Strike in While the world waited to see a naval engagement take place between Japan and Russia, a sort of civil war broke out in this supposedly peaceful land, and that of a kind which is likely to be much more important in the history of civilization than all the naval engagements which ever took place. To have a feeling exist among the classes such as there has been in Chicago these past weeks is a terrible thing to contemplate. Dickens, in writing on the reign of King George III, spoke of the riots on the streets of London, the arming of the mob, the troops shooting into the crowd and dozens being killed, of the city being given up to turmoil, and spoke of it as of a thing which could not be expected to happen in a civilized community again. And yet for two weeks, at the present writing, Chicago has been in the throes of a labor strike which has resulted in mobs, riots, bloodshed, the arming of thousands of police; as bad a condition as exists to-day in Warsaw, at which the world stands aghast. In Chicago there had been since last fall a strike among the garment makers, and the employers had been steadfast in refusing the demands made upon them. It ran on until spring and there was no settlement. Then the only way to bring these employers to terms, it seemed to the labor leaders, was to hit at all employers through the medium of the strongest and best organized union in the city, namely, the teamsters. The move was successful to the extent that it closed the great city of Chicago to all activity completely. Business went on after a manner, but there was no possibility of doing very much. Merchants have lost thousands and millions of dollars. However, it looks now as if there would be a settlement soon, and that the strike would spread no further. For the employers have held firmly together, rather against expectation, and held by the ties of a common necessity, have formed an independent organization by which they have been able to have their goods hauled and obtain the necessary supplies. These independent delivery wagons have been generally accompanied by armed guards, who were not afraid to shoot. Blood and This readiness to shoot has been the worst thing about the Chicago Death strike. The mob has run mad and has done things which would warrant unlimited fear from their every movement. Innocent by-standers have been assaulted, meek people who would like nothing better than to keep out of trouble have been beaten over the head and knocked about the pavement. It has been anything but safe for the most ordinary citizen to pass along the streets in the down-town district. A single incident shows to what tension both sides of the conflict have been driven. The armed guard of a delivery wagon saw a man stooping, and believing that he was gathering missiles, shot at him. The man was not hit, but startled to an upright position, he showed himself to be only a street car conductor moving a switch. Strike breakers who have been coming to Chicago by the trainload are assaulted openly whenever seen, though the police are doing all in their power to give them protection. Armed bands patrol the streets with no other purpose than to seek out those who have broken the strike or are helping do so, and treat them without mercy. Robbery has also become rife. Thieves have been emboldened to the extent of driving automobiles to the doors of houses in early evening and overpowering the inmates, taking whatever they cared for and driving off again. The police are too busy to help the ordinary householder. And yet with all the terror, the bloodshed and violent death which has filled the streets, the people of Chicago go about their business as best they can. The strike has been successful to the extent that ordinary house to house delivery has been entirely cut off, so all have to take their purchases home as best they can. And if they have bought from a boycotted store they are sure to be stopped by a mob and their bundles taken away from them and destroyed. War on Before this number is off the press two great events may take place.. the Sea The present signs of weakening among the Chicago strikers may result in a return of greater courage, a general strike and mob rule such as nothing but the intervention of Federal troops will bring an end to. The other contingency is a naval battle between the Russians and the Japanese. So far it has not occurred. The Russian fleet is divided into two divisions, and is hastening to join forces somewhere in the China Sea, and the Japanese are no one knows where. They have kept their movements carefully concealed, and no doubt they are at a point of great advantage awaiting their opportunity to fall upon the Russians and drive them to a more certain death than the Russian soldiers faced ashore. If Japan's courage and boldness on land is any criterion for her activity on the sea, Russia had far better have kept away from Eastern waters. The Japanese have shown on occasion what they are capable of under disadvantageous circumstances at sea, and now they will be at least on an even footing. France's * The Russians were in danger of being in a bad way after their long trip Neutrality at sea, their meeting off the coast of Madagascar and then the long run to the eastward, but France came to their aid and put them in fighting trim. They were permitted to use a port in French Cochin China, to which French and German merchant vessels brought supplies, coal and provisions, to answer all the needs of the Russians, so that when they left after a week they were in a condition to fight at their best. Japan, of course, declared that France had not conserved her neutrality laws, but France averred otherwise. For as she said, a continental nation has less strict neutrality laws than an island nation, and Japan, copying after England, has a strained idea on that point. That sort of talk was all very well, but as a matter of fact the Russians in using a French port in which to receive supplies were taking advantage of a peculiar condition. England and Japan have made an alliance, and Russia and France are on equally friendly terms, but England and France above all things wish to avert a quarrel between themselves. Russia, and France, too, knowing this, felt perfectly safe in pressing a doubtful point to the limit, for in no case would England fight France, and that she would have to do under her treaty with Japan rather than allow hostilities to begin between France and Japan. Riots in * The labor troubles which have convulsed Russia and brought it almost arsaw into revolution have centered at Warsaw. Moscow has long been considered the headquarters of all that is destructive in the social world, of the anarchists and nihilists in particular, but the bitterest feeling to-day is in Warsaw. To have the rioting and bloodshed there must be a great relief to the aristocracy of Russia, for Poland is expected to be dissatisfied, and a few hundred killed here and there matters little, but when Moscow and St. Petersburg were in the condition of Warsaw now there was so great danger to the monarchy that the death of the Czar and the overthrowing of the present government would not have been a great surprise. As far as mere rioting and ill feeling go, Warsaw is worse to-day than either St. Petersburg or Moscow have been at any time during the present struggle. The rest of Russia is quiet enough and the monarchy is safe for the time. Japan's Japan is spending money royally on the Russian war, and is having no Finances trouble floating all the loans it wishes to make. At first it made only internal loans, but not to tax the country too hard with the burden, it sought foreign noney, and obtained it without trouble. The fourth loan the Japanese government has floated since the beginning of hostilities was for $150,000,000. and was oversubscribed. This brings the whole loan to date to $450,000,000. Of this all but the last is being carried by Japan itself. The first loan was for 5 per cent, the next two for 6, and the last for 4%, the bonds coming due in 1925. Security is given for this last loan on the revenues of the tobacco monopolies. The financial commissioner representing Japan in London announced that his country now has sufficient money to carry on the war with Russia for a year or more. War in * A wealthy young New Yorker, James Hazen Hyde, has brought him the Equitable self into unusual prominence by demanding no more than belongs to him. By inheritance he becomes possessor of fifty-one shares in the Equitable Life Assurance Society and president of the stock company. His father, the founder of the company, left the management of the many millions belonging to people all over the country to the vice president, Alexander, the shares and the votes to revert to James Hazen at the age of 30. Now that the young man is about ready to claim his inheritance, Alexander attempts to make a mutual insurance company out of what was a stock company and prevent young Hyde from being made president. Alexander himself has filled the executive position in the company since the death of the elder Hyde. "Caleb'' Hyde, as the young man is called, does not care so much to have the position of president, it appears, as to have his rights. It might seem from the publicity given the row that all the money in the Equitable were in the balance, but as a matter of fact policyholders are assured of being paid their due. There has been some dabbling with the Equitable funds no doubt, but the amount is so large that even if the directors loaned on risky undertakings they have so much money behind them that they can make almost anything a success. As one commentator expressed it, they may gamble, but the dice are loaded in their favor and they can not lose. John Paul The body of John Paul Jones has been found in the St. Louis cemetery in Paris and brought to the United States. For five years Admiral Porter has been directing investigations to find the body, and when the government would no longer furnish money for the purpose, persisted with his own income. At last he succeeded in unearthing a leaden coffin similar to that in which John Paul Jones was supposed to have been buried, and the coffin when opened disclosed a body which was identified as that of the famous admiral. The body was well preserved, and the face was very similar to that of certain medallions bearing his profile. During the search through the cemetery the whole plot of ground was tunneled and retunneled, and many a dead heap of bones was rudely disturbed, but a great people wanted the body of the great naval hero and the bones of the dead suffered. Hay Secretary of State Hay sailed for Europe a number of weeks ago worn Worn Out out from overwork. He was so weak and tired that as he stood on the dock in New York he was forced to call for a chair. The people realized when they heard this that the great Secretary of State had been killing himself for his country, and after almost half a century of public life, during which he has been connected with the greatest national movements, that he was compelled to give up. During the last few months particularly his strength has been much overtaxed, and he has submitted to a great deal of annoyance besides. The treaties he has drawn have been tampered with by Congress until they no longer were capable of bringing about the effects the Secretary hoped for, and in spite of ill health, he has persisted in going to his office and taking up the heaviest tasks of state. Mr. Hay has been a world power, and has had a hand in matters directing the destinies of nations. He framed the policy of the "open door" in China by which the entity of that country was preserved, he placed obstacles in the way of Russia encroaching upon the East, he settled the Alaskan boundary treaty, and he removed the danger of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty interfering with the Panama canal project. He began his public life with Lincoln. Castro, Cipriano Castro, President of the Venezuelan Republic, and the asphalt The Terrible trust have been squabbling over broken contracts, and the asphalt trust seems to be of the opinion that the United States should protect its interests. Trusts, however, are not in good odor in this country just now, and there is half a belief in the land that, though Castro may be irresponsible and devoid of commercial honor, the asphalt trust having more sets of brains than one, may be just as bad or worse, but more able to cover its tracks. In fact, the asphalt trust has not much sympathy, but it will undoubtedly be protected in whatever legitimate interests it has in the South American Republic. The chief point in its favor is the tyrannical attitude taken by Castro ever since he has been declared President three years ago. He is a usurper, who began his political career as a tax dodger and later the leader of a ragged revolutionary army mustering sixty mountain savages. In a march of a thousand miles to Caracas he gathered more followers, and when he came to the capital city he was heralded as a patriot who was saving the country from an unpopular predecessor. To-day his strength in the country lies with the proletariat, with whom he mixes freely. With his soldiers he is also a good fellow, and, a true soldier of fortune, he leads his men in battle and is worshiped by them. They care nothing for the commercial interests, neither does he. So the country has been gradually deteriorating under his rule. This was all very well as long as American interests were not interfered with, but when the asphalt trust found itself hampered it cried for help. Castro waved his puny sword at the United States in defiance, but his attitude has been taken as a joke here. United States Minister Bowen, formerly a favorite in Venezuela, is now regarded there as its enemy, though he claims to be asking only decent treatment for his countrymen. Ten years ago he represented the Venezuelan government at the conference over the British Guiana boundary and was in high favor with the South Americans. Municipal Edward F. Dunne, the new Democratic Mayor of Chicago, was elected on utilities. The particular utility the new mayor aims at is the street railway system, and he purposes immediate action. Chicago, for many years looked upon as the place from which the most advanced ideas come, is by this fact the birthplace of a movement which has threatened for a long time to sweep over the whole country. For the municipality to own such things as the street railways, the electric lighting and telephone systems has been opposed generally not only on account of the wide divergence from Jeffersonian principles, but on account of the corruption which has been proved to exist in the affairs of all large cities. In Chicago, however, both the Republican candidate, John M. Harlan, son of Supreme Court Justice Harlan, and Dunne advocated similar measures in regard to public ownership, a difference existing only in the method, Harlan favoring conservative means, a gradual working towards municipal ownership as a thing of the future, and Dunne coming out for immediate action. Dunne won by 20,000 majority, succeeding Carter Harrison, his long-serving Democratic predecessor. They say in Chicago that Dunne was elected because he had thirteen children. At all events that point was brought out very strongly in the campaign, the Dunne "workers" laying particular stress on the expression of opinion that Dunne was the kind of man Roosevelt liked. Rockefeller's pharisaism." By CHARLES ERSKINE SCOTT WOOD Chancellor Day, of Syracuse University, says of the Rockefeller donation for missions: "Give me $100,000, and I will take it without any Stand up and define a Pharisee, Chancellor. Mr. Rockefeller stands morally and publicly convicted of amassing wealth by crushing competitors through immoral conspiracies. Now, is it pharisaism to condemn a robber and to refuse his spoil? Good! Here, Chancellor, is $100,000 stolen from a widow. Do you take it? Of course. No namby-pamby Christianity here. The money's the thing, and the dollars themselves are clean; that is enough. Put money in thy purse; fill thy purse with money; make all the money thou canst. Out upon sanctimony and a frail vow; therefore, make money. The money's the thing! Damn the odds! Is there a real moral difference between taking money by a club or a pistol and taking it by a fraud and a conspiracy? I fancy Captain Kidd and Chancellor Day could agree on a definition of pharisaism. It seems the first reports that the Board of Missions had not solicited the money were erroneous. The Board of Missions solicited the money robbed from the helpless and unsuspecting. But even the priests refused to put back into the church's treasury Judas's blood money when the repentant traitor flung it before them. Anarchy The Civic Improvement Society is a good instance of an anarchistic institution. It has no authority of law, no existence by law. Its treasury is from the contributions of those interested, and it is doing better work than any halfdead organization existing merely by force of law and supplied by enforced taxes, fruitful of graft. One of the insuperable obstacles it finds is the ugly billboard which, entrenched in its legal rights, sits by the wayside in tatters and exhibits its sores to the passers-by. A hideous blue and yellow one has crept up along the Willamette, and soon we may expect to see the beautiful river walled in by nightmares. The correction of this, as the real correction of every evil, must be not in law, but in the people themselves. If the masses of the people so appreciated beauty and dignity and fitness as to boycott every advertiser who thrust himself into notice by these monstrosities, the advertiser would find that he was doing himself harm rather than good. And in the more civilized communities this is beginning to be so. People are learning to esteem both the advertiser and the man who rents his land for this purpose as "hoodlums.'' Clean This is another instance of how unnecessary are laws to real reform if public opinion be back of the movement. How useless the law unless backed by public opinion. As an Easter offering, the Czar has given his subjects the right to choose, Religious each, his own God and worship, each, in his own way. The Czar has Liberty given! What right has the Czar to give, what right to withhold? How stupid and patient are the masses! Yet let us consider the conditions. The Czar believes he is God-appointed to rule, and millions believe they are God-appointed to be ruled; so let us praise the Czar and congratulate the subject. From any freedom of thought comes finally, all freedom. Chicago and For this victory of the people, I am glad and sorry-glad because it serves to settle the right idea in the minds of the people that every monopolistic privilege held by a private corporation is held in trust for the people and upon condition that it must be efficiently and fairly administered and that if it be not, the trustees will be ousted. Any economic monopoly is tyranny; greater or less tyranny as it covers a general necessity or only a luxury. And, therefore, the declaration of the common law against monopolies is nothing more than a statement that "self preservation is the first law of nature." The masses must either deny the right to law-protected monopolies or they must be enslaved; for he controls a man's life, who controls the means whereby he lives. Whatever makes the people see that they are the real and final owners of the economic monopolies is good. But to take the actual operations of these industries into the realm of American politics, wherein dwell the district boss, the ward heeler, the political tout and the scout, the big and the little grafter, is bad. Our system of politics is such that ultimate power lies with the voting majority. The real power lies with the men who make politics a business. Most of them are in that business for profit. Some take for their reward, power and honors, some take money, some take both, for it is considered honest (as politics go) to take what belongs to the public. It is not like robbing any one flesh and blood man. The general public is common prey for the political machine, and the corporations with needs or desires. To turn over a street car system or any other industry to politics is to simply make politics more paying; therefore, more powerful and necessarily to exact political efficiency from employes rather than industrial efficiency. I would always leave the properties, for actual management, in private hands upon condition that when any responsible parties offered under sufficient guaranties better service or lower rates, the existing management must meet the bid or be dismissed from control. By some such process, we would have the beneficial ownership in the public and the operative ownership in private hands. It will be found that Chicago's politics are not Glasgow's politics. Chicago and its mass of voters have practically absolute powers. Glasgow has not. I am Direct Primary I aided this work so far as I could, doubtingly, but hopefully. Nominations still hopeful, still doubting. It is too soon to pronounce upon so radical a change, but it does seem as if all the evils of "what is everybody's business is nobody's business," hovers about this experiment. It has perhaps robbed the boss of some of his power in his pliant tool, the convention, and he has not yet so adapted himself to new conditions, as to organize and dictate the party candidates completely at the primaries. Meanwhile, the "good citizen" is still content with being just "good" and leaves politics to the politicians. The consequence is that in the Republican party (which holds the greatest chances for the prizes) is a stampede of self-appointed candidates; and in the minority (Democratic) party, men are reluctant to stand at all, and for many offices there are no candidates. I still believe this is a move in the line of progress because it removes veils and secrecies, but just so long as politics brings plums, you will find plum hunters; and it is they, not the "good citizen," who will by work and organization capture the plum tree. The remedy is either to rob politics of its tremendous power over our property in taxes, contracts for improvements, franchise granting, etc., and bring it more and more to the basis of merely affording peace and protection; or else to have the very best men in the community hold office. This last seems a perpetual failure and never more so than in the nominations at the primaries. You may bring the trough of politics to the best people—but you can not make them drink. What Does My friend Victor Yarros suggests that I expound my philosophy of It Matter? "what does it matter?" and as a commentary he asks me, if nothing matters, why do I, myself, write "Impressions. He misunderstands the terms. It does not mean that it is useless to make individual effort; it means that having made our honest effort, let the result take care of itself. The philosophy of "what does it matter" is one of proportions, not of conduct; of view, not of motives; of self-obliteration, not of self-seeking; of stimulation, not of despair; it is the philosophy of "what does it matter?" not of "what is the use. If one stands alone at midnight and looks into the clear infinity, the thought will impress him, that every glittering jewel, among the hosts of heaven, is a world; and the reach of this circling of the suns is so vast that the shaft of light shot at the birth of Christ from this outer verge, is just this night quivering upon the tiny target to which we are bound; and even the whole earth and all the inhabitants thereof, must seem to him a forgotten toy. If he stands upon the mountain top and looks upon the green valleys made of the infinitely slow dissolving of the bare rocks which arose from the waters in creation's dawn; or if he picks up sea shells on the desert peaks and considers the millions of years which prepared this crust for any form of life, and then the millions of years upon millions, which brought up man, or if we are too proud for that, let us say brought up the horse, from lower and lower forms; he will then, I think, be apt to consider that he is indeed a brother of the worms of the dust. Or, if he will mediate upon the slow, pitifully slow, rolling of the wheel of human progress since history opened her record book, he will feel that our life is less than the flight of a spark. We are like the coral insect, building a reef to come some day above the waves to let Freedom and Justice rest there; but what does any tiny worker down in the depths |