Lapas attēli
PDF
ePub

and the only point to be gained was to make two races live together in harmony.

Recognizing this, Afrikanderism has made part of its programme a policy of waiting. It has set to work to extinguish, if possible, the antagonism of the two European races which share supremacy in South Africa. To bring about this result the leaders of Afrikanderism do everything to strengthen the idea that a close community of interests, in commerce, industry, and agriculture, unites the people of South Africa, and to create a feeling of toleration and reciprocal respect between the inhabitants of each division of South Africa in the matters of religious worship, education, and language. Such is, in fact, the only method by which can be created that national and patriotic feeling which must necessarily precede a formal union.

The fundamental position of Afrikanderism is "South Africa for the South Africans." To make this the rallying-cry of all, or the large majority of those who dwell in South Africa, is the work now being zealously carried on. In the Cape this work has succeeded beyond expectation. In the Free State of Orange success has also been great. So far in the Transvaal, thanks to English interference, the movement, as yet, has failed. The advocates of Afrikanderism, however, have lost no jot of heart or hope, and have no doubt that both there and in Natal victory will be theirs eventually. The matter has been still further complicated by the appearance of the Germans at the south of Zambesi. Yet, with this, there seems no need of despair. Time and patience work wonders, and there is no improbability that the policy of Afrikanderism may triumph much sooner than seems likely to most persons at present.

MR. SPEAKER.

THE HON. ROGER Q. MILLS, M. C., AND THE HON. THOMAS B. REED, M. C., EX-SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE.

W

North American Review, New York, January.

MR. MILLS:

HETHER the speaker of the House of Representatives, when a record vote is being taken, can add to, subtract from, contradict, vary, or explain the record is an American and not a European question.

Our Constitution, in Section 5, Article II., says: Each house shall be the judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members, and a majority of each shall constitute a quorum to do business.

What is meant by doing business? Certainly doing nothing is not doing business. The business of a legislative body is to debate, to make motions, to elicit the expression of the will of the body, and to vote. To do business is to act, and act in the line of duty prescribed by law. Members who retain their seats, and refuse to speak, make motions, or vote, are not doing business. The Constitution takes no notice of the man who is present but abstains from acting. It is only those present, acting and doing business that it regards. The Constitution requires that a majority of the House shall do whatever is done. This has been the uniform construction of the Constitution for one hundred years. No Speaker from the First to the Fiftieth Congress ever held otherwise. Speaker Reed himself, prior to the last Congress, held the same view as all his predecessors. In 1880, when this very section was before the House, he said:

The constitutional idea of a quorum is not the presence of a majority of the members of the House, but a majority of the members present and participating in the business of the House. It is not the visible presence of members, but their presence and their votes, that the Constitution calls for.

The Hon. George M. Robeson, another distinguished and able leader of the Republican party, said in the same debate:

It is necessary, under the Constitution, that a majority shall be

present doing business before there is a quorum of any kind, and no rule can make it otherwise.

If the uniform construction of a century can settle anything, it has settled that a majority to do business is the majority of the whole House attending and participating in the business. The position is too clear and too long settled to remain in the realm of controversy.

It is contended that the Speaker, to meet the Constitutional requirement of a quorum, may count the members present and not doing business, as present doing business. If the Speaker has the power to count, he may count the absent as being present; which very thing occurred under this new rule during the last Congress. Given the right to count, he can render the Constitutional provision wholly nugatory.

When Speaker Blaine was urged to count a quorum when the roll-call showed there was none voting, he indignantly refused, and said that there could be no appeal from the record of the yeas and nays, and that when such a rule was adopted, the House would stand on the brink of a volcano.

The House adopted it in 1890, and the eruption of the volcano which came in November of that year, has, happily for the country, made it possible for the House to return to the Constitution.

MR. REED :

It is the fault of most discussions which are decided incorrectly, that they are decided by the misuse of terms. When men speak of the rights of minorities, and claim for them the sacredness of established law, they are correct or incorrect according as they interpret the word "rights."

A man has a right to an estate in fee simple, a right in land, and there is no right more indisputable under our system. Nothing but supreme law can take the estate away, and then only after compensation. The same man has a right of passage over land used a highway, but his town or county can take that right away from him without his consent and without compensation. In both cases the man has rights, but they are entirely different, and the difference arises from the nature of things.

The rights, so-called, of any man, or set of men, have their foundation only in the common good. There is no such thing as an unrepealable bill of rights. Even the Constitution of the United States can be changed by due process of law. So long as that instrument remains unchanged, the rights secured under it remain fixed. When it is changed the rights obliterated cease. By the Constitution the majority voluntarily limited its own powers. But this limitation was not for the sake of the minority, but for the good of the whole nation. No system of government could long exist which sacrificed the many to the few.

Most of the talk and haranguing in the last Congress about the rights of minorities, was based upon the false idea that the rights in question were real estate in fee simple, not to be diverted, instead of public rights of way, to be changed at any time the majority deemed it to be for the good of the community. Another source of error was the notion that a minority in Congress is always a political minority. ThreeOnequarters of the questions which arise are not political. half, at least, of the bad results of disorder and wilfulness on the part of the few against the many were not political.

ment.

When our Government was formed, frank, out-spoken government of the people by the people, was a very novel experiHence the constant striving for checks and limitations. While progress ran to all lengths in the Declaration of Independence, conservatism held its own in the Constitution of the United States.

While the Constitution has been preserved, it has been much stretched, and otherwise more or less fitted to the young giant which it covered in many places rather too tightly. If there had not been a chance to let out the seams on the general welfare and taxation and other like clauses, it is to be feared

that the country would have been cramped, or the Constitution burst.

What are called the rights of minorities in deliberative assemblies, are like the rights of an individual in a highway subject at all times to the control of the whole community. Debate is intended to throw light on the subject from all directions, so that there may be no delusions. What is all this for? For the benefit of those who turn out to be the fewer in number? By no means. All this light is to enable the majority to come to right conclusions. Any right of debate which prevents results by obstruction, instead of guiding to correct results by enlightenment, is a perversion of honest purpose which ought to receive condemnation and repression.

What are rules, and what are they for? The Constitution uses the full expression, and says that each House may determin the " rules of its proceedings." How does a House proceed? Solely by majorities. Rules, then, are methods of procedure established to enable the whole body to accomplish its duties and purposes. It can be only a perversion of words to claim that in rules of procedure are sacred rights of nonprocedure; that a systematic way of doing something gives the right to a systematic power of preventing the very thing the rules were established to accomplish. While rules exist they should be followed; not because of the minority, but because having been established by the whole body, only the whole body can abrogate them. Whenever the whole body chooses to change them, no one has any right of complaint. If in the rules themselves there are provisions for their own suspension or temporary modification, no one has any right to find fault.

THE

RUSSIA AND GERMANY.

Die Nation, Berlin, December.

HERE are now some Russian papers which, after a long interval, are again discussing the prospect of good relations between the two neighboring States; and the German papers, which have been utilized for official communications, reply coolly that, to guard against disappointment, it would be better to wait further developments. The question here arises: Does Russia now think it advantageous and desirable to reëstablish herself on her old friendly footing with Germany? Germany has certainly nothing to object to such a return; but, if it is not to be, we must submit with dignified composure to the regrettable tension which it is not in our power to avert. This comparatively simple problem is, however, in great measure obscured by the importation into it of the financial question. Some sections of the German press attribute deceitful designs to the Russian Government. They attribute Russia's approach to Germany to a simple design to refill her empty coffers with German gold. But we hardly think that the Russian Ministry includes any members capable of indulging in such delusions. All that the most enthusiastic political good will could do for Russian finances was done in Paris; and if, in spite of it, the last Russian loan resulted in a complete failure, the moral lies on the surface.

The Russian policy of recent years has completely undermined all confidence in the country. This is certainly not in any way attributable to the late unfortunate harvest failure. Russia would have found herself in an unfortunate dilemma under any circumstances, but this dilemma could have been readily remedied, and the European States could have aided her, without difficulty, if Russian domestic and foreign politics had not aroused the most earnest and deep-seated general mistrust, even in France. Russia finds on all sides closed doors and buttoned-up pockets, because a State which excites and fosters revolutionary sentiments by its domestic policy, and, by its foreign policy provokes warlike developments, cannot furnish the security required of them who solicit

The

other people's money for the furtherance of their undertakings. National sympathies and antipathies played but a subordinate part in determining the fate of the last Russian loans. position is best explained by the reflection that Russian policy has created so deep-seated a mistrust as completely to neutralize the strongest political sympathies.

These facts indicate Russia's true course. Entirely apart from whether a government wishes it or not, it is practically impossible for a bureaucracy to make the citizens produce their savings. There is no need then for Russia to deceive herself as to the necessary course of development. To secure European gold first and then perhaps or perhaps also not-a modification of Russian politics, is not within the limits of the practicable. Russian policy must first be altered, Russia must be again ruled on the relatively humaner lines of Alexander II., and foreign relations must exhibit, at least temporarily, a peaceable tendency. Only by these means can the people of Western Europe be brought to regard the conditions of the Russian Empire in a new and more favorable light.

The exchange of notes, diplomatic conferences, diplomatic combinations, cannot, in any way, modify these conclusions. Public opinion must be recovered, and that by deeds, not by promises.

It is one of the greatest triumphs of our time that public opinion, and its organ, the Press, which presents the facts clearly, are, together, stronger than the united Cabinet politics of Paris and St. Petersburg; and the Government of the Czar will find it necessary to reconcile himself with this new member of the Great Powers or it will have to bear the further consequences of its persistent disregard of it.

Of course it will be necessary to take decided measures to guard against the perversion of public opinion by the importation of ill-feeling-against the sentiment that because the Russians have so long irritated us, we should now do our best to return the compliment, and reject the proffered hand if it were stretched out toward us. Such a perversion of public opinion is not altogether impossible, for public opinion under morose excitement is easily perverted. But in politics there is no time but the present, and the policy, which is based on interest, is preferable to that which is based on mere sentiment. He would be a fool who, rendered sullen by a continuance of wet weather, should persist in wearing his waterproof and rubbers after a return of sunshine. Our course, then, is to put on the right demeanor when the right moment arrives, and neither allow ourselves to be duped by the Russians on the one hand, nor on the other to trifle away a favorable opportunity for the improvement of our relations.

THE

ALGERIA.

HERVÉ DE KEROHANT.

Le Correspondant, Paris, November 25.

HE great Algerian problem is to get the colonists and the natives to live in harmony under the same administration. This problem it became necessary to solve immediately after the conquest of Algeria. It has not yet been solved. Still further, we do not seem to have advanced a step toward solution. The chasm which separates the European colonist from the Arabian native seems broader and deeper than it was a quarter of a century ago. The colonist and the Arab dwell side by side, yet hate and despise each other.

The census of 1891 declares the population of our three Algerian departments to be 4,125,000. The Mussulman natives are much the larger part of this population. They number 3,567,000 individuals. Among these three and a half millions of Mussulmans, live, in three distinct groups, 272,000 French people, 220,000 foreigners, and 47,000 Jews. Thus there are in Algeria seven natives to one European; thirteen natives to one Frenchman.

What policy ought France to follow in respect to this native

population established on the soil of Algeria for so many centuries?

There are two extreme opinions, the one of those who love the Arab, the other of those who fear him. The first thinks the natives would live happily under French dominion, if there were no colonists. The second is of the opinion that Algeria would be as prosperous as the United States and Australia, if there were no natives. Neither those who love nor those who fear the Arabs have any practicable scheme to offer. We must, therefore, look further for a solution of the problem.

There are but three ways in which a conquering and a conquered race can be assimilated: intermarriage; conversion of the conquered to the religion of their masters; teaching the inferior race to speak the language of the superior.

Experience shows abundantly that the French and Algerian cannot be assimilated by either intermarriage or conversion. You can convert the idolatrous negro and the Asiatic Buddhist to Christianity, but not the Mussulman. Entirely reliable statistics prove that in the last five years not a hundred Mussulmans in Algeria have became Christians.

Up to this time such instruction as we have given has had no better results. The children of the French and of the natives are taught in different schools. In the Arabic and Kabylic schools, French is not taught; in the French schools, they do not teach either Arabic or Kabylic. Among the French functionaries who hold office among the Arabs or Kabyles in Algeria, there is rarely one who can communicate with those whom these officers are appointed to govern.

The first thing to be done in order to make the relations between natives and colonists harmonious, and put the latter in the way of exercising moral influence over the former, is to teach in both the primary and secondary French schools of Algeria the languages of the Arabs and the Kabyles. It is astonishing that up to the present time nothing of the kind has been attempted, and that our 300,000 French colonists in Algeria are content to live without understanding a word of the language of the three million Arabs and Kabyles among whom these French people pass their lives.

A more difficult thing will be to teach French in the schools of the natives. To begin with, it will be expensive, for it will be necessary to build seven or eight thousand school-houses, which will cost from fourteen to sixteen million dollars, while for the primary instruction alone will be required a yearly appropriation of from two and a half to three million dollars. We are a long way as yet from spending such a sum, for at present the total yearly appropriation for the primary instruction of the natives is less than 45,000 dollars. When the school-houses have been constructed, and the requisite yearly appropriation made, will the young Arabs come to be taught? That may reasonably be doubted, in view of the dislike which the natives show to our system of instruction.

If nothing else can be done, however, we can at least bring the Algerian native to regard the Government of France as a benefit to him. We can give him a good, by which I mean an honest and just, administration. This is the minimum which our subjects in Africa have a right to demand. This minimum, however, they do not get. France does not fulfill her duties in regard to the three million Mussulmans whom conquest has put under her rule. By her improvident policy, France is on the road toward making Algeria an African Ireland, which will become, in the near future, what Celtic Ireland is for England, a source of embarrassment and danger. General de la Moricière said before a Committee appointed to revise Algerian legislation: "In legislating for Algeria we pay not the slightest attention to the interests of the Arabs. We promised on taking possession of the capital of the Regency, to respect the manners and religion of the people we conquered; yet not one of our administrative measures shows the least consideration for Arabian ideas, interests, or religion. What have we done for public instruction, for

the organization of justice, for the protection of the Mussulman religion? What have we done for that immensely important question of landed property? Nothing. These words of the General were said in 1848. In the forty-three years, which have since elapsed, the situation has not improved-in some respects it is worse. How long will these three and a half million people endure the injustice with which they are treated? They may not rise in armed rebellion as long as we are not engaged in war in Europe. Let our hands once be tied, however, by the need of concentrating all our forces on the German or Italian frontier, and we may expect in Algeria an explosion, which, if it does not drive the French out of the country, will cripple France for long years to come.

SOCIOLOGICAL.

THE HALO OF INDUSTRIAL IDLENESS. MORRISON I. SWIFT, Esq.

Andover Review, Boston, December.

No reflecting person

of capital in production; working people, the bulk of them, do not think of questioning it. But here is the logical breach: Given the capital, is not the burden of all workers augmented because they have to support a body of people for letting them use it? Of course capital is a benefaction, but it does not follow from this that the owners of capital are benefactors.

The idea of capital, and that of its owner, must be dissociated if there is to be any clearness or progress in political economy. Capital performs its function in increasing production through being capital, and through being applied and managed by capable persons, not at all by belonging to this man or that. The mere function of ownership is a sinecure, and yet the rewards for ownership are absolutely enormous, and, all things thrown in the scale, greater than the remuneration for producing the things that keep the race alive, and society going. The capital would be there without them, and would be as productive and useful. The alternative is not as assumed, no capital, if no non-producing owners of capital, but capital without the drag of non-producing owners, and a working society that would have, as return for its labor of social production and support, all that is now turned over to those who do nothing. The fact that the capital-owning drones are permitted to sit down before the whole product of industry, which they have moved no finger to aid in creating, and to consume great portions of it, makes the quota of time and energy required for the workers to create it just so much the greater, as time and energy are taken to create what the drones consume. The burden is diffused over all productive society.

One of the most important effects of capital-owning by drones, is that they set up a luxurious scale of living, which entrepreneurs, too, in time, grow to regard as necessary for themselves, and this reacts in various ways upon the workers.

Of course, the inference from what has preceded is, that society should not support a class of drones. But a difficulty seems to be found in the fact that these non-producing owners are thought generally to confer a favor by keeping out of active productions, in which they are pretty sure to fail, having no fitness or training, deranging general business and annihilating capital in the experiment. It is charged that our need is not of more business men but of fewer; that our men of affairs stay at the helm too long, making it harder for the younger men to obtain a footing.

The first of these difficulties might be serious if the unfitted capitalists were to be called on to attempt the productive manipulation of their property. But this does not follow. When an owner destroys his capital, as he does by putting it in an industrial plant that yields no return or a disproportion

ately small return, he injures the community as well as himself, and this the community has a right to deprecate, and, if possible, prevent.

The second charge, that there are too many business men and that the older ones hold on too long, opens up a very grave question. According to the theory of business as now conducted, everything is overdone-one store or one manufactory thrives at the expense of another. Success means getting trade from competition.

From the point of view of this business method, there are apparently too many stores and factories. If the older and established business men would retire earlier, the field would be freer and fairer for others. But, on the side of business itself, the new managers might be inferior and cause the business to decay or fail. It is, then, hardly a clear desideratum, even upon ordinary trade principles. If we look at the matter from the viewpoint of production, instead of the private interest of a limited number of persons, it may be wholly unfortunate if the more experienced leaders give up their post early. The withdrawal from business of non-productive manipulators would be an advantage. The withdrawal of a real producer will, under right conditions of production, be invariably an injury. True, the conditions of production are not now right; a great producer may, with all appearance of deserving it, retain for himself vastly more of the general product than he creates,

In proposing to retire the successful capitalists sooner, it is tacitly recognized that their reward, conferred on them by society, is greater than the services they have rendered to it; and that, if they continue, the disproportion of the service to the reward will continue to increase,

We have traced this thought through for the light it throws on the original question-the question whether non-producing capitalists, the present drones, should be required to enter the life of action, adding many more to the already crowded field. If they go in to produce, with a reward not too great, the answer is simple enough. So long as they receive an income, they are bound to be helping among those whose toil produces income.

A

GENERAL BOOTH'S EXPERIMENT.

HERBERT V. MILLS.

Unitarian Review, Boston, December.

CRISIS rapidly approaches in the history of General Booth's Farm Colony Experiment. Land has been purchased, buildings have been erected, and a large number of the able-bodied poor have begun operations; but thus far vital principles remain unsettled, as to the exact object of its existence and the rules under which the colonists are to be eventually governed.

Some five weeks ago I went to see the colony; and it seems to me that it is capable of becoming a greater power for good than all the charity organizations of this country.

The Farm Colony is in Essex, and two and a half miles distant from the railway station at Leigh, which is between forty and fifty miles from London. Altogether about 1,300 acres of land have been purchased, at a price varying from £5 per acre for low-lying and rough grass lands, and £25 to £30 for fertile, cultivated land.

I found about two hundred men at work on the colony. The chief work at present is building large wooden sheds which are to be used as dormitories, dining-rooms, a large cooking and iron bake-house, reading-rooms, baths, lavatories, and an building which is to be used as a hospital. There is already sleeping accommodation for three hundred men. Among the workmen I saw brickmakers, builders, carpenters, glaziers, plumbers, general fitters-who were engaged on a waterheating apparatus-blacksmiths, a shoemaker, cement and concrete makers. When these buildings are completed, a network of tram lines is to be laid over the estate, along which

wagons are to be pushed by hand, as may be convenient and necessary. A wharf is also to be built, to give the advantage of easy water traffic with London. A large tract known as Sea Marsh is to be reclaimed and made arable. The stock now comprises 160 sheep and 70 cattle, of which 15 are dairy stock. A large quantity of poultry and many pigs are also kept. The first batch of unemployed laborers, numbering twenty-five men-no women have yet been admitted-arrived in May, The second batch of thirty were sent down about the middle of June; a third, numbering twenty-two, came late in June; and since that time a few have been sent down every day. When a deserving applicant presents himself at the Colony, he is admitted by the director without applying to headquarters.

It was pleasant and very encouraging to see men with bright, hopeful faces at work again, who still bore the marks of the time when hope had given place to a heart-sick despair. Here were men who had belonged to the upper middle-class in society, who through drunken habits had been reduced to hunger, but who found under the "Social Wing" of the Salvation Army a refuge from temptation, and who were content to work and accept the remuneration offered by the director.

But I was most pleased to see occasionally a regular "tramp," having the tramp's peculiar walk—the hobbling, sorefooted, shambling gait of the man who knows the fourpenny lodging-house and the casual ward. It is wonderful to see the 'Salvation" cheerfulness and fellowship spreading among these colonists, although they are not required to conform to any "Army" dogmas. The rooms of the men are made atractive with bright-colored paint, and they are scrupulously clean. The director is not a member of the Salvation Army, and the agricultural department is under the supervision of a Lincolnshire farmer of wide practical experience. Each man is required to sign the following:

AGREEMENT BY COLONIST.

I, being by trade a ———————, but being unable to find work, have been in the London shelters of the Salvation Army for and now wish to go upon the Farm Colony.

[ocr errors]

I agree to obey all the rules and regulations

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

of the colony.

I understand the rules and regulations as to grants, as printed on the other side, and am willing to work for my food and shelter only, for one month upon the colony, and after that time shall be satisfied with the grant allowed me by the superintendent under whom I may be placed.

The "regulations as to grants" are, in effect, that for those who are unable to find work elsewhere, work will be provided in exchange for shelter and maintenanee. In order to encourage good workmen who will be of especial benefit to the colony, wages will be paid after the first month. As to such wages, there are the following classes and rates: Fourth Class, Is. per week; Third Class, 1s. 6d.; Second Class, 2s. 6d.; First Class, 45. per week; the classing to be settled by the superintendent during the trial month. For infringement of rules or negligence, a portion or the whole of the weekly grant may be stopped by the director; for more serious misconduct a colonist may be reduced to a lower class, or be discharged from the colony.

The whole aim and purpose of the agreement and its provisions seem to offer a continuous series of new advantages and rewards, calculated to bind the colonists to the Hadleigh estate for many years. I saw the wage-sheet of the week preceding my visit. The total for the week was £207 95.

Since the settlement of the colony began, about forty men have either left or been expelled. Half of these were dismissed for drunkenness, there being a drinkshop within a mile of the colony. The other half left of their own accord, from dissatisfaction either with the work or the food. The officers are full of enthusiasm and proud of their work; while they are delighted to find that a much larger proportion of the unemployed than they expected at the outset, are willing to remain and to do hard work.

Professors of political economy, who are well acquainted with the attempts of Feargus O'Connor and Saint-Simon, and the experiments of the American Socialists, agree that the experiment I have outlined has not been tried under similar conditions, and that it would be of real value to economic science.

THE GERMAN SOCIALISTS AT ERFURT.

ARTHUR RAFFALOVICH.

Journal Des Economistes, Paris, November.
HERE was not need of great perspicacity to show that the

Tabrogation of the rigorous laws against the revolutionary outgivings of German Socialism would result in a lack of cohesion among the Socialists, and cause the apparent unanimity of the party to disappear. The persecutions, the stratagems of the police, all the apparatus of repression invented by Prince Bismarck, had two effects-both advantageous to the persecuted. On the one hand, the obstacles put in the way of liberty of discussion made of secondary importance the differences of opinion among the Socialists, who presented a compact and united front; while on the other hand, as an act of self-preservation, the leaders of Socialism separated from the handful of anarchists, who had become odious and compromising. The propaganda continued in spite of the police, The ballots of the Social Democrats and forbidden pamphlets were circulated like contraband matter. It was easy to arouse the sympathies of workmen for the persecuted Socialists. During the silence imposed by the rigorous statutes, the adversaries of Socialism themselves found it more difficult to combat and refute its errors and absurdities.

Now the situation in Germany is changed. Discord has been introduced among the Socialists. Personal questions, individual ambitions, play a great part. That was perceived at the Congress of Halle; it was still more evident in the Congress held at Erfurt, in the month of October. While discussing the tactics to be followed, these questions of a personal order consumed nearly all the sittings of the Congress, and there was no time to discuss the programme of the party, which had to be adopted without debate.

Without wishing to fall into optimism, or to deny the danger there is in Socialism, it may be said that the Congress of Erfurt has not contributed towards increasing the prestige of Socialism and that, with the opportunity of free discussion of its doctrines, the absurdity of its fundamental idea becomes more evident, while the edifice constructed under the Bismarckian reaction is crumbling away.

The new programme, like the old, is divided in two parts. The one contains the programme, properly so called, the other the points which can be put forward in the present condition of the State and contemporaneous society. The first part is the customary dilution, with the usual silence as to the exact picture which Collectivism will present in practice.

The Congress renewed the attacks against the established order of things, declared a matter of the highest importance to be the transformation of private property and means of production (land, mines, raw materials, tools, machines, means of communication) into collective property, and the transformation of commercial production into socialist production, done for and by society.

In the preceding programme, much had been said about a social regulation of all work, of a general obligation to work, and of the partition of the product of work according to an equal right, each receiving his own share according to his reasonable needs. The expression, "equal product of work," was abandoned, because, according to the criticism of Marx, this expression does not harmonize with the Collectivist character of work. They left in the shade the thing which they aim at an equal remuneration.

The word State was studiously shunned. It was replaced by the word Society. Liebknecht declared that it would be a waste of time to inquire if the Collectivist Society would have the name of State.

The adversaries of Socialism need not attach an exaggerated importance to the programme set forth by the Congress of Erfurt.

That programme is summed up in one of its clauses, which declares that the abyss between the classes who possess

property and the classes who do not possess it, is constantly becoming broader and deeper. The contrary of this is true in the opinion of the economists. Scientific observation of social phenomena shows that the tendency is towards less inequality in the division of wealth or that, at least, as a result of progress of all sorts, the lot of the laboring classes is constantly improving, while the revenues of capitalists diminish.

The ironclad law of Lassalle is denied to-day by the very persons who have heretofore taught it. Other parts of theoretical Socialism wlll doubtless take the same road. As an indication of this may be mentioned the fact, that immediately after the Congress of Erfurt adjourned, a meeting of a Socialist faction was held at Berlin, which denounced in the strongest terms some of the acts of the Congress, which, it was declared, had overlooked the fact that Socialism is an intellectual movement, and that no one can be excluded from the Socialist ranks on account of any difference of opinion as to the policy the party ought to pursue; such an exclusion being an annihilation of the liberty of individual opinion.

As a compensation for all the absurdities appearing in Socialist meetings and publications, I recommenced the reading of the biting satire, that Mr. Eug. Rechter has made so amusing in his publication, entitled "Social-demokratische Zukunftsbilder." It is a picture of what society organized by the Socialists will be, on the day of their triumph, with national workshops where very bad work will be done during a few hours of the day, with national restaurants where the food will be very poor, with children and old men taken away from the cares of their families, with the general impoverishment of the country, with the increase of fiscal burdens and the growing discontent of the dupes and victims, all of which will end in a terrible reaction.

CE

THE PALIMPSESTS OF PRISONS.

HELEN ZIMMERN.

New Review, London and New York, December. ESARE LOMBROSO, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence at the University of Turin, has devoted considerable time to the study of mental maladies, with special reference to criminal pathology. A peculiar side branch of this large subject in which he has broken entirely new ground, is the collection of Palimpsests of Prisons, under which title he has just issued a large volume, in which he publishes the inscriptions, often in fac-simile, and all the drawings and ciphers his industrious researches have collected

The originals are in the study of his private abode at Turin, and consist of pieces of coarse earthenware, washing basins, jugs, and other objects of intimate use, often broken and dirty. All scratched with rough drawings, writings, and hieroglyphics, which, the Professor holds, have the same ethnographical value, as those left by street boys on the walls of Pompeian houses, in the shape of aids to an intimate knowledge of these men.

The prisoner shut up in his solitary cell is impelled instinctively to some outward expression of his inner feelings. Only, as invariably happens when a human requirement is in conflict with a law, it expresses itself in underhand and hidden ways; on prison walls, on water jugs, on bed-posts, on the margins of the book given to convicts to read with an idea of improving their morals, on paper that has wrapped up medicines, on their very clothes, upon which they impress their thoughts in embroidery. From this springs a species of diary, anonymous but endless, which informs the prisoner of what goes on around him or what may happen, and which constitutes, besides, a collection of autobiographies.

Now if we bear in mind that every such inscription is an infringement of prison regulation, that their inditing becomes a vulgar question of bread and butter to the hungry author,

« iepriekšējāTurpināt »