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No. 16.

Thursday, August 21, 1890.

Published weekly by J. MORRISON-FULLER, at 3 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.

SUBSCRIPTION, $2.00 PER YEAR.

NOTICE THE WORKS OF HERBERT SPENCER. Subscribers will receive FREE (to the amount of their subscription) any of the Works of Herbert Spencer they may select. Authorized Edition.

Even the art of killing one another, which at first particularly trained to be quick, now requires men to be slow. A hasty general is the worst of generals nowadays; the best is a sort of Von Moltke, who is passive, if ever a man was passive; who is "silent in seven languages"; who possesses more and better accumulated information as to the best way of killing people than any one who ever lived. I wish the art of benefiting men had kept pace with the art of destroying them; for though war has become slow, philanthropy has remained hasty. The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does more good or harm. Great good, no doubt, philanthropy does; but then it also does great evil. It augments so much vice, it multiplies so much suffering, it brings to life such great populations to suffer and to be vicious, that it is open to argument whether it be or be not an evil to the world; and this is entirely because excellent people fancy that they can do much by rapid action

that they will most benefit the world when they most relieve their own feelings; that as soon as an evil is seen, something ought to be done to stay and prevent it. One may incline to hope that the balance of good over evil is in favor of benevolence; one can hardly bear to think that it is not so; but, anyhow, it is certain that there is a most heavy debit of evil, and that this burden might almost all have been spared us if philanthropists as well as others had not inherited from their barbarous forefathers a wild passion for instant action.

WALTER BAGEHOT.

Price 5 Cents.

Devoted to the record of the facts and considerations which show that Individual Liberty is good for the people of the United States:

And that, therefore, Legislative Regulation is injurious for them.

IN MEDIAS RES.

On Aug. 7th, the House passed a bill amending the "Act to provide for taking the eleventh and subsequent censuses." It is provided that the "superintendent of the census shall require and obtain from the owners, proprietors, or managers of every unincorporated express company the same class of facts" which, by Section 17 of the Act, he is now obliged to require and obtain from the owners and managers of incorporated express companies. It is further provided that the same penalties shall apply in the case of wilful refusal to give true and complete information on the part of owners and managers of unincorporated express companies as are specified in Section 15 of the original Act.

On Aug. 12th a message from President Harrison was read in the House, and referred to the Committee on the Territories:

"I have received, under date of July 29th, ult., a communication from Hon. George W. Steele, governor of the territory of Oklahoma, in which, among other things, he says:

"A delegation from township 16, range 1, in this county, has just left me, who come to represent that there are at this time twenty-eight families in that township who are in actual need of the necessaries of life, and they give it as their opinion that their township is not an exception, and that in the very near future a large proportion of the settlers of this territory will have to have assistance. .

Information received by me from other sources leads me to believe that Gov. Steele is altogether right in his impression that there will be, unless relief is afforded, either by public appropriation or by organized individual effort, widespread suffering among the settlers in Oklahoma. Many of these people expended in travel and in providing shelter for their families all of their accumulated means. The crop prospects for this year are, by reason of drought, quite unfavorable, and the ability of the Territory itself to provide relief must be inadequate during this year.

I am advised that there is an unexpended balance of about forty-five thousand dollars of the fund appropriated for the rel ef of the sufferers by flood upon the Mississippi River and its tributaries, and I recommend that authority be given

to use this fund to meet the most urgent necessities of the poorer people in Oklahoma. Steps have been taken to ascertain more particularly the condition of the people throughout the Territory, and if a larger relief should seem to be necessary the facts will be submitted to Congress. If the fund to which I have referred should be made available for relief in Oklahoma, care will be taken that so much of it as is necessary to be expended shall be judiciously applied to the most worthy and necessitous ones.

A resolution authorizing the expenditure asked for was passed by the Senate on Aug. 14th. The House passed the same resolution, with amendments, on Aug. 15th. A conference has been appointed to discuss the amendments.

upon the subject, and we had better enforce what law we have than make new legislation.

Thirdly, The provisions of the bill are bad, and even absolutely dangerous, in that its tendency is toward centralization and interference with the proper functions and powers of the States.

Mr. Hayes (who had voted in the affirmative for that purpose) entered a motion to reconsider.

The Massachusetts Secretary of State finds himself unable to comply with the provisions of a law enacted by the last Legislature per

On Aug. 16th the House passed the McKay mitting municipal authorities to designate Anti-Lottery Bill.

It provides that no letter, postal card, or circular concerning any lottery, so-called gift concerns, or other similar enterprise offering prizes dependent upon lot or chance or concerning schemes devised for the purpose of obtaining money or property under false pretences, and no list of the drawings at any lottery or similar scheme, and no lottery ticket or part thereof, and no check, draft, bill, money, postal note, or money-order for the purchase of any ticket, tickets, or part thereof, or of any share or any chance in any such lottery or gift enterprise, shall be carried in the mail or delivered at or through any post-office or branch thereof, or by any letter-carrier; nor shall any newspaper, circular, pamphlet, or publication of any kind containing any advertisement of any lottery or gift enterprise of any kind, offering prizes dependent upon lot or chance, or containing any list of prizes awarded at the drawings of any such lottery or gift enterprise, whether said list is of any part or of all the drawing, be carried in the mail or delivered by any postmaster or letter-carrier.

It is made a misdemeanor, punishable by not exceeding five hundred dollars fine, or imprisonment for not more than one year, or both, for any person to knowingly deposit, or cause to be deposited, anything to be carried through the mails in violation of this preceding section, or that is forbidden to be carried through the mails by this Act. Violators of the law may be tried and punished either in the district of mailing, or in the district to which the matter is mailed or sent.

The postmaster-general may, upon evidence satisfactory to him that any person or company is engaged in conducting any lottery or business such as is prohibited by the Act, instruct postmasters at any post-office at which registered letters arrive directed to any such person or company, or to an agent or representative, to return all such registered let ters to the postmaster at the office at which they were originally mailed, with the word "Fraudulent" plainly indicated on the outside thereof, and returned to the writers. Nothing in this section, however, shall authorize any postmaster or other person to open any letter not addressed to himself.

The public advertisement by such person or company so conducting such lottery, gift enterprise, scheme or device, that remittances for the same may be made by regis tered letters to another person, firm, bank, corporation, or association named therein, shall be held to be prima facie evidence of the existence of said agency by all the parties named therein. But the postmaster-general shall not be precluded from ascertaining the existence of such agency in any other legal way satisfactory to himself.

The postmaster-general is also given the same powers and authority with regard to postal notes and orders directed to the prohibited concerns, or their agents, as is conferred upon him by the sections relating to registered letters.- DAILY PAPER.

Representative Hayes, of Iowa, had submitted to the House a minority report dissenting from the views of the majority of the committee on post-offices and post-roads on the bill. While fully concurring in the necessity of checking the lottery "evil," he offers the following objections to the bill:

First, That it is unconstitutional.

Secondly, There is no necessity for any such legislation, from the fact that we already have a sufficiency of law

certain ornamental and shade trees on highways for preservation, by driving into them a nail on which the letter "M" is imprinted on the head, which is to be provided by the Secretary of State. By a strange oversight, the Legislature failed to make an appropriation for providing the nails, and so none are to be had.

Senator Plumb's resolution, looking to the removal of the body of Gen. Grant from its resting-place by the Hudson to a new spot on the banks of the Potomac, is called forth by the failure to raise a fund for his monument by popular subscription. Of course it is intended that Congress shall eventually appropriate $1,000,000 or more for this purpose, although the resolution carries no appropriation with it.

But a splendid monument is of very doubtful value to the memory of a hero when the funds to pay for it must be raised by compulsory taxation, after years of solicitation have failed to produce by voluntary subscription more than a small fraction of the sum required. A less expensive monument, given spontaneously, would have been better.

Boston Globe.

An advertisement of Tolstoï's "Kreutzer Sonata" reads: Suppressed by the Czar of Russia and the Postmaster-General of the United States. Like most advertisements, this is hyperbolical; the book has not been suppressed either in Russia or in this country. Just what effect the governmental disapproval has had in the former country I do not know, but here the result has been to increase the sale of the book in a remarkable degree. No other form of advertisement could have been nearly so effective. Whatever may be thought of the propriety of gov

ernmental advertisement of private real estate, a more important question is involved here. That a man, certainly stupid, and probably a hypocrite, should have the power of largely increasing the sale of such a book as the "Kreutzer Sonata " is not exactly in accord with the eternal fitness of things; but the case would have been still worse if the action of the Postmaster - General could abridge the freedom of the press.

The advance in the price of silver since the passage of the Silver Bill shows that the Government is able to raise the price of any article, but that, in order to do so, it must have regard to the laws of trade. The ability of the Government to maintain the ratio of

1:16 between the values of silver and gold, in case the people will stand the expense, cannot be seriously questioned. In the same way, it might raise the value of wheat by purchasing and storing up 4,500,000 bushels a month. By purchasing and storing up a sufficient quantity, it might, doubtless, maintain the ratio of 2:1 between the values of wheat and corn. This would be a good thing for those who produce wheat, and a bad thing for those who consume wheat and pay taxes.

Just why there should have been so much anxiety to keep the ratio 16:1 between gold and silver did not appear in the Congressional debates upon the subject. It is evident, however, that there was in the minds of many members a vague idea that they were dealing with a comparatively new question, and that there was something absolute, and eternal, and sacred about the magic formula, 16:1. Most of them seemed to think that the depreciation of silver dated from less than twenty years ago. A very moderate amount of information would have shown them 16:1 has not been the ratio in all places and at all times. Many of them would have had a great respect for Timbuctoo if they had known that Mungo Park found the ratio there to be only 14:1. According to the laws of Menu, it was 24:1; in most of the countries of Asia it was for centuries 10:1. In England, Prof. Rogers states it to have been, in 1262,-9.6:1; 1272,-12.5:1; 1345, 13.7:1. Other ratios that have prevailed are, 11.6:1 (Holland, 1589); 12:1 (Italy, 1579); at the beginning of the seventeenth century, 13.3:1 (Spain); 12.16:1 (Germany); 13.22:1 (Flanders); 13.5:1 (England).

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In Hamburg, between 1816 and 1852, the ratio varied from 15.11:1 to 16.2:1; in London, between 1816 and 1837, it fluctuated between 15.80 and 14.97 to 1. The notion that any one of these various ratios is better than the others, or that if it were the American Congress could find it, is delightfully ludicrous; but it will be costly to work out their experiment.

It is common for a certain class of political philosophers to comment on the superficial thought of those who lay the fault of "hard times" at the door of the party in power. How absurd, they say, to blame political leaders for bad crops and unfavorable seasons. Of course, no one does blame them for these things, but they are, and rightly, in accordance with their pretensions, held in some measure responsible. If they promise that, in case they are elected, they will enact laws that will make business good, and business fails to improve, it is only fair to infer that their promises were humbug, and their legislation quackery. The greatest wonder is,

that they are not held to a much more strict account. They really stand to civilized peoples in much the same relation as rain doctors to savage tribes. They are ready enough to claim credit for good harvests and prosperous times. This is their chief stock argument for being retained in power; this is what they promise to secure, if intrusted with power. Then, when called on to redeem their promises, they exclaim, how inconsistent to demand such a thing! A curious trait of men is to be noted in this connection. It is not unusual to hear of lip-service, and of men pretending to believe things which they do not believe; here is the reverse case: men do believe the promises of political seekers which they affect to disbelieve. So it is, after all, inconsistent to demand the fulfilment of these promises.

IN his last article, dealing with Industrial Democracy, Dr. Lyman Abbott mentioned a fourth form of government, in addition to the three enumerated by Aristotle. The latter thought that all kinds of government were included in three classes: government by one, government by the few, and government by the many. The fourth form is self-government; but unfortunately Dr. Abbott does not explain clearly what the term means; and it

certainly needs explanation. The names of the other forms are sufficiently descriptive to give one a general idea of the meaning, but the more one reflects, the more difficult it is to attach any meaning to the term self-government except national autonomy. Dr. Abbott instances this country as an example, but that only makes the case still more difficult. In what sense can our present government be said to be a self-government of the people? True, the people support it; but so the people support any government, monarchical, aristocratic, or democratic. They elect their rulers, that is, they choose between two or three party candidates who shall fill a given office; but this is a very poor conception of self-government, merely to say by which of two sets of men they shall be ruled. Sometimes slaves are permitted to choose the masters whom they will serve, but, after they have made the choice, are they any less slaves? Occasionally, when a constitutional amendment is submitted to them, the people vote directly for or against the enactment of a law, and if a majority is found to favor it, the law is enforced. But how does this, the nearest approach we make to self-government, differ from government by the many? The minority who opposed the law are coerced, and they certainly cannot be said to exercise self-government in obeying. In fact, the self-government of a whole people is plainly a contradiction of terms, unless the whole people are agreed on all points, in which case there is no need for any government at all; or unless the words refer to the government of each individual by himself, and in this case also any coercive general government is negatived.

MR. ATKINSON ON THE TARIFF. After the testimony given before the Ways and Means Committee, after the strangled debate of the McKinley Bill in the House, and during the war of empty words over that measure in the Senate, it is a relief to see some common-sense applied to the tariff question. Mr. Atkinson's article in the Popular Science Monthly contrasts very agreeably not only with the ignorance of the subject, in both its theoretical and practical aspects, displayed by Congressmen, but with the partisanship and prejudice manifested in most of the periodical literature upon the subject.

No man in the country is better qualified by extensive

knowledge of the conditions to offer rational suggestions as to the best manner of dealing with the tariff than Mr. Atkinson, and when the theory is boldly advanced by the dominant party that the national revenue should be diminished, not by reducing but by increasing taxation and permitting corporations and "trusts" to collect and retain the increased taxes, it is certainly time that a little judiciousness should be injected into the discussion.

Mr. Atkinson maintains that the present tariff actually restricts our domestic market by unnecessary taxation; and endeavors to show how the removal of $50,000,000 of obnoxious taxes upon crude or partly manufactured material might open the way to an increase of at least $500,000,000 worth of products, thus "promoting domestic industry, enlarging the home market, raising both the rate and the purchasing power of wages, and increasing profits." These words used by him really mean what they seem to mean, and he shows clearly how the results predicted stand to the measure advocated in the relation of effect to cause. He deprecates the warfare of different interests carried on in the halls of Congress, a spectacle of which the country has lately been treated to. It would be far better for both the country and Congress that these industries should contend under free competition in the open market. He slays over again that bugaboo, dear to the heart of the more superficial protectionist, fear of competition with the "pauper labor of Europe." Every man with any basis for forming a judgment knows that this pauper labor is very expensive to employ. Every employer of labor avoids low-priced labor as much as possible. Owners of factories during dull times discharge their worst-paid laborers first, without fear that these workmen will find employment at rival concerns, and enable those concerns to produce goods at lower cost. But when the inferior laborers are in another country, their competition all at once becomes terrible. Sometimes an increase of wages will render the same laborers more efficient. According to Mr. Brassey, when the draining of Oxford Street, in London, was made, while wages were rising, it happened that the cubic foot of masonry, at ten shillings a day, was cheaper than it was formerly, when six shillings paid for a day's work.

The sham nature of the cry for the protec

tion of laborers is evident.

Workmen here are exposed to competition with European workmen. There is no tariff upon the labor, only upon the product. A passage across the Atlantic costs only a few dollars. Employers are not allowed to import workmen under contract, but they can send agents who induce men to come here, by promising that contracts shall be made with them as soon as they land. Protection as we have it now amounts to free trade in labor, protection for the manufacturer.

Mr. Atkinson's article will not be neglected by any one who wishes to keep up with the best that is written upon the subject with which it deals.

BELOW DECKS.

Under the title of "Clearing for Battle," the editor of Liberty tries to avoid the issue which I have professed a desire to have him thresh out for my benefit. To be sure, getting below and pulling the hatch well down over one's head is one way of " clearing for battle," -a way which has been described in the vernacular as clearing out, other wise, leaving the enemy in possession of the decks.

It seems that the last time (not the first, by any means) I called on Liberty for a defence of the Anarchists' premise, I stated their "trenchant declaration" to be that "Government is the Father of All Evil," whereas the statement should have been that "Government is the Father of All Social Evil," and on this slender provocation Liberty raises an outcry to drown the angry sea itself. It is said of me:

He does not apologize for his misquotation. He does not even allude to the difference between the two phrases. He utterly ignores the presence of the word social in the correct version. His disregard of this word, here so vital, is the most beautiful specimen of sheer cheek that I have ever met.

Fudge! Fiddlestick! Stuff!

If that answer is not sufficient, I may amplify hereafter by liberal recourse to the dictionary. It is well enough understood that neither Liberty nor To-DAY is a medical and chirurgical journal; neither are we almanacs, nor weather bureaus, nor catchpenny quack advertisements. Did the editor imagine that I would presently invite him to elucidate

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the causes of microcephalous idiocy or explain the phenomena of heterodactyly? Certainly not. But he found a hatch open to crawl into, so down he goes, and calls out that he is clearing for battle"! Let's have a catalogue of (d)evils, by all means, and find out how many there are abroad in the world, after all, which may not properly be called social. Having got these into one small corner of the State, wipe them off, and then begin at the top of the list, or alphabetically, if you like, to defend the Anarchist premise. Now, my decks are cleared, too. The editor professes himself ready to maintain the corrected proposition. Well, let him fall to.

Of course, I know that the proposition cannot be maintained. Of course, I knew that, to begin with. And now the editor of Liberty knows that it cannot be maintained. It must be taken below and have the hatch fastened down over it. This is really all I wanted. I knew all the while that this was merely a hyperbole. I knew, and I know now, that this proposition is merely a rhetorical flourish. At first, I was somewhat distressed, because I feared that my Anarchist friends were mistaking their own emotions and fancies for objective realities. Now I am pacified. They know, and I know, and we all know, that social ills result from the presence in society of men not very well adapted to society. I say some are not very well adapted; for the present, I say nothing about how many these are. Of course, we are all saints, except where the Government compels us to compound with our consciences; but the other fellows, the other fellows! What rascals they are! Well, society is partly made up of these other fellows. I am loath to exaggerate just now, when I am taking Liberty to task for the same offence; but perhaps I may be permitted to say that society is largely made up of the other fellows. Indeed, if one regards the matter very closely, how can he avoid the spell of egotism? From a society partly composed of others, we pass to a society largely composed of others, and then to a society wholly composed of others, and our position is not to be distinguished from that of the good old Quaker, who said to his wife, "All the world is queer, except thee and me, and thee's a little queer." And social evil evidently results from the presence here of these queer people.

But let us raise the hatch and peer down

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