works and wrote books and comments upon them until near the time of his death a few years ago. Fourier died in 1837, leaving a host of disciples on both sides of the Atlantic, who are now nearly all dead. Brisbane was probably the last of the enthusiastic ones on this side.

Those communities that have been organized on the ostensible foundation of religion have had fair material success during the lives of their leaders and organizers, but the gross immorality which has characterized most of them soon planted the seeds of their decay, and the successors of the original leaders were seldom able to continue the full authority bequeathed to them. This has been the result with the Oneida Community experiment at Oneida, New York, over which a man named John Noyes ruled with a rod of iron for many years. After his death the community collapsed. The Salt Lake experiment in Utah, organized by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, has been handicapped by the strict execution of the laws passed by Congress against polygamy. Young was a man of extraordinary personal power, with great individuality and marvelous magnetic influence over his deluded followers. He found Utah a barren wilderness and left it a fertile garden. He built a temple larger than that of his polygamous prototype, Solomon, although the gold was hardly so abundant in the Utah structure as in the sacred edifice of Lebanon built by the wise king of Israel. At last the nation became disgusted with the whole system, and suppressive enactments were passed by Congress designating polygamy a crime.

My strictures as to immorality do not apply to the Shakers, who have, perhaps, come nearer to success than any modern Even they, however, lack vitality and are rapidly

movement.

dying out.

One of the great elements of disintegration in all of these efforts to organize a community on a permanent basis arises from the dissatisfaction inseparable from the idea of the fruits of one's labor being devoted to persons who put forth no effort to assist the community. This and the strong desire implanted in the human mind for hire and profit as the reward

of labor appear to overcome all the broader intentions of elevating the standard of the whole community and of making the individual sacrifices necessary to accomplish the end. That self-preservation which is the first law of nature would thus seem of itself capable of frustrating every effort to establish a community where the earnings are to go into a common fund, and where the most industrious and frugal individual, as well as the genius, is to be depressed to the working level of the lowest human animal.

The drones are the chief disintegrators of all these social schemes, but the tyranny of the "bosses," which always develops with the possession of power, is a potent factor of destruction by inciting rebellion. The worm will turn when trampled on.

In conclusion, I would say that the privileges connected with the ballot-box make provision for equality and equity as near perfection as any theory that the annihilators can prescribe. With regard to the abuses of trusts and other corporations, the legislation already on the statute books, both national and in most of the different States, together with the provisions of the common law, are pretty nearly sufficient to deal with these matters so as to remedy and correct all abuses.

PART IV.

WALL STREET AND INTERNATIONAL

AFFAIRS.

CHAPTER XXXII.

PEACE AND PROSPERITY.

Some reflections on the horrors of war. - How it ruins material prosperity and degrades humanity. — Remarks on the efforts of the six European powers to put Europe on a peace footing. The favorable influence which the success of the movement would exercise on trade and commerce. Plans for an Anglo-American reunion discussed. — Captain Mahan's views. —A defensive alliance of all civilized nations against a possible invasion of barbarians.

I

TAKE the title of this chapter, "Peace and Prosperity," to be the union of two words that in their meaning can scarcely be disunited. The apparent prosperity that war sometimes brings must be dearly paid for, either by the parties. themselves or their descendants, as in the case of our own Civil War, the debt of which is not yet paid.

Napoleon I. brought the continent at large to a condition of bankruptcy in which France herself was overwhelmed, despite the immense plunder secured by the unexampled avarice of the conqueror; and England, though she emerged victorious out of that terrible struggle, did so only at the expense of a permanent debt, which by certain statesmen has been considered a national blessing, as a means of investment. To me it seems rather that a national debt, instead of being a national blessing, is a national curse of inherited taxation incurred to gratify the ambition of a few individuals, who probably never have to

abate one of their luxuries in consequence of their errors, or of being the instruments of so much entailed misery to millions.

Yet we hear people constantly talking about the glorious achievements of war and the prosperity which attends it. War, in the nature of things, can never bring prosperity except to a comparatively small number of individuals at the expense of taxing an exceedingly large number, together with their offspring for generations. These remarks apply more especially to wars of conquest, wars for sustaining imaginary dignity and wars for prolonging the power and prestige of the reigning monarch or executive when the people are tired of him and he wants some excuse or plausible plea to revive his popularity. Such to a large extent was the Franco-Prussian War provoked by the necessity and ambition of Napoleon III. and the Empress Eugénie, and such would have been the war which might have been fomented with Great Britain by President Cleveland, when with overweening zeal he espoused the cause of Venezuela under the questionable plea that the Monroe Doctrine was dangerously menaced.

It has now been amply demonstrated how easily that AngloVenezuela misunderstanding could have been settled by arbitration, without causing the least disturbance to the business interests of either of the nations concerned; yet before this was made manifest our country had to pass through an expensive panic, which also reflected a very unfavorable influence for a time on the business interests of Great Britain.

Looking at the subjects of peace and war through the medium of business experience, to say nothing of the far greater questions of human happiness and misery involved in their consideration, it is a healthy sign of the times and a forecast of a higher development in civilization to witness the action in the interests of peace and prosperity taken by the six great powers of Europe in the Turko-Grecian affair. Its success proves the possibility of what has been regarded as an impossibility, the harmonious coöperation of the leading powers for the settlement of critical international disputes, even concern

ing matters in which their interests conflict. This is largely a new function in diplomacy, and what was accomplished in the case of this war shows how valuable a concert of this nature may become for the future maintenance of amicable international relations. The concert of the powers has introduced an important element favorable to the creation of permanent political confidence. More than this, it is a great gain for quieting the disturbed state of European politics that the six states directly interested in the long dreaded Eastern question thus were able to discuss freely its involvements and agree upon a common policy to prevent its being made an occasion of common quarrel.

The business interests of every civilized country, and of some that are not civilized in our sense of the term, are so related to one another through the expansion and development of trade and commerce that war has become a far more extensively disturbing element than ever before, and every year of progress renders it more and more so. We have thus arrived at an era in the advance of trade when an outbreak in even the smallest of the nations or a hostile collision with its neighbor is felt as a shock charged with forebodings of evil throughout the civilized world. No matter how free we ourselves may be from the immediate interests and bearings of the quarrel, and no matter how we may be able to profit by it temporarily, owing to its stimulating influence in certain departments of our exports, we nevertheless feel it as a premonitory symptom antagonistic to the interests of business in the long run.

It is to be regretted that the United States Senate did not entertain a more cosmopolitan opinion of the great question of arbitration between this country and Great Britain. In view of the efforts which have recently been exerted to put the nations on a peace footing, it would have been a great honor to this country to have taken the initiative in such a grand international enterprise. The very effort to promote such a laudable design is a record to which future generations will point with pride, and which will illumine the history of that great nation which has so distinguished itself when most of the passing