on the basis upon which it was entered into, the play is fair, and no one has a right to complain.

Far different is the "essential character" of the proceeding when the Government steps in and says that the dollar shall be something else—not something else in value, but something else specifically, from what it was understood to be when the bargain was made. The dishonesty consists not in the hardship inflicted on either side, but in altering the terms of the bargain. The whole of our commercial and financial morality is built up on the feeling of the sanctity of contracts. If we were to attempt to substitute for that feeling a sort of humanitarian regard for the interests of the several parties to a contract, we should be plunged into a bottomless morass. And yet this fundamental departure is made by the Springfield Republican when it finds in a loss sustained by creditors through deliberate Governmental alteration of the monetary standard a proceeding of essentially the same character as a similar loss occasioned by the operation of causes, always known to be in existence, affecting the value of the monetary unit. In the latter case there may be hardship, but there is no dishonesty; in the former case there is dishonesty even if there be no hardship whatever.

Nor is the difference important in its abstract aspect only, important as this is. Practically, the effect of an admission that there is no dishonesty in Governmental interference with the standard would be disastrous to the last degree, for there would be no practical limit to the application of the principle thus established. In the case of the silver

agitation, there was some ground for the proposed change aside from the claim that equity toward debtors demanded the readjustment in question, and furthermore it was contended by many that under free coinage the parity of the silver dollar with the gold dollar would be maintained. But if we were simply to consider a Government readjustment of debts to be of essentially the same character as the readjustment that is taking place every day through natural and scientific and business. causes, what would there be to prevent a debasement of the currency at any time that a plausible argument for such a step could be made to secure a popular majority in its favor? If the simple principle were not recognized, and upheld by the overwhelming sentiment of thinking people, that a change of the monetary standard by Governmental fiat is an act of dishonesty, the times and the extent of such changes would become a mere question of the taste and fancy of the majority for the time being. That such a state of things would work its own cure is true enough; but this would come about solely through conditions becoming intolerable, as they did in the days of the French assignats or our own Continental currency. Of course, at the present time there is no danger of any departure from sound principles. But the days of free silver, and even those of greenbackism, are not so far behind. us as to make us indifferent to the promulgation of a doctrine which was at the bottom of most of the mischief in both those movements.

THE LOGIC OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

(March 21, 1903)

In an address before the Commercial Club of Boston, on Thursday night, Mr. F. A. Vanderlip, formerly Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, presented in the striking manner which is habitual with him some of the salient features of the recent industrial and commercial development of the country as a whole, and of various sections of it. The ultimate aim of his address was to impress upon his hearers the idea that, in a future no longer remote, New England will have to look to foreign trade as its chief recourse in the maintenance of a high standing in the industrial and commercial world. Time was when the West and South afforded a clear field for the disposal of the manufactured products of New England enterprise, but the development of manufactures in both those sections has been going on at so rapid a rate that every year shows a notable increase in the range covered by the home industries of those regions, and a corresponding narrowing of the field left open there for the expansion of New England's trade. 'The South and the West," said Mr. Vanderlip," are now in a large degree equipped with the machinery of civilization. They are no longer under tribute for men or products, and in great measure are also becoming financially free, the last few years of prosperity having discharged vast indebtedness. The position which New England held as a manufacturing source to supply the wants

of the West and South has in turn been contested and in large measure lost. The great cities of the West and South have changed their distinctive character as distributing points, and have become manufacturing centres in turn. The remarkable expansion of the cotton industry in the South, the rapid growth of leather manufacture in the West, taking from New England its prominence in both fields, are but two illustrations among many ... A development of signal significance to the future prosperity of New England can be found in the rapid expansion all through the West of the manufacture of all sorts of highly finished goods . . . . The lines in which the manufacturers in the East, and particularly New England, had until recently a control approaching to monopoly are now being diffused over the very territory which these factories of yours once almost exclusively supplied."

All this has been said, in various forms, many times within the past few years, but the fact that it is made the central matter of his discourse by a man of Mr. Vanderlip's position, in an address before a leading business organization of Boston, lends the words a special interest. What we desire to draw attention to, however, is not the facts, now so familiar, which were dwelt upon in Mr. Vanderlip's remarks. There is a lesson conveyed in them which is of larger import than the specific application he had in mind. No belief, perhaps, is more widely entertained in America than that which ascribes to the operation of the protective tariff the remarkable change which has taken place in the relations between our country and Europe along industrial lines.

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ago in iron and steel production, and tures generally, and see where we a isn't the tariff that has brought abou what is it?

The answer is ready to our hand, strange thing is that it should be so g looked. What has brought about (though we are not denying that in it may have been accelerated by the relations between the United States a the same thing as has brought about a about the change in the relations betw and West on the one hand and New E other. It is the natural development tremendously rich in natural resources the stage of agricultural activity and lated capital to the stage in which industry with large available capital i agriculture. The South and West a unprotected state, as against New E factures, that they always were in; ye ade after decade passed in which t development was slight, they have con ness of time, to that stage so graphi by Mr. Vanderlip. Change" South a United States" and "New England