That this sort of thing has taken place in Chicago, and on a large scale, there can be no doubt. That it does away with the gratifying conclusions as to improved health conditions in Chicago drawn from the Health Department's figures, we are far from asserting. On the contrary, we are quite sure that those figures, upon thorough investigation, would still show a very remarkable improvement in the health prevailing in the great Western metropolis. But that they do not show any such marvelous progress as has been inferred from them is evident enough from what we have said. And it happens that in the Times-Herald's own editorial there are contained statements which might have warned the writer that there was something wrong, and have shown in what direction the error was to be sought. The percentage of decedents whose age at death was above 70 rose from 2.7 per cent in 1872 to 8.8 per cent in 1898. This shows a gain of 226 per cent

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among those whose lives are now prolonged in Chicago beyond the Scriptural limit of three score years and ten," says the Times-Herald, quoting from the Health Department's report. But unfortunately it is added that "the average age of the Chicago decedents reaching the Scriptural limit was 77.5 years in 1872, 77.8 years in 1882, 74.7 years in 1892, and 77.7 in 1898." Thus it appears that those who are septuagenarians in Chicago today have no better chance of life than those who were in the same stage of existence twenty-six years ago. Is it not clear, then, that the reason why so many more people die above the age of seventy in Chicago than formerly did so is simply that a lot of young and

A LEADER OF MEN

(November 6, 1899)

Two or three days ago, the simple announcement was made in the New York Evening Post that, owing to impaired health, Mr. Edwin L. Godkin had retired from active participation in the conduct of that journal. To the vast majority of those who read that statement as copied in the newspapers of the country, it came as a mere item of everyday news, having at most a mild interest, and calling forth far less emotion than a score of other things which they read of in the same issue of their paper. But there are those to whom few announcements could have given a keener pang; for it marked the close of thirty-five years of a public activity unique in its character and in its results; an activity of the highest kind, the influence of which has been no less profound and no less pervasive than it has been elevating and inspiring.

The Nation was established by Mr. Godkin in New York in 1865; with him was associated, as its literary editor, Mr. W. P. Garrison. Viewed even upon its literary side alone, the service rendered by the Nation to American civilization and culture is quite incalculable; it has drawn upon the best talent and the highest scholarship of the country for its contributions, and the unerring taste of its literary editor and his unfailing fidelity to his standards have secured a uniformity of excellence which can probably not be matched in any periodical in the world.

something that lies far deeper than mere 1. It stirred the thought of the most serious e most high-minded men and women in the y, and it stamped indelibly upon the minds of nds of earnest young men standards of pothinking and of political conduct which would ise have existed for them but as vague ideals. its immediate circle of readers was never arge-its subscription list seldom exceeding --it was read with care in every respectable aper office, and the strong doctrine so mightily out at the fountain-head filtered through, we e sure, in a thousand ways, and slowly but y made itself felt by the multitude. Improbs it may seem to many readers, we have no ion in saying that, taking the entire period ty-five years, the influence of the Nation and ening Post upon the history of the time has ncomparably greater than that of any other can publication.

ttempt, in a brief newspaper article, to give ea of even the chief objects to which the Nand the Evening Post) has been devoted duris long period would of course be absurd; nay not be out of place to recall a few of the

most striking and most important of them. Coming into existence immediately after the close of the Civil War, the Nation, though animated by the fullest sympathy with the great purposes for which the Republican party stood, was distinguished, from the outset, by its vigorous protests against carpet-bag misrule, its ardent desire for the promotion of good feeling between North and South, and its championship of the rights of the Southern States as against the centralizing and militarist tendencies of the Republican party. From the close of the war to the last flutterings of the "bloody shirt," the wicked policy which sought to make political capital out of sectional animosity found nowhere a more persistent or more formidable enemy than in the columns of the Nation. Another cause which enlisted the championship of the Nation from its earliest days was that of civil-service reform, and few things would be more interesting than to contrast the situation when the Nation was almost alone in its advocacy of that salutary measure with that now existing, when it has not only been carried out upon a large scale, but when there is hardly an important newspaper in the country which does not support it. In the education of the public mind to this point, much as was done for it by others, and especially by George William Curtis, the leading part was played by the Nation. The keenness of its wit, the unending resources of its ridicule, no less than the force of its arguments, ever repeated yet so admirably varied as to be ever fresh, gave a life and impetus to the agitation such as nothing else could have imparted. Perhaps next in importance to these services should be named the