Chapter II: Part 2

The flogging begins. It lasts a long time, accompanied by loud laughter, jokes and noise. The student is silent all the time and lies with his face buried in the snow. He is constantly being asked whether he feels allright, and is kicked with the boots on his head.

"Halt!" cries the officer at last, when the whole body of the student has been covered with blood. The excited soldiers do not leave off at once, but continue for some time. At last they stop.

"Please, sir, won't you allow us, too, to have a little game?" smilingly ask a couple of artillery soldiers, saluting the officer.

"Well, have a go at him," says the officer kindly.

The second shift gets to work, and turning up their sleeves, takes over the bloody whips and resumes the flogging of the student, who still, as before, is lying in the snow without uttering a word. Only his body still thrills instinctively as the soldiers get more and more excited and the blows become more and more frequent.

"Sir, we, too, want some of the lark," impatiently interfered some of the dragoons, and having received the permission of the officer, substituted themselves for the artillery men and with new force and zeal began to flog the student, who still lay strictly as before, only his body scarcely moving.

"Well, here you are, you got your higher education--all the three faculties!" somebody joked as the flogging at last stopped and the student lay motionless in the snow.

But he was not flogged to death. He was taken to the other side of the river and there shot.

_II.--Lieutenant Schmidt, of the Sevastopol Mutiny, after being captured._

(From a letter received by Prof. Miliukov from a lady correspondent who saw Schmidt in the Fortress and had the tale from his own lips.)

....He only remembers how the officers of the "Rostislavl" posted him naked, with a broken leg, between two sentries in their mess-room and approached him in turns, shaking their fists in his face and abusing him in the vilest terms. Schmidt's son, who, for some unaccountable reason, had been kept in fortress for two months, said to me: "I cannot tell you how they abused my father, the terms are unpronounceable." Schmidt himself spoke to me sobbingly of the painful treatment meted out to him by the officers.... For twenty-four hours the two of them, father and son, were kept stark naked and without food, under a fierce electric light, on the open deck. They lay together, pressing against each other so as to warm themselves, and everyone who passed looked at them, and those who wanted, abused them. When Schmidt, being wounded, asked for a drop of water, the senior officer shouted at him: "Silence, or I'll stop your gullet with my fist."

PATERNALISTIC GOVERNMENT.

By THEODORE SCHROEDER.

HISTORY serves no purpose to those who cannot, or do not avail themselves of it as a means of learning helpful lessons, for present use. From a few sources not readily accessible to the masses, I have copied a partial summary of paternalistic legislation which even the most devout devotees to mass or ruling class wisdom would now decline to defend.

It is helpful, perhaps, to look back to the persistent fallacious assumption that men can be made frugal and useful members of society by laws and edicts. Every thoughtful student feels sure that future generations will look upon our present efforts to regulate the self-regarding activities of humans with the same cynical leer as that which now flits over our faces as we read the following:--

The earliest sumptuary law was passed 215 B. C., enacted that no woman should own more than half an ounce of gold or wear a dress of different colors, or ride in a carriage in the city or in any town or within a mile of it, unless on occasion of public sacrifices. This law was repealed in twenty years. In 181 B. C. a law was passed limiting the number of guests at entertainments. In 161 B. C. it was provided that at certain festivals named the expense of entertainments should not exceed 100 asses, and on ten other days of each month should not exceed 10 asses. Later on it was allowed that 200 asses, valued at about $300, be spent upon marriage days.

A statute under Julian extended the privileges of extravagance on certain occasions to the equivalent of $10, and $50 upon marriage feasts. Under Tiberius, $100 was made the limit of expense for entertainments. Julius Cæsar proposed another law by which actual magistrates, or magistrates elect, should not dine abroad except at certain prescribed places.

Sumptuary laws, that is to say, laws which profess to regulate minutely what people shall eat and drink, what guests they shall entertain, what clothes they shall wear, what armor they shall possess, what limit shall be put to their property, what expense they shall incur at their funerals, were considered by the Early and Middle Ages as absolutely necessary for the proper government of mankind.

Tiberius issued an edict against people kissing each other when they met and against tavern keepers selling pastry. Lycurgus even prohibited finely decorated ceilings and doors. In England the statutes of laborers, reciting the pestilence and scarcity of servants, made it compulsory on every person who had no merchandise, craft or land on which to live, to serve at fixed wages, otherwise to be committed to gaol till he found sureties. At a latter day, all men between twelve and sixty not employed were compelled to hire themselves as servants in husbandry; and unmarried women between twelve and forty were also liable to be hired, otherwise to be imprisoned. All this, of course, was to compel people of modest wealth to remain among the laboring class purely for their own good. (?) But they were quite impartial in enforcing benefits, since the Star Chamber also assumed to fine persons for not accepting knighthood.

Compulsion was also used at the time of the Reformation, to uphold the Protestant faith and keep people in the right way. Refusing to confess or receive the sacrament was first made subject to fine or imprisonment, and a second offense was a felony punishable by death, and involved forfeiture of land and goods. Those who, having no lawful excuse, failed to attend the parish church, in the time of Elizabeth, were fined twelve pence--at that time a considerable sum. This penalty was afterwards altered to twenty pounds a month, but those were exempted who did not obstinately refuse. The penalty on all above sixteen who neglected to go for a month was abjuration of the realm; and to return to the realm thereafter was felony. And two-thirds of the rent of the offender's lands might also be seized till he conformed.

An ordinance of Edward III., in 1336, prohibited any man having more than two courses at any meal. Each mess was to have only two sorts of victuals, and it was prescribed how far one could mix sauce with his pottage, except on feast days, when three courses, at most, were allowable.

The Licinian law limited the quantity of meat to be used. The Orcian law limited the expense of a private entertainment and the number of guests. And for like reasons, the censors degraded a senator because ten pounds weight of silver plate was found in his house. Julius Cæsar was almost as good a reformer as our modern Puritans. He restrained certain classes from using litters, embroidered robes and jewels; limited the extent of feasts; enabled bailiffs to break into the houses of rich citizens and snatch the forbidden meats from off the tables. And we are told that the markets swarmed with informers, who profited by proving the guilt of all who bought and sold there. So in Carthage a law was passed to restrain the exorbitant expenses of marriage feasts, it having been found that the great Hanno took occasion of his daughter's marriage to feast and corrupt the Senate and the populace, and gained them over to his designs.

The Vhennic Court established by Charlemagne in Westphalia put every Saxon to death who broke his fast during Lent. James II. of Arragon, in 1234, ordained that his subjects should not have more than two dishes, and each dressed in one way only, unless it was game of his own killing.

The Statute of Diet of 1363 enjoined that servants of lords should have once a day flesh or fish, and remnants of milk, butter and cheese; and above all, ploughmen were to eat moderately. And the proclamations of Edward IV. and Henry VIII. used to restrain excess in eating and drinking. All previous statutes as to abstaining from meat and fasting were repealed in the time of Edward VI. by new enactments, and in order that fishermen might live, all persons were bound under penalty to eat fish on Fridays or Saturdays, or in Lent, the old and the sick excepted. The penalty in Queen Elizabeth's time was no less than three pounds or three months' imprisonment, but at the same time added that whoever preached or taught that eating of fish was necessary for the saving of the soul of man, or was the service of God, was to be punished as a spreader of false news. And care was taken to announce that the eating of fish was enforced not out of superstition, but solely out of respect to the increase of fishermen and mariners. The exemption of the sick from these penalties was abolished by James I., and justices were authorized to enter victualing houses and search and forfeit the meat found there. All these preposterous enactments were swept away in the reign of Victoria.

Of all the petty subjects threatening the cognizance of the law, none seems to have given more trouble to the ancient and mediæval legislatures than that of dress. * * * Yet views of morality, of repressing luxury and vice, of benefiting manufacturers, of keeping all degrees of mankind in their proper places, have induced the legislature to interfere, where interference, in order to be thorough, would require to be as endless as it would be objectless.

Solon prohibited women from going out of the town with more than three dresses. Zaleucus is said to have invented an ingenious method of circuitously putting down what he thought bad habits, namely, by prohibiting things with an exception, so that the exception should, in the guise of an exemption, really carry out the sting and operate as a deterrent. Thus he forbade a woman to have more than one maid, unless she was drunk; he forbade her to wear jewels or embroidered robes, or go abroad at night, except she was a prostitute; he forbade all but panders to wear gold rings or fine cloth. And it was said that he succeeded admirably in his legislation. The Spartans had such a contempt for cowards that those who fled in battle were compelled to wear a low dress of patches and shape, and, moreover, to wear a long beard half shaved, so that any one meeting them might give them a stroke. The Oppian law of Rome restricted women in their dress and extravagance, and the Roman knights had the privilege of wearing a gold ring. The ancient Babylonians held it to be indecent to wear a walking stick without an apple, a rose, or an eagle engraved on the top of it. The first Inca of Peru is said to have made himself popular by allowing his people to wear ear-rings--a distinction formerly confined to the royal family. By the code of China, the dress of the people was subject to minute regulation, and any transgression was punished by fifty blows of the bamboo. And he who omitted to go into mourning on the death of a relation, or laid it aside too soon, was similarly punished. Don Edward of Portugal, in 1434, passed a law to suppress luxury in dress and diet, and with his nobles set an example. In Florence a like law was passed in 1471. And in Venice, laws regulating nearly all the expenses of families, in table, clothes, gaming and traveling. A law of the Muscovites obliged the people to crop their beards and shorten their clothes. In Zurich a law prohibited all except strangers to use carriages, and in Basle no citizen or inhabitant was allowed to have a servant behind his carriage. About 1292, Philip the Fair, of France, by edict, ordered how many suits of clothes, and at what price, and how many dishes at table should be allowed, and that no woman should keep a cur.

The Irish laws regulated the dress, and even its colors, according to the rank and station of the wearer. And the Brehon laws forbade men to wear brooches so long as to project and be dangerous to those passing near. In Scotland, a statute enacted that women should not come to Kirk or market with their faces covered, and that they should dress according to their estate. In the City of London, in the thirteenth century, women were not allowed to wear, in the highway or the market, a hood furred with other than lamb-skin or rabbit-skin. In the Middle Ages, it was not infrequent to compel prostitutes to wear a particular dress, so that they might not be mistaken for other women. And this was the law in the City of London, as appears from records of 1351 and 1382.

The views and objects of English legislators as to the general subject of dress, however preposterous in our eyes, were grave and serious enough. They were so confident of their ground that it was recited that "wearing inordinate and excessive apparel was a displeasure to God, was an impoverishing of the realm and enriching other strange realms and countries, to the final destruction of the husbandry of the realm, and leading to robberies."

The Statute of Diet and Apparel in 1363, and the later statutes, minutely fixed the proper dress for all classes according to their estate, and the price they were to pay; handicraftsmen were not to wear clothes above forty shillings, and their families were not to wear silk or velvet. And so with gentlemen and esquires, merchants, knights and clergy, according to graduations. Ploughmen were to wear a blanket and a linen girdle. No female belonging to the family of a servant in husbandry was to wear a girdle garnished with silver. Every person beneath a lord was to wear a jacket reaching to his knees, and none but a lord was to wear pikes to his shoes exceeding two inches. (1463.) Nobody but a member of the royal family was to wear cloth of gold or purple silk, and none under a knight to wear velvet, damask or satin, or foreign wool, or fur of sable. It is true, notwithstanding all these restrictions, that a license of the king enabled the licensee to wear anything. For one whose income was under twenty pounds, to wear silk in his night-cap was to incur three months' imprisonment or a fine of ten pounds a day. And all above the age of six, except ladies and gentlemen, were bound to wear on the Sabbath day a cap of knitted wool. These statutes of apparel were not repealed till the reign of James I.

Sometimes, though rarely, a legislature has gone the length of suddenly compelling an entire change of dress among a people, for reasons at the time thought urgent.

In China a law was passed to compel the Tartars to wear Chinese clothes, and to compel the Chinese to cut their hair, with a view to unite the two races. And it was said there were many who preferred martyrdom to obedience.

So late as 1746, a statute was passed to punish with six months' imprisonment, and on a second offense with seven years' transportation, the Scottish Highlanders, men or boys, who wore their national costume or a tartan plaid, it being conceived to be closely associated with a rebellious disposition. After thirty-six years the statute was repealed. While the act was in force it was evaded by people carrying their clothes in a bag over their shoulders. The prohibition was hateful to all, as impeding their agility in scaling the craggy steeps of their native fastnesses. In 1748 the punishment assigned by the act of 1746 was changed into compulsory service in the army.

Plato says it is one of the unwritten laws of nature that a man shall not go naked into the market-place or wear woman's clothes. The Mosaic law forbade men to wear women's clothes, which was thought to be a mode of discountenancing the Assyrian rites of Venus. The early Christians, following a passage of St. Paul (1 Cor. xi.), treated the practice of men and women wearing each other's clothes as confounding the order of nature, and as liable to heavy censure of anathema.

There was formerly rigorous punishment of persons poaching game with blackened faces. Those who hunted in forests with faces disguised were declared to be felons. And as disguises led to crime, and mummers often were pretenders, all who assumed disguise or visors as mummers, and attempted to enter houses or committed assaults in highways, were liable to be arrested and committed to prison for three months, without bail.

The Mosaic law prohibited the practice of using alhenna, or putting an indelible color on the skin, as was done on occasions of mourning, or in resemblance of the dead, or in honor of some idol. And two fashions of wearing the beard and hair were prohibited, as has been supposed, on account of idolatrous association. Even Bacon said he wondered there was no penal law against painting the face.

(_To be Continued._)

LIBERTY IN COMMON LIFE.

By BOLTON HALL.

IT seems to me that none of us see how far-reaching freedom will be.

The Socialists have abundantly shown that if only the wastes of production and distribution were saved, two or three hours' labor per day would produce all that we produce now. If, in addition to this saving, the land, including all the resources of nature, were opened to labor, so that all workers would use the best parts of the earth to the best advantage, wealth would be so abundant that interest would disappear.

Even now, with increased production, and notwithstanding the restrictions on the issue of money and our crazy banking system, interest is decreasing so that we find it hard to get 4 per cent. here.

Suppose to-day the mortgages and railroad bonds, which are forms of ownership of land, were taken out of the market, what interest could we get? Certainly not one per cent.

Were the restrictions on production of the tariff, taxes on products of labor, patent monopolies, hindrances to the making of money through franchise privileges done away with, and above all were private appropriation of rent abolished, wealth would not be so abundant and so easy to obtain that it would not be worth anyone's while to keep account of what he had "lent" to another. With the disappearance, at once, of interest and of the fear of poverty the motive for accumulations of more than would be sufficient to provide against disability or old age will disappear, while such small but universal accumulations made available by a system of mutual banking will provide ample capital for all needed enterprises.

Co-operation will spring up as a labor-saving device, and the great abilities of the trust managers will be turned to public service instead of public plunder.

Henry George is wrong in thinking that the increased demand for capital due to free opportunities for labor would increase interest. If it did, it would perpetuate a form of slavery. He omits to notice that the very use of the capital would reproduce wealth and capital so much more abundantly that it would destroy the motive for accumulation.

The time will come--it is even now at hand--when dollars and meals and goods will be given to those who ask these as freely as candies or water or cigars are offered to visitors. If I am wrong in this, then I am wasting my efforts, as far as sincere efforts can be wasted.

If Socialism or Anarchism is needed to insure voluntary communism of goods, then it is for Socialism or Anarchism that we should work; and for me, if I could see, I would turn from single tax to either of them as readily as I would turn down hill if I found that up hill was the wrong road.

At present, hardly any one favors these views--of course, not plutocrats, because the doctrine is dangerous; not Socialists, because they think that its words turn Socialists into land reformers; nor Anarchists, because they regard compulsory payment of a fair price for the land one uses as a form of tax; not even single taxers, as yet, because they are wedded to the theory of Henry George.

My only fear, if there be room for fear, is that the new liberty and leisure will come too soon for the sordid people to make a wise use of it. Yet such a fear is like that of a man who should fear that his jaw would grind so hard as to destroy his teeth.

The world is moved by one Spirit, which everlastingly adjusts action against reaction, so that all is and always must be well.

Do not shy at truth for fear of its logical consequence.

STATISTICS.

By H. KELLY.

(_Special Cable Despatch to "The Sun."_)

"LONDON.--The result of the first organized census of the British Empire is issued in a Blue Book. It shows that the empire consists of an approximate area of 11,908,378 square miles, or more than one-fifth of the entire land area of the world.

"The population is about 400,000,000, of whom 54,000,000 are whites. The population is roughly distributed as follows: In Asia, 300,000,000; Africa, 43,000,000; Europe, 42,000,000; America, 7,500,000, and Australasia, 5,000,000.

"The most populous city after London is Calcutta. The highest proportion of married persons is in India, Natal, Cyprus and Canada. The lowest is in the West Indies. Depression in the birth rate is general almost everywhere, but is most remarkable in Australasia. The proportion of insane persons in the colonies is much below that in the United Kingdom. Insanity is markedly decreasing in India, despite consanguineous marriages. Indeed, the theory that such marriages produce mental unsoundness is little supported by these statistics."

To those who read without preconceived notions, the figures given above show how history repeats itself. The British Empire is decaying at the centre, and the census just taken proves it conclusively. The proportion of insane in the colonies, even in poor famine-stricken India, is "much below" that in the United Kingdom. Striking as these figures on insanity are, they convey but a part of the truth as to the real condition of the people of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, as all reference to their material well-being (if we were Christians we would add and spiritual, for over one million people in these countries never heard of God) is carefully omitted. Charles Booth, author of that truly great work, "Life and Labor in London," seventeen volumes, estimates that 30 per cent. of the population of the United Kingdom live in a state of poverty, and Seebohm Rowntree, author of "Poverty, A Study of Town Life," puts it at 27.84 per cent. Mr. Rowntree also states that an average of one person in five, or 20 per cent. of the population, die in some public institution, i. e., prison, poor-house, hospital or insane asylum. These statements are depressing enough as they are, but they become worse when we learn that the standard of living upon which they are based are those enjoyed--we use the word advisedly--by poor-house inmates. Think of this, ye Pharisees, Christian and otherwise, 30 per cent. of the population of the British Isles living under such conditions! These are not the idle statements of long-haired reformers or yellow journalists, but of two very estimable Christian gentlemen, both of them manufacturers and successful business men. They are different from the ordinary exploiter only in the sense of being honest and humane enough to recognize that something is radically wrong with modern civilization and make an earnest attempt to remedy it.

In this connection it is worthy of note that when the proprietors of the London "Daily News" had a systematic canvas and investigation made into the housing conditions in London, some six or seven years ago, it was found that 900,000 people, one-fifth of the population, were living in violation of the law. This was the case notwithstanding that the law says 400 cubic feet of air space for each adult and 200 cubic feet for each child must be provided, whereas Professor Huxley, who at one time was a physician in the East End of London, said at least 800 cubic feet for an adult and 400 cubic feet for a child was absolutely necessary to keep the air in a fair state of purity.

It was and is the proud boast of millions of people that they are co-inheritors of this glorious empire, an empire the greatest the world has ever seen: 400,000,000 souls and an area so vast that the sun never sets on all its parts at one time. Pete Curran, the Trade Unionist and Socialist, once remarked he knew parts of the empire upon which the sun never shone, and Pete knew.

Glory and aggrandizement based upon injustice brings its own reward, and when a people subjugate and exploit another, they must inevitably pay the price of their own brutality and injustice. The handwriting is on the wall in the shape of the present census report. Decaying at the centre, the British Empire is rapidly going the way of the Persian, Greek and Roman Empires, and her name will be synonymous with injustice as theirs are. Nations no more than individuals can thrive, expand and develop their best faculties unless their lives are based upon freedom and justice. Not freedom to exploit a weaker person or people, not justice before the law which is a mockery and a sham, but freedom for each to live his own life in his own way, and justice to all in the shape of equal opportunity to the earth and all it may contain.

This lesson applies equally to America, and if any of my countrymen are so blind as not to see it, they deserve pity rather than censure, and it is to be hoped their awakening will not long be delayed.

GERHART HAUPTMANN WITH THE WEAVERS OF SILESIA.

By MAX BAGINSKI.

WHEN I look at the last engraving in the illustrated edition of "Hannele," at the Angel of Death with the impenetrable brow, over whom Hannele passes into the region of beauty, I have the consciousness, that that is Gerhart Hauptmann, such is the inexhaustible wealth of his inner world.

The stress of the life effort and the certainty of death, groping forth from delicate intimacies, ripened the fineness and sweetness of this man's soul. The picture contains transitoriness, finiteness, yet also a vista of new formation, new land.

Of Gerhart Hauptmann one can say, his art has given meaning to the idea of human love, which in this period is looked upon with suspicious eyes as a bad coin, a new impetus, the reality and symbolic depth of which grips the heart. Out of his books one can draw life more than literature. A strong soul-similarity with Tolstoi might be observed, I think, if Hauptmann were a fighting spirit.

I met the poet among the weavers of the Eulengebirge, Silesia, in the districts of greatest human misery, February, 1891, in Langenbielau, the large Silesian weaving village. One evening, on my return from a journey, I was informed that a tall gentleman in black had inquired for me. The name of the stranger was Gerhart Hauptmann, who came to study the conditions of the weaving districts. The visitor had taken lodgings in the "Preussischen Hof," where I called on him the same evening, with joyous expectation. The name of Gerhart Hauptmann in those days seemed to contain a watchword, a battle call: not only against the unimportant thrones of literature at that time but also against social oppression, prejudices and moral crippling. Hauptmann's first drama, "Vor Sonnenaufgang," had just appeared and been produced by the Free Stage in Berlin; and had operated like an explosive. It was followed by a flood of vicious and vile criticism. The literary clique little imagined that the future held great success for such "stuff" both in book form and on the stage.

This lamentable lack of judgment misled the various pot-boiler writers to attack the new tendency with the most repulsive arguments. One leading paper of those days wrote of Hauptmann as an individual of a pronounced criminal physiognomy, of whom one could expect nothing else but dirty, appalling things.

Such literary highway assaults made one feel doubly happy over the fact, that together with Hauptmann were a few splendidly armed fighters, like the aged Fontane, with his great poise and fine exactness.

The first impression of Hauptmann was that he was not a man of easy social carriage, rather discreet, almost shy, and uncommunicative. An absorbed, deep dreamer, yet a keen observer of the human all too human, not easily led astray, not Goethe, rather Hoelderlin.

The guest room of the "Preussischen Hof" contained many empty benches. The keeper thereof had ample time to meditate over the mission of the strange gentleman, in the weaving districts. I learned the next morning that he had quite decided that Hauptmann was some government emissary, intrusted with examining the prevailing distress of the weavers. One thing, however, appeared suspicious, the man associated with the "Reds," who, according to the government newspaper, only exaggerated the need and poverty to incite the people for their own political ends.

Whether or not the misery of the weavers that winter had reached such a point as to warrant an official investigation, had been the topic of discussion for weeks. The State Attorney, too, had taken an active part in the matter. The criticism in the labor paper, "The Proletarian," of which I was the editor, that the exorbitant profit-making methods of the manufacturers, which left the workers nothing to live on, were met with a number of indictments against the paper on the following grounds: "It was indictable to incite the public at the moment when the prevailing poverty was in itself sufficient to arouse the people and cause danger; that this was criminal, and therefore punishable. The distress was thereby officially acknowledged; was that not sufficient? Why then hold the conditions up before the special attention of the people?"

We mapped out a tour through the home-weaving settlements. At Langenbielau, the textile industry had to a large extent been carried on in mills and factories and at a higher wage. Misery was not so appalling and hopeless there, as in the huts of the home weavers.

The following days unrolled a horrible picture before the eyes of the poet. The figures of Baumann and Ansorge from his play "The Weavers" became real.

With mute accusation on their lips, they moved before the human eye in tangible shape; yet one longed to believe they were only phantoms. They lived, but how they lived was a burning shame to civilization. Huts, standing deep in the snow, like whitened sepulchres, and despair staring from every nook, in these days of paternal care, just as at the time of the famine that swept across the district in 1844.

Strewn among the hills and valleys lay bits of industry that had been passed by technical progress, as so many damned, spooklike spots; and yet those, who vegetated, worked and gradually perished here, were compelled to compete with the great productive giants of steel and iron machinery.

The poet entered these homes not with the spirit of a cool observer, nor as a samaritan,--he came as man to man, with no appearance of one stooping to poor Lazarus. Indeed, it seemed as though Hauptmann walked with a much steadier gait in the path of human misery, than on the road of conventionality.

Steinseifersdorf, situated beyond Peterswaldau. A bare snow field, spread about huts of clay, shingles and branches, without a sign of life. Neither a cat, dog nor sparrow, not even chimney smoke, to indicate the activity of the inhabitants. Heated dwellings in this stretch of land are luxuries, difficult of achievement; and how is one to prepare a warm meal out of nothing?

We attempted to enter one of the huts to the right; there was no path leading to it, so that we were compelled to work our way through the deep snow. Was it possible that human beings breathed within? The old weather-worn shanty looked as if the slightest breeze would tumble it over. The few wooden steps, leading to the entrance, creaked underneath our steps, and our knock was met with dead silence. We knocked again, and this time heard a faint step slowly moving toward the door; a heavy wooden bolt was moved aside, and we perceived a human face, with the expression of a wounded, frightened animal. Like a delinquent, caught at the offense, the human being at the door stared at the invaders. Not a ray of hope enlivened the dead expression. No doubt the man had long ceased to expect amelioration of his needs from his fellow beings. The figure was covered with rags, and what rags! Not the kind of rags, that tramps wear and which they throw off when luck strikes them, but eternal rags, that seemed to have grown to the skin, to have mingled with it so long that they had become part of it,--disgustingly filthy, but the only cover he had and that he could not throw away.

The man, about fifty years of age, was silent and led us through a dirty, cold gray entry into a room. In front of the loom we observed the drooping figure of a woman, a cold oven, four dirty, wet walls, at one of them a wooden bunk also covered with rags that served as bedding; nothing else. The man murmured something to the woman, she rose; both had inflamed eyes, water dripping from them with the same monotony as from the walls.

Hauptmann began to speak hesitatingly, depressed by the sight of such misery. He received a few harsh replies. The last piece of cloth had been delivered some time since; there was neither bread, flour, potatoes, coal nor wood in the house; in fact, no food or fuel of any sort. This was said in a subdued, fearful voice, as if they expected severe censure or punishment. Hauptmann gave the woman some money. The thought of going without leaving sufficient for a supply of food at least for the next few days, was agony.

On the widening of the road stood the village inn. The guest room showed little comfort, the innkeeper looked worn and in bad spirits. No trade. Innkeepers of factory towns are better off. They can afford guest rooms of a higher order, since they enjoy the patronage of bookkeepers, clerks and teachers. In Steinseifersdorf one had to depend on the weavers, and that did not bring enough for a square meal, especially in the winter. The wife of the innkeeper assured us that the misery in Kaschbach, a neighboring village, was even greater, even more awful. It was getting late, so we decided to go there the following day.

Our conversation on our ride homeward dwelt on the fate of these unfortunates, condemned by modern industrialism to a life of the Inferno. I asked Hauptmann what an effect an artistic, dramatic representation of such a fate could possibly have. He replied that his inclinations were more for summernight's dreams toward sunny vistas, but that an impelling inner force urged him to use this appalling want as an object of his art. As for the hoped-for effect, human beings are not insensible; even the most satisfied, the most comfortable or rich must be gripped in his innermost depths when pictures of such terrible human wretchedness are being unrolled before him. Every human being is related to another.

My remark that the right of possession has the tendency to blind those who are part of it, Hauptmann would not accept as generally true. He was anxious to bring the sympathies of the wealthy into energetic activity; sympathies that would, of course, bring to the poor real relief from their hideous conditions. He added that the poverty of the masses had at times tortured him to such an extent that he was unable to partake of his meals, which were meager enough, especially during his student life in Zurich; yet he had felt ashamed of partaking of such a luxury as a cup of coffee even. I had to admit that I could not share his hopes of the influence of an artistic portrayal of the sufferings of the weavers upon the people of wealth. Self-satisfied virtue is hard to move. Rather did I believe that a great work of art, treating of the life of the masses, was bound to rouse their consciousness to their own conditions.

At that time, I believe, Hauptmann had already completed his "Weavers." His journey into the weaving district was not to collect material for the structure of that tremendous play, rather than it was devoted to details, localities and landscapes. He had already drawn up the outline for his other play, "College Crampton," portraying a genial and joyous man, of whom narrowness and miserableness of surroundings make a caricature and who is finally wrecked.

Langenbielau, after our journey through the Golgatha of poverty, seemed a place of relief. The mills, with the increasing noise of machines that dulls the ears and racks the nerves, are by no means an elevating sight, but they bring the workingmen together and awaken their feeling and understanding of solidarity and the necessity for concerted action. Here, in spite of sunken chests, great fatigue, poor nourishment, one felt the breeze of the struggling proletarian mind that indicated a new land of regeneration, beyond the misery of our times.

For one of the evenings a gathering of the older weavers was arranged. Hauptmann had a plate set for each one. During the meal a lively discussion developed. There was one weaver, Mathias, very bony, and with a skin like parchment, very poor, but blessed with many children. He related of a bet he had won. The owner of the tavern where we were having our feast had expressed doubt as to the ability of Mathias to consume three pounds of pork at once. He volunteered to do it, if the meat would be paid for and a quantity of beer added to it. A neighbor was intrusted with the preparation of the roast. At the appointed hour Mathias appeared, together with two other men as witnesses of the contest. The prize eating began, when Mathias was confronted by an obstacle: Five children belonging to the neighbor surrounded the table, with their eyes widely opened at the unusual sight of a roast. Their little faces expressed great desire and their mouths began to water. The prize eater felt very uncomfortable before the longing look of the children. He imagined himself a hard-hearted guzzler, only concerned about his own stomach. He forgot the bet, cut up some of the meat and was about to place it before the children, when a howl of protest arose. This was not permitted, if he wanted to win he would have to eat the entire roast himself. Mathias submitted, but dropped his eyes in shame before the children. Time and again he involuntarily passed portions of meat to them, but his attempts were frustrated by renewed protests. He could not continue, however, until the little ones were taken out into the cold. There was no other place, since the only room was taken up by the parties concerned in the contest. They might have been put into the cold, dark garret, but that would have been too cruel and would have made Mathias unable to carry out the feat. The undertaking was finished, but the winner felt quite wretched; he was conscious of having committed a great sin against the simplest of human demands.

The conversation turned to the uprising of the weavers in 1844. Many incidents of those days were related. Various legend-like and fantastic stories told. Also names of people of the neighborhood who had participated in that historic event.

The entire affair was very informal and simple, and not an atom of the oppressive atmosphere one feels in the relations between the members of the upper and lower stations of life.

The next morning we started for Kaschbach. The place looked even more dismal than the one we had visited the day previous. In one of the huts a weaver, with a swollen arm in a sling, led us into a corner of the room. On a bunk covered with straw and rags lay a woman with a little baby near her. Its body was covered with a terrible rash, perfectly bare, almost hidden within the floor rags. The shy father, himself in pain, stood near, the personification of helplessness. If only there were food in the house! The district physician? He would have been compelled to prescribe food, light, warmth and sanitation for every hut he visited, if he did not wish his science to prove a mockery. He could not do that, so he came but rarely. Humanitarianism, thus far your name is impotency! All that could be done was to leave money and hurry out into the air.

The next abode might be considered pleasant compared with the previous one. Two elderly people, not so worn and wan, and not so ragged. The man was weaving, still having some work at times; his wife, very pleasant and amiable, was almost ready to praise the good fortune of their home. "We are better off than our neighbors," she said with some pride. She pointed to a freshly cut loaf of bread, to the fire in the oven, to a table and a real bed--a great fortune, indeed. The walls were covered with some colored prints, representing virtue, patience, endurance to the end. One picture showed the return of the prodigal son, one the ejection of Hagar from the house of Abraham. Our hostess could boast of the luxury of a coffee mill even, and, after she had ground and brewed the coffee, we were invited to partake of it, which we gratefully did. Local and general affairs were talked over; the man, quite talkative, but careful and reticent in his remarks, especially when religious and political questions were approached. His remarks were kept within careful lines so as not to offend. Hauptmann said afterwards that he had noticed such cautiousness in all weavers. No doubt it had grown out of the great poverty that often brought out diffidence and reticence toward strangers.

Hauptmann sat on a low stool, and, while we were sipping our coffee, the woman petted him tenderly on the brow. "Yes, yes, young man, Want, the awfulness of Want, but we cannot complain." At our departure, she pointed to a hut nearby and said: "The people in there are nearly starved." It was not exaggerated. When we entered, we saw a woman in the dismal gray of the room, surrounded by a number of crying children. Two or three of the maturer girls, thin and pale and drawn out by the Procrustean bed of poverty, secretly wiped the last drops of tears from their suffering faces. Hunger reigned supreme within these walls. The woman, in the last stage of pregnancy, suffered the keenest under the lamentations of the younger children, to whom she could give no food. The husband had been gone two days on a begging tramp. He would surely bring home something, though it was very difficult to get anything in this neighborhood. One must tramp a long distance for a piece of bread. Yesterday they could still obtain a few potatoes, but to-day she had nothing more to give, nor did she know what to tell the children. She had implored the minister to let her have something to eat, if only a few morsels, but he had nothing himself, he said. The tightly pressed lips of the older girls trembled violently, every breath of the family was despair. Our presence had silenced the cries of the children with the frost-bitten faces, but when we left, they again would tear the heart of their mother, their weak little voices calling for bread.

No one could expect such fatalism from these starving little ones, that they should coolly and philosophically analyse the "economic necessity" that condemned their parents to a desperate battle with hunger. The only thing that could perform miracles here was a coin. The poor woman did not dare to believe that she actually held one in her hand. That which was to secure these unfortunates relief from death, at the same moment fostered elsewhere conceit, corruption and extravagance, and is being used for the conversion of heathen to brotherly love. The terrible sight of this mother and her little ones conjured up the heartlessness and emptiness of all philanthropy and charity for dumb misery. Greatest of all social crimes, that makes the possibility of stilling the hunger of the little children dependent on money.

One morning Hauptmann and I went on foot to Reichenbach, where I introduced him to an old weaver, a Socialist, who had participated in the co-operative scheme proposed by Bismarck. The old man had much of interest to relate of this venture, that had been very meagerly assisted by the government. He said that the association could have survived, had it not been for the conspiracy of the manufacturers, who had a large capital at their disposal. The result of this, for the co-operative movement, was the closing of the market. At one time all the weaving products sent to the Leipzig Fair had to be transported back; a clandestine but effective boycott had made the sale thereof impossible. With much more gusto he related the days of Lassalle's agitation--that had brought life into the still limbs of the masses, a great change had seemed to be at hand. The wife of our old friend, too, had hoped for the change; but now, she remarked somewhat resigned, "we old people would rejoice if we were confident that the young generation would live to bring about the change."

In this house we met a widow with a thirteen-year-old daughter. Hauptmann found the child very striking. She had beautiful, soft, golden-blond hair, deep-set eyes and a very delicate, pale complexion. I learned later that he sent her occasional gifts. And when I read "Hannele" I could not rid myself of the thought that the vision of this child from Reichenbach must have haunted him when he created this drama.

That was my last outing with Hauptmann in the textile regions. A few months later I visited him at his home, located in the woods, close to the edge of a mountain.

Still later, when I was serving a term of imprisonment at the Schweidnitzer prison for my sins in exercising too much freedom of the press, I was overjoyed one morning by the news that Hauptmann had sent me a box of books. Through his kindness, Gottfried Keller, Konrad Ferdinand Meyer and other authors have illumined many dreary days of my cell life.

All the books reached me safely but the "Weavers," which had just been published at that time, and that I could not get hold of, in spite of every effort. The inspector had strict orders to consider that book as contraband.

Every time I went into the office to change one book for another, I saw the "Weavers" on the table. The temptation to shove the book under my jacket at an opportune moment was very great and trying, but unfortunately the State Attorney had instilled the idea into the head of the inspector that it was a very dangerous work; he never took his eyes from it.

Gerhart Hauptmann remained to the Schweidnitzer prison administration the most dangerous, prohibited author.

DISAPPOINTED ECONOMISTS.

Teachers and economists represent the bees as models of diligence. Behold how these little hard workers gather the honey together! Not a sign of obstinacy. They never insist on a certain number of hours for their workday, nor do they crave time for leisure, meditation or rest. Indeed, they employ all their energies, so that the owner of the beehive shall gain high profits.

No matter if they gather a thousandfold as much honey as they can consume, they never seek iniquity. Man takes all their wealth from them, and in the spring, in the beautiful month of May, when the flower cups begin to fill, the little hustlers resume their work again without complaint and without murmur.

Probably some economists regret that workmen are not endowed by nature with such an instinct for work as would let them feel nothing else but the desire to accumulate wealth for others.

It is too bad, indeed, that house builders, railroad workers, miners, garment workers and farmers are creatures with thinking faculties. That they should be able to analyze, to compare, to draw conclusions is really very unfortunate for the "Captains of Industry."

Next to the bee, the Asiatic coolie is the favorite ideal of the every-day economist. In one respect he surpasses the bee--he does not destroy drones.

How smoothly everything might run along in this world of material supremacy, if only the workers were made up of such a desirable mixture as the bees and coolies.

Fortunately, Fate hath not willed it so.

VITAL ART.

ANNY MALI HICKS.

IN order to estimate the value of any movement, whether social, economic, ethical or esthetic, it must be studied in its relation and attitude to general progress. Its effectiveness should be judged by what it contributes to the growth of the universal conscience. That "no man liveth unto himself alone" is never so true as now, because now it is more generally realized. Therefore, any expression which concerns itself solely with its own special field of action finds itself soon set aside, and presently becoming divorced from reality, ends as a sporadic type. Any expression, however, which responds to the larger life gains a vitality which insures its continuance.

Thus, the effort to apply certain truths not new in themselves, is a tendency to work in harmony with progress. The effort to apply principle, however imperfectly expressed, is important, not because of its results, but because of the desire to relate theory and action in a conduct of life. Almost every type of expression is undergoing its phase of application. Esthetics have somewhat aligned themselves to the others, but at last there is a movement, known as the arts and crafts movement, more properly called applied esthetics, which is the effort to relate art to life. The old banality, "Art for Art's sake," is obsolete, and the vital meaning of art is in a more rational and beautiful expression of life, as it were, the continent art of living well.

This is the ideal and educational aspect of applied esthetics. Within the limits of its exclusive circle and within the radius of its special activities there is a trend to contentment with the production of objects of "worth and virtue." The object of luxury, which in fact has no vital meaning to either the producer or consumer. Were the production of such things to be its only aim, it would soon defeat its own end. But this movement has in reality wider and more democratic ideals. Because of its power to stimulate self-expression and the creative impulses, its greatest and most vital influence is more social than artistic. It principally concerns itself with the desire of the worker to express in his work whatever impulse for beauty may be his. There is no surer way of feeling the pressure of present economic conditions. The value of applied esthetics is as a medicine to stir up social unrest and discontent. Its keynote is self-expression, and it is when men and women begin to think and act for themselves that they most keenly feel social and economic restrictions, and are made to suffer under them. But if suffering is necessary to growth, let us have it and have it over with by all means. No sane being will stand much of it without making an effort to get at its cause. It has been said that the most important part of progress is to make people think; it is vastly more important that they should feel. The average individual is not discontented with his surroundings, else he would go to work to change them. As a product of them he is benumbed by their mechanical influence, and consequently expresses himself within their limits. He is the mouthpiece of existing conditions, and, accordingly, acts in law-abiding fashion.