VOL. XXIII., No. 15

PRICE.-Per year, in advance, $3.00; four months, on trial, $1.00; single copies, 10 cents.

RECEIPT and credit of payment is shown in about two weeks by the date on the address label attached to each paper. POST-OFFICE ADDRESS.-Instructions concerning renewal, discontinuance, or change of address should be sent two weeks prior to the date they are to go into effect. The exact post-office address to which we are directing paper at time of writing must always be given. DISCONTINUANCES.-We find that a large majority of our subscribers prefer not to have their subscriptions interrupted and their files broken in case they fail to remit before expiration. It is therefore assumed, unless notification to discontinue is received. that the subscriber wishes no interruption in his series. Notification to discontinue at expiration can be sent in at any time during the year. PRESENTATION COPIES.-Many persons subscribe for friends, intending that the paper shall stop at the end of the year. If instructions are given to this effect, they will receive attention at the proper time.

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

TAMMANY'S NOMINEE FOR MAYOR.

NOT

No

OTHING but appreciative words are found in the New York newspapers for the personal character and good intentions of Mr. Edward M. Shepard, whom the Tammany Hall organization has just selected to lead its forces in the municipal campaign; but some of them ask what such a man as Mr. Shepard is doing in such company. Mr. Shepard is described as a lawyer and pamphleteer of consummate skill, and "a reformer of the reformers," one who in past years has been most conspicuous in denouncing Tammany and all its associates. one accuses him now of having lowered his moral standards, and he himself declares that if he becomes mayor, it will be with "an absolute and unqualified freedom from obligations, expressed or implied, direct or indirect," except such as he shall publicly assume to the people of New York. Several papers take comfort in the reflection that, as the New York World (Ind. Dem.) puts it, "the city will have an honest, able, independent, and incorruptible mayor, however the election may result."

Controller Coler, who was reported to have had hopes of a mayoralty nomination, from one side or the other, says of the Tammany candidate :

"The nomination of Mr. Shepard insures, in my judgment, an administration of the mayor's office in accordance with the very highest requirements of fidelity to the public welfare on the one hand and an enlightened party policy on the other. Fairly familiar as I claim to be with the history of the city, I hesitate not to assert that never has the chair of the mayoralty been occupied by a gentleman superior to Mr. Shepard either in firmness of character, clearness of intellect, breadth of purpose, or equipment in point of knowledge. What I think now is what I have said in the recent past, when the question of the nomination was under consideration, that it was not in the power of the Democratic party or any other party to find a more able man. The Democratic party is to be congratulated upon Mr. Shepard's willingness to accept the nomination and to give up his large law practise and income for the benefit of the public."

However kindly may be the attitude of the leading metropolitan papers toward Mr. Shepard personally, they make it clear

WHOLE NUMBER, 599

that they intend to spare no effort to defeat him. The Herald (Ind.) sent a reporter last week to ask Mr. Shepard if, in case he was elected, he intended to retain Devery. Mr. Shepard is reported to have replied: "That is a hypothetical question. Really, I can't answer it. I have nothing to say on the subject." Other papers have been looking up the political record of the candidate for the past few years and the result it has made on their minds is expressed in a little anecdote that has been "going the rounds" to the effect that a man arrested for intoxication a few days ago in Brooklyn put in the plea that he had not been drinking-he had merely been trying to follow Mr. Shepard's political record. The Tribune (Rep.) gives the record in tabular form thus:

The Sun (Rep.) calls Mr. Shepard's nomination "the surrender of his good name for the sake of a chance to get office," and The Press remarks that he "will be the thinnest veil ever used to mask the face of a political burglar entering a municipal household." The Times (Ind. Dem.) says:

"What does he favor and support, what is he going to do? Manifestly he favors Tammany. He lends his distinguished name to that band of desperadoes to save them from impending destruction, to keep them alive and out of jail for two years, in order that when he goes out of office Croker may be in a position again to summon his captains about him, unterrified and unashamed, to seize once more the whole powers of the city government with a mayoralty candidate of their own kind."

EDWARD M. SHEPARD.

The fact that a large part (some say one-third) of the population of New York City consists of citizens of German origin, immediate or remote, gives a good deal of importance to the German feeling toward Mr. Shepard. The Staats-Zeitung, the leading German daily of the city, says of him:

"Granting in the case of Shepard his earnest desire to give the city good government, it must not be overlooked that he owes his nomination to the coalition between Tammany, rotten to the core, and the McLaughlin machine, just as corrupt, but not quite as brazen and obtuse. We can not conceive how it is possible for Shepard to give the city a good administration with the tools that will be placed at his disposal by these organizations. Even

tracts:

"I have again and again declared my opinion of Seth Low, of his noble integrity, his fine equipment for public duty, and his great services to good government in the past. Nobody seriously doubts them. . . . Every Democrat who thinks that the mayor of New York ought to be elected for New York and nothing else, and every Democrat who does not insist upon voting in 1897 for the Chicago platform of 1896, should have no hesitation in supporting Seth Low."

issue? I have said more We all know him through

"Now, fellow citizens, what is the than once what I think of Seth Low. and through. We know that if he be mayor, the mayor himself is mayor. No boss appointed him."

"Again and again independents have elected a good man on the theory that all that is required is to have a good man in office. Again and again they have been disappointed in the practical results. I tell you, fellow citizens, Republicans and Democrats, that much more is necessary; that the best of men in any office against his will, however powerful, is in chief measure the creature of the conditions or the instrument of the forces which surround him. If political conditions about him are unsound, if the foundations under his house are treacherous and shifting, if there is malaria in the air of the community in which he lives, he can no more escape than the humblest citizen. We must have far greater concern for all these than our concern for the candidate, great as that should be."

"I shall support Seth Low for mayor. I shall support him with thorough enthusiasm, tho he is a Republican and I a Democrat. . . . The Tammany ticket represents the most insolent and audacious, as well as the most reckless assault we have yet known upon the welfare of the greater New York and of the masses, and especially the less fortunate masses, of its people."

"If you will put Tammany into power, Tammany Hall will give you the same kind of government that Tammany Hall gave you in 1894 and the years preceding the Lexow investigating committee. There is a degree of insolent and frank audacity about that that will demand our admiration. That is the sole recommendation which Tammany Hall and the Tammany orators give for their ticket. . . . They say, in unmistakable terms, Tammany Hall is virtuously just and as virtuous as Tammany Hall was in 1894. They are the same men, the same bosses, the same inspirations, the same results precisely, as at the time when our little friend, Mr. Lexow, made his investigation. Do we want that thing-do we want that thing in Brooklyn? If they stand it in New York we can not stand it in Brooklyn. The most burning and disgraceful blot upon the municipal history of this country is the career of Tammany Hall in years which preceded the election of Mayor Strong in New York. The bossism, prostitution of power, a more tyrannical proceeding and mean treatment of citizens who were too poor and ignorant to protect themselves, a worse treatment of a great city, we have never known, to disgrace us with ourselves, to disgrace us throughout the United States, to disgrace us in the eyes of the civilized world."

FROM present appearances there will be no Assistant Tammany party in the New York municipal election.-The Philadelphia Ledger.

RICHARD CROKER is becoming very cosmopolitan. He makes himself at home in New York quite as freely as he would in Wantage.-The Washington Star.

LOCATED.-Reverting to that old question pertaining to Boss Croker. "Where did he get it?" there is an invigorating prospect that he may get it in the neck this time.-The Chicago Tribune.

A PHILIPPINE DISASTER AND ITS LESSON. HE optimistic feeling in regard to Philippine conditions, created by the statements of officers returning from the islands, was rudely shocked a few days ago by the news of the Samar disaster, which the Detroit News (Ind.) describes as the most serious reverse to American arms that has befallen a single company of troops since the Custer massacre. In some quarters the suggestion is made that the assassination of the President, which was probably reported to the Filipinos in distorted form, may have been responsible for their attempt at this time to retrieve some of their lost ground. The fact that an entire com

pany of the Ninth Infantry was surprised at breakfast by a force of 400 bolomen seems to show, in the words of the New York Evening Post (Ind.)," that somebody blundered, and blundered badly." "The attacking force," continues The Post, "consisted, it is said, of 400 bolomen, of whom 140 were killed. The bolomen were armed with a kind of pike, or sword-blade attached to a pole. The surprise of our men must have been very complete if the massacre was accomplished with such primitive weaponsagainst men provided with the best of modern firearms." The loss on the American side was forty-five killed, including the three officers of the company. The Manila American gives the additional information that the Filipinos got between the soldiers, who were breakfasting, and their quarters. "The insurgents were mostly armed with bolos," it says, "but they had a few rifles with them." It is supposed that the attacking party was led by the presidente and chief of police of the neighboring village of Balangiga, and that they shot many of the American soldiers with their own rifles.

Samar is an island a few miles directly south of Luzon. The island is 155 miles long, and it has a population of about 200,000. Its interior is wild and mountainous, and it is a country in which military operations are so difficult that the Spaniards made no attempt to subjugate it.

44

That the captain of an isolated company, in a wild and hostile country, should set his men down to breakfast without the protection of pickets seems scarcely credible," says the Philadelphia. Times (Ind.); "yet this is what the despatches suggest. It seems to have been not a battle, but a massacre." The Chicago Tribune (Rep.) thinks that judgment should be suspended until further details are received. It calls attention to the brilliant war record of the Ninth Regiment in China, where its commanding officer, Colonel Liscum, was killed, and adds:

"The full details of the rout of Company C will be waited with

anxiety and interest. There is little doubt, however, that this part of a 'regiment with a record' will be found to have acquitted itself with credit as far as the actual fighting went, even tho there may have been a laxness in sentinel duty. That 140 of 400 insurgents who made the attack were killed shows the company must have made a gallant stand against greatly superior numbers."

The anti-imperialist papers find in the Samar disaster a new indication of their point of view. "Is there no better way than this [of force and bloodshed] by which Americans can perform the duty to civilization and humanity which they have assumed?" asks the Buffalo Express (Ind. Rep.). The Springfield Republican (Ind.) says:

"The idea is spreading in the United States that, however desirable a policy of ultimate Philippine independence may be, the declaration of such a policy is of no immediate practical importance in view of the apparent subsidence of the insurrection. This is a great mistake. Such a declaration is about as urgent now as it ever has been, considered as a measure for peace and honest and hearty cooperation from the natives in reestablishing civil government on a native footing. The peace we have so far secured, the civil government we have so far succeeded in introducing there, is a peace and a government enforced by 40,000 soldiers and having little or no basis in the hearts of the native population. The only difference between the present state of so-called peace and the previous state of war is a difference between 60,000 soldiers and 40,000; and no genuine progress toward an actual state of peace and substantial relief from the military burden we have taken upon ourselves seems to be possible under the existing policy."

PRESENT STATUS OF THE BOER WAR.

WHEN

HEN Lord Kitchener issued his proclamation of August 7, imposing permanent banishment on all Boer leaders who failed to surrender by September 15, it was confidently expected in some quarters that his action would mark "the beginning of the end" in South Africa. It is very plain, however, that this expectation has not been realized. Lord Kitchener has carried out his threat, and a recent despatch announces the permanent banishment from the country of ten captured Boer leaders. But the Boer remnant continues to fight as vigorously as ever, capturing British outposts and inflicting constant damage on the British arms. "The war has now lasted two years," remarks the Baltimore Sun, "nearly 25,000 British soldiers have perished

in the conflict. South Africa has been laid waste by the invaders, most of the Boer fighting-men have been killed in battle or have been captured and deported. . . . The world's history will be searched in vain for an instance of more heroic endurance, more indomitable courage, and greater patriotism than the Dutch farmers of South Africa have displayed in their struggle for independence."

In England the greatest dissatisfaction seems to prevail in regard to the conduct of the war. The British military journals are now frankly advocating some form of conscription. Disquieting rumors of discord in the War Office and of Lord Kitchener's intended resignation have also been given currency. The appointment of Generals Sir Redvers Buller and Sir Evelyn Wood to command army corps has proved very unpopular. "In spite of the pledges of the Government, the whole army machine is to be hauled back as soon as it may be to the old ruts of impotence, pretence, and collapse," writes. Rudyard Kipling in a striking letter to the London Spectator. "Men see," he continues, "that the chosen commanders are not quite in touch with the real army, which, with a little tact and a little seriousness, might so easily survive. It is not the triviality or ineptitude displayed in this matter that appals, but the cynical levity. The English people have paid no small price in money and in blood that there might be born an army handled by fit and proven leaders." Winston Churchill, speaking at Oldham a few days ago, declared that the military situation in South Africa is now "not less momentous than when the Boer armies threw themselves into Natal at the beginning of the war," and that the British empire to-day "confronts difficulties and dangers more embarrassing than those which hung over it in the black weeks of December, 1899."

The conduct of the concentration camps has been such as to bring severest criticism on Lord Kitchener's head. Official reports show that the total number in these camps during August was 137,619, and that during the same time 2,345 prisoners died, of whom 1,878 were children. The New York Irish World considers this record a "damning indictment of the savagery practised upon non-combatant Boers"; but the Boston Transcript thinks that, considering the gigantic nature of the task Lord Kitchener has in hand, criticism should not be too hasty. "In justice to Lord Kitchener," it says, "we must remember that he has been placed in a most difficult position, and that as a soldier it is