt.

By ALICE STONE BLACKWELL.

In the cold North, between the stony rocks,
A lonely streamlet, sorrowfully flowed.
Foaming the spray dashed, and the rocks looked down,
As if they whispered, "Whither leads thy road?

"Why hast thou come here to the wilderness,
A tardy guest? In this lone desert gray
Thy waters in the darkness will dry up;
Thou canst not through the passes break thy way."
Clear, pearly spray fell on the rocks like tears,
Gleaming like steel, the streamlet wound along
Softly, as if it answered to the rocks:
"Oh, ye are wrong! Rocks, ye are wholly wrong!

"Ye laugh at me in pride: 'We rocks are strong;
Thou, streamlet, weak. We ne'er shall be o'erthrown!'
Rocks, laugh not! Granite does not last for aye;
Continual dropping hollows out the stone."

_________________________________________________________________________________

be introduced into the mutual covenant of all federated bodies of workingmen as the very first necessity. It recommends that an understanding be sought between the united federations of workers and the anti-militarist organizations. Meanwhile local groups continue to meet and effect distribution of anti-militarist placards and literature.

There seems to be a reappearance of the perennial idea of a universal language; this time it is "Esperanto"; and the avidity with which it is being seized and propagated by our European comrades is evidence sufficient that there are certain demands for international information which could be more easily, supplied through the channel of a universal language than the roundabout courses now open. An appeal has been issued for help to bring out a journal in the new tongue.

A new anarchist monthly, En Marcha, has appeared in Uruguay. Those who read Spanish, and are curious to know the progress of radical ideas in the less aggressive countries of the earth, should get it. Address, "Centro International de Estudios Social, Rio Negro, 274, Montevideo."

The free communist group of Stockel-Bois, Belgium, has changed the name of its paper, "The Insurgent,' to "The Emancipator"; this as the result of the conference of delegates from all over Belgium, recently held at Stockel-Bois. Perhaps the new name gains in mellifluousness what it loses in force.

Colony experiments are multiplying in France and the Netherlands, chiefly through the efforts of the young comrades who are not content to be warned by the failures of their elders, and who insist that they desire to try and to make their own failures if needs be, but to try at any rate. In this they are right. However disheartened we may be with our own attempts or those of our generation, let us not restrain the young from pursuing the ideal of a free life as they see it. Failure in trying to get what you want is better than success in getting what you don't want.

Alexander Herzen, Jr., son of the great Alex Herzen, who was the stormy friend of that storm-petrel Bakounine, died recently at Lausanne, Switzerland. His was the life of the quiet savant, having been, since 1881, professor of physiology at the University there. Nevertheless he was one of the strong and steadfast supports of freedom in moral life, having written well on the subject: "What is morality?" from the standpoint of the freeman.

NOTICE.

On November 3d the first number of the new Anarchist labor paper, "The Voice of Labor," will be issued at 127 Ossulston street, London N.W., England. The object is to bring the English workers into line with the advanced movement of other countries, pointing out to them the futilities, imbecilities and the chicanery of politics, and encouraging them to orginize along economic and revolutionary lines. Among the contributors will be P. Kropotkin, A. Marsh (Musicians' Union), John Turner1 (Shop Assistants--Retail Clerks--Union), T. H. Keell (London Society of Compositors), and other well-known writers. An American letter by H. Kelly dealing with labor matters in this country will appear weekly. All who wish to get a clear, sane view of the labor movement in Great Britain should read the "Voice of Labor"; it will contain eight pages; the price is one dollar a year. Send subscriptions to the "Voice of Labor," 127 Ossulston street, London N.W., England, or to H. Kelly, 210 East 13th street, New York City.

1Those who were desirous of hearing Mr. Turner in this country, but were unable to do so owing to his deportation by the U. S. Government, will through this medium have the opportunity of learning some of his views.

EDUCATION UNDER REACTIONIST SPAIN.

It is a well-known fact that popular instruction in Spain is sadly neglected, almost as much as in Turkey and Russia. What little is given is poor in quantity as well as in quality, chiefly in the latter respect, as it rests under the control, more or less, of priests and monks, who take care that the modern tendencies are as much ignored as possible by the underpaid, starving schoolmasters, whose will is generally subservient to that of the Church.

A good friend of ours, Professor Francisco Ferrer, who spent several years of his life in Paris as an exile, was in the habit, amongst the circle of friends he made in the French capital, of complaining bitterly of the imperfection of the whole of the Spanish education system, and of telling with much enthusiasm what he would do in the way of public instruction if he had the needed financial support. A wealthy lady who was much impressed with his theories left him a considerable portion of her fortune, and Ferrer at once went to Barcelona and started La Escuela Moderna (the Modern School), in praise of which it is enough to say that its success was so marvelous, from the very beginning, that branches had to be established in numerous parts of Spain.

Besides providing good teachers, Ferrer turned his attention to the lack of suitable text-books and reading-books for children in Spain, and provided both by suitable translations and adaptations of French standard works, and by appealing successfully to native talent.

Amongst the works thus published there are, besides translations from Reclus, Kropotkin, Malato, Jean Grave, Letourneau, Paraf-Juval, Engerand, etc., textbooks written in Spanish by Buen and Vargas, professors of the Barcelona University, by Ramon Cajal, the greatest Spanish naturalist, by our Spanish friends, Anselmo Lorenzo, Nicolas Estervanez, Dr. Lluria, Federico Urales, Mrs. Jacquinet, Pi Arsuaga, etc. Needless to say, all these books are decidedly rationalist and frankly revolutionary in tendency--just what is needed to prepare a new generation of free citizens. This precisely explains the hatred and animosity entertained towards Ferrer and his work by the two most potent factors in the Spanish State--the Romish Church and the Army. Their representatives waited only for an opportunity to act, and the opportunity sought came on the occasion of the attempt on the lives of the Spanish sovereigns by Mateo Morral.

Morral, who had rather large private means, enriched the Library of La Escuela Moderna, and volunteered to act as librarian. After he had committed suicide, his acquaintance with Ferrer was found a sufficient motive for arresting the latter and seizing his fortune, or rather the money left him in trust for a purpose.

Those who are acquainted with the ways of Spanish justice in political matters--as revealed to the world by Montiuich, Mano-Negra and Alcalá affairs--will not need to be told that the Spanish inquisitors have more than one way of proving guilty any man they want to get rid of.

Several prominent Freethinkers and Revolutionists, as well as all our comrades on the Continent and in England, are now making a vigorous fight on behalf of justice. Press campaigns have already been started by many independent papers in Spain; by the Tribuna and Messagiero in Italy; by the Labour Leader in England; the Express in Belgium; by L'Intransigeant Echo de Paris, Action, Temps Nouveaux, Courrier Européen, Petite République, Dépêche, and many others in France.

A first victory has already been gained by this agitation. The Spanish government, who intended to submit Ferrer to a court martial, which in Spain always condemns the accused, whether they are guilty or not, has at length decided to remit the affair to a civil tribunal.

Now we must demand a prompt and a fair trial, and compel the Spanish government to allow the Rationalist schools, which have all been closed throughout Spain, to reopen their doors and to continue without hindrance the work of education and emancipation.

FANATACISM.

BY CHRISTOPHER CAUSTIC

I hate your hypocritic race,
Who prate about pretended grace;
With tabernacle phizzes,
Who think Oninipotence to charm,
By faces longer than my arm!
O, what a set of quizzes!
I hate your wretches, wild and sad,
like gloomy wights in Bedlam mad,
Or vile Old Bailey* culprits;
Who, with a sacrilegious zeal,
Death and damnation dare to deal
From barn-erected pulpits.
I hate that hangman's aspect bluff,
In him, whose disposition's rough,
The porcupine surpasses;
Who thinks that heaven is in his power,
Because his sullen looks rnight sour
A barrel of molasses.

* English Insane Asylum and Prison.

POLICE BRUTALITY.

Liberty by the grace of the police and the might of the club was again brought home to us in the most brutal and unspeakable manner. A club of young boys and girls, peaceably assembled Saturday night, October 27th, to listen to a discourse as to whether or not Leon Czolgosz was an Anarchist. At the close of the meeting three of the speakers--Julius Edelson, M. Moscow, and M. Bubinstein--were arrested and. placed under $1,000 bail each. Tuesday, October 30th, a meeting was called to protest against the arrest of these boys and the suppression of free speech. Mr. Bolton Hall, H. Kelly, Max Baginski and myself were announced to speak. The meeting proceeded in absolute order, with Julius Edelson, who had meanwhile been released on bail through Mr. Bolton Hall, as the first speaker. He had spoken barely twenty minutes when several detectives jumped on the platform and placed him under arrest, while twenty-five police officers began to club the audience out of the hall. A young girl of eighteen, Pauline Slotnikoff, was pulled off a chair and brutally dragged across the floor of the hall, tearing her clothing and bruising her outrageously. Another girl, fourteen years of age, Rebccca Edelson, was roughly handled and put under arrest because she failed to leave the hall as quickly as ordered. The same was done to three other women--Annie Pastor, Rose Rogin, and Lelia Smitt--for no other reason except that they were unable to reach the bottom of the stairs fast enough to suit the officers. I was about to leave when one, of the officers struck me in the back, and put me under arrest.
Fortunately, Mr. Bolton Hall and H. Kelly could not be present at the meeting; they, too, might have been clubbed out of the hall.
Six women and four men were packed like sardines into a patrol-wagon and hustled off to the station house, where we were kept in vile air and subjected to vulgar and brutal annoyance by the police until the following morning; then we were brought before a magistrate and put under $1,000 bail each for assault. Fancy girls of fourteen and eighteen, of delicate physique, assaulting twenty-five two-hundred-and-fifty-pounders!
If we as a nation were not such unspeakable hypocrites, we should long since have placed a club instead of a torch in the hand of the Goddess of Liberty--the police mace is not merely the symbol, but the very essence of our "liberty and order."

EMMA GOLDMAN.

Adverts

College
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You can't strike fire by rubbing your nose. You must use means adequate. Neither can you succeed without fit tools and proper methods. The question then becomes, "HOW CAN YOU BEST GAIN SUCCESS?"
We answer, "By having a proper preparatory education." Figures show that with an education you have forty chances of success to one of your uneducated brother.
Where can you get the essentials of a High-School course without, its useless frills and its four years?
Where can you prepare for a profession in less than a year and a, half? Our hundreds of graduates have all been satisfied on this point. We can satisfy you.
Year after year it becomes more difficult for young men and women who must depend upon their own energy in the struggle of life to enter a Professional College.
Two years ago 28 counts admitted you to study Law. Last year you needed 48 counts; this year you must have 60 counts. Last year you could have studied Pharmacy without a single count; only last month you could have entered with 12 counts, but now an applicant must show 15 counts. To enter a College of Dentistry, 63 counts is needed instead of the 48 of last year, or the 36 of two years ago. This year the Medical Colleges require 63 counts instead of 48 and are also discussing a five-year attendance at College instead of four.
We therefore say again, "YOU DARE NOT LOSE TIME."
Begin with us this month, and you wil come under the old law, and no matter what changes are made in the entrance requirements it will be no concern of yours.
JOIN OUR SCHOOL NOW. Wherever you live you will find one of our Schools in your neighborhood. We have two Schools downtown, a branch School UP-TOWN at 8 EAST 116th STREET, near Fifth Avenue, and one School in Brooklyn.

ABRAHAM RUBINSTEIN
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