with these great corporations, then, no matter what our reverence for the past, our duty to the present and the future will force us to see that some power is conferred upon the National Government; and when that power has been conferred, then it will rest with the National Government to exercise it. At present we will do the best we can with strawless bricks; but remember that it is not our fault that they are strawless.

FROM THE FITCHBURG SPEECH

If some of those who have seen cause for wonder in what I have said thus far on the subject of the great corporations which are popularly, although with technical inaccuracy, known as trusts, would take the trouble to read my messages when I was Governor, what I said on the stump two years ago, and what I put into my first message to Congress, I think they would have been less astonished. I said nothing on the stump that I did not think I could make good, and I shall not hesitate now to take the position which I then advocated. I am even more anxious that you who hear what I say should think of it than that you should applaud it. . . . I am not going to try to define with technical accuracy what ought to be meant when we speak of a trust. Normally, in popular parlance, men mean the great corporations through which so large a proportion of the work of the business world is now done. But if by trust we mean merely a big corporation, then I ask you to ponder the utter folly of the man who, either in a spirit of rancor or in a spirit of folly, says, "Destroy the trusts," Destroy the trusts," without giving you an idea of what he means really to do. I will go with him if he says destroy the evil in the trusts, gladly. I will try to find out that evil; I will seek to apply remedies, which I have already outlined in other speeches. But if his policy, from whatever motive, whether hatred, fear, panic, or just sheer ignorance, is to destroy the trusts in a way that will destroy all our prosperity

ing a prosperity in which the majority share, but in which some share improperly, why, as sensible men, we must decide that it is a great deal better that some people should prosper too much than that no one should prosper enough. So that the man who advocates destroying the trusts by measures which would paralyze the industries of the country is at best a quack, and at worst an enemy to the Republic.

Now you can look back but nine years to a period when no trust flourished. In 1893 there was no trouble about anybody making too much money. The trusts were down, but the trouble was that we were all of us down. Nothing but harm to the whole body politic can come from ignorant agitation, carried on partially against real evils, partially against imaginary evils, but in a spirit which would substitute for the real evils, evils just as real and infinitely greater. Those men, if they should succeed, could do nothing to bring about a solution of the great problems with whch we are concerned. If they should destroy certain of the evils at the cost of overthrowing the well-being of an entire_ country, it would mean merely that there would come a reaction in which they and their remedies would be hopelessly discredited. . . . Now, it does not do any body any good, and it will do most of us a great deal of harm, to take steps which will check any proper growth in a corporation. We wish not to penalize but to reward a great captain of industry or the men banded together in a corporation who have the business forethought and energy necessary to build up a great industrial enterprise. Keep that in mind. A big corporation may be doing excellent work for the whole country; and you want, above all things, when striving to get a plan which will prevent wrong-doing by a corporation which desires to do wrong, not at the same time to have a scheme which will interfere with a corporation doing well, if that corporation is handling itself honestly and squarely. Now, what I am saying ought to be treated as simple, elementary truths. The only reason it is necessary to say them at all is that apparently some people forget them. ... Something more, I believe, can be done by National legislation. When I state that, I ask you to note my words.

I say I

believe. It is not in my power to say I know. When I talk to you of my own executive duties, I can tell you definitely what will and what will not be done. When I speak of the actions of any one else, I can only say that I believe something more can be done by National legislation. I believe it will be done. I think we can get laws which will measurably increase the power of the Federal Government in dealing with corporations; but, gentlemen, I believe firmly that in the end there will have to be an amendment to the Constitution of the Nation, conferring additional power upon the Federal Gov ernment to deal with the corporations. To get that will be a matter of difficulty and a matter of time. . . . I want you to think of what I have said, because it represents all of the sincerity and earnestness that I have, and I say to you here from this platform nothing that I have not already stated in effect, and nothing that I would not say at a private table with any of the biggest corporation managers in the land. FROM THE BANGOR SPEECH

The prerequisite to doing good work in the field of philanthropy, in the field of social effort, undertaken with one's fellows for the common good, is that it shall be undertaken in a spirit of broad sanity no less than of broad and loving charity.

The other day I picked up a little book called "The Simple Life," written by an Alsatian, Charles Wagner, and he preached such wholesome, sound doctrine that I wish the book could be used as a tract throughout our country. To him the whole problem of our complex, somewhat feverish modern life can be solved only by getting men and women to lead better lives. He sees that the permanence of liberty and democracy depends upon a majority of the people being steadfast in that good, plain morality which, as a National attribute, comes only as the result of the slow and painful labor of centuries, and which can be squandered in a generation by the thoughtless and vicious. He preaches the doctrine of the superiority of the moral to the material. He does not undervalue the material, but he insists, as we of this Nation should always insist, upon the infinite superiority of the moral and the sordid destruction which comes upon either the Nation or the individual

if it or he becomes absorbed only in the desire to get wealth.

The true line of cleavage lies between the good citizen and the bad citizen; and the line of cleavage may, and often does, run at right angles to that which divides the rich and the poor. The signs of virtue lie in man's capacity to care for what is outside himself. The man who gives himself up to the service of his appetites, the man who the more goods he has the more he wants, has surrendered himself to destruction. It makes little difference with him whether he achieves his purpose or not. If his point of view is all wrong, he is a bad citizen, whether he be rich or poor. It is a small matter to the community whether, in arrogance and insolence, he has misused great wealth, or whether, though poor, he is possessed by the mean and fierce desire to seize a morsel, the biggest possible, of that prey which the fortunate of earth consume. The man who lives simply and justly and honorably, whether rich or poor, is a good citizen. Those who dream only of idleness and pleasure, who hate others and fail to recognize the duty of each man to his brother, these, be they rich or poor, are the enemies of the State.

The misuse of property is one manifestation of the same evil spirit which under changed circumstances denies the right of property because this right is in the hands of others. . . . Material prosperity becomes the one standard, alike. for those who enjoy such prosperity in slothful or criminal ease, and for those who in no less evil manner rail at, envy, and long for it. Poverty is held to be shameful, and money, whether well or ill gotten, to stand for merit. Now, all this does not mean condemnation of progress. It is mere folly to try to dig up the dead past, and scant is the good that comes from asceticism and retirement from the world. But let us make sure that our progress is in the essentials as well as in the incidentals. Material prosperity without the moral lift toward righteousness means a diminished capacity for happiness and a debased character. The worth of a civilization is the worth of the man at its center. When this man lacks moral rectitude, material progress only makes bad worse, and social problems still darker and more complex.

A

MONG the most interesting religious bodies in the United States I should count the so-called fraternal insurance organizations. Strictly, these are not sects, of course, yet they have many characteristics that give them a resemblance to denominational bodies. Indeed, each of the most important marks of distinction which exclude them from being popularly classed among the sects that they disclaim all connection with the Church, that no denomination "fellowships" them, that they have no order of clergy, and that they do not usually hold their stated meetings on Sunday-can with equal truth be attributed to some Christian denomination. On the other hand, almost all of them have a more or less avowedly religious basis. Some of them are nominally theocratic, each having its own epithet, appropriate to its general nomenclature, which it applies to God. The order which does not place belief in deity and in immortality among its principles is exceptional. Possibly this is because insurance and relief, which it is the object of such associations to promote, center about the fact of death. Like the religious impulse, the ethical idea of the Church and the fraternities is largely identical in terms, even to the cant title "brother."

More obvious resemblances to religious denominations, however, have come from the adoption or imitation by the orders of what in the Church are called "the means of grace"-the Bible, common worship, and personal piety. The promoter of one of these orders, for instance, told me that he began by selecting a book as a basis. More's "Utopia" was his choice. Then he prepared a ritual, formulated according to the ideas and in the very phraseology of the book. Wherever now that order has spread-chiefly in the Middle West-there are men whose feeling towards More's "Utopia" might be described not inaptly as personal devotion. Other orders have their own scrip

tures, their own rituals, and their own brands of piety. "In fact," the disciple of More said, with a smile, after describing an organization named and patterned in accordance with one of Scott's novels, "it is not uncommon for members to be heard saying, 'I mean to read my Ivanhoe more!' or, 'If we only lived up to our ritual l'-just like a woman in a prayermeeting!"

The real religious significance of these orders seemed to me strangely overlooked by most of the church people with whom I talked on the subject in various parts of the country. As a rule, it seemed, according to their view, to consist in the degree in which these orders competed or cooperated with the churches. In one place I would be told that for many men they took the place of the churches-as the real guides of moral conduct, inculcating a sort of remunerative altruism; the real teachers of religion, inculcating in place of faith a vague belief in the existence and benevolence of God; and the real leaders of worship, supplanting the clergyman even in the ministrations for the dead. In another place, on the contrary, I would be told that they made deeper the ethical teaching of the church, reinforced its religious influence, and cooperated with it in public worship. The more fundamental significance of fraternal organizations, as I learned of them, certainly quite irrespective of locality, may be stated as threefold. First, they show that men, when left quite free of any ecclesiastical direction, are still strongly governed by religious conceptions, however vague and undeveloped. Second, they illustrate how widespread and spontaneous is the impulse to express religious and ethical ideas by ritual, however crude and artificial. Third, they express concretely, though in a rather one-sided and selfish form, that social consciousness which has too often been left by the churches without any other religious or ethical expression. In one respect, how

Distinctively ecclesiastical bodies have become so numerous in the United States that the mere brief mention of each of those I chanced to meet with during my journey would require an article by itself wholly encyclopædic in character. The most depressing impression I received, as the result of my trip, was caused by hearing the claim of one sect after another to be the most truly representative of the real Christianity of Jesus and the Apostles. By meeting in person and in somewhat rapid succession, as I did, actual representatives of many different theologies, I heard, as it were, the clamor of creeds, and saw the bewildering confusion of sects that has been the result, under the conditions of absolute religious freedom peculiar to America, of the popular Protestant conviction that salvation depends upon the acceptance of correct dogmas. Of the sects that came to my knowledge there are two distinct types. One depends for its existence upon the identification of Christianity with some invented or resuscitated doctrine or body of doctrines; the other depends for its existence upon the inert continuity of an organization which has largely lost its historic reason for separate existence. Of the former type, Christian Science, the Christian Catholic Church in Zion, and the Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints afford examples; of the latter type, the Friends and the Moravians.

In view of the rapid spread of Christian Science, it was somewhat surprising to me that I made the acquaintance of only a single votary of Mrs. Eddy's cult, and that was in Maine, on the first day of my

suppose, if I had cared to search for them by invading any of the numerous Christian Science Reading-Rooms which I saw in most of the cities I visited; but I did not think it worth while to pick up at haphazard statements concerning the tenets of a sect that has been so assiduous in giving to those tenets currency. I found it more interesting to learn what people not adherents thought about it. Indeed, on several occasions I discovered that the easiest way of approaching the general topic of religious life was by introducing into conversation the specific subject of Christion Science. Everybody seemed to have some experience with regard to it, or some opinion concerning it. The little group of commercial travelers I fell in with in a South Carolina hotel were all mightily interested in the tales of healing that they told one another out of their own fund of experience, and were perfectly frank in admitting that they were readier to concede the claims of a Church that made its chief business to do away with disease and suffering than the claims of churches that made their chief business to preach at people. A journalist of Missouri remarked to me in the course of conversation: "The churches are weaker than they used to be, except the Roman Catholic Church (which I don't understand) and Christian Science. The latter seems to appeal to men especially. is partly because of the concreteness of its appeal "—a leg healed here, a specific disease cured there-" but its real power lies in the fact that it makes no distinction between hearing the word and doing it;" in other words, that it not only accepts on their face value the promises of Christ that his disciples should be healers of disease as well as he was, but assumes that this function of healing is the very essence of the Gospel itself. Most significant of all were the comments of a physician in Iowa. I asked him if he thought there was anything more in Christian Science than organized and deliberate use of psychological suggestion. "Yes," he replied, "there is a religious principle involved. You will be surprised, perhaps, to know that I have a considerable practice among Christian Scientists. I think that is due mainly to my attempt to avoid antagonism, and to approach their ailments in every

This

case possible from their own point of view. If there is an amputation, I remark, ' You cut your toe-nails, don't you? then why not go a little further up and cut off the foot?' Or if there is need for surgical dressings, I inquire if they do not use soap; and then ask, 'Why not use an antiseptic?' It is easy enough to argue from the other direction, and to inquire why, if they do not use medicine, they should not dispense with food. Their reply is always that the reason lies in the imperfection of the individual mind, not in any defect of the 'science.' They put it all up in the air where you can't get at it; so I accept their theory of the imperfection of the individual mind. In many respects my Christian Science patients are the best I have, aside from the fact that they pay their bills (they've been trained to do that by their 'healers'). In a Christian Science household I do not encounter the flustered state of mind that in other households I have to deal with as well as with the disease. If it is a case of confinement, for instance, when ordinarily there is a great deal of nervousness, in the Christian Science household everything is accepted as natural, as in harmony with the mind of God." In addition to human credulity, which has so often served as a cavalier explanation of any religious phenomena, it was to one or all of these three characteristics of Christian Science-its appeal through the concrete, its identifying its faith with practice, and its effectiveness in producing serenity of mind by the easy method of denying the existence of any cause for dis-, turbance that non-adherents accounted for its growth.

Divine healing is the special stock in trade of a number of new sects, among them the so-called "Christian Catholic Church in Zion "--an enterprise promoted by a man named Dowie. Chicago, eager if undiscriminating, is the Rome for this pope the wilderness for this Elijah, this John Baptist, to use his own titles for himself. One Sunday afternoon I went to the building used as headquarters of the new Zion. I was directed to follow the crowd. As I left the building, a short, corpulent man, with a long gray beard, hurried by me, giving me a searching glance as he passed. I recognized him

from his pictures on the placards posted about the city. He drove off in a carriage drawn by a pair of spirited horses driven by a liveried coachman. I made my way on foot to the "tabernacle," and entered among a throng of ordinary-looking people. At the further end of the "tabernacle," back of the platform, were tiers of seats, like those for a chorus in a concert hall, in the midst of which was a reed organ. On the walls were hung trophies supposed to have been obtained from converts, and displayed as tokens of their release from their ills and superstitions; in one place a design composed of crutches; in another the word "drugs spelled out in empty medicine-bottles; in another a decoration consisting of rosaries and Roman Catholic charms; in another a sort of tapestry made of insurance orders' certificates; and in yet another a cross formed by hot-water bags! The body of the house was filled with people, and the semicircular galleries were well occupied. A woman in white vestments was playing a prelude on the organ. Soon the audience rose. Coming up the aisle were children, walking slowly by twos, wearing white vestments and holding open books in their hands; they mounted the steps to the platform, then, separating, filed up from either side into the tiers of seats. The full length of the aisle was filled twice over with children before there appeared a division of young women similarly vested, and with mortarboard caps. As they approached the platform they began to sing "Crown him with many crowns." Then following came a choir of young men in caps and white vestments; after these white-robed ones came, in black gowns and mortarboard caps, first a choir of middle-aged women, then one of middle-aged men. These followed the others up on the platform, but, the tiers of seats being filled, streamed into the front rows of the galleries. At the end of the procession walked the stout, graybearded man, now dressed in a black gown with bishop's sleeves and a hood of white, yellow, and purple. When he reached the platform and turned, the music stopped and all the men removed their caps.

No theatrical device could have more effectually concentrated attention upon the central personage. He raised his hand dramatically, and in resonant,