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intellectually to these minds than a better poem would have been. Rude thoughts not too carefully discriminated are more powerful revolutionary instruments than more exact truths in finer phrases. "Queen Mab" was certainly the poem by which he was long best known. The first revival of his works came just before the time of the Reform Bill, and they were an element in the agitation of men's minds; but his permanent influence began with the second revival, ten years later, when his collected works were issued by his widow. Since then edition has followed edition, and with every fall of his poems from the presses of England and America new readers feel the impulse of his passion, blending naturally with the moral and political inspiration of an age which has exhausted its spiritual force in pursuit of the objects that he bade men seek. Democracy, of which philanthropy is the shadow, has made enormous gains; the cause is older and social analysis has gone farther than in his day; his denunciation of kings and priests seems antiquated only because the attack is now directed on the general conditions of society which make tyrannical power and legalized privilege possible under any political organization, and in industrial and commercial as well as military civilizations; his objects of detestation seem vague and unreal only because a hundred definite propositions, developed by socialistic thought,―any one of which was more rife with danger than his own elementary principles,—have been put forth without any such penalty being visited upon their authors as was fixed upon him. This advance, and more, has been made. The consciousness of the masses, both in respect to their material position and their power to remedy it, has increased indefinitely in extent and in intensity in all countries affected by European thought; socialism, anarchism, nihilism are names upon every lip, and they measure the active discontent of those strata of society last to be reached by thought except the bourgeoisie. Whatever revolutionary excess may unite with the movement, the stream flows in the direct course of Shelley's thought with an undreamt vehemence and mass. That he still implants in others that passion of his for reforming the world is not questioned; his works have been a perennial fountain of the democratic spirit with its philanthropic ardor. As in the other phases of his influence, so in this its grand phase, his work has been in modification instead of demolition of the social order; it has been only one individual element in a world-movement issuing from many causes and sustained from many sources; but here too he fulfils his own characterization of the poet, imperfectly conscious of his own meanings, dimly prophetic of what shall be, belonging to the future whose ideas

come into being through his intuitions, sympathies, and longings.

Shelley's genius, then, it must be acknowledged, had this prescience by which it seized the elements of the future yet inchoate, and glorified them, and won the hearts of men to worship them as an imagined hope, and fervently to desire their coming. If one thing were to be sought for as the secret of his power on man, I should say it was his belief in the soul. No poet ever put such unreserved trust in the human spirit. He laid upon it the most noble of all ideal tasks, and inspired it with faith in its own passion. "Save thyself," he said, and showed at the same time the death in which it lay, the life of beauty, love, and justice to which it was born as to a destiny. Virtue in her shape how lovely, humanity throughout the world how miserable, were the two visions on which he bade men look; and he refused to accept this antithesis of what is and what ought to be as inevitable in man's nature or divine providence; it remained with man, he said, to heal himself. He was helped, perhaps, in his faith in the human spirit by the early denial he made of religion as interpreted by the theology of his period; for him salvation rested with man, or nowhere. In later years he made love the principle, not only of human society, but of the government of the universe; it was his only conception of divine power; but he never reconciled in thought this mystical belief with the apparent absence of this divine element from its lost provinces in human life. He promised men in their effort no other aid than the mere existence, in the universe, of beneficent laws of which mankind could avail itself by submitting thereto. The doctrine of the power of the human spirit to perfect itself, and the necessity of the exercise of this power as the sole means of progress, remained in unaffected integrity. This fundamental conviction is one that has spread equally with the democratic idea or the philanthropic impulse. The immediacy of the soul as the medium of even revealed truth is a conception that clarifies with each decade, and it is in harmony with Shelley's most intimate convictions, with those tendencies and dispositions of his temperament so natural to him that they were felt rather than thought. But in such analysis one may refine too much. It is meant only to illustrate how completely, in the recesses of his nature as well as in definite manifestation of his thought, he was the child, intellectually and morally, of the conquering influences implicit in his age, so readily apprehensive of them that he anticipated their power in the world, so intensely sympathetic that he embodied them in imagination before the fullness of time, so compelled to express them that he was their prophet and leader in the next ages.

By his own judgment, therefore, of what great poets are, he must be placed among them, and the office of genius, as he defined it, must be declared to be his. The millennium has not come, any more than it came in the first century. The cause Shelley served is still in its struggle; but those to whom social justice is a watchword, and the development of the individual everywhere in liberty, intelligence, and virtue is a cherished hope, must be thankful that Shelley lived, that the substance of his work is so vital, and his influence, inspiring as it is beyond that of any of our poets in these ways, was, and is, so completely on the side of the century's advance. His words are sung by marching thousands in the streets of London. No poet of our time has touched the cause of progress in the living breath and heart-throb of men so close as that. Yet, remote as the poet's dream always seems, it is rather that life-long singing of the golden age, in poem after poem, which most restores and inflames those who, whether they be rude or refined, are the choicer spirits of mankind, and

bring, with revolutionary violence or ideal imagination, the times to come. They hate the things he hated; like him they love, above all things, justice; they share the passion of his faith in mankind. Thus, were his own life as dark as Shakspere's, and had he left unwritten those personal lyrics which some who conceive the poet's art less nobly would exalt above his grander poems, he would stand preëm.inent and almost solitary for his service to the struggling world, for what he did as a quickener of men's hearts by his passion for supreme and simple truths. If these have more hold in society now than when he died, and if his influence has contributed its share, however blended with the large forces of civilization, he has in this sense given law to the world and equaled the height of the loftiest conception of the poet's significance in the spiritual life of man. Such, taken in large lines and in its true relations, seems to me the work for which men should praise Shelley on this anniversary, leaving mere poetic enjoyment, however delightful, and personal charm, however winning, to other occasions.

George E. Woodberry.

TOPICS OF THE TIME.

Popular Crazes.

No portion of Professor James Bryce's “American

Commonwealth" reveals more strikingly the author's remarkable insight into American methods and character than the twelve chapters on Public Opinion which constitute Part 4 of Vol. II. Every American who is interested in the efforts which his own country is making to work out successfully and completely the problem of popular government can read those chapters with profit, for he will find in them, clearly and forcibly set forth, many things that he has dimly conceived but has never been able to think out thoroughly for himself. Professor Bryce holds that "in no country is public opinion so powerful as in the United States," and in the course of his searching and able discussion of why it is so he makes certain observations which we wish to cite at this time as having an especial bearing upon the subject that we wish to consider in the present article.

Remarking that one of the chief problems of free nations is "to devise means whereby the national will shall be most fully expressed, most quickly known, most unresistingly and cheerfully obeyed," he says:

Towards this goal the Americans have marched with steady steps, unconsciously as well as consciously. No other people now stands so near it. Towering over President's and State Governors, over Congress and State Legislatures, over conventions and the vast machinery of party, public opinion stands out in the United States as the great source of power, the master of servants who

tremble before it.

There is no one class or set of men whose special func

tion it is to form and lead public opinion. The politicians certainly do not. Public opinion leads them.

A sovereign is not less a sovereign because his commands are sometimes misheard or misreported. In America every one listens for them. Those who manage the affairs of this country obey to the best of their hearing. The people must not be hurried. A statesman is not expected to move ahead of them; he must rather seem to that they are wrong, and refuse to be the instrument, he follow, though if he has the courage to tell the people will be all the more respected.

Professor Bryce goes on to argue that one reason why public opinion is so powerful is the universal belief of the people in their star, a "confidence that the people are sure to decide right in the long run," that "truth and justice are sure to make their way into the minds and consciences of the majority." Every one who has studied the history of this country knows how true all this is. Whenever a new peril threatens us from any quarter, either in the form of some abuse in legislation or in administration, or in the form of some fresh financial or economic heresy, the final stronghold of hope to which every anxious observer clings is the conviction that the people will decide right in the end. Our national history is the record of a succession of perils of one kind or another, suddenly averted at the very moment when escape from them seemed most impossible.

The recent collapse of the Free Silver Coinage "craze" makes a review of similar popular delusions timely. We have had many of these since the war, and all of them have passed away as suddenly as they arose, after a uniformly brief and absorbing period of existence. No one can contemplate them after they have

passed and not doubt whether they were really as strong with the people as they appeared to be; whether they might not be, after all, mere instances of what Professor Bryce calls the "mishearing" of public opinion. There was the Granger movement, which appeared in 1873, and which seemed to carry everything before it in the Western States. It did elect a governor in one of those States and legislatures in a few others, but by 1876 not a trace of it remained. It was followed by the Greenback movement in 1878, which threatened the supremacy of political parties in all parts of the country, actually gaining the control in Maine, polling many thousands of votes in nearly every Western State, and making inroads upon the old parties even in New York State. By 1880 nearly every trace of this "craze had vanished. Next came the Labor movement, which sprang from the great strikes of 1886. In the fall of that year Henry George polled 68,000 votes, nearly one third of the entire number cast, as Labor candidate for mayor of New York city, and shrewd politicians were convinced that the Labor vote would be the controlling force in the presidential election of 1888. Yet when 1888 arrived, scarcely a trace of the movement, as a separate force in politics, was visible.

Following close upon the Labor movement came that of the Farmers' Alliance, with the sub-treasury money plan as its chief issue. In 1890 this was so powerful that it carried two Western States, and seemed

certain to threaten the dominion of the Democratic party in the South. Yet in the elections of 1891 it cut scarcely any figure, and has been fading rapidly from existence since that time. The Free Silver delusion, which accompanied it, and remained after its demise, seemed, when the new Congress assembled in December last, destined to overcome all opposition, and to plunge the country into the most direful cheap-money experiment of modern times. Yet at the critical moment this peril was averted, and at the present time the "craze" itself has so nearly disappeared that one wonders if it really ever was formidable.

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In every instance public opinion was the sovereign under whose commands the "craze" was abandoned by the politicians. As soon as they discovered that the people did not favor the movement, they hastened to turn against it. It is, of course, impossible to say whether or not the people had ever been so strongly in favor of any of these various "crazes as the politicians supposed. Undoubtedly more were in favor of them at their birth than at the moment of their abandonment, for in the intervening period the work of education had been in progress, and the American people are quick to discover an error and equally quick in correcting it. We are convinced, however, that in nearly or quite every instance the politicians had, to use an apt phrase of Professor Bryce, “mistaken eddies and cross currents for the main stream of opinion." They had been so fearful lest public opinion should get ahead of them that they hastened to stimulate the "craze" in order to benefit by it, rather than to point out to the people their mistake and trust to their intelligence and honesty to bring them around to the right side in the end. As Professor Bryce well says, the statesman who has the courage to tell the people that they are wrong "will be all the more respected," but this is a truth which the lower grade of politicians is slow to learn.

What is Patriotism?

It was suggested some months ago by some one who was impressed with the need of a keener sentiment of patriotism among the American people, that such a sentiment could be cultivated by certain observances in the public schools. The chief of these was to be the daily display of the American flag upon all school buildings, and the daily formal salute of it by the pupils. It is indeed a pleasant and inspiring sight, and not without a patriotic effect upon children and the general population- the flag flung to the breeze from the school-house in the city street, or on the country hillside or valley. But according to our observation young Americans draw in a love of the flag and of their country as the British general in the Revolutionary War said the boys of Boston did-" with the air they breathe." They think the American flag the most beautiful in the world, and the American nation the most powerful and glorious on the earth. This is the spontaneous and unreasoning patriotism of childhood, and the country which did not inspire it would be in a sad condition.

There are no signs of a lack of this childish patriotism in this country. Concerning the supply of reasoning patriotism, which ought to be developed from it as the youth advances to manhood and takes his place as a citizen, the case is less clear. It must be said that many men carry through life, without change or development, the unreasoning patriotism of childhood, and are thus the easy victims of the sham statesmen and politicians who make patriotism not merely the “last refuge of a scoundrel," but, as the Rev. J. W. Chadwick said recently, the first. Men who take "my country, right or wrong," as the complete epitome of patriotism, are the most useful, though unconscious, allies of those who do the most to injure their country's fame. Lowell, with his unerring touch, has put his finger on the crucial test of all patriotism, by saying in regard to doubts about his own love for his country,

I loved her old renown, her stainless fame,-
What better proof than that I loathed her shame ?

That is the true kind of patriotism which no country can have too much of—a patriotism which loathes everything that brings shame to the nation's honor, or to its reputation before the world. A patriotism of that kind makes short shrift with political tricksters and time-servers, by condemning them as disgracing their country and dishonoring its name. No nation is so great that it can afford to be unjust, or to act the bully toward weaker nations, or to conduct its public affairs in violation of moral and economic laws. The highest conception of a country is expressed in the Scriptural phrase, “Righteousness exalteth a nation." The real patriot is the man who wishes to see his country glorious through the reign of intelligence, truth, honor, and justice in all its public affairs, and through the high value of its contributions to the civilization of the world. The only kind of patriotism worth having is that which holds up this model of a country, and rejects as unworthy all that stands in the way of its achievement.

There is no more persuasive teacher of patriotism than the true politician or statesman, as Lowell has described him.

He is not so much interested in the devices by which men may be influenced, as about how they ought to be influenced; not so much about how men's passions and prejudices may be utilized for a momentary advantage to himself or his party, as about how they may be hindered from doing a permanent harm to the commonwealth. Under the guidance of statesmen of this type, politics becomes a very different pursuit from what it usually is in this country. Of politics, in the true sense of the word, the American people have a very inadequate conception. What they think of when they hear the word is something very unlike this definition, which stands first under the word in "The Century Dictionary":

The science or practice of government; the regulation and government of a nation or state for the preservation of its safety, peace, and prosperity. Politics, in its widest sense, is both the science and the art of government, or the science whose subject is the regulation of man in all his relations as the member of a state, and the application of this science. In other words, it is the theory and practice of obtaining the ends of civil society as perfectly as possible.

Nobody can deny that we need in all parts of the land politicians of this character, earnest, able, trained men, who are so thoroughly grounded in the science of politics, who have such complete knowledge of governmental laws and social and economic principles, such familiarity with the history of politics and political systems in all lands and times, that they will be able when occasion offers to stop the progress of "crazes" and delusions, simply by showing from the teachings of human experience and the working of established laws the impossibility of their success in practice. In no country in the world are liberally educated men, in the true sense of the word, more needed than they are in the United States, and in no country in the world are they more powerful, for of all peoples, Americans are the most eager to learn the truth and the quickest to grasp it when it is presented to them. The breeding of citizens of this character in our schools and colleges is the surest way by which to develop patriotism of the highest type.

Trade Schools.1

IN giving a half-million dollars for the endowment of the New York Trade Schools, Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan has set the millionaires of the country an example which, it is greatly to be hoped, many of them will imitate. It would be difficult to conceive a more beneficent use of wealth than this. The object of such schools is to furnish the young men of the country with the means of learning, quickly and thoroughly, useful trades; that is to say, to supply them with the best qualifications for leading upright, industrious, and useful lives. We have in this country abundant school privileges, and are constantly enlarging our facilities for the education of youth who desire to live by brain-work as distinguished from manual labor; but for the youth who would be glad to fit themselves for lives of manual labor we have, until within a few years, furnished no educational facil

ities whatever.

One of the first men to perceive the need of an educational system of this kind was Colonel Richard T. Auchmuty, of New York city. About eleven years ago

1 See also "The Need of Trade Schools," THE CENTURY for November, 1886, and "An American Apprentice System," January, 1889; both by Colonel Auchmuty.

he established the New York Trade Schools for the purpose of giving young men instruction in certain trades, and to enable those already working in such trades to improve themselves. At first instruction was given mainly in the evening to pupils who were engaged in workshops during the day, and who were dissatisfied with what they were learning in them. Gradually other young men who had finished their school-days, and had no definite occupation in view, became interested. They were unwilling to learn a trade by entering a shop as apprentices, but they were very glad to avail themselves of this method of not only learning it rapidly and thoroughly, but without unpleasant or humiliating surroundings. In their eagerness to learn many of these young men joined both day and evening classes.

From small beginnings the schools grew rapidly, until at the end of eleven years the attendance was nearly 600, instead of 30 as at the beginning. The trades chiefly taught are plumbing, plastering, stone-cutting, painting, bricklaying, carpentering, and tailoring. Instruction is given by master mechanics and other competent teachers, and practical work is accompanied when necessary by the study of technical books and diagrams. The pupil is not only taught how good work should be done, but the difference between good and improper work. The purpose of the instruction is "to enable young men to learn the science and practice of certain trades thoroughly, expeditiously, and economically, leaving speed of execution to be acquired at real work after leaving the schools." The prices charged for instruction are scarcely more than nominal, relieving the schools of the charitable aspect and giving the pupils a manly sense of paying their way.

The benefits of this system of education are obvious and great. The thoroughness of the instruction sends out workmen of the best type, scientific, thinking, progressive men, who become the master mechanics and inventors of the future. They are the kind of workmen who give dignity to labor, and who, in addition to elevating the condition and character of their fellow working-men, make good citizens in whatever community their lot may be cast. If every city in the land were to have its trade schools, modeled after those established by Colonel Auchmuty, and nobly endowed as his have been by Mr. Morgan, the work of reducing the mass of idleness and consequent viciousness which exists in our large cities would be begun in the most effective way.

When Colonel Auchmuty began his experiment, trade instruction in schools was little known in this country, though it had long been in existence in Europe. In this country, in addition to the trade schools of New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, trades are now taught to beginners at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn; at the Free Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts; at the Hampton Institute, Virginia; at Clark University, Georgia; at Central Tennessee College; to the Indians at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania; in some of the colleges endowed by the United States land grant act; and in many asylums and reformatories. The Carriage Makers' Association in New York has a school for young men in that trade, and the Master Plumbers' Association in some cities provides instruction for its 'helpers." We have made a beginning in this country, but have done little more than that. Colonel

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Auchmuty's schools are now assured of a future of large and constantly increasing usefulness, and ought to serve as a model for others in all the large cities of the land.

These schools, in fact, supply the only means by which American boys can become skilled workmen. The old apprentice system has gone, never to return. Both the spirit of the time and the changed conditions of trade are against it. Outside the large cities, in the so-called country districts, boys can still be taught a trade by the workers in it; but in the large cities, where skilled labor is in demand, this is no longer possible. The tradeunions in these cities are controlled by foreigners who seek to confine their industries to men of their own nationalities. They not only refuse to teach an American boy a trade, but they combine to prevent him from getting employment after he has succeeded in learning it in a trade school. This is a situation of affairs without parallel in any country in the world, and one which will not be tolerated in this country when once public opinion has been aroused to a full comprehension of it.

Colonel Auchmuty has shown from statistics that out of $23,000,000 paid annually to mechanics in the building trades in New York city, less than $6,000,000 goes to those born here. The number of new journeymen trained outside the cities in the trades themselves is not sufficient to fill vacancies, much less to supply the constantly increasing demand for larger forces. Thousands of foreign mechanics come here every year, some to remain, others to work through a busy season and return to Europe with their profits. These foreigners have no sympathy with Americans. They control the trade-unions, which in turn control the labor market, absolutely in their own interest. They seek to keep wages high by closing the doors of employment to all comers not of their own kind. The result is that in free America, sometimes called the paradise of working-men, the field of skilled labor is occupied almost exclusively by foreigners who declare that an American boy shall not enter, either to learn a

trade, or to find employment if he shall have been able to learn his trade elsewhere.

We present to the civilized world the astounding spectacle of a great nation, which boasts itself the freest on the globe, throwing open its vast and lucrative fields of skilled labor to the mechanics of all other nations, while closing them to its own sons. Was there ever a more incredible act of national folly! We have in America material from which to make the best and quickest mechanics in the world—that is the testimony of all competent authorities; yet we refuse either to train them or to give them work if trained. We deplore the existence of increasing numbers of idle and unoccupied young men in all our cities, and then accept conditions which compel a multiplication of the numbers. It is useless to put the blame upon the foreign laborers: they are merely improving their opportunity. The American people are responsible, and they must supply the remedy.

The first step toward the remedy is the multiplication of trade schools, and the second is the insistence upon the free exercise of every man's right to earn his living in his own way. It is surely not too much for the American people to say that their own sons shall not only be permitted to learn trades, but shall be permitted also to work at them after they have learned them. We advise any one who is desirous of seeing the kind of skilled working-man that the American boy makes, to visit Colonel Auchmuty's schools and look over a set of photographs of his graduates. He will find there a body of clear-browed, straight-eyed young fellows who will compare well with the graduates of our colleges. This is the stuff from which laborers are made who honor and dignify and elevate labor, not by agitating, but by being masters of their craft, faithful in its performance, and willing to share its toil with all comers, fearing honest competition from no quarter. Such men are at once true American laborers and true American citizens of the highest type, and the educational system which evolves them is a national benefaction of incalculable value.

Camping Out for the Poor.

OPEN LETTERS.

NEARLY twenty years ago Urefu new york late one

JEARLY twenty years ago I left New York late one

night's vacation in a little hamlet a mile east of Moriches, on the south or ocean shore of Long Island, seventy miles away from New York. The day had been a particularly hot and exhausting one. The city literally panted for breath. As I walked down to the ferry I had to pass through some of the most miserable of the tenement-house districts on the east side, and for a few blocks I went along Cherry street, a most wretched thoroughfare blessed with a pretty name in grotesque contrast to the street's character. The slums were alive with people.

The shades of night seemed to bring no comfort to such streets as these. It would be morning before the heated masses of brick and stone cooled off, ready for another day's sun, for there was not a breath of air.

I could not help contrasting the scenes in which I should find myself twenty-four hours later with this squalid, heated misery, and it really seemed as if I had no right to run away while so much wretchedness remained behind, unable to escape. I suppose that most of my readers have experienced this feeling when about to get away from New York in summer, and then, as I have so often done, they have put the unpleasant thought away with the consoling reflection that what little they could do to alleviate such misery, even by the sacrifice of their own vacations, would be but a drop of honey in this ocean of gall. We have also the habit of saying to ourselves that the poor people who remain in town the year round do not suffer as we imagine they do— they are thicker-skinned, and they have never known anything better.

But upon this particular occasion, although I was not an over-sensitive young man, the scenes upon which I could not shut my eyes haunted me for days, and I

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