it should not censure as entirely bad the minority which exercises the privileges of opportunities afforded it. There seems to be great dread in many quarters that "politics" will somehow crawl into the trade unions and cause general disruption. The man who becomes wildly belligerent at the mention of politics forming part of the discussion at union meetings is lacking in judgment and apprehension of the basic principles of true unionism. By politics is not necessarily meant office-mongering or partisan warfare. Politics is the science or art of government, and certainly the science of government should be applied to a union of workingmen in any trade or calling, if stability is the aim of its projectors. It must be founded and framed in such manner as to be not easily shaken or overthrown. It must have a settled method by which the government of its affairs are soundly administered. If to do this is not good policy what is it; and what is the action of any body of men laying down a line of policy and adhering to it but politics in its broadest sense? Politics in union meetings! I should say so. And lots of it, too. Isn't it politics to form a trade union, with well-established laws and adopt methods for their enforcement? Isn't it politics to frame a scale of wages and offer it to those who desire it as the price of your labor or services? Isn't it politics to contrive measures for steady employment and shorter hours of toil? Of course it is. And it's politics-good politics, too-to provide means for something to eat and to wear; to provide for those depending upon you for sustenance; and there need be no shame attached, if you should carry your politics farther, into providing something for a rainy day. There need be no fear of internal strife. A trade or labor union has no power-nor does it pretend to have -to regulate or direct the opinion of any of its members on anything but their economic welfare, wellbeing and prosperity. It bars no one on account of his belief, whether in partisan affiliations, social connections, or his belief in anything, sectarian, denominational, or otherwise. It recognizes the rights of all, regardless of sex, color, race or nationality. All it requires is honesty, fairness and faithfulness to the duties of its connections. With all these acknowledged attributes of liberty and power, why should we not strive to ameliorate our conditions by going beyond the portals of local and immediate wants? There are many evils and ills which stare us in the face, that put the lie to the claims of justice and equity in the administration of governmental affairs, national, state and municipal. Congress and legislative halls are corrupted to the money power; large trusts and money syndicates regulate the prices of food, clothing and other necessities; railroads and other thieving corporations bear heavily the iron hand of oppression upon the helpless and dependent; vitiated and debased dispensers of justice flaunt the weapons of injunction and imprisonment,, with utter contempt to the personal rights of the citizen; ̧militarism spreads itself across and over the land in posi tive defiance of the rights of sovereign states, and a subsidized and capitalist press joins in the chase to hound and run to cover all who do not bow down to the will of monopoly and the money power. These conditions can not be changed in a day, or a year. It is not the evils which exist that must alone be destroyed. It is the system of laws extant which permits the continuance of such criminality. More must be done than to merely "scotch the snake." The system is what must be killed if we would eradicate the poison. This can only be done by legislation. It may take time. The world was not made in a day. But it must be done. The time to begin is now. The middle class of this country are the working class— politically, as an established fact. As the middle class, they are the "ruling power," and as such they must exercise that power, politically, in the overthrow of all barriers standing as a menace to their progress, prosperity and happiness. Why is it that the eastern press, with a few rare exceptions, favors the single gold standard, and the press of the west and south is in favor of a bimetallic currency? Because the east is creditor of the south and west, and the single gold standard enriches the holder of such securities as the south and west were forced to give, to get the necessary money to develop their resources. What the south and west want is a return to the same conditions under which their debts were contracted, and not be forced to pay the tribute which the gold power now exacts, for by demonetizing silver in 1873 nearly one-half of our debt-paying money was taken from us, and we are expected to liquidate in full with a dollar that has double the purchasing power it had previous to that year, and an obligation contracted with $40 per capita in circulation must necessarily be twice as hard to meet with only half that amount in circulation to do it with. The favorite argument of the gold standard men is that the silver dollar is only worth 57 cents, but they can not deny that an ounce of、 silver will buy as much now as it did in 1873, for with silver in 1873 worth $1.32 per ounce, it would buy one bushel of wheat valued at that time at about $1.30 per bushel, and in 1895, with silver worth 60 cents an ounce, we can still buy a bushel of wheat, valued now at about 60 cents. This proves that silver, measured by all other staples, has not declined, but that the purchasing power of gold has doubled. The question might be asked, if silver will buy as much now as in 1873, what use would there be in remonetizing that metal? The answer is, that while the price of all commodities has declined at the same rate that the purchasing power of gold has increased, it does not in the least alter the conditions of a debt contracted previous to the demonetization of silver; for now a farmer who owes $2,000 on a mortgage, must raise 4,000 bushels of wheat to pay the debt which was contracted at a time when 2,000 bushels would have liquidated the mortgage. This question is not alone of interest to the south and west, although, through circumstances, those sections are brought more forcibly in contact with resulting conditions, but is of interest to every one in the United States. The thousands of failures every year speak eloquently in favor of our argument, and thousands more are gliding with the current that is fast drifting toward insolvency. Directly it affects us all, for by that insidious act committed in 1873, all bondholders were given nearly four times the price they originally paid for their bonds. The government of the United States issued $2,800,000,000 worth of bonds, which were bought at 60 cents on the dollar, but were worth one dollar at par. These bonds were made payable in coin. Coin at that time meant gold and silver. When the demonetization of silver was brought about, it increased the value of these bonds in the same ratio that the money they were payable in was contracted; in other words, with one-half the redemption power gone, their value was increased to that extent. All government bonds issued by general act of congress are made payable in COIN. The act of 1875 authorizing the secretary of the treasury to issue bonds, whenever in his opinion it would be necessary, to maintain the reserve fund of $100,000,000, makes those bonds payable in COIN. Under this act the latest issue of bonds, amounting to over $100,000,000, was floated, and with this last issue came a bribe to congress to make these bonds payable in gold, claiming an alleged saving of $16,000,000 could be had, but congress rose superior to the temptation and saved the country from an irredeemable condition. How, under our present system, can the government ever redeem all outstanding bonds in gold, with only $3,700,000,000 of gold in circulation in the world? Its only apparent recourse is to refund the bonds when due, as has been done before, and make the rule of bondholders perpetual. Remonetize silver, and it will give the government the power of paying its obligations according to the letter of its contract, for silver will be recognized as COIN, and equal to gold at a ratio of 16 to 1. It will increase our circulating medium to about $40 per capita, stimulate business and advance prices and labor to a degree where demand will equal supply, and the theory of over-production will prove to have been under-consumption in fact. The benefit of any reform should be measured by the opposition to it. Opposed to the remonetization of silver stand arrayed as a unit bankers, brokers and money lenders. If this class uphold the gold stand ard, it is from motives that are selfish, and not from the patriotic desire to see the common people prosper, and our country prosper with them. To remonetize silver would make it possible for the government to redeem its bonds, and eventually put out of existence the national banks as banks of issue, and would force the government to renew its functions in coining money for the benefit of the people, and not for the benefit of banks, which force the people to pay tribute for the privilege of putting into circulation the money necessary to commerce and exchange. This is, of course, against the bankers' law of self-preservation, which the common people, through ignorance and prejudice, have allowed to stand, and which will stand as long as bankers and stockholders in financial institutionsdepending on the government for their existence-are in the majority in both houses of congress, and are successful in defeating every effort made to institute reform on financial questions, and see to it that every change will be to better their control of the circulating medium of our country. To try and cover the question of the remonetization of silver in a limited article would be a futile effort. There are several specific arguments on this subject on which could be based an article, without drifting into a desultory discussion in an effort to bring together some of the main points. The production of and the cost of silver vs. gold, the "dumping ground" fallacy, and many others advanced by the gold standard men, could be discussed with benefit; and in all these subjects we (the 16 to 1 bimetalists) use logic in dissecting, until nothing more is necessary to prove we are right. We would welcome any challenge on this question, confident that we represent the principle of a just cause, and that it requires no extraordinary talent to do justice to a subject as simple as it is misunderstood. Honest Elections. BY FRANK A. MYERS. The American ballot-box is raped perpetually by deception practiced on the voter, and so grave is this wrong that bribery is but an incident in comparison. The man with but limited facilities for learning is deceived as to the nature of the issues in the campaign, is hoodwinked into the belief that the opposing party is vilely, and innately, and hopelessly corrupt; is filled with stuff to the effect that the other party is lying about his party in order to mislead him, and, through tricks of falsehood, his emotions are aroused until he declares he will "vote 'er straight." Such ballot-box crimes effectually defeat the will of the people, and defraud the voter himself of a fair expression of his honest views. Such base methods are rank treason against a representative form of government. Voting illegal voters, fraudulently counting. votes that are illegal, throwing out honest ballots on some trivial technicality, are no more dangerous to the government than deceiving and angering the suffragist for the purpose of whipping him into party lines. The remedy for this is not far to seek. It lies in education-education in special directions. If com pulsory education makes better citizens, then let it be compulsory education; but let the education offered be fully worth the pains of compelling the embryotic citizen to take it. ་་ "A great mass of the poor people in this country are poor because they are overreached by those in better circumstances, because of superior judgment," says a writer in the daily press. When a poor man has been so educated as to have the benefit of an enlightened judgment in the business affairs of life, he will be enabled to hold his own in transactions with his more prosperous neighbor. True, there are, and always have been, keen traders who, in the popular sense, were not educated, but this class is exceptional. The rule is that men become adepts in everything by training, and individual prosperity in money affairs in this country depends almost wholly upon the exercise of an enlightened understanding upon a few simple, fundamental questions. When and what to buy, when to sell, when to accept or refuse offers for service, are queries upon the answer to which hinges the financial and the consequential social welfare of the people." To this relative observation must be added the perception of the current affairs of the world in relation to the business selected as a life pursuit. That is to say in brief, a man must know his business. And he must vote, as a liberal-minded benefactor, for the greatest good to the greatest number. We are social creatures by nature, and owe a thoughtful consideration to others around us. Therefore our vote must be a thoughtful one, and not an expression of our prejudices, as is too commonly the case. James G. Blaine said in a speech once, that if the only purpose of parties, and the only aim of politics was the distribution of party patronage, it would not be worth the work of a single campaign to keep a party alive. Omitting the work, time and money contributed to party organization and compaigns for the gain of official patronage, the party contributors could much better afford to assess themselves and pay their candidates, as soon as elected, their salaries than to go through the confusion and worry of a canvass. It is futile to rebuke political spoilsmen unless the spoils system is done away with, for what gain is there in exchanging one set of incompetent, inexperienced officials for another, or what profits it in transferring the government from one set of bosses to another? It is a debasing idea to make the possession and distribution of official patronage the central idea and chief end of politics. It is, hence, clearly perceptible that our office holders are not as bad as our office-holding system. The control and distribution of official patronage as rewards for personal political service is chiefly the corrupting influence in our political system, and the defeat of honest men at the polls. This is what generates bosses and nourishes them; bosses who are but pustules on the body politic, and who corrupt the whole system of elections. Away with bosses and with place hunters! Let every one vote always for the man and for principle. Economic Fallacies-That a National Debt is a National Blessing. BY WILLIAM H. JOHNSON. One often meets prosperous optimists who enthusiastically refer to the public debt as if it were a source of wealth. That it is better than a gold mine, since it needs no working, to a certain class, will not be disputed. What it is to the mass of the people let us now briefly inquire. The first question with regard to a public debt is a moral one. Has a government a right to lay a burden on future generations? Can the people who are living to-day bind the people who will be living fifty years hence? For answer, let us take the following case: Under what conditions is a man justified in charging his estate with a debt which his children must pay? Without hesitation we answer: Only when the consideration of the debt is something which enures to the permanent advantage of the children. There must be an equivalent rendered to them for the outlay which they are required to make. A man who, simply by his improvidence or viciousness, bequeaths a burden to the next generation of his family, receives our unqualified condemnation. Precisely the same principle is applicable to a people acting through its representatives, or misrepresentatives, as is most commonly the case, the government. The simple question is, Is the object, for which it is proposed to create a public debt, of such a kind as will secure some permanent and adequate advantage to those who, in years to come, will have the burden to bear? Judged by this standard, the public debts of modern nations stand, in the great majority of cases, condemned. Where one dollar represents legitimate outlay for the people's good, in roads, canals, or other improvements, hundreds of dollars are the legacy left by unjust wars-wars entered into without the people's choice or concurrence, enormously expensive military establishments in time of peace, and the like things. That a despotic government should mortgage the industry of its people for generations to come to pay the expense, among other things, of keeping the people in subjection, need not surprise us. National debts are, therefore, justly in bad odor. Let us, however, suppose the moral question satisfactorily settled in any given case. Then arises one of expediency. Is it wise to create a public debt? A war, let us say, is imminent. Two methods are available for meeting its extraordinary expenditures. The one is by taxation, taking the means directly from the people and meeting expenses as fast as they are incurred. The other is by a loan, which is speciously represented as making the immediate burdens of the people lighter and distributing the weight over many years to come. Against the first it is commonly argued that the measure would be too drastic and would impose great hardships upon the people, and would render the war so unpopular, if anything like a free expression of opinion exists, that it would be impossible to carry it on. To this the reply is pertinent: The kind of patriotism that is dependent on the delusion that the country is prosperous, whereas, in fact, it is constantly destroying wealth in enormous quantities, is not of the staying kind. The civic virtue that sends a substitute to the front while it fights the country's battles in talk; that buys government bonds with tremendously depreciated paper, and holds them to be paid in gold; that enriches itself from the proceeds of fat contracts to supply "our brave soldier boys" with shoes, clothes and blankets—that kind of patriotism can well be dispensed with. Public spirit that pays well is of doubtful advantage to the community. The test of true patriotism is to be ready and willing to endure hardships and privations, and yet not flinch from the task which it has undertaken. That spirit is tried by taxation. If a people will not stand it, there could be no better evidence that they do not really want the war. The resort to a loan is, therefore, under a representative form of government, commonly a sign of weakness. It means the fear of the administration to make itself unpopular. Therefore, the government adopts a procedure which seems to relegate to a future time the burden of the war expenditure. In point of fact, it does nothing of the kind. It is a delusion to suppose that a national debt lays no heavier immediate burden than the payment of interest. On this point I can not do better than to quote John Stuart Mill. He says: "The privation which it is supposed must result from taking the amount in the shape of taxes is not avoided by taking it in a loan. The suffering is not averted, but only thrown upon the laboring classes, the least able, and who least ought to bear it, while all the inconveniences, physical, moral and political, produced by maintaining taxes for the perpetual payment of the interest are incurred in purè loss. Whenever capital is withdrawn from production, or from the fund destined for production, to be lent to the state and expended unproductively, that whole sum is withheld from the laboring classes. The loan, therefore, is in truth paid off the same year. The whole of the sacrifice necessary for paying it off is actually made; only it is paid to the wrong persons, and therefore does not extinguish the claim; and paid by the very worst of taxes, a tax exclusively on the laboring class. And, after having, in this most painful and unjust of ways, gone through the whole effort necessary for extinguishing the debt, the country remains charged with it and with the payment of its interest in perpetuity." The difference is this: When a government takes the whole cost of any extraordinary expenditure, such as that of war, outright by taxation, it is taken out of inand, necessarily, from those chiefly who have the come, most of income. When the cost is met by a loan it comes out of capital, which causes immediate hardship to the working classes, whom the capital would have employed productively; and, in addition, there is a heavy burden laid upon labor perpetually in providing the interest on the debt. In other words, the capitalist simply lends his money to the government instead of yielding it up outright; and his patriotism proves a most profitable investment for himself and his posterity. It has been demonstrated that the entire cost of our civil war might have been met by taxation. By the plan actually pursued the country was charged with an enormous debt; and to that source may be traced the greater part of the social evils under which it has since labored. The accumulation of colossal fortunes began at that time, and the evil tendency has been fostered by the agencies thus brought into being. A national debt exploits the laboring classes for the benefit of the moneyed classes, to whom it affords a splendid investment. It is an engine of oppression, of the same cunning kind as indirect taxation, which steadily robs labor, mostly without its knowledge. It creates a perpetual lien upon the productive industry of the country in favor of those whom it enables to live in idleness. Oligarchial Government and Its Remedy. BY JOSE GROS. We boast of our wealth and inventions, our large cities and immense national domain, yet Alexander the Great promenaded 2,000 years ago through 4,000 square miles of the Persian empire with an army of 40,000 infantry and 7,000 cavalry without the need of waiting anywhere for accumulation of the wants of such an army in its line of march. Evidently that army found everywhere an abundance of products with which to be fed and clothed. From the above we can conclude that the Persia of that period was enjoying a far more solid prosperity than our own nation to-day and for a number of years back. Could an army of 50,000 men go through our own nation, fighting other armies, and yet find everywhere an abundance of resources? The writer lives in one of the richest towns in the country, with over 10,000 population, in the wealthiest section to be found north, south or west, yet we could not furnish any 2,000 men, for more than five days, with what they would need, if they came all at once upon us, much less if previous armies, on the march had, in time of war, drawn upon our usual resources. The Persia of that period had, no doubt, its internal troubles, but its troubles could hardly be greater than ours, and, if anything, the general poverty of the nation could not be quite as great as ours to-day. Persia was cursed with about forty satraps, governors of provinces, pretty wealthy perhaps. We have 500 men who could buy the wealth of those satraps and remain with wealth enough to buy 1,000 more of them. We don't know that Persia was cursed by millions of beings suffering because no work was to be found by quantities of male adults, but we do know that that is our great curse, the greatest any nation can have. The fact of strong men, anxious to have work and finding it not, can only be the product of the vilest oligarchy that is possible for nations to evolve. Because that alone implies miserable wages among the many who are yet at work, or a large portion of them. We could, no doubt, retain a certain degree of prosperity among the workers, if, like Persia, we had but forty satraps with about two or three millions of dollars each. Unfortunately we have several thousand satraps, worth from two and three millions up to fifty, 100 and 150 millions. That is a little too much, even for our great American nation. But what are we going to do about it? I know what we could do, and that it could be rapidly done, too. I have said that ours is the vilest oligarchy that has ever been evolved. History seems to prove that, as has been indicated. We give the ballot to our male adults, but what kind of ballot do we give? What does it amount to? It only amounts to the negative fact that through our ballot we give to a few legislators the power to fix the conditions on which the bulk of the workingmen shall go through life with hard work and poor pay. Hence our strikes and labor troubles. No ballot can, in the end, amount to anything which does not give to the voter the power to directly influence legislation. That alone can suppress the political and economic monopolies from which we are suffering, and hence that oligarchy of ours, which plays with the popular will as the cat plays with the mouse. We need a political party which, instead of marching to the polls with a long platform that our legislative bodies may overrule and trample upon, marches to the polls with a few specific bills resting on some of the most vital natural rights of men, such bills to become laws when a majority of our voters have backbone enough to vote for that. As long as we fail to do that we deserve all the poverty that our oligarchy may see fit to impose upon our dear American people. What the Referendum Will Do. It will simplify laws. It will control monopoly. It will supplant violence. It will sever party bondage. It will simplify government. It will reduce taxation to necessity. It will wipe out plutocratic dictation. It will prevent the bribery of our law-makers. It will establish home rule in all municipalities. It will restore to the people their natural rights. It will aid honest representatives in serving the people. It will give us a government by the people for the people, whose corner stone is equal and exact justice to all. Labor Legislation (?) BY FRANK VALESH. The newspapers recently published the fact that the supreme court of Illinois had declared unconstitutional the eight-hour law so far as it relates to the employment of adult women. The court gave its approval to that part of the law relating to children; and this, we are told, is the only law receiving even a partial indorsement from the highest judicial tribunal in that state. And that, too, after thirty years of agitation for labor laws. A parallel to this experience may be found in nearly every other state in the Union. Yet, despite all such reverses the labor movement remains a living entity and labor organizations continue to work out the problem which called them into existence. Experiences like that in Illinois simply demonstrate, however, how limited is the practical good that trade unions attain through legislation. With the exception of extending or defining the police powers of the state there has been but little accomplished by legislation which could not have been attained through other and more direct channels and with greater corresponding benefit to the labor people. It is also a significant fact that much of the sentimental legislation passed in the name of labor has either failed to accomplish its object, or has, in fact, been used to the detriment of labor unions. The most notable example we have of this class of laws is the United States "anti-trust act," passed in 1890. In its opening sentence it declares that every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce is made illegal. How good that opening sentence sounded, and what grand results were expected therefrom, to check the rapacity of trusts. Yet the law slumbered for three long years and then its machinery was put in motion. Was it against a trust? No; against a labor union in New Orleans, where Judge Billings granted a restraining injunction against the draymen and other unions on strike. On four other occasions has the anti-trust law been put in operation. In three of these the labor unions were enjoined from striking, the latest being the A. R. U. strikers in Chicago. Even in the Georgia case, where Judge Speer recognized the right of workmen to make contracts in regard to wages, etc., it was held that a rule of the B. of L. E. in regard to strikes is plainly a rule or agreement in restraint of trade," and that it violates the anti-trust law (55 Fed. Rep., 149). ་་ The interstate commerce act is another law of this character. The labor people, especially in the West, sent congress innumerable petitions and resolutions. urging its passage. And after being a law for several years it is best known for the Toledo and Ann Arbor decision-directed against a striking labor organization. It is also remarkable for the very limited sense in which it controls the railroads against whom it was solely directed. There is another sort of law almost equally illusive and ephemeral, to which labor unions often give their |