The voters shout at Radical meetings; but on election day they go to the polls and (unknown to the Radical leaders) vote for the Conservative. This illustrates the way in which the system has caused many surprises in every country; and shows how useless it is for politicians to attempt to calculate beforehand whether or not the measure will benefit their particular party.

The system was first tried in the United States in Connecticut and Montana, in the October elections of 1889. The success of the plan was still more marked at the elections held by those two States in November, when they were also joined by the States of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

In 1891, twenty-six of the States of the Union vote under some form of the Australian system. This leaves only eighteen States that have not made a great advance in the reform in the past three years. The eighteen are: Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine. Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Virginia. The new Constitution of Kentucky provides for an official secret ballot, for which the General Assembly will probably provide during the coming winter. Maine has enacted a law providing for the full Australian ballot, but the first election under its provisions will not occur until September, 1892.

Massachusetts, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, Montana, and Rhode Island use the 'blanket ballot" upon which the names of all candidates are printed, and the voter indicates his choice by a X marked opposite the name of the candidate, or the party group, according to the arrangement of the names upon the ballot. The arrangement under the law of Massachusetts, which is believed to carry the system to its fullest logical development, is to place the name of the candidates, in alphabetical order under the designation of the office for which they are nominated, leaving space sufficient for writing in other names if desired.

In Connecticut and New Jersey official envelopes are used, in which the voter must seal up his ballot, but the ballot is not the strictly official ballot, as it is obtainable before the voter reaches the polls.

It may be said of the ballot reform laws of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut that they were passed, and, in the case of New York, amended, by the enemies of the full and complete Australian system.

FEW

THE RESTORATION OF SILVER.
JOHN A. GRIER.

Lippincott's Magazine, Philadelphia, November.

NEW questions before the American people are of more momentous national importance than the restoration of silver to its full use. Persons are often blind to events; yet nations are educated by events, not by arguments. The people of the United States have been receiving this education since the demonetization of silver in 1873.

Pass by any argument or deduction in this article as mere personal opinion which may have little value; but when facts from statistics or history are stated, please examine them with

care.

Facts, not opinions, should be the basis of conclusions on a question like this.

Until 1873 the world moved along for more than twenty centuries using silver and gold concurrently as the money-measuring metals. There was very little complaint about the superabundance of either. During the immense outpouring of gold from the mines of Australia and California, Chevalier, a distinguished French engineer, wrote an earnest plea for its dethronement as a money-metal, and his theory found many believers. Richard Cobden translated the work into English, and it was extensively circulated; but the craze soon ran its course and was buried, France, that ever wide-awake and keen-witted nation, holding then as now, one of the largest

supplies of silver money in the world, ignored the delusion and kept her mint open to the rich current of the yellow metal. She coined an enormous amount of gold, and her example produced a most excellent result; The benefits from the world's enlarged output of gold during these years forcibly stimulated the activity of mankind and eased many of the burdens of life for the less prosperous. When we demonetized silver as full legal-tender money, we committed a national blunder that has cost the mass of our people the loss of untold millions of dollars annually.

Only a small part of this has, legally but unfairly, enriched a few thousands of our people, while many millions have been uselessly thrust upon our creditors on the other side of the Atlantic. The late Secretary Manning, in his annual report of December 6, 1886, distinctly expressed this view of the case. He was a believer in the efficacy and necessity of international treaties in the use of silver as full legal-tender money. Thus, in advocating such treaties he urged the discontinuance of silver coinage, so as to bring a more direct financial pressure on all other nations for the gold of the world. He thought if we should drop silver coinage, and enter more earnestly into the contest for gold, then going on, we should be the gainers. With our immense resources in the production of so many of the articles Europe must have, we could procure the gold, while denying ourselves of part of our imported luxuries. In regard to the cost to us of the demonetization of silver, he said:

The monetary dislocation has already cost our farming population, who number nearly one-half of the population of the United States, an almost incomputable sum, a loss of millions upon millions of dollars every year, a loss which they will continue to suffer so long as Congress delays to stop the silver purchase, and by that act to compel an international redress of the money dislocation.

To give some estimate of these losses I have made the following investigations: Assuming that it required approximately the same amount of labor to farm an acre of cereals during the years 1871-2-3 that it did during the years 18867-8; then by examining the farm price of cereals as given by the United States Statistical Bureau we find that, on a gold valuation at each period, the annual shrinkage in the price received by farmers during the latter period was about $600,The statistics also show that for the five years 188589, as compared with the five years 1880-84, our exportation of wheat and wheat flour fell off in value to the enormous extent of $334,000,000.

000,000.

The farmers of the United States are studying this question. They have apparently reached some unwise conclusions as to remedies, but, as a class, they seem determined that silver shall be restored. There are a few eminent authorities who deny that the disuse of silver as a money-measuring metal has had any effect in causing the world-wide fall in prices or on our loss of certain foreign exports. They admit the changes, but attribute them to other causes. Our government statistics are accessible to all; and this is one of the inductive questions that each one must settle for himself. However, the British Royal Commission, appointed a few years ago to examine this question, unanimously admitted the conclusion I have cited, and six of the twelve called for the prompt restoration of silver, while the other six hesitated for further observation.

Thus, by our novel attempt to get down to a gold basis, we found ourselves measuring prices by a commodity for which the legal demand had suddenly and largely increased. We also found that its value, either as a commodity or as money, nad largely appreciated. The way to ascertain the exchangable value of money is to see what it will exchange for or buy in the markets of the world. Tested by this inexorable economic rule, it will be found that the average prices of commodities used in common life have fallen approximately one-third since the demonetization of silver. This means that the purchasing power of gold has increased about one-half. If the greatest possible stability in the purchasing power of coined money is desirable, we should maintain the concurrent use of both metals, in order to keep up their mutual automatic action on each other's value. The apprehension that we, like China, India, or Mexico, may perchance reach a silver basis, is groundless, although we may decide to increase largely our use of silver. There is a wide and safe margin between this increased use of silver and free coinage.

TH

THE PAMIR PLATEAU.

Die Nation, Berlin, November.

HE Pamir Plateau, which is now frequently referred to in connection with the Russian advance in Central Asia, is mentioned by Marco Polo in the record of his travels in the thirteenth century and by the Jesuit father Benedict Goës in 1602.

It is a high table-land lying between the Chinese province of Kashgar, the British protected States of Chittral and Kashmir, between Affghanistan and the Russian Provinces of Bokhara and Ferghana, to the north of the Hindoo Kush and the Karakorum ranges, called by the Kirghese “roof of the world." This plateau with an approximate area of 1,400 square miles, and with a mean elevation of ten to fourteen thousand feet, is one of the most sterile and desert regions of the earth, and on this account, probably, the bordering kingdoms have shown no very jealous interest in it. Still China lays claims to the eastern portion as far as Sutschau; Affghanistan claims political authority in the southwest portion, while England' manifests an ever-growing desire to strengthen herself by the establishment of military stations in Chittral.

This long-forgotten mountain desert, thinly peopled by the nomadic Kara Kirghese, this region without political organization, this No Man's Land, in the heart of Asia, has in recent years been made the occasion of much scientific travel and investigation on the part of the English and Russians. With John Wood's travels to the sources of the Oxus in 1837 the region may be said to have entered on a new epoch.

While the plateau has little in natural resources to tempt the cupidity of the Russians, its possession would nevertheless be of immense importance to them. By pushing forward her front to the southern border of the Pamir plateau Russia's troops would come into direct contact with England's military stations on the Hindoo Koosh and Karakorum ranges, and within about fifty kilometers of the northern boundary of British India.

It is true that this treeless, barren region, covered with snow during a great portion of the year, is little suited to military occupation; the Chinese traffic, too, that once crossed it is now diverted into other channels. But numerous and, for the Russians, important passes cross the Altai and Serassan chains to the Pamir, and from this, across the Kisil-Yart mountains, into Eastern Turkestan in the regions of Kashgar and Yarkand. Moreover, the descent by the valleys of the headwaters of the Amu Darya is by no means a difficult one; so that, apart from its rigorous climate, it presents abundant facilities of intercourse between Russia, China, Affghanistan, and India. The power of the plateau is consequently for Russia a strategic position of considerable general importance, and the door of Northern India and western East Turkistan. The long march of 600 English miles between Sarac and India through Affghanistan and the Khyber Pass, would be a formidable enterprise, with the impetuous and warlike tribes, which England would certainly endeavor to win to her side with English gold, threatening her communications. Even if England secure this route it is by no means impossible that the English would first come into collision with the Russians, not at Cabul, nor in the Khyber Pass, but that the first great battle for dominion in India would be fought before the gates of Herat. And even should the Russians prove victorious here they would, on pushing forward, leave their lines of communication exposed to the attacks of Affghan tribes, so that their position in India, cut off from supplies and reinforcements, would be rendered a very critical one.

But while at present the Trans-Caucasian region would necessarily form the basis of a Russian advance upon India, Russia once in possession of the Pamir could make Ferghana its basis of operations, and invade India without exposing its communications to the risk of being cut off by hostile tribes. This important and valuable province of Ferghana, the par

adise of the Orientals, which fell to Russia in her conquest of Khokand in 1876, still wants railway communication with Samarkand, the eastern terminal station of the Trans-Caspian railway, to render it a suitable basis of operations for the invasion of India, but there is little doubt that Russia's next step will be the extension of her railway system to Chodschent, the chief city of Ferghana.

At the same time, Russia will require a very material increase of her military strength, and war material and military estabments of all sorts in this province, to render it a suitable base of operations for the invasion of India by the way of the Pamir Plateau; and forts and provision and forage depots would have to be constructed on the plateau itself.

All these preparations will require time and vast expenditure, so that Russia's advance upon the Pamir, while it indicates the road by which she may probably attempt to invade India, can hardly be regarded as a present danger.

The recent advance of Russia from the Trans Altai Mountains and the Dragon Sea, to Mluktschat Enghen, Irkistan, and Nagra Tschally is, however, of importance in quite another direction; it will give her possession of the important passes across the Northern Kisil-Yart Mountains, into East Turkestan, and afford her favorable opportunities for debouching upon the rich provinces of Kashgar and Yarkand, and thus intimidate China into withholding her support from these distant vassal provinces. So that not only England and Affghanistan, but China also, has an interest in opposing the Russian occupation of the Panir.

The present Russian expedition may be deemed comparatively unimportant, and as being only what it professes to be, an expedition against the robber bands which harass the province of Ferghana; but the semi-official journal the "Ochrana" which may be assumed to indicate the views of the Russian Government, says: It will be necessary to annex the neighboring Khanate to relieve the district from the disorders and menaces which arrest the internal development of Ferghana." This is precisely the style of justification which Russia has always advanced for the extension of her Asiatic conquests.

SOCIOLOGICAL.

THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE SOCIAL QUESTION. ALBERT TOUBEAU.

TH

La Revue Socialiste, Paris, October.

HE social question has made during the last twenty years undeniable progress. It may be said to have assumed a new and decisive phase, the phase which immediately precedes a solution, not only theoretical but practical. Many symptoms indicate this new situation. One of these particularly demands attention: it is no longer the working classes alone which are interested in the social question; the cultivated classes also are interested.

All those who, like myself, have been able to follow the course of the social movement, will remember the difficulties and obstacles with which the problem of misery formerly struggled. The suffering masses alone, through some few writers as their mouthpiece, were in a condition to point out the social evil of that problem. As to the comfortable classes, they blindly denied its existence. Thence resulted those strained, hostile, intolerable, and apparently irreconcilable relations between the two classes. So great was the defiance on the side of the working classes that they thought they ought to adopt this motto: "The emancipation of the toilers must be the work of the toilers themselves." This is what was thought and declared twenty years ago. The working classes refused to put any confidence in the directing classes; the former were afraid of everything which manifested any superiority whatever, material or intellectual.

The situation is no longer the same. The enlightened

classes have taken hold of the question, and have almost reached a simple, reassuring, and practical solution. The question has emerged from the phase of violent, utopian, or purely impracticable reforms, and has entered on the definite period of healthy and sure application.

The solution is not a personal work. It is the result of the logical and natural development of sociological, and especially economic, studies. It has not been discovered by a single man and in a single country, but by many, in France, in England, in Russia, in America-in America, above all.

Everywhere the movement propagates itself and is propagated from below above, from those without property to the small trading classes, from the small trading classes to the liberal professions. I need give no other example of this than the Anglo-American movement of which Henry George, the celebrated author of "Progress and Poverty," is the head. This

plished. We are then authorized to entertain the liveliest hopes as to the approaching solution of the labor problem, when we see what is passing at this moment; social studies spreading everywhere among the classes which, through their talent, their merit, and their fortune, are better situated than those who work with their hands, to rise from effects to causes. These classes will themselves bring new elements for an appreciation of the problem, and, by enlarging the point of view, will arrive more easily at a complete synthesis.

The movement is displaced. In this displacement it takes on a new character. Thus it has become less aggressive and less utopian.

INFLUENCE OF LABOR ORGANIZATIONS.

GEORGE GUNTON.

Social Economist, New York, November.

T is a characteristic of evolution that new formations must

judges, artists, wealthy merchants, manufacturers, landed proprietors. In England especially, great associations, powerful corporations, town and municipal councils manifest, by visible signs, their desire and firm intention to start on the road to serious reforms. From England the movement has extended to Australia, where already a large number of towns have pronounced in its favor.

It is only after having been for a long time debated, studied, discussed, that the social question has ended by losing its threatening character, while becoming more and more urgent. Nothing is said any more about confiscations, expropriations, retaking rights by sheer violence. There was a return to moderation as soon as the time of solution approached. The enlightened classes have taken hold of the question, and every day take a firmer hold of it, either because constant witness of the undeniable sufferings of the disinherited classes, they have been so deeply moved as to find themselves ill at ease; or because which is less probable-the instability of positions in this world is such that no one can be considered free from all danger of reverses, and the fear of falling into misery or of seeing those who are under their care fall into it, has aroused in these enlightened classes a sense of its being a duty to seek for the inmost causes of a situation which threatens all lives, all families, all classes.

Moreover, can social evil attack one class alone and not be spread by contagion among all the other classes? Misery increases incessantly, as is shown by the difficult careers of those in all professions, and especially in the professions called liberal. Misery attacks professors, physicians, lawyers, journalists. As to the manual, agricultural, industrial occupations and small shopkeepers, do we not see numbers of these crushed in the battle of life? Even the great manufacturers, the vast agricultural enterprises, are from time to time the prey of crises, which oblige them to busy themselves with problems at other times disdained.

These circumstances have contributed, with many others, to displace the social movement and to transfer it from the working classes, to which it was strictly confined, to the enlightened classes, to the well-to-do, and even the rich classes.

In thus being displaced, the axis of the social movement has likewise displaced, not the elements of the problem-these elements are everywhere and always the same-but the conditions of the search for the causes, the conditions of the solution to come also. It is evident that as soon as the instructed classes took hold of the question, there was more reason to hope for a near and definitive solution. The workmen will best instruct us as to the hardships of their situation; it will be difficult, if not impossible, for them to trace out the profound and hidden source of the evils from which they suffer. Slaves do not emancipate themselves; doubtless they constitute a force by their number, but they lack the true power. That true power is intelligence. And it is by intelligence— that is, by the enlightened classes, that progress is accom

selves. This characteristic is as general in society as in the physical world. Every new institution has had to fight its way against old established forms.

To this Labor Organizations have been no exception. For generations they were treated as conspiracies against society, and to be a member of one of them was made a criminal offense. Even now efforts are frequently made to suppress them; but one might as well attempt to abolish factories or to .stop civilization.

Labor organizations are not ancient institutions which have outlived their usefulness, but they are comparatively recent developments, and are demonstrating their usefulness by their rapid and healthy growth. They are a natural feature of capitalistic production and the wages system, both of which are indispensable to our complex civilization.

The development of the capitalistic class, with its specialization of industry, and its use of large machineries, has practically divorced the laborer from nature. The single-handed laborer cannot obtain an average living, either upon the farm or in the shop, because his products can be undersold by those of capitalistic producers. Therefore, the laborer has been led to turn to the capitalist for employment, who in turn has assumed the responsibility of the laborer's income. It is now the employer who deals directly with nature, and laborers deal with him.

Under these changed conditions, when workmen want to increase their income they cannot profitably go to nature with a little more energy or a few more hours' work, but they must go to the capitalist for higher wages, and if nature is to yield more, it is he who must make her do it.

This transition has also practically destroyed the productive individuality of laborers, by differentiating them into specialized parts of a complex productive machine. Men can now only work successfully when employed in large masses, subdivided into numerous groups, each complementary to the other and dependent upon it.

By these changes workmen have been welded into an economic, as well as a social class, whose income, drawn from employers, tends to uniformity, according to their industry. This identity of interest and interdependence of welfare natu rally led to associated efforts among laborers, in the same way that the division of labor led to the organization of capital. Labor organizations are therefore both historical and economic accompaniments of the organization of capital, and are as separable from the wages system as are factories from capitalistic production. Inasmuch, however, as they arose in opposition to capital at first, they have, as I said, been violently opposed from many points of view, and especially by capitalists.

They are said to destroy the right of individual contract, but the capitalists who bring the charge do not hesitate to enter into similar combinations among themselves. And,

moreover, it is a fact that the freedom and welfare of the laboring classes have steadily advanced during the period that Labor Organization has most increased. Edward Atkinson and others pleaded for the sacred right of working women to make individual contracts; just as if factory women or children, or men either, had ever enjoyed this precious boon. As a matter of fact, no such right has ever existed since the factory system began. It has been rendered impossible by the very nature of specialized and concentrated industry. To the modern employer, laborers constitute various parts of a large productive industry, and must work in practical uniformity or not at all. Since both capital and labor necessarily move in large aggregations, it is manifestly as irrational as it is uneconomic for organized capital to object to organized labor.

The truth is that no such freedom on the part of the laborers to make individual contracts for themselves, different from those under which their fellow laborers in the same shop are working, is ever intended by the much-heralded phrase "freedom of contract." All that it really means is that employers should have the freedom to take laborers singly, in order to make them jointly accept their terms. In other words, laborers shall not have the right to be represented by the most competent of their class or craft.

Moreover, Trades Unions are educational institutions, stimulating the study of industrial questions, which involves a considerable amount of reading and general information, and also an intelligent acquaintance with the industrial conditions of their craft. Further, they afford an opportunity for social. intercourse, otherwise practically impossible. It thus appears that Trades Unions are essentially economic institutions. Of course they resort to strikes as a means of enforcing their demands when more moderate means fail; and it cannot be disputed that strikes are often unwisely and badly managed, that dishonest men, otherwise conspicuously unfit for leadership, sometimes get to the head of Labor Organizations; but the same impeachment can be urged with quite as much truth against political organizations and social clubs.

It is a fact to-day, that in those industries where Trades Unions are best organized and exercise the greatest influence, strikes are fewest, wages are highest, hours of labor are shortest, and the relation between workmen and employers most confidential and harmonious; hence, it is alike the interest and duty both of the employing class and the community to encourage their developement and increase their usefulness.

THE FOOD-SUPPLY OF THE FUTURE.
W. O. ATWATER.

Century, New York, November.
II.*

THE SEA AS A SOURCE OF FOOD FOR MAN-FISH CULTURE.

HE of containing material that should

Fish is especially rich in protein (the food element which makes blood, muscle, bone, and tendon). By the culture and use of fish we effect a threefold saving. We obtain the protein needed to supplement vegetable products as food for man. We thus reduce the demand for meat, which requires the prod-uct of so much land in its production. We bring back from the sea in the protein of fish the precious nitrogen so much needed to restore fertility to our exhausted soils. The sea is made to supplement the land by producing the very foodingredient that is most lacking in the produce of the soil. We can use less soil-product for making meat (the chief land source of protein) and thus save large areas for the cultivation of wheat and other vegetables for food, and in this way make the soil supply far more nourishment for man than is otherwise possible.

INCREASE OF FOOD-SUPPLY BY TILLAGE AND IRRIGATION. Few who have not studied the subject realize the possibilities of crop-growing by irrigation. The lands of Egypt, otherwise a desert, have been kept fertile for centuries by the overflowing of the Nile; the irrigated plains of Lombardy can yield nine crops of grass in a year; the sewage-farms of England, over which is spread the sewage of cities, yield almost fabulous. produce. Already our Government is preparing for a vast system of irrigation. Dams and reservoirs are to be constructed in the mountains of the West to hold the waters of winter until needed for the nourishment of summer crops. It is believed that this enterprise put into effect will make the region which covers two-fifths of the United States include the garden of the continent, and capable of sustaining a population as dense as those of Italy or Spain.

But tillage and manuring work wonders in farming. The produce which the Prussian farmer gets from his sandy plains excels that of our virgin prairies. Prince Kropotkin (who argues that the 78,000,000 acres all told-of the United Kingdom could provide all the necessary amount and variety of food for its 35,000,000 human beings) says:

If we want to know what agriculture can be, we must apply for infor mation to the market-gardening culture in this country [England], in the neighborhoods of Paris, Amiens, and other large cities [in France], and in Holland. There each hundred acres, under proper culture, yield food, not for forty human beings, as they do on our best farms, but for 200 and 300 persons; not for 60 milch cows, as in the Island of Jersey, but for 200 cows and more if necessary. They [these gardeners} smile when we boast about the rotation system hav-. ing permitted one crop every year, or four crops every three years, because their ambition is to have six, nine, and twelve crops from the very same plot of land during the twelve months.

In such a culture the primitive condition of the soil is of little account, because loam is made out of the old forcing beds. No less than 2,125 acres are cultivated near Paris in that way by 5,000 persons, and thus not only the 2,000,000 Parisians are supplied with vegetables, but the surplus is also sent to London.

The essential features of this system are selecting vigorous. plants, providing proper warmth and moisture, especially when young, transplanting so as to give best opportunity for development, and supplying abundant food. This

THE

plants to be used

extent, wasted. In various ways an immense amount of plantfood ultimately finds its way through soils, sewers, and streams, into the sea. Unfortunately, nitrogen, the most precious element, is the one which is the most carried into this great receptacle. Part of it comes back by evaporation in the form of ammonia, which is returned to the soil by rain. But this is not the only saving of nitrogen from the sea. There is vegetation in the sea as well as on the land. That in the sea yields fish. Here is the source for an almost inexhaustable supply of nourishment for man. Reliable authorities have made calculations of the quantities of fish in rivers, lakes, and the sea, and of the possibility of increasing the supply by fish-culture, and the conclusion seems almost incredible until we look into the facts and see how well they are founded.

* Part I., which appeared in last week's issue of THE LITERARY Digest, shows that Americans eat too much meat-especially fat meat; and that there is great waste in this country, both in the making and in the use of meats.

is coming to explain-improvement of varieties of plants and the economizing of plant-food and energy. Chemistry, by discovering and defining the food elements of vegetable growth, revealing their sources and realizing the means of making them cheaply available to the farmer, has overcome one of the previously insuperable obstacles to the development of national wealth.

THE MALTHUSIAN DOCTRINE.

The theory of Malthus, briefly stated, is that population increases in a geometrical, and food-supply in an arithmetical ratio; and hence the time must come when there will not be food enough. This doctrine is the product of a time when men's thoughts ran in gloomy channels, when a stern logic, arguing ruthlessly from premises which to-day we cannot accept, led to conclusions harsh and unwarranted.

The capacity of men to consume food is limited. The possibility of its production is almost limitless. The very increase

of population which the Malthusian doctrine makes the cause of starvation will thus become (as in the case of manufactures) the condition of cheap and abundant sustenance. In place of the prophesied rule of famine, we have the promise of a reign of plenty.

Faith has always had its reply to Malthusian pessimism, though that reply has been vague. The science of to-day makes it clear. So faith and science rightly joined ever lead us to the light.

THE BRAND OF CAIN IN THE GREAT REPUBLIC. EDWARD WAKEFIELD.

Contemporary Review, London, November.

man knew the American people better, or was

more

the Mafia" was a bold and ingenious device for diverting attention from the true nature and origin of the crime. There was not a vestige of what in England would be called evidence, of the existence of any Mafia in New Orleans. The jury acquitted the prisoners; and, having read every word of the evidence, I unhesitatingly say that upon that evidence they would have been acquitted by any unprejudiced jury, whether in Europe or America. They were acquitted, but the mob murdered them and raised the cry that the jury had been bribed. The "Committee of Safety," as the leaders of the assassins were called, instituted a prosecution against Dominick Q'Malley, a detective, but the solitary witness they could bring in support of the charge was an Irishman, named McCrystal, himself one of the jury, who was ready to confess to having been bribed. The Court refused such evidence, and after a

Russell Lowell. But there is one characteristic which he never touched on without disgust and a sharpness of reproof that was very unusual with him. Their proneness to violence and their disregard of the sanctity of human life shocked his intelligence and grieved his heart. He clearly saw, and he honestly declared, what is the truth:

From Rio Grande to Penobscot's flood

The whole great nation love the smell of blood.

The excuse of "a new country" is a singularly weak one. America is not a new country. It is nearly three centuries old, and if a country cannot "get through with its cussedness" in that time, what hope is there of its ever improving with age? How many centuries do the Americans want before they begin to lay aside the customs of savages?

But the plea itself would not be valid, if founded on fact. I have had experienee in new countries, and I deny that bloodshed and violence are necessary or even usual attendants upon the youth of nations. Australia is 200 years younger than the United States, and had the drawback of starting from a convict settlement. Yet the Australians are not more prone to blood than are the English. New Zealand has been settled only fifty years, and for twenty of those years the settlers were clinched in a bitter struggle with a race of cannibals. Yet violence is almost unknown there, and any man carrying a concealed weapon would be looked upon as mad. In all British colonies life and person are safe, and even a blow with the hand is rare and sure to be punished. Canada is a bloodless country compared with the United States, though Canada is much the younger.

The United States has the bad preeminence of showing more murders in proportion to population than any other country in the world; and these are only the murders counted officially; whereas a vast number of homicides, murders in every sense of the word, are not so counted. There are twice as many homicides in the United States, in proportion to population, as in any other country where law exists; and most of this senseless bloodshed takes place in some of the oldest States. Crimes of violence in the United States have more than doubled in number, in proportion to population, since 1850; and last year was the worst of all.

Nor does it suffice to say that this shocking prevalence of bloodshed is due to the influx of foreigners. Well-informed Americans know that it is not so. Poor and ignorant these immigrants may be, but dangerous they are not. The greater number are Germans, who soon become excellent citizens. The same may be said of the Scandinavians, who go stolidly to their work in the Northwest, and never hurt anybody. The Italians have got a bad name lately, but very unjustly. The secret history of the murder of Hennessy in New Orleans is pretty well known in America, and has been partially published. It is believed to have been an incident in one of those Irish feuds that have for years existed in New Orleans as in Chicago and other cities: the same feud in which Hennessy's father and brother were killed. The accusation against

demanded a trial, the indictment against him was abandoned October 8. On being discharged he published a declaration that the prosecutors knew all along that there was "no suspicion of wrongdoing" in the Hennessy case, but "the indictment had to be brought in order to satisfy the people for what was done on March 14," that is, to justify the massacre of the Italian prisoners. He added, "I have been asked to keep quiet, and allow the matter to be forgotten.”

[The writer relates numerous incidents to show "how cheap life is held "here, citing the habit of carrying weapons as a prolific cause of murder. He accuses the police of reckless and unnecessary shooting; mentions the killing of Judge Terry by a deputy United States marshal; speaks of the feuds and vendettas, which wipe out whole families, generation after generation; the shooting by "a gentleman occupying a postion of great wealth and influence in New York of his unarmed brother-in-law; the shooting of a man for playing the idiotic "McGinty joke on an acquaintance. As evidence that boys and women are "handy with the pistol" he mentions the case of a lad in New York who shot his mother's attorney dead in his office, and gloried in what he had done; and the shooting (which he witnessed) by Mrs. Southworth, of Brooklyn, of the man she claimed had betrayed her. In all of the above cases (except shooting by the police) the writer thinks nine out of ten Americans would tacitly approve the killing as deplorable but justifiable. As evidence of how readily weapons are drawn, he relates that, traveling by rail in the South with two very pleasant men who chanced to be seated opposite to him in the crowded car, they promised to keep his seat while he went out for a lunch. Returning to the car, he found a man apparently about to take his seat, yet not actually taking it. A glance at his acquaintances revealed the cause of the man's hesitation. Each was holding a cup of coffee to his mouth with his left hand while his right grasped a revolver covering the intruder. The stop being short, they were drinking their coffee while they "kept the Britisher's seat." The tall stranger politely retired on the appearance of the writer, the others put away their " guns" without comment and the journey was resumed. The writer, however, had caught sight of a solemn-looking old man near the middle of the car, who had drawn an enormous, antiquated ivory-handled six-shooter, and, with finger on trigger, was holding it up ready to "take a hand." His disgust at the ending of the incident was apparent.]

There are three causes for this readiness for bloodshed in America. First, slavery, which seared the national conscience and brutalized the national feeling. Second, the Civil War. Third, the futility of the law under the Federal system of government. All this sanguinary lawlessness could easily be stopped if the central authority had power to deal with it.