Chapter V: Part 5

This we do for the sake of the employes themselves, and for no other reason. We demand better pay for the men that they may lead decent American lives, feeding and clothing their wives and children, and educating their children properly. We demand short hours for them, that they may live part of the twenty-four hours WITH their families, knowing their own children and bringing a little pleasure and companionship into the lives of their patient wives.

We are proud of the fact that we have helped in a small way to increase the prosperity and happiness of many tens of thousands of honest families, that we have increased the OPPORTUNITIES of many thousands of children.

We want the merchants to remember that, while we have thus striven to protect those masses of the people whom we represent and whose ADVOCATE we are, we have also advanced enormously, although without premeditation, the fortune and quick success of every capable and legitimate merchant.

Who owns the stock in the street railroads? A few individuals--a Widener, an Elkins, a Yerkes, a Whitney, or some other energetic private individual.

One street railroad system, let us say, employs ten thousand men.

They struggle to add one dollar per day to their pay. We help them with moral support and publicity, and they succeed. TEN THOUSAND FAMILIES have each ONE DOLLAR a day more to spend, or ten thousand dollars a day in all.

What becomes of that ten thousand dollars added daily to the living-money of ten thousand families?

EVERY DOLLAR OF IT GOES INTO THE HANDS OF THE MERCHANT, THE LANDLORD, OR THE SAVINGS BANK.

If the men had not got that increase in wages, what would have become of that ten thousand dollars daily, or $3,650,000 A YEAR?

Would it have gone to the merchants of the great cities? Would it have gone to build up thousands of comfortable little homes in all the suburbs of the great towns? Would it have enabled thousands of American boys and girls to stay in school instead of going in their infancy to the mills and factories?

No!

If that money were not distributed among the people in the shape of good American wages for good American work, it would go to build big race tracks, where thieves and gamblers are manufactured. It would go to buying foolish bogus antiquities that no man needs. It would go to building ridiculous and uncalled-for palaces where human mushrooms without a sense of humor imitate in their idleness the active types of the past. ----

When this newspaper adds to the payroll of a great corporation, it adds to the happiness of a great many families; and therein lie its pride and its excuse for being. And at the same time this increase in the payroll of the Trust or the monopolizer of public privileges means an increase in the income, the prosperity, the legitimate reward of the enterprising merchant, builder and general business man.

We do not lack criticism from well-meaning friends who conduct great stores or other business enterprises. We appreciate all criticisms and suggestions. We offer a suggestion in return:

Let the builder who dislikes unions GO TO CHINA and build his apartment houses. He will find patient workmen at ten cents a day. He will find laws that suppress the unions, and laws that suppress the newspaper which takes the side of the poor.

He will find a non-union Utopia.

But he will not find tenants for his buildings, because in a land where men don't get high wages they can't pay high rents, and when the few Li Hung Changs have built their palaces the building boom is over.

Let the great merchant who deplores unions start a DEPARTMENT STORE IN CHINA.

He will never see a walking delegate; he will never be bothered by the dark cloud of unionism.

He will find a perfect heaven in the way of low wages.

BUT HE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SELL GOODS.

His department store will dwindle into a store for selling rice, and while his velvets, silks, hats and muslins moulder he will get very sick of a hundred million women who don't spend forty cents in a year.

In the land where men are not well paid THEY CAN'T SPEND MONEY.

The best friend of the American merchant, builder, lawyer, doctor, property owner, banker and general business man is the individual or the newspaper that helps the people to get high wages, AND THUS GIVES THEM MONEY TO SPEND.

WHAT ABOUT THE CHINESE, KIND SIR?

A prosperous and old New York merchant assures a conference of workingmen that England's great strikes have caused that country to lose its leadership in exports of machinery.

If England's wonderful system of trades unionism has hurt its exports of machinery, if abundance of very cheap slave labor means great industrial superiority, we beg to ask this question:

WHY IS NOT CHINA THE GREAT EXPORTING COUNTRY OF THE WORLD?

There are scores of millions of men in China glad to work for a few pennies per day.

There are no labor unions in China, and in some districts the employer can have his workmen beheaded for demanding an increase of pay. If the venerable old New York merchant is right, China ought to be certainly a marvellously successful country industrially.

As a matter of fact, China is dead, and there is no better proof of her complete deadness than the fact that among all her millions of coolies there is not enough spirit for the formation of a labor union.

The energy of the British workman established England's industrial greatness and fought for and won the great trades-union system which the workmen of this country are developing so ably. ----

Suppose it were true that trades unionism, with its higher wages and shorter hours, decreases exports--what of it?

Is it not more important to have ten million workmen well paid, with reasonable leisure and decent lives, than to have a handful of iron masters and coal-mine owners piling up millions of pounds and producing sons like the famous "Jubilee Juggins"?

Wouldn't it be better for China if her several hundred millions of citizens were well paid, well fed and well educated, even though Li Hung Chang and the other prosperous viceroys should all be paid a little less money, and own fewer square miles of rice fields and tea plants? ----

In Huxley's admirable biography, written by his son, you may read of a 'longshoreman who, thanks to reasonably short hours of work and a little leisure, took up the study of scientific subjects.

He was aided by Huxley, who lent him a microscope, and ultimately this common 'longshoreman's researches were of real value to the scientific world.

Isn't it well to have a trades-union system which curbs the avariciousness of employers and gives workmen a chance to develop the best that is in them?

Isn't it better for England to have that 'longshoreman develop into a scientist than to let some man who employs him make an extra shilling a day out of his labor, even though it should add a little to the exports of England? ----

A country's greatness depends on the quality of the men that live in the country, not on goods manufactured to sell to outside nations.

Rome was doing little exporting when she ruled the world.

She was breeding men, independent and brave, who could bring the products of the world to her.

She did not need to worry about exports, nor does any other country need to worry about them.

The thing to worry about is the condition of your citizens, the education of children, the decent treatment of women, the equality of laws.

Other things take care of themselves.

150 AGAINST 150,000--WE FAVOR THE 150,000

It should not take long to convince a man fit to live in a republic that public welfare demands the support of Union Labor.

No better proof of that could be asked than a spectacle presented in Chicago.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY contractors have practically locked out ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND men.

The contractors want bigger profits--to be got through underpaying and overworking their employes.

The men want better pay and shorter hours. ----

Leave out sentiment if you choose. Ignore the fact that on one side the few who enjoy everything are industriously squeezing the many who have little enjoyment.

Look at things purely from the standpoint of benefit to the nation and the nation's future.

If the hundred and fifty win, they will have a little more money.

Their wives and daughters will dress a little more grotesquely. Their families will be able to go abroad oftener and stay longer.

Their heirs will be able to make more complete idiots of themselves--and that is all. Personally we should like to see all contractors' families prosperous--all American families prosperous. No man's wife or daughter can be too happy to suit us, provided things more important be not neglected. ----

If Union Labor wins, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND families will be able to lead at least decent American workingmen's lives.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND wives will be able to dress their children comfortably and to dress themselves respectably.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND families of children will be brought up more nearly as American children ought to be.

Which is more important:

THE WELFARE OF 150 CONTRACTORS' FAMILIES? (They will have enough anyhow.)

Or THE WELFARE OF 150,000 WORKINGMEN'S FAMILIES? (They will have only a decent living at best.)

Perhaps you have drifted away from the early American idea, and refuse to admit that one family is as good as another. It may seem anarchistic to suggest that the workingman's wife, who acts as wife, mother, cook, washwoman, nurse and housekeeper, is as good as the lady who has less to attend to.

But admitting--which we don't--that one hundred and fifty contractors' families are more important than one hundred and fifty workingmen's families, surely all will agree that ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND of the alleged inferiors ought to offset the 150 alleged superiors. ----

If the contractors win, the Paris dressmakers will be richer, and a few families will have a little added to what they do not really need.

If the workingmen win, the future of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children will be made brighter, and the citizenship of the future made stronger by men better fed, better clothed and better educated. ----

This newspaper hopes for labor union victory and means to help it along, BECAUSE THE PUBLIC WELFARE DEMANDS IT.

TO-DAY'S WORLD-STRUGGLE

Far off in the distance shines the goal of present human ambition.

It is a shining, golden light. Toward that light the millions struggle, trampling each other, sacrificing everything in the harsh fight for the dollar.

Here and there a preacher thunders, here and there a philosopher proses against the money struggle. But they might as well whisper at the brink of Niagara. And often the preacher changes his thundering when a RICH church calls him, often the philosopher grasps the first chance to forget philosophy in Wall Street.

The men admired to-day are the men who have made millions--some are admired because they find excitement in giving the millions away, others because they silently pile more millions upon the others already gained.

"Society," the class devoted to pleasure, consists now, in America, of those who have much money.

Literary success depends upon the money which the writer accumulates.

The man talked about is he who has SOLD a hundred thousand books.

The rich boy at school is followed by toadies. In college he learns contempt for human nature from the sycophancy of others.

"Representatives" of the People may be found dogging the footsteps of those who need to buy laws, or to steal the people's rights. ----

It is a fierce and remorseless climb up the steep road to wealth.

There are many corpses, many crimes, many broken hearts, haggard faces and bitter disappointments on that road.

The man with the "Good-money-making idea" struggles on with it over the bodies of suicides and of those who have fallen in despair.

At the bottom of the road the murderer plies his trade with knife or poison--to make money. And the murderer who has tried for MUCH money calls forth special interest and special privileges, special new trials, special newspaper headings.

At the top of the road to wealth, another, more intelligent class, work with equally remorseless energy. They murder no individual. But they rob entire classes of society.

They tax others to fatten their pockets--they add to the cost of food that children eat--they coin human life into cash--smoothly and nicely, using law-makers as tools. Envy and admiration are theirs--such admiration as the retail murderer can never earn. ----

The struggle for money is the struggle of THE WHOLE WORLD to-day.

And of the money-making movement, as of ALL WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENTS, there is a side that is good and necessary.

Divine wisdom guides the world, and the human race, working out its destiny in seeming blindness, is not allowed to wander from the track of actual progress.

The money-making mania is one phase of human advancement.

This is the age of industrial progress. Money is simply the means of perfecting industry. It is human labor condensed and put into compact, transferable shape.

The man with the hundred millions can build the great railroad across the continent. There is no more important work now than the building of that road.

The man with the thousand millions can control the great oil trust and a dozen other trusts. He taxes the people--but his hundreds of millions do an important and necessary work.

It is well for us all that such a man has sacrificed health, digestion, happiness and all idea of self-indulgence to the accumulation of a vast industrial army of dollars.

The scramble for money, looked at without understanding, is a horrid sight. But horrid also is the sight of a battle that frees slaves.

When the battle of money shall end, the score will be on the right side of humanity's ledger.

A few forgotten billionaires will have struggled and died. Some millions of men will have died disappointed.

But industry will have been brought to perfection. Universities, libraries and other benefactions will abound, pleading for recognition of the money-making dyspeptics. Human ingenuity will have contrived some means for freeing men's minds from the dread of destitution.

The money struggle will have ended and humanity will be much better off, much further advanced--as it is at the end of all great and painful struggles.

WHITE-RABBIT MILLIONAIRES AND OTHER THINGS

The most wonderful thing in America is--what do you think? It is the absolute nullity of the man of many millions. It is the vapid colorlessness, the dull inactivity, the total lack of imagination among men whose power is unlimited. What possibilities are spread out before the man who by signing his name could set to work in any direction a million of his fellow men! The world stands ready to obey his orders; every law says that he shall have whatever he demands. Any conception born in his brain can become reality as soon as conceived. But there is no conception there.

These comments are written, not to scold, or complain, or suggest, but simply to express wonder.

What man of millions does anything that a white rabbit does not do?

One man--of a hundred millions at least--has become recently very conspicuous among his golden fellows.

How?

By undertaking a scheme to irrigate the desert of Sahara and give millions of fertile acres to humanity?

No.

By calling together, at his expense, the ablest thinkers of the world to discuss and to solve, if possible, the social questions that so deeply concern the millionaire's future?

No.

By seeking, through study and experiment, to abolish child-labor, to promote public education, to encourage science art or American inventiveness?

No.

This millionaire, much discussed because of his piquant originality, has put on a dress coat with two pointed tails behind, and, geared in a white shirt front and white tie, with silk socks highly colored and patent leather shoes, this splendid American product has led a cotillon and has led a cakewalk.

Grand, splendid, magnificent, inspiring, isn't it?

What lop-eared, mild-eyed rabbit dancing in a clover field with a full paunch need fear comparison with this man of millions?

Old Jacques Coeur, of France, giving his fleets to his country--there was a man of millions and imagination combined. But his kind has died out, and in his place we have a herd of overfed, sleek, timorous, hopping white rabbits, hoarding their piles of gold, shivering at the mention of change or innovation, asking only for peaceful possession, as free from thought as the fat oyster in his bed.

What wonderful things, what useful things, what dangerous things could these all-powerful men do?

What could they not do? They DO nothing.

NO HAPPINESS SAVE IN MENTAL AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY.

Bresci, who murdered the Italian King, is sentenced to solitary confinement for life. While you read this he sits on a narrow plank in a cell not much bigger than a sleeping-car section.

If you talk to any friend about Bresci--and especially if you mention the subject to any young man inclined to be idle--call attention to this point. You can amplify what must be presented briefly here.

Bresci's imprisonment is torture--why?

Because it sentences him to DO NOTHING.

Every man put on this earth is put here for a purpose. He is put here to work, to struggle, to interest himself in his fellows, to share the pleasures and disappointments of others. The wise laws ruling the universe fill us with a DESIRE to do that which we were meant to do. It is intended that we should be active here, and, therefore, although we often fail to realize it, our happiness lies in activity.

Bresci is to be tortured beyond the power of imagination because he will be forbidden to follow nature's law. He will be forbidden to fulfill man's destiny here. His brain, his muscles, his sentiments must lie idle until death or insanity shall come to relieve him. ----

Bresci will live on bread and water--but it is not the bread and water that will make his life worse than death. He could be happy on such simple fare if his mind had work to do. Many a man has done his good work and enjoyed life's greatest pleasures while suffering mere hunger or poor fare.

Many men would be happier if they could see Bresci, the murderer, forced into that idleness which is sometimes ignorantly desired.

In his prison Bresci is protected from the sun and the rain and the cold. He can sleep as many hours as he likes. No duns can trouble him. He pays no rent. There is absolutely nothing that he MUST do. But there is absolutely nothing that he CAN do.

The saddest slave in Morocco toiling under the heaviest load would win Bresci's gratitude if only he would let Bresci carry that load.

The most desperate man, harassed by cares of all kinds, would seem blissfully happy in Bresci's eyes, for he has at least full play for his sentiments, for his activities. ----

To punish Ravaillac's attack on the life of the French King, long ago, they tried ingenious devices. They broke him on the wheel. They tortured him slowly. Finally they poured melted lead into his stomach through his navel. It was a hard death.

But they did not punish Ravaillac as severely as Bresci is to be punished.

The minutes, the hours, the weeks, months and years will drag along.

Idleness, idleness, idleness. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

No human smile or voice to measure time.

Sleep, bread and water; sleep, bread and water.

Gradually madness will come and bring relief.

Be glad that you are active, you who work willingly.

And you young man who rebel against labor and long for the chance to do nothing, study Bresci's case and take up your load gladly.

The decree condemning us to earn our bread in the sweat of our brow was merciful, not stern. For that same power which sentences all to work also causes happiness to be found in work alone.

THE OWNER OF A GOLDEN MOUNTAIN

An old man sits at the end of his life, with money piled up on all sides of him. Years ago he was working hard. All his ability was strained to the utmost pushing back those who strove to pass him on the road up the golden mountain.

He enjoyed the conflict, he enjoyed the sight of beaten rivals. His delight was in work, in ACQUISITION. His growing surplus added new zest to his life. He pitied "the poor fool" who wasted time at anything save money-making.

But he is at the top of the heap of money now. He looks about, and none compete with him. A few strugglers--too far away to be heard--strive for a little of his useless accumulation. Legal sharpers struggle and get a little, and in return keep away those who try to climb up near him.

The interest has gone out of life. Where he used to see competitors, he now sees only old memories. The old associates have gone--it is even too late to help them--and he will soon go, too.

He looks out over the land, and sees, when it is too late, all that he has missed while he thought he was doing the thing most important.

He has made a hundred millions of dollars, but not one human friend.

He can hire almost any man to do anything. But there is not enough money in the world to hire any one to miss him sincerely when he is gone.

Such a man as this--an actual individual, with wealth far exceeding one hundred millions--has insured his life for half a million. To those who asked "why" he replied: "I want some insurance company to be sorry when I die. No one else will be sorry." Possibly he thought he was joking. But there was truth in what he said.

The man who piles up money builds a solid wall that shuts out the world from him. Sycophants climb over the wall--but their flattery and fawning grow tiresome. Old age and cessation of strong feeling cause the mind to see clearly--and hypocrisy no longer deceives in the old, pleasant way.

The most depressing fact in the old man's life is the hopelessness of trying to change. His mind has worked so long in one direction that it can no longer work in any other. He would like, perhaps, to begin now and live as others live, but he cannot do it.

There are men whose great wealth is earned WITH PART OF THEIR ABILITY, leaving them force and strength for other things. Such a man was Peter Cooper.

But the man most frequently seen in America is the man who accumulates money for money's sake. His is a sad heart when he looks over the past and ahead into the short future.

If he has children, he has hardly known them--and HIS MONEY has separated them from each other.

When his son was a little child the rich man made himself think that he was piling up the money for that boy. What became of that boy?

Ask the Keeley Cure, the public gambling houses, Monte Carlo, the divorce court--and the other "resources" of the sons of the very rich.

Thousands envy him, and he knows it. But there is little in being envied when old age makes a lonely life unbearable, and when the next striking event in his career will be a funeral.

There are hundreds of thousands of men with their thoughts fixed absolutely on money making. They hate what threatens money. They love those who sympathize with money. They live, work, vote, talk, marry and cheat their friends for money.

If they fail--as most of them do--they die unhappy. If they succeed, money cheats THEM, and for all their devotion gives them nothing.

"For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

The man wastes his soul who devotes its forces only to accumulating wealth.

THE HUMAN WEEDS IN PRISON

How shall we approach a prison to see it fairly and to study it intelligently?

Let us imagine ourselves visitors from a world outside of this.

Far off in infinite space there is a small whirling planet--our earth.

Little creatures move about this planet, chained to it by the force of gravity. But they MOVE as they choose, and they call themselves FREE.

There are millions of free square miles, and hundreds of millions of free human beings.

But there just below us is the prison at Auburn. There the human beings are not free. There suffer those who for any reason have violated the established rules of the little globe that supports them.

They have not even the freedom of the little patch of soil fenced in for them. They cannot walk, speak, sit down, lie down, or stand up as they please.

They have broken some of the rules established for the protection of all. They have misused their freedom, and in punishment their freedom is taken away from them.

They live in small cells, in a very big prison.

Gray stone, iron bars, striped suits, enforced silence, enforced work, enforced regularity of life--all these punish most keenly those whose first crime was lack of self-control and lack of regularity. ----

In every prison and in every prisoner there are lessons for each of us. You will not waste time to-day if you walk through this great Auburn prison and think of the men there think why they came there, think how they could have been saved, think what will gradually empty prisons and make them unnecessary.

A man with one arm opens the first iron gate--his mutilated body foreshadows the mutilated minds and souls within.

Before the door of the prison there are bright flowers--the name of the prison itself stands out in brightly colored blossoms to prove the gardener's ability and strange sense of the appropriate. Many of the causes that bring men there are written out in just such bright colors--when first seen--and many a prisoner must have thought of that as he passed through the iron door.

A party of six or seven go through the prison with you.

There is a woman of middle age, stout and cheerful, in a bright purple dress. There are two children, a moon-faced man, a tall, thin man, and others whom you do not notice.

Carelessly they look at a nervous woman sitting in the reception room talking to a convict. They take no interest in her, no interest in the convict. To you the prison guide says:

"She comes here to see him as often as the rules allow. She's his wife. She's been coming for seven years. I tell you, women get the hard end of it in this world."

Women do indeed get the hard end of it. There are twelve hundred men in that prison--and every one of them has caused some woman to suffer. And every one has broken the heart of one other woman--his mother.

Through a narrow door you travel with your fellow-visitors.

At every step you marvel at the curious indifference of average humanity to the one interesting thing--their fellow-man.

There are shown to you piles upon piles of loaves of bread--fresh and brown. The guide says: "We bake every day. Nine hundred loaves a day."

The stout woman in purple sighs with amazement, the children gape, the man with the round face has an anxious look--he seems to be a taxpayer.

But not one looks at or thinks of the convict who turns quickly away to hide a thin, white face. To you the guide says: "He's a forger. You can see he's sensitive about being here. Some of them never seem to get used to it." ----

The stout woman in purple is delighted with the enormous copper vats for making the convicts' coffee. She is charmed with the great iron pots for boiling soup.

But you will be more interested in these facts:

There is a great chapel--BUT NO CONVICT IS COMPELLED TO ATTEND.

There is a huge wash room--fitted with showers for the hardy, with porcelain tubs for the old and crippled--AND EVERY MAN IS COMPELLED TO TAKE HIS BATH.

How much of progress, how much that is hopeful for humanity, is told in those words!

Religious services are optional--no more compulsion of man's soul or of his belief.

Bathing IS COMPULSORY. Truly, we progress, and the prison rules prove it.

There were showers in every prison and in every insane asylum one hundred years ago--but those showers were used only to torture the criminal or the lunatic. He was doused with cold water until senseless.

There were chapels in the old-time prisons, and all were forced to accept and profess such views as the majority or the ruler chose to profess.

That prison at Auburn is a monument to humanity's sorrows and weaknesses. But it tells in every department of human decency and of a constant striving by those who are fortunate to help others.

In the prison yard a squad of convicts are marching. The lock-step is there no longer. Prison reform has ended that. The convict is no longer forced into a gait which stamps him ever after.

There are electric lights in the hundreds of cells--and there is absolute cleanliness throughout the vast structure. No hotel is cleaner, if any be as clean.

The convicts get their letters twice a week. They have pictures in their cells--and they may have musical instruments if they wish; and many a man, beside his narrow plank bed, has a strip of rag carpet made at home. Their lives are horrible--for confinement kills men's souls; and one has said who knew prison life:

"It is only what is GOOD in man That wastes and withers there; Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate, And the Warder is Despair." ----

While you go through the prison you see the things mentioned--electric lights, clean halls, bathing apparatus, and the rest. But you STUDY the human beings working at their fixed tasks, or moving about in their dismal, heavy suits of stripes.

Just as many kinds of faces as you see in a city street you see in that prison--but there you see more than elsewhere the failures, the human weeds.

But at least there is a striving to make things better. Society no longer willingly tortures its failures. It controls, punishes, but does not hate them. There are no beatings, no tortures, no close-cropped heads, even, for the convict may grow his hair as he chooses.

Every man who knows no trade is taught one. There is a feeling of moral responsibility to the criminal, and a desire at least to make him NO WORSE.

The prisoners are divided into two classes: those whose faces and skulls tell of evil birth and predestined failure, and those who are simply like others--average men, victims of chance, of temptation, of ability ill-balanced, of ignorance, of drink, or even of accident.

In one great room the convicts are weaving--working at hand looms. The work is desperately hard. Both hands and both feet are going constantly. Human power is used, that the greatest amount of labor and least competition with the outside working world may be simultaneously achieved.

At one loom sits a poor creature, a dismal human failure. His forehead is half an inch high and a bony ridge-telling of unfortunate prenatal influence--runs high along the top of his head. His small eyes are close together. His exaggerated chin protrudes; only a cunning look directed now and then toward the watchful warden tells that any thinking goes on in that miserable being. His best place, perhaps, is there. He is protected against himself, and society has no other way of taking care of him.

Near him sits a young boy in his teens. His face is intelligent; he is not a born criminal. He is above the average in intelligence, and in him there are all possibilities of success and usefulness.

A boyish piece of criminal foolishness brought him there--and he must now spend years degenerating into real criminality under the influences around him.

There are the two extreme samples of humanity in that cage which we build to protect ourselves against ourselves.

It is a dismal garden set apart for human weeds and in it many a good plant is hopelessly driven into the weed class.

Of the men in that prison may truly be said what a great student of plant life--Luther Burbank-- says of the poor weeds that we despise among plants:

There is not one weed or flower, wild or domesticated, which will not, sooner or later, respond liberally to good cultivation and persistent selection. * * * Weeds are weeds because they are jostled, crowded, cropped and trampled upon, scorched by fierce heat, starved, or, perhaps, suffering with cold, wet feet, tormented by insect pests or lack of nourishing food and sunshine.

Most of them have no opportunity for blossoming out in luxurious beauty and abundance. * * * When a plant once wakes up to the new influences brought to bear upon it the road is opened for endless improvement in all directions.

More pitiable than any weeds in a garden and more worthy of sympathy are those poor human weeds in the great prison.

Crowded and kept ignorant in youth, tempted, ill-fed, cold and worried in after years, their lot was hard--and their fall almost inevitable. They must be confined, they must be protected against themselves, they must suffer for the poor start given to them.

But the duty of those who are FREE and fortunate is to treat kindly those who fall, and especially to deal in such fashion with the young as shall minimize the crop of weeds later.

Fortunately, it may truly be said that humanity begins to realize its responsibilities in both lines of effort.

Kindness reaches the convict in his prison.

And Education, the thrice blessed AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOL, does steadily the work that makes useful plants of growing youth, diminishing year by year the crop of weeds.

Kindness and EDUCATION--go to Auburn prison and you will realize how much work they have still to do in our country.

CRIME IS DYING OUT

Many of us feel that crime is the striking feature of modern life, that this century sits among the skulls of crime's victims, and that Father Time, after all his ages of travel, sees no improvement.

But those discouraged by modern crime misunderstand the meaning of events and fail to make a just comparison between the past and the present.

It is true that crime to-day is shocking in its frequency. Each day we see spread out before us murders.

But first of all remember this:

We often mistake widespread NEWS of crime for increase in crime itself. The newspapers are multiplied in number by tens of thousands, and they all tell what happens. It seems as though crime had increased, whereas in reality we have simply increased facilities for letting all the people know what goes on among us. ----

We are shocked occasionally by crimes of poisoning. Go back a few centuries and you find men and women making a regular business of selling poison to those who want to commit murder. The crimes that fill us with horror would not have been noticed in those days.

We hear of a father killing his own child, and we declare that humanity is going to destruction. Yet but a few centuries back and THE LAW RECOGNIZED EVERY FATHER'S RIGHT TO KILL HIS CHILD IF HE CHOSE.

We shudder when we hear that a mother has exposed a new-born child on a doorstep or thrown it into an ash barrel. That is a horrid and unbelievable crime.

But in Rome, before the days of Christianity, there were appointed places where mothers might legally expose their children to destruction. The wild beasts or dogs ate the children thus exposed, and no one was shocked. Whoever might care to take such an exposed child could keep that child for a slave forever. That kind of crime we have outgrown certainly.

The Presbyterian teaching of infant damnation seems to us horrible. We shudder at the statement that God would condemn a helpless baby to eternal punishment simply because it had not been baptized. The idea seems cruel now. But it was invented by the well-meaning early Christians in order to make women give up the legal practice of infanticide. The mother was made to believe that her unbaptized child went to hell, and that she must follow later on for not having had it baptized. Thus women were afraid to expose their children secretly, and infanticide was stamped out by a Christian doctrine which now seems so brutal. ----

And note one thing above all: Crime still lingers among us. But it is now LABELED AS CRIME. We no longer have horrible crimes sanctioned by law.

We read that a criminal has tortured some old man or woman for money--and then murdered the victim. We can scarcely believe in such atrocity. But only a little while ago--barely two centuries-- IT WAS THE REGULAR LEGAL CUSTOM TO TORTURE OLD PEOPLE AND YOUNG.

Poor old women, falsely accused of witchcraft, were burned alive and ducked in this country, while clergymen and magistrates looked on and applauded.

All over Europe innocent witnesses could be tortured to make them give testimony at a trial.

Men accused of no crime whatever were tortured to make them give testimony against others--often when they had no testimony to give. They were hung up by the thumbs, the bones of their legs were crushed in a boot of steel, the soles of the feet were roasted over a brazier of red-hot coals--to make them help convict another.

The noble leaders of the French Revolution abolished such torture of witnesses in France, and they were criticised for doing so by the respectabilities.

"How are you going to convict criminals if you do not torture witnesses?" the respectable element asked. We have got beyond that state of affairs. We hear of murders based on jealousy-- perverted affection. We hear of crimes based on envy--perverted ambition. All of the best elements in man, when perverted and thwarted, lead to crime.

And these perverted passions will continue to breed crime until men shall have learned to regulate society on a basis that will give full and natural play to the forces within us. But organized murder on a really vast scale is practically done away with.

Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon and others like them had great ambition. To gratify their ambitions they forced millions of men to die for them.

Human beings have protected themselves against the murderous ambitions of their great leaders.

The Napoleon of to-day must get a Congress to give him his soldiers.

Public opinion, the ballot and financial science have pulled the teeth of the greatest instrument of crime--the conquering army of ambition.

It is horrible to witness the assassination of a national leader.

The murder of McKinley or Carnot makes republican hopes seem chimerical.

But it must be remembered that not so long ago the head of a government who ESCAPED assassination was the exception. A few centuries back, and murder was the natural end of the average ruler. ----

Murder results first from control of the brain by animal passions. Almost every animal is a murderer, and at stated times murders its own kind. Primitive man is always murderous. Murder results, in the second place, from misdirected forces within us.

Crime will diminish through education, as the mind takes control of us, and through society better organized, which shall give men a chance to develop normally. Thanks to education and to improving social conditions, crime is disappearing, NOT increasing. Even our despondency is comforting. It proves that we have progressed so far as to be horrified at that which we should have taken for granted a few centuries back.

THE VALUE OF POVERTY TO THE WORLD ASK YOUR FRIEND WHAT HE WOULD DO IF HE HAD A MILLION

A majority of men long for a great deal of money.

Each man will tell you that he is struggling along in uncongenial employment; that if he had his way his life would be arranged very differently.

Put to any friend this question:

"What would you do if you had a million dollars?"

You will learn that, first of all, he would get rid of the useful daily plodding that occupies him. Instead of living to work he would live to enjoy himself.

A majority of men are usefully employed because they must work to live.

If we all had our way we should do as we chose, and there would be no progress. Fortunately, the wisdom of Providence keeps the great majority of men poor and usefully busy. ----

This writer asked an able business man, who manages the material success of a great newspaper, what he would do if he had a million dollars. He replied without hesitation: "I would go abroad and spend the rest of my life collecting artistic things and enjoying them."

By his newspaper work, which helps to disseminate truth and to fight privilege, this man renders the greatest possible service to the world. He is head of the commissariat department of an army of righteousness. How fortunate that he cannot abandon his useful work to collect artistic trash that would only make him useless and enrich a few unscrupulous dealers! ----

Joseph Jefferson as an actor has done great good for the world. He has filled hundreds of thousands of young and old hearts with kindly sympathy. He has set a good example to all the actors of the world. He is truly a public benefactor.

If Joseph Jefferson had had a great fortune he would have spent his life painting pictures, for he believes that he was meant to be a painter.

He was not meant to be a painter; if his life had been devoted to painting it would have been wasted.

How lucky that he was not rich enough to be able to waste his life! ----

Often the world marvels that the sons of great and successful men accomplish so little.

The world is foolish. It should marvel that the sons of the rich accomplish anything at all.

For genius has truly been called the capacity to take infinite pains. It is the splendid fruit that grows on the tree of HARD WORK.

Infinite pains and hard work are distasteful to human beings. They are avoided by those who can avoid them. It is lucky for the world that the number of those who can shirk is limited. ----

Dryden tells you in four lines what the actual man would amount to if he had his way.

"My next desire is, void of care and strife, To lead a soft, secure, inglorious life. A country cottage near a crystal flood, A winding valley and a lofty wood."

Every man who could afford it would live for himself, to indulge some useless little tenth-rate part of his brain activity. ----

The world progresses because the wisdom of the universe compels every man to work directly or indirectly for every other man.

If we had our way, if hard necessity did not compel us to do the disagreeable work for which we are fitted, we should all live for ourselves; we should all be mere human sponges, absorbing personal gratification--the progress of the human race would stop.

Let this fact console you when you contemplate with bitterness the few who accumulate great fortunes.

You are a disappointed drop in a great ocean of useful human beings. The interest of the whole ocean demands that you and the vast majority of all other drops should fail to get what you crave--

THE OPPORTUNITY TO BE USELESS.

600 TEACHERS NOW, 600,000 GOOD AMERICANS IN THE FUTURE

On one single day 600 teachers, representing and devoted to the American public school system, sailed for the Philippine Islands.

These 600 teachers, men and women, will do more than 6,000 or 6,000,000 soldiers could do with cannon and Gatling guns to civilize and Americanize the new possessions.

They will teach the inhabitants FACTS. They will give them solid knowledge in place of degrading ignorance and superstition.

They will teach them that the world is round and that every man on it has the same chance, if he will use his brain; that if he himself cannot seize the opportunity it can he seized by the children whose success is as dear to him as his own.

Like all wars, the conquest of the Philippines has had many discouraging and some disgraceful features. The killing of ignorant men and women, the burning of houses, the unnecessary severity, will all be forgotten when the school teachers of America shall have done their work. ----

A great many thoughtless people imagine that the world is retrograding, that times are not as good as they used to be.

We are still far from perfect. But as a matter of fact we are angels compared to the men of olden times. A few years ago the usual course was as follows:

First, soldiers were sent to subdue the people.

Then tax collectors followed with the public executioner, the noose and various ingenious instruments of torture to extract cash payments.

We still send soldiers, but with them we send physicians to cure the wounded; and when the soldiers' work is done we do not send tax collectors or other civil vampires.

We send school teachers, publishers of newspapers, organizers of labor unions. We send those agencies which shall enable the people conquered to make themselves equal or superior to their conquerors.

EDUCATION--THE FIRST DUTY OF GOVERNMENT

We wish to discuss with our readers in this and in later editions of this newspaper the great and serious question of education.

It is a question as broad as the ocean, and as deep. It is a question so vast that organized discussion of it seems hopeless.

The greatest minds of the world have devoted their powers to the intricate question of developing the human brain, and the problem has been scarcely touched.

The greatest works on education in the history of the world are undoubtedly Plato's "Republic," Spencer's "Education" and Rousseau's "Emile." The last is the greatest of all. It should be read by every father and mother and by every earnest citizen.

Other works that may be earnestly recommended are Aristotle's "Politics," Pestalozzi's "How Gertrude Teaches Her Children" and Froebel's "Education of Man."

To Rousseau undoubtedly belongs the high honor of having thought and written most powerfully, most originally and most practically on the greatest of problems. His brain is the cornerstone of the structure of intelligent educational methods.

He foreshadowed in his "Emile" Fourier's splendid principle of "attractive industry." ----

THE PROGRESS OF HUMANITY DEPENDS UPON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN BRAIN THROUGH EDUCATION.

The intricate processes of thinking separate mankind from other members of the animal creation.

Man is far from the animal in proportion as his brain is cultivated. Even the animals themselves rank in their kingdom in proportion to their brain activity.

William T. Harris said truly: "If man had let himself alone he would have remained the monkey that he was. Not only this, but if the monkey had let himself alone he would have remained a lemur, or a bat, or a bear, or some other creature that now offers only a faint suggestion of what the ape has become."

The elephant and the ape, among our humble animal brothers, appear to have reached their limits of possibility in the way of educational development. They still remain, and always will remain, vastly inferior to their microscopic comrades--the ants and bees and other insects.

The human race has barely begun the systematic study of the problem of application, and systematic application of the truths discovered and agreed upon. In proportion to our stature and possibilities we are hideous ignoramuses compared with the ant in the garden path.

The education of children is regulated not by their brain formation and possible development, but by the wealth of their parents, the parsimony of municipalities, the baleful influences of tradition and the colossally stupid idea that thorough brain cultivation is in some way antagonistic to material success.

The greatness of a nation depends upon the average mental power of the nation's citizens, and mental power depends absolutely upon education.

The man who doubts the importance of educating his son thoroughly--if any such man now exists--is invited to consider the following brief statement of facts:

The holders of slaves in the Southern States and outside of America desired to keep their slaves down. They wanted them to be content with slavery. They wanted them and their children to remain willing, humble, helpless machines.

THEY PUNISHED AS A CRIMINAL ANY MAN WHO TAUGHT A SLAVE TO READ. THEY KNEW THAT SLAVERY AND EDUCATION COULD NOT LONG ENDURE IN THE SAME HUMAN BEING. ----

The ignorant man who has succeeded through natural force and lucky opportunity is fond of asking these questions:

"What is the good of education? Of what practical use is scientific training?" These men are admirably answered by Herbert Spencer, to whose work they are referred.

A collection of Englishmen ruined themselves in the sinking of mines in search of coal. They might have saved their money had they known that a certain fossil which they dug up in abundance belongs to a geological stratum below which no coal is ever found. They went on digging cheerfully and wasting their money. An acquaintance with that fossil and its meaning would have saved their cash.

Some individuals spent one hundred thousand dollars trying to save the alcoholic byproduct that distils from bread in baking. They would have saved their money had they known that only a hundredth part of the flour is changed through fermentation.

The study of biology is essential in the successful fattening of cattle.

An "entozoon" seems to the practical man a foolish, imaginary creature. But millions of sheep have been saved by the discovery that one of these fancy scientific entozoa, pressing on the brain, caused the sheep's death. When you know the entozoon you can dig him out and save the sheep's life.

"My son's going to be an artist," says one proud father. "He does not need to study a lot of scientific rubbish."

This parent does not know that the difference between a good and a bad sculptor or painter is often based on knowledge or ignorance of anatomy and mechanical principles. ----

Education is important to the individual because it means development of the brain, development of capacity for production and increased chances of success.

Education is important to the State because it means not only COMPETENT citizens, but MORAL citizens.

The animal in us yields to the influence of education. Knowledge and brutality are enemies. They do not dwell together.

The most important institutions in this country are the public schools--the gymnasiums of human brains. The most important citizens of the nation are the teachers.

The greatest criminals are the employers of child labor, because they deny education, cut down in childhood the citizen's chance of progress and success.

Work and vote for more and better public schools.

POVERTY IS THE FATHER OF VICE, CRIME AND FAILURE

These are days when men do their hardest work for money, when they scramble and struggle and strike each other down in the effort to reach wealth. And it is not possible to blame them. They are trying to escape from poverty, from a disaster worse than any prairie fire or other physical danger.

Dire poverty is the worst of curses. It combines every kind of suffering, physical, mental, moral, and in the end it means either death or degradation.

The great task of humanity is the abolition of poverty. The great benefactors of humanity are the great industrial organizers of this day, because, in spite of individual selshness,{sic} they are planning production on a scale that will in the end provide for all.

It is worth while to discuss and to realize what real poverty means. If we can realize its meaning every one of us must be more anxious to relieve, as far as we can, the poverty around us, and especially anxious to work for the social betterment that shall one day wipe out poverty forever

Poverty means dirt.

The thoughtless and comfortable have a way of saying: "The poor might at least be clean." But cleanliness is a LUXURY; it demands leisure and peace of mind, as well as bathtub, soap, hot water and good plumbing. The very poor cannot be clean.

Poverty means ignorance, and it means ignorance handed down from father to son.

Poverty means drunkenness. The pennies of POOR men and POOR women pay for more than half the vile whiskey, gin and other poisons that men buy to help them forget.

Poverty and its sister, Ignorance, fill the jails and the insane asylums.

Poverty is the mother of disease, and it fills the hospitals.

Tens of thousands of consumptives alone are murdered every year by poverty. They are too poor to do that which is required to save their lives. ----