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So long as the development was purely commercial all changes made in the tariff were for revenue purposes, and it was not till the close of the war of 1812, when the industrial conditions following the Revolution were repeated on an exaggerated scale, that protective legislation was again sought."

THE INCOME TAX.

R. JOHN J. O'NEILL contributes to the Amer

the subject "The Graduated Income Tax," in which he favors strongly the adoption of such a tax as a means of supplementing the revenue derived from the duties after the present session of Congress has revised the tariff. He makes light of all the objections that have been raised against the income tax. The justice and fairness of this tax is so apparent to Mr. O'Neill that he does not consider it necessary to be advocated by extended argument. This tax to be imposed ought, he thinks, be graduated in proportion to the amount of income, and he suggests that a tax of one per cent. should be imposed upon incomes of ten thousand dollars, the rate of tax increasing as the amount of income taxed grows larger, until an income of one hundred thousand dollars would be subject to a tax of ten per cent. Mr. O'Neill argues that a man who enjoys an annual income of one hundred thousand dollars can pay for the purposes of the state ten thousand dollars out of that income without experiencing the smallest hardship in being compelled to pay such tax.

NOT IMPRACTICABLE.

In reply to the charge that the income tax is impracticable, Mr. O'Neill calls to mind that in 1862 our government imposed an income tax, which was continued in force until December, 1871. This tax was at the beginning placed at three per cent. on incomes over eight hundred dollars, and at this rate the sum of twenty millions of dollars was raised in 1864, thirtytwo millions in 1865, and by increasing the rate to five per cent. on sums over six hundred dollars and less than five thousand dollars, and ten per cent. on incomes in excess of the latter sum, nearly seventythree millions of dollars was raised during the year 1866. Mr. O'Neill has no doubt that if an income tax were imposed at the present time it would yield an income far in excess of that derived from it thirty years ago. He shows that in Great Britain, with a population of only about thirty-five millions, about eighty millions of dollars was collected in 1888 by an income tax law, the rate at that time being eight pence on the pound, and the tax levied only on incomes exceeding one hundred and fifty pounds. He states, further, that in Italy, France and Germany experience with this form of tax has led to its permanent adoption.

Mr. O'Neill does not consider that such a tax would be any more open to the objection that it would involve an impertinent prying into the private affairs of a citizen and the necessity of the spy system than the present laws for taxing personal property, or the operation of our present custom laws.

THE JUSTIFICATION OF INTEREST.

THE question, Is it right to take interest ?—once

so laboriously discussed by medieval casuistsis rising again to exercise the consciences of men. In the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Mr. Arthur T. Hadley writes with the aim of showing "that the justification of interest, as an institution, is not to be sought either in the interest productivity of capital or in the difference of value between present and future goods; but in the fact that it furnishes a means of natural selection of employers whereby the productive forces of the community are better utilized than by any other method hitherto devised."

He traces three stages in the development of modern industrial law: "The first, where a man was allowed property as a stimulus to labor and save; the second, where he was allowed profits as a stimulus to exercise skill and foresight in management; and the third, historically almost coincident with the second, where he was allowed to offer interest to induce others to give him the means of exercising his skill and foresight over the widest range."

This is his summing up: "If these views be correct, interest is essentially a price paid by one group of capitalists to another, for the control of industry on a large scale. The system is justified by its effect in the natural selection of employers and methods rather than by any contribution made by the individual receiver of interest to the good of society. The rate of interest does not depend so directly as has been supposed on a general market for capital, but is the result of commutation of profits in particular lines; the terms of this commutation depending upon the relative numbers of those who desire control and those who are willing to part with such control for the sake of avoiding the risks which it entails." INCREASING DIFFICUTLY OF GETTING GOLD.

MR

R. T. A. RICKARD presents in the Engineering Magazine innumerable facts and statistics relating to the mining of gold, which, he holds, is growing more and more difficult each year. In the colony of Victoria, which yields two-thirds of all the Australasian gold, the output has decreased from 3,150,025 ounces in 1853, to 654,456 in 1892. This decline is attributed to the exhaustion of the rich alluvium, to the expense of quartz mining and the limited employment that could be given owing to the lack of capital. Mr. Rickard further says that in California as well as Victoria the rich alluvium has been for the most part exhausted, and he gives the following statistics showing the production from alluvial gravel and quartz veins in California. "In 1851 the entire product, 81,294,700, came from the alluvium, in 1881 it was 18,200,000, and about one-half was of alluvial origin. In 1892 hardly ten per cent. of the production was derived from the gravels. The obstacles raised to the carrying on of hydraulic mining, due to the filling of the river channels by tailings from the mines, caused an immediate diminution of the yield of from six

millions of dollars or more." Mr. Rickard's conclusion is "that while to predict the exhaustion of the gold supply is foolish, it is certainly true that the difficulty of getting gold is daily increasing."

'FEATS AND FOLLIES" OF AMERICAN FINANCE.

WITH

7ITH characteristic plainness of speech and English prejudice about things American, the Investors' Review (London) discourses upon the financial methods of the United States.

"No country, ancient or modern," it affirms, “ever displayed a greater elasticity of resources" than was shown when the United States paid off in less than thirty years a debt of almost £400,000,000. This feat, and the small amount of local indebtedness, is attributed to the system of fixed dates for redemption. "Such a thing as a permanent irredeemable debt does not exist in the American Union." In this excellent management is traced "the influence of the old conservative ideas of the South."

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'On the contrary, the Republican régime, which lasted unbroken in the Union down to the time of the first presidency of Mr. Grover Cleveland, is one of the least satisfactory manifestations of Republican government which is to be found in modern history.

It has been one of the most debased, debasing and corrupt democratic administrations the world has ever seen on a large scale."

The "pension" system is described as "the most gigantic system of public corruption which history has anywhere recorded."

WHAT HAS MADE PROTECTION POSSIBLE.

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The effect of the economic principles which the United States has adopted is held to have been largely disguised by 'the amount of European, and especially British, German and Dutch, money poured into the United States since the close of the Civil War," which is said to have exceeded one thousand millions sterling, and has " supplied the means by which the Union has been able to stand up under burdens which would have crushed any community, young or old, if left entirely to itself." Since the Baring crisis there has been "a slackening off in, if not complete withdrawal of, supplies of European moneys." This has made itself felt in the American crisis of the past summer. Continued for a year or two longer, "it would compel the States to fly to any expedient which will knock down the barriers standing between them and an enormous export trade." But all the follies and cconomic blunders, all the social cankers of the American Union, are but trivialities beside the blood tax to which the leading nations of Europe have to submit in times of peace. In Germany, Austria, Italy and France, and to a smaller extent in every other European State, the devastation of an armed peace becomes every year more agonizing. They must be beaten in any industrial competition with the North American Union when it throws off its shackles."

The reviewer holds, therefore, that "the American people will come through their present currency and

other afflictions with little scathe," and "that the United States gives at the present time, and are likely to continue long to give, the best security available for British capital judiciously invested." But he also urges that "the British public ought to let the American people themselves find the money for new enterprises, no matter how attractively these may be put before them."

THE R

THE HAWAIIAN SITUATION.

HE North American Review contains this month three articles dealing with the Hawaiian situation. The first, by Mr. Eugene Tyler Chamberlain, is entitled the Invasion of Hawaii." In this article Mr. Tyler attempts to show that the dethronement of Queen Liliuokalani and the establishment of an oligarchy on the island of Hawaii were encouraged, if not actually effected, by the presence of a considerable body of the naval force of the United States stationed in the immediate vicinity of the palace and government buildings, where the overthrow of the monarchy was consummated,

His report of the overthrow is as follows: "The recognized government of a nation with which we were at peace had officially notified Minister Stevens, our representative, of its ability to preserve order and protect property. The Vice-Consul-General of the United States, testifies that no uneasiness was felt. at the consulate, and that the landing of the troops was a complete surprise to him. All the signs of street life betoken good order, and, soon after the blue-jackets had trailed their artillery through the streets the population of Honolulu was enjoying the regular Monday evening out-of-door concert of the Hawaiian band. The landing of the troops was promptly followed by the protests of the proper authorities of the kingdom and the island, transmitted officially to Minister Stevens. No evidence has been presented to Commissioner Blount to show that there was any apprehension or any desire for the presence ashore of the men of the "Boston" under arms, except on the part of the members of the Citizens' Committee of Safety. The matter was not referred to at the mass meeting of the foreign population, organized by that committee, and held but a few hours before the troops landed. The Committee of Safety, at whose request Mr. Stevens summoned the troops, did not prefer that request as American citizens.

"The Queen was dethroned and the oligarchy established by proclamation, read by a citizen of the United States, shortly before three o'clock, and recognized, in the name of the United States, by Minister Stevens before it was in possession of any point held in force by the Queen's government. With more prudence Captain Wiltse, in command of the Boston,' declined to recognize it until it came into possession of the military posts of the Queen, as it did by her voluntary surrender of them early in the evening. Her surrender was in terms to the superior force of the United States,' and until such time as the government of the United States shall, upon the

facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representative,' and on this understanding it was accepted by the junta."

Ex-Minister Stevens' Version.

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Hon. John L. Stevens, recently United States Minister at Hawaii, follows with "A Plea for Annexation." After reviewing the events which led to the downfall of Queen Liliuokalani, which Mr. Stevens holds was brought about by her open defiance of the opinions and advice of the best men on the islands, he gives the following version of the establishment of the provisional government: "Amid the exciting events in Honolulu following the revolutionary attempts of Liliuokalani to proclaim a despotic constitution, by which she flung away her crown, a sinall force of marines and sailors was landed from the United States ship 'Boston,' as a precautionary step for the protection of American life and property, and as a safeguard against night incendiarism stimulated by the hope of plunder, greatly feared by many of the best citizens. This was doing precisely what has been repeatedly done in previous exciting days in Honolulu, during a period running back many years. The men of the Boston' came on shore nearly fifty hours after the fall of the queen, in whose defense no effective aid was offered by those who had surrounded her in her carnival of immorality and official corruption. The naval commander and the United States Minister earnestly sought to faithfully carry out the prior rules of the Legation, especially those contained in the last instructions issued to the United States Minister and naval commander, by Secretary Bayard, July 12, 1887. Neither by force, threats, nor intimidation, did the United States officials oppose the fallen queen or aid the provisional government, the latter being supported by the same men, with now increased numbers, who found it imperatively necessary to take despotic power from King Kalakaua in 1887, by the adoption of the reformed constitution, and who crushed out the Wilcox rebellion in 1889. All assertions to the contrary as to the action of the United States officials and marines are absolutely untrue and certain to be swept aside by time and history, however plausibly stated and however strongly these assertions may be supported by the perjured testimony of persons deeply compromised by the vices and unlawful actions of which they had been guilty before Liliuokalani lost her throne."

Restore the "Status Quo."

In the third article Hon. William M. Springer, of Illinois, maintains that it is not a matter of concern of the American people whether the government of Hawaii was a just one, a moral one, or an efficient one, and that we have no more right to overthrow a monarchy in Hawaii because it does not conform to our ideas of a just government than we have to overthrow a monarchy in Canada or Great Britain, or Russia or Turkey, or Spain or elsewhere. The claim that the presence of the United States forces on shore was necessary to the protection of American life and

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property can, in Mr. Springer's opinion, only be supported on the assumption that American citizens were actually in danger in their persons and in their property while peacefully pursuing their business there, and he asserts that no foundation whatever existed for this claim. He states flatly that the people of the United States are not responsible for the kind of government in existence in Hawaii and that it is no concern of theirs whether the government deals justly with its citizens and subjects or not. 66 Whether the government of Hawaii is a good government or a just government is a matter for the people of that island to determine for themselves. There is no divine right of republicanism in this world, any more than there is a divine right of kings. The divinity in all these matters is in the right of the people to govern themselves.

WHAT RIGHT HAVE WE TO INTERFERE?

"Our own right to self-government is no more sacred than the right of the handful of ignorant Hawaiians in the Sandwich Islands to govern themselves. If they prefer a monarchy, feeble and inefficient though it may be, it is their business, and not ours. But it is claimed that the provisional government is one composed of Christians, and that they are representatives of advanced Christian civilization. The United States, being a Christian nation, should sympathize with and render moral and material aid in sustaining that government; and it is alleged that we have no right to consent to its overthrow. It may be conceded, for the sake of argument, that the provisional government is composed of Christians, and that it more nearly corresponds to our ideas of a just government than does the government of the monarchy, but, as suggested before, this is foreign to the controversy. We have no more right to interfere on this ground with the government of Hawaii than we have to interfere with the government of China or Japan or Turkey.

REDRESS THE WRONG.

"The question is frequently asked in partisan papers, How can the monarchy be restored?' Or, By what right does the government of the United States assume to re-establish a monarchy which has been overthrown?' The government of the United States has no more right to establish a monarchy in Hawaii than it has to establish one in Mexico or in Central America. But it is the duty of the United States government, when its agents and representatives have committed a wrong against the government of a friendly power, to redress that wrong, and in this case it can only be accomplished by placing the government in status quo, or in the condition in which it was found at the time the armed forces of the United States were landed upon Hawaiian soil ́ and interposed in the local affairs of the monarchy. We cannot redress the wrong we have committed by merely withdrawing our forces after they have been used for seventy-five days to suppress the existing government and establish a provisional government

in its stead. We must restore to the queen her own armed forces and we must disarm the forces of the provisional government which were armed and equipped by the aid and under the protection of our navies. Anything short of this is a mockery of justice, a disgrace to our diplomacy, is unworthy of a Christian nation, and a travesty upon our devotion to the principles of local self-government.

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If the restoration of the status quo which existed prior to the landing of our forces on Hawaiian soil should result in the restoration of the monarchy, such restoration would only demonstrate the fact that the overthrow of the monarchy was due to our intervention. If it does not result in a restoration of the monarchy, then we have washed our hands of responsibility in the matter, and have vindicated the integrity of our diplomacy and the high character of our government as one which loves justice and maintains international comity. Therefore, it is not the restoration of the monarchy which is in issue, but it is the restoration of the condition which existed prior to the armed intervention of the United States. Justice requires that our government should go back thus far, and when we have thus done justice we are not responsible for the injustice that others may do. We must maintain our integrity as a nation. We must vindicate our regard for the rights of a weak and defenseless government."

OBSTRUCTION IN THE SENATE.

OMMENTING editorially upon the "Obstruc

COMMENTING entity in the Senate," the Yale

Review says:

"Condemn as we will the conduct of the Senators from the silver States, for thwarting the wishes of the country for the sake of a locality-they are only doing in a flagrant case the same sort of thing which is done over and over again in River and Harbor bills and other expenditures of public money. The average Congressman thinks of the good which comes to his district, and not of the harm which comes to the public treasury. If the district can gain at the expense of the nation he deems it his duty to promote such gain. We have had a case of this sort in Connecticut in the last few weeks, where certain towns had paid a large sum of money to have a certain bridge transferred from the charge of the towns to that of the State. The circumstances attending the payment of the money were suspicious; yet most of the towns concerned refuse to investigate the matter for the thinly disguised reason that they got more than their money's worth out of the State treasury. So dear is the privilege of appropriating general funds to special uses that the beneficiaries of such a process shut their eyes not only to the real character of the transaction, but to the means by which it is brought about.

"The silver question in its present form offers an instance of the same general sort. The silver mining districts seem to gain by the continuance of silver purchase; therefore the Senators exhaust every means

to continue such purchase in defiance of the expressed will of the rest of the country. But in the light of Congressional traditions, why should they not do so? If it is right to convert the capital of the country to local or partisan uses under pretext of legislation, it is a very slight sin to exhaust every parliamentary resource to prevent the majority from repealing such legislation."

How to Deal With Filibustering.

Considering, in the Forum, the question "How to Deal with the Filibustering Minority," Mr. John B. McMasters, the well-known American historian, suggests as an effective means that of setting a limit to the time of debate on any given subject. The very fact that a minority exists is held to be the best of all reasons for hearing it, but no reason for permitting the minority to prolong debate indefinitely. "A minority is not to be considered as factious till it ceases to be reasonable and becomes factious. A majority can very easily be in the wrong and ought under no circumstances to act hastily, nor until that great safeguard of representative government, freedom in debate, has been fully respected. The provision, therefore, should be made in full recognition of the fact that a majority may be arbitrary as well as that a minority may be factious; and a certain time fixed during which time no gag, no previous question can apply, and after which a vote must be taken." He does not think it desirable or possible that such a provision should be put in the constitution of the United States, nor does he think it necessary. Obstruction by the minority has been successfully dealt with by Mr. Reed and Mr. Crisp in the House and, declares Mr. McMasters, may be as successfully dealt with in the Senate.

THE PROBLEM OF THE UNEMPLOYED.

THE

`HE ever-recurring question of how to deal with the unemployed is treated by Canon Barnett in the Fortnightly, and by Mr. J. A. Murray Macdonald, M.P., in the New Review. Mr. Macdonald begins by pointing to the effect which machinery has had in increasing the number and relatively decreasing the employment of the population. He contends: "1, That the proportion of the population of the country that finds work in the staple industries is decreasing, while the wealth produced in them is increasing; 2, that the increase in the population does not obtain work under satisfactory conditions in other channels of labor; 3, that the oversupply of labor cannot justly be traced to any fault of the laborer, but to a cause, operating in our industrial system as a whole, over which the laborer has hardly any control."

PUBLISHED ACCOUNTS AND COLLECTIVE CONTROL. The remedy he advocates is "the substitution of such an organization of industry as would lead to a due balance between distribution and production, in place of the present wasteful overproduction."

To this end we first require knowledge of the actual demand and actual supply of a given commodity.

GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF RAILROADS.

A the telegraphs appears as

STRONG argument for the government control

Export and import returns are not enough. "What is needed is a detailed account of the business of each particular firm in each particular industry of the country, and the collection and analysis of these accounts." In order to obtain a balance between the demand and supply of commodities thus ascertained, Mr. Macdonald advocates "the collective control of the production of any particular commodity by the whole body of the producers of that commodity ;" for example, "the collective control of the whole cotton industry of the country by the whole body of those actually engaged in it," or the combination of the Miners' Federation and the Federated Mine Owners. Such an amalgamation would make the miner's connection with the mine as stable as is the mine owner's. His third specific is the eight-hour day for certain trades.

Canon Barnett's View.

Canon Barnett divides the unemployed into two classes, those unable to work and those unwilling to work, requiring respectively relief and discipline. "The danger at hand is," he thinks, "not so much one of abnormal distress as of antagonism." He does not find a solution in shorter hours or new public works, or the holding over to the slack times of winter of all work that can be so arranged, or farm colonies; he condemns outdoor relief to the physically unfit, and "shelters and feeding." He approves of the proposal. "1, That training be offered by Boards of Guardians to all willing to subinit for a certain time to certain regulations; 2, that the parochial authorities reserve its street work-sweeping, cleaning, etc.-for inhabitants in its own district who have occupied tenements for at least twelve months, and that such work be strictly supervised so as to ensure the performance of a full day's task; 3, that those who refuse training and fail at street work be offered the workhouse."

"The Whitechapel guardians are proposing as an experiment to offer willing, able-bodied men-inhabitants of Whitechapel-work on farms in Essex.”

"DO ONE GOOD THING."

The Canon's final advice is to trust less to machinery and more to personal friendship: "The one thing which every one can do and be certain of its use is to make friends with one or two who are in need-to do all necessary for this one or two, and leave off attempting to raise the masses. There would be perhaps more self-denial in the self-restraint than in the sacrifice. It is often less hard for many in these days of bold advertisement to spend themselves on platforms and at street corners, to stand night after night in close rooms feeding hungry hundreds, than to restrain themselves in order to do one good thing. If to-morrow every one who cares for the poor would become the friend of one poor person-forsaking all others-there would next week be no insoluble problem of the unemployed, and London would be within measurable distance of becoming a city of happy homes."

the opening article in Electrical Engineering, the writer being Mr. W. S. Crosby. State control, in Mr. Crosby's opinion, is a theory which cannot be successfully applied in practice. He says in substance: The theory proceeds along the line that the railway should at least do more adapting and that State control can secure that result better than private ownership will do. It being manifest that as a rule a person owning a useful thing can and will insure a better adaptation of it than if some one else owned it, then follows as a plausible theory that any number of persons owning a thing can and will insure to themselves a like advantage, and from this it is but a step to the conclusion that by owning railways the whole people can and will insure to themselves an advantage thereby.

THE GREAT DIFFICULTY.

But the process of adjusting the service of railways to the needs of the people, while it is a process that must go on, is, continues Mr. Crosby, one that is susceptible of acceleration or retardation, and it is one wherein unlimited adaptation on either side is impossible. The rate of adaptation depends upon the efficiency of the management of the railway to that end, and the mere transferring of the title to the whole people will not enlarge its powers in that direction. Then Mr. Crosby proceeds to tell why the people cannot manage railways so efficiently as private owners. "If the people own the railways, the people must manage the railways. How will they do it? By delegated authority. Authority must be limited or it must be unlimited. If the delegated authority of the people for the management of its railways were unlimited, the world had never yet seen the concentration of power that would be in the hands of the man or men who would possess it, and the man has yet to be born who could wield that power to the satisfaction of the people. If that authority is to be limited-and it certainly would be-how and by whom are the limitations to be set? By the peopleand that sounds well; through a vote of Congressand that don't sound so well. That power would be limited by law. Granting that every member of Congress is honest, for which admission may God forgive me; and granting that every member knows the needs of his own constituency in the matter of railway service, for which admission may their constituencies forgive me, even then, what kind of a regulation power for the railways of the United States would acts of Congress be? The question to be decided is the adaptiveness of the railway service to the varied and variable needs of the people; and that adaptiveness lies in the regulative apparatus of the railways, and that regulative apparatus is controlled by law. But a thing to be adaptive must be flexible. Did anybody ever notice anything flexible about a statute law, or a legislative regulation? In

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