forming all other elements to its will regardless of consequences. The main object is to lead, to excel, sometimes apothesized under the high-sounding apellation of ambition, which, like charity, covers many sins. The lowest manifestation of the ruling power is seen in the prize fighter, and its most injurious in the politician, our modern warrior, who can dangle more scalps to his belt than a Sioux Indian. In the effort to lead is the ruling power's birth; its growth is of its own spoil. It gathers strength from out the corruption it creates, and, as its desire is never satisfied, the tendency increases. Even the church, teaching christianity, desiring to lead, ruled, and became corrupt. A turnthe-other-side humility could not stay the arm of the ruler, and, although a take-it-or-leave-it policy has been substituted, the theological devotee would crowd us to-day with revelations and decrees. Happily, the ruling power here has been curbed. In the highest forms of society we find heart-burnings, scheming, artifice, jealousy and ambition, the desire to lead and hence rule. In science, art, intellect, not infrequently the most aggravated instances. More generally is it found in the under strata. Obscurity feels its position keenly and stops not at trifles. Purpose rides roughshod over equity. The inclination and practice of the ruling power is to assume greater proportions, a wider domain, and from a knowledge of its position, fostered by fawning, flattery and supplication, to induce its administrators to take on powers that are purely coercive, entirely outside contracts. In corporations and associations the agreement is voluntary and the governing powers well defined. Any assumption outside of this is rudely checked, and effectually so, as the individual has the counter power of withdrawal; but not so in government, when, regardless of abuses, the abused must contribute to its support, or be classed a rebel. Experience dearly teaches that the ruling power should only be invoked when liberty is clearly and unquestionably invaded. Ruling begets ruling, continual warfare, each striving for power, man pitted against man. To the assumptions of the ruling power can be traced all our industrial ills, poverty, and its resultant crime. Remove the evils created thereby and there would be but little crime left, small need to rule. The strength of government is in its weakness. When its irregular decrees fail because of inability, then is it strongest. With unlimited power it marches to destruction, along with the lives of the people. The progress of the world has been away from government, and its simpler form met the popular idea in our early history, as against the strong central idea of Hamilton, debated and relegated, and the government that "governs best governs least" prevailed. With the industrial situation that existed in those days, evidently limited government was embodied in freedom from kingly domination, foreign legislation, taxation and home rule. With the vast unused opportunities free to all, the need of stipulating and defining industrial conditions was not forcibly brought to the attention of the people, nor generally understood or recognized, or, if so, by such rare minds as Jefferson's, it was thought to be a question of the future. And it is, with a vengeance. Although a change of government was had, no change was made in the economic field. The old customs and usages prevailed; the land system of William the Conqueror was adopted, and special privileges were granted to individuals as of yore.' We have succeeded in duplicating the results of monarchial rule in a republic, because of adopting the same industrial practices. How could it be otherwise? Like causes produce like effects. Our working conditions are fast verging upon those from which our fathers fled. Our government is different in name only. With the freedom that then reigned it was enough to preach "all men are created free and equal." Had the fact been fully grasped that their liberty was because of a simple government and unlimited natural resources, a patriotic and humane spirit might have provided just and stable conditions for the future. It is not enough now to say that men are equal, it must be shown how to secure equity. The ruling power has gradually augmented, taking on greater assumptions and conferring them upon others. Done under cover of advancing the people's interests. The Union and Central Pacific railroads are a striking example. The contribution of the United States to these companies, on account of their main line, is said, on good authority, to be not far from $80,000,000, of which over $52,000,000 was paid in bonds, and the remainder in land, aggregating 25,000,000 acres, with all timber, iron and coal. The recent bond deal is another instance, And our governors were not at all backward about openly violating our constitution, in the case of our postal system, which permits of individual enterprise in the carrying of mails, but which is estopped by congress,-an usurpation of state and individual rights. Echoes of the present time indicate that the people, especially the working people, will be extremely fortunate if they do not find this great power arrayed against them as the struggle grows fiercer, just as the judiciary is now used to place labor's representatives in jail, by an abolition of trial by jury. It is safe to say that in the next great social upheaval, however it may come, the new bill of rights will be something more than a generalization, and will attempt to define what liberty is and how to maintain it. "Individual liberty, limited only by the liberty of others," while being the true principle, and upon which we all agree, is as much a generalization as "all men are created free and equal." It will also require definition; but let the principle of liberty be recognized and based upon freedom in nature's gifts, no special protection to any individual or industry, and let no ruling power be exercised unless the violation of liberty is clearly flagrant, such to be always decided by an impartial jury of the whole people. It is evident that any social system must depend upon the education and intelligence of its units. Individuals can and do rise above the mass in many ways, but their privileges and practices are limited. The average mind will rule in matters of common interest. That system, then, which is the simplest, requiring the least exercise of power, will be found the purest, most enduring and best. Meantime, we should jealousy watch and guard against any attempt to create or increase the ruling power, no matter whether the ruler is in the field of commerce or in the state, or whether he be a speculative superior will-o'-the-wisp of the future. Our Ignorance. BY EDWIN A. WALDO. What the American workman most needs to-day is a leadership which, in point of mental endowment and moral stamina, surpasses the capitalist leaders. Intellectual strength always subdues inferiority, and moral worth will, in the long run, win the staunchest following. There is a reason, but no apology, for the needless ignorance existing to-day among the great majority of our work-people. The reason is, that much of their leisure is spent in idleness or fruitless conversation, too frequently with minds clouded in the fumes of ill-ventilated saloons and club-rooms, where conversation is confined to decrying the plutocracy or defending the infamy of the popular alderman of the ward. No one will deny the advantages enjoyed by those who have had years of culture in the training of a university. The time will come when such opportunities will be open to all. Yet, those years of training are, after all, but years of preparation for the education of a life-tiine, rather than the completion of an education. The practical gain of a university training, as far as fitting a man for citizenship is concerned, is not as liberal as is often supposed. Let the workman make use of his opportunities and he has the advantage over the university graduate, particularly within the limits of his own trade. As a matter of fact, the average workman is not only unable to talk intelligently upon the origin and development of organized labor in his specific trade, but he cannot give you a clear statement of its present status. He is led on the one hand into a fight with the capitalist opposition, and, even if success crowns the effort, the battle being over, the same workman who has fought almost to the point of starvation against the plutocrats and aristocrats, turns and places his vote in favor of his enemies, giving back to them the control of the political machinery, and thus very largely undoing the good accomplished through the industrial organization. In both instances the average workman is led without determining in his own mind a reason for his following. Our labor leaders are themselves largely responsible for this lamentable condition. The education of the workman to a thoughtful consideration of present social conditions and their remedy has been disregarded. Enthusiastic leaders have swayed the multitudes by sheer force of personality rather than by the logic of cold facts. A few feeble attempts have been made at various times to inaugurate an educational movement in this country similar to the Fabian Society in England, but with slight success. The secret of the prosperity of trades organization in England is that the movement is grounded in the intelligent co-operation of the workmen. Our own lack of success has been commensurate with our igno rance. In education is to be found our salvation. Intelligent action is the highway to industrial freedom. The power of the capitalist class will be broken when the united workmen of the nation shall manifest their mental and moral superiority. Through ignorance the industrial forces are to-day divided against themselves. Through the tactics of the wire-puller disintegration is being brought about. Through compromising to capitalists in the republican and democratic parties the workmen of the country are sacrificing their moral integrity and putting off the day of their emancipation. Industrial peace can come only in an intelligent development on the fundamental principle of human brotherhood. Let the leaders of trades unions undertake to discover the relationship of the members of each union to the municipal government and to the legislature. Let them unfold the evils of individual control of the means of production as well as of labor, and let a keener interest be aroused in obtaining all neglected privileges that are even now a legal heritage. Let laws of sanitation be enforced, overtime abolished, female and child labor laws be strictly enforced. Let classes for instruction be opened, and vantage taken of the experience of our British cousins in the diffusion of information and awakening a public sentiment along these lines. A campaign conducted by men trained in the school of industry to a clear conception of economic truths and sustained by workmen educated in the same school of applied economics will dislodge plutocracy from its seat of power and give the solution to the social equation. The Almighty Public. BY FRANK A MYERS. It is the con Public opinion is king in America. census of belief of the masses, and its power and authority are to be respected. It is a mighty current that sweeps down all before it, as the river does driftwood. It is a sun that swerves not in its course. Happy is that public man who is in the light of this sun, or floating in his bark in this current. It shapes government, society, and even the family and the individual. The whispers of the Mrs. Gamps and the Mrs. Harrises, and the potency of Mrs. Grundy as to what she will say, have perhaps an insensible directing influence upon the individual that he may even pretend to defy. But there are things he will not do and things he does do that he would not were he less civilized. He may never stop to reason why he acts the one way or the other, and may assure himself it is entirely another reason that actuates him. But his views about his conduct, shaped to be consistent with his rule of civilized independence or native self-assertion, or made to flatter his amour propre, do not remove the human fact down behind all. An estimate of one's own motives count for nothing, if it be not correct, and the public expression of that estimate establishes no truth in the case. It is not meant to say, however, that there are no exceptions to this rule. We all go, more or less, with the fashion, in opinions as in dress, and find many excuses for ourselves that we will not accept from others for their course. To be outre we regard, usually, as an evidence of one who is a crank. If we defy Mrs. Grundy, and labor to be a crank-why do we do so? Perhaps it is to set the old madam right, as we think, and have her finally on "our side," for plainly she is not always right. All persons try to put their best foot foremost. Why so? Simply to win the approbation of Mrs. Grundy. We all pose, in at least a degree, before others, whether in church, on the street, in the assembly, in the coach, or in the counting-room. Even at the table no one acts out the animal that he is, but he is pleasant to his elbow neighbor and graciously helps him before helping himself. The reason of this is, it is the fashion but not nature. The dog seizes his bone and growls on the approach of another dog, but Mrs. Grundy forbids this in the human animal; and she even says we must eat our pie with a fork, and we obey. We desire to be gracious and polite, because public sentiment. would condemn us were we not so. Thus the King Public shapes our training and our opinions, and lays down rules for our judgment of others and of affairs in general. We even write and speak our sentences according to the rules laid down by the hidden Mrs. Grundy. The family, perhaps less than society, is directed somewhat by the same insensible influence. We fear to be rude, because Mrs. Grundy will raise a scandal about it. We are kind because it is the best. Best for whom? and why the best? Well, for one thing, it saves bad feeling, and then Mrs. Grundy would not like for us to be known as a coarse, bad, beastly fellow. So we come to ask of our open course-what will the people say if we do so and so, or thus and thus, and we measurably shape our conduct accordingly. If we don't do right-that is to say, according to agreed opinion-we are at once talked about in no moderate terms, and that we don't like very well. We don't like to be set down in the scale of manhood by public opinion-no one does. We would rather climb up the ladder of fame than be abused for not trying. Popularity! Yes, here that invisible Mrs. Grundy is again. The almighty public is one of her protean disguises. If you wish to catch the public ear, you find after all it is only Mrs. Grundy that lurks in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. King Public is supreme, and when he speaks we all listen and heed. Vox populi, vox dei! The people's voice is not to be ignored. No one person is able to cope with it. The people can easily spit on a man and rub him out, and leave him as dead as Dick who was accidentally choked to death by his hat-band. No amount of seeming reason can displace the popular laugh. As Peter Wilkins says, "when the laugh is against you, silence is discretion." Popular clamor is as equally omnipotent as it is persistent. It may not be omniscient, but there is no gainsaying its power and influence. Therefore, we have time-trimmers in public places, and men who tremble when the ark is brought into the camp of Israel with a shout. Such wishy-washy men are unfit for the positions they hold. They strain to go with the majority, which everybody knows is not necessarily right, nor does it establish the right. In obedience to the almighty public, governments bow, often unwillingly. Congress has been convened in compliance with its demands. Legislators, with a finger on the public pulse, vote on questions of legislation as the wish of the "dear people" may request. Laws are thus fashioned, too often too tardily, to suit the public will. Of course, the public is not always right, but it soon rights itself—a very happy quality. A public official once said to the writer: "A man is a fool who will enforce a law that will cut his own throat." This man ignored the law in order to "stand in" with a certain element of the public. Law to him was nothing; the public was all. Order might take care of itself, his business was his re-election. It is not infrequently the case that law is ignored by dependent officials, or but faintly executed, because the next election is coming on. The law is but poorly responded to at best, if its enforcement would make the official odious. This heartless rejection of official duty in executing the law is half treason to the people, and it is done for power-power to wield the people and command their votes. Few say, or feel able to say, "the public be damned." The public is king and not its official creatures. If the public repudiates a law, the creature official also repudiates it. The almighty public is supreme. As Shakespeare says: "Nice customs courtesy to kings," and Ovid says: "Nothing is stronger than custom." The Japanese Workers' Condition. The editor of the Review of Reviews, discussing our civilization in its recent issue, says: "The Japanese have not only learned to use modern machinery in manufactures, but they also learned to make the machinery themselves; and by reason of their cheap labor they can produce at lower cost than the European countries." To one who believes in permanent good of the high wage condition, such comment cannot be accepted as a flattering compliment. Nevertheless, what he says is true, and the fact may be considered as a blot upon our civilization, if we take it for granted that the high wage condition is the natural outcome of high civili. zation. In order to give some idea of our cheap wage condition, I shall take a hurried glance over the existing status of some of the working classes: In Tokio, the capital of Japan, the center of our advanced system of industry and commerce, where wages are generally higher than in any other part of the country, a carpenter, one of the most important workers, receives only fifty cents (Japanese money, a dollar of which equals about fifty cents in United States money at present rate of exchange) per day. Daily wage of a plasterer is fifty-five cents, and that of a mason, sixty cents. In making the patrolmen's uniforms, (the goods of which they are made are a great Ideal inferior to that which is used for the same purpose in America), a tailor receives eighteen cents per suit. Even an experienced hand has to work from 8 A. M. to 12 P. M. to finish one suit. Coming down to a still lower class of the workers, which you may term the "hand-to-mouth” workers, the wages they receive are very small. Those who make underwear receive from seven to ten cents per dozen, and for making the tabi (sox), fifteen cents per dozen. A day's earnings of an umbrella-maker will not amount to more than eight or ten cents. A glassworker, in making lamp chimneys, will earn from eight to twelve cents per thousand, and to do so he has to work six or seven hours. The earnings of a large majority of home-workers (women and children) will not reach more than five or six cents a day. For example: Those who make paper boxes earn sixteen cents per one thousand of four-inch square boxes; the average worker can make only three hundred a day, thus their daily earning, after paying for mucilage themselves, amounts to about three cents. The color painting on lithographical pictures will bring six cents per hundred. The colorings are their own expense. An experienced hand can finish only twenty in an hour. Apart from the hand-workers, there are a great number who work under a modern system of industry, and their condition is, generally, a great deal better than those of the hand-workers. I shall try to depict them in my next report. With these low figures of wages before you, you may naturally conclude that the great mass of the Japanese workers are in a most pitable condition-such as are similar to those of the workers under the sweating system in New York-but, when you consider the fact that in Tokio the working class can get three meals and a comfortable night's lodging at twelve and a half cents, or a wholesome meal at two and a half cents, you will know that their condition is not as distressing as that of sweating workers. Nor should the condition of the working people be a special object of pity, because even the members of the house of representatives receive only eight hundred dollars per year. Indeed, those who earn thirty or forty dollars a month are considered among the well-to-do class. These conditions fit very well to our national status, so long as we are satisfied with our present degree of civilization and material wealth. But to bring our civilization and material wealth to a higher point it is necessary to break down the prevailing systems, and this can only be done by industrial revolution, brought about by long and patient work of education, agitation and organization among the great mass of the Japanese working people. Tokio, Japan, June, 1895. Individual Liberty. BY MINNIE MARTIN. Wm. Cowper said, long years ago, that Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume; Is evil." Thomas Jefferson built his system of government on the soverignty of the individual, as expressed in the declaration of independence, which, when boiled down, means that no man is born with the right to rule over another, and that every man has a right to all-not so much as organized greed may think necessary to keep him in condition to labor-the property that he can earn; and that, too, under a system of voluntary cooperation that respects the law of equal freedom. These democratic notions have long since been outgrown by the governing classes, who connive and wink at the destruction of popular liberty. The declaration of independence was emasculated by the constitution, and a government for the rich aristocrat was enthroned, with a king in a frock coat, and a supreme court that could fiddle away the liberties hinted at by Jefferson and Paine, and they whose liberties have been trodden under foot cheer the performance to the echo and themselves hoarse over it. The two potent factors in our government are piety and the almighty dollar. Laboring people everywhere need liberty in order to be prosperous and independent, but they will never get it so long as they vote for the two old parties—for any man to tax and plunder them at will. The power of taxation is despotism, pure and simple. Our government is but the outward manifestation of the far-reaching influence of the almighty dollar, as manifested by injunctions and supreme court decisions-all in the interest of greed. The laboring people ought not to vote for any man or set of men who do not advocate individual liberty. The laboring people will never be prosperous until we have free money-not simply free coinage of gold and silver at a ratio of 16 to 1, or any other ratio-but absolute freedom to make and use any kind of money they may desire to use, with all legal tender laws repealed. None but poor, or depreciated, money need legal tender laws to cause it to circulate. With freedom to capitalize credit, and establish mutual banks, with well known credit, to loan money on good security at cost, which, with free competition, will reduce interest, rent and profit to a minimum. Then demand free land—that is, occupancy and use as the only title to land. These would be followed by free men and women; then an era of prosperity would Commencing back in the night of time, while man was yet an animal and brute, not knowing how to build a fire or hardly to wield a club-it being scarcely necessary to go back in the still earlier cycles of his existence, in forms yet cruder and more remote—we find him on the same plane of intelligence as the animal and plant life surrounding him, and over which he has as yet advanced but little. Place a varied collection of fowls in the yard together for the first time and they at once begin fighting for the mastery or lordship. So of a herd of cattle grazing upon a common pasture-the strongest individual of the male gender soon becomes leader of the flock. And plants, in their struggle for existence, are constantly warring with each other -the tares rooting out the wheat-the stronger overshadowing the weaker— until the hand of the reasoning cultivator lays low the obnoxious weeds. Thus we find man at this period on the bed rock of brute competition. MASTER AND SLAVE. The Indo-European and Semitic families, from which modern civilization dates its existence, were just beginning to establish their succession, and their form of society was that of master and slave. All the children of the aristocratic household, except the oldest son born of the real wife and legal mother, were unrecognized as "human" beings. They were worse than the chattel slaves of the south before the war, the master having absolute power to punish them-his own brothers, sisters and children-with death, to sell them to any bidder for any purpose, no matter how immoral, and inflict upon them the most cruel tortures. ORIGINAL WORKINGMEN. These were our original workingmen, and then, as now, they soon commenced to combine and rebel against their hard fare, degredation and unrequited toil. But what was the result? Then, as now, we find that the workingmen did not "combine sufficiently" to cast off their shackles, while their masters did, as is evidenced by the Amphictyonic council, existing two thousand years before Christ, composed exclusively of the lords from each family, and, when one member was threatened, casting its combined power for his protection. A THOUSAND YEARS LATER. A thousand years later, we find Moses, the inspired Hebrew law-giver, trying to abolish slavery—no doubt from the bitter contempt of the degredation of his people in Egypt—and Lycurgus, the Spartan statesman and imperator, dallying with his new "state" and solution of the industrial question. But Lycurgus, despite all his wisdom, could not conceive of a nation without slaves. His thoughts were only for the "better classes." He saw they could not much longer withstand the shocks of competitive industry among themselves, augmented by the ever-threatening and increasing spasmodic rebellion of the slaves. He must bring these "better classes" more thoroughly together by removing the bone of contention, and this he did by nationalizing all property, slaves and landed interests—no one really owning anything, but all being rich in their collective wealth. To be a good farmer, a skilled mechanic, or an inventor, therefore, under Lycurgus, Imperator, Esq., was to be a degraded and most abject mortal, denied all citizenship, as a dog or cow, and hopelessly doomed a chattel slave forever by "imperishable laws." NOT COUNTED AS MEN. So unimportant were these ancient working people supposed to be that they were not counted in the census as men or human beings, and as slaves or artisan freedmen they were obliged to live in a despicable condition, feeding on the poorest food, going almost, and often, quite naked, living in caves, the meanest of. huts, or in the open air, and frequently on the verge of starvation; whipped every day to be reminded of their cringing humility; horribly brutalized with clubs whenever they dared stretch themselves at full height, lest they be taken to ape the "human" stature and the attitude of manhood; chained to the side of oxen and mules and made to draw loads with these beasts of burden; waylaid by the trained assassins of state and murdered in wanton sport on the pretext of becoming "dangerous;" forced to work from fourteen to twenty hours a day, preparing food and clothing for the "citizens," who expressed their gratitude by kicks and terms of loathing and contempt. ARMED RESISTANCE. Such was the actual status of white workingmen down to, and for years after, the birth of Christ-such, through numberless ages, have been our sufferings from that cruel competition based upon ownership by a priviledged few. Then, as now, our masters made the laws, held the offices of state and directed the military-the ultimate power of the nation and supreme appeal in the hour of last resort. What ideas had the workingmen to overcome this |