does in these days of our boasted prowess as a world power.

But how long will our ideas last or the expression of them remain untrammeled? Trooping behind our entrance as a world power comes the hint that the Philippine aggression cannot be discussed without committing an impropriety. "If we are sensitive to our honor at home," says Mr. Roosevelt, "we will not discuss it." For it is a question neither of right nor wrong, nor of constitutional law, but it is a question of honor. It is fate, but if it were not fate it is done, and since done honor forbids its condemnation. Thus the constitution is made a huge joke; a genial myth like Santa Claus with which to befool the people, while everything is resolved into a question of honor, and whether our honor is being besmirched or not depends upon those to decide who assume to conserve it and fix the political fashions of the day.

Some other conditions have arisen as the outgrowth of other developments which have fully made their appearance at this time. The tendency of the period is very strongly toward socialism. That it should be condemned as unholy by the very men who have produced it is perhaps as strange a feature as the movement exhibits.

For almost a century it has been the policy to give governmental aid to men no more entitled to it than anyone else. Manufacturers have been awarded premiums of all sorts upon the theory that they were predestined to have it and inherently and of right must have it. For, it is said, they cannot be profitable without it. "The tariff," according to Mr. Roosevelt in

his late message, "makes manufacturers profitable, and the tariff remedy proposed (for the trusts) would be in effect simply to make manufacturers unprofitable."

So this governmental favoritism leads not to a revival of individualism but to socialism, for the reason that long confusion of the province of the state has obscured the line between state duty and individual right and has made men eager for immediate benefits as the favorites of government have been eager for bounties and gifts in order to obtain present results. And if this dispensation of special privileges is necessary as a foundation of our modern commercialism why, it is asked, is it not the prior step in the order of evolution, or collective ownership? Hereby we eliminate the tyrannous greed of the few who use our property for our own undoing; who not only take the bulk of what we earn, but tax us for those things which we need, and which we have made it profitable to produce by tariff laws bearing upon us. Hence it is that all socialists, and especially the Marxians, watch with calm certainty the results. Their belief that by some blind fatality society is moving toward socialism and that the aggression of capital enters into the certain force which will bring the wished-for end is in part justified.

The efforts of the magicians of plutocracy to keep back the ground swell are wasted in air. Not realizing that their patrons have produced the movement, they seem to think that it can be kept down by shouting socialism or by talking against "criminal discontent," "vile trade unions" and other disorders. One

distinguished educator grieves because it seems to him that labor wishes to "work as few hours as possible and get as much money as possible"-just as if it had been the creed of capitalism to give as much as possible and exact as little as possible.

What a spectacle has been held up to the wealth producers of this country for more than a century! They have seen every form of capitalism lobbying at the national and state capitals for laws enabling them to get something for nothing. They have seen the laws made and administered for their interests. They have seen protected industries combine with each other to monopolize and extort, and railroads combine with these to discriminate against and crush out independent enterprise. They have seen some of their sworn officials uphold this condition as scientific, the result of natural evolution, and others confess its iniquities, but deny their power under the constitution to help it. Why should moral wonders be expected of labor? Too great a compliment is paid it in marveling that it desires short hours and big pay. It sees corruption and favoritism flourish at the top and the laws of supply and demand and competition repealed from the industrial code, and in consequence it can conceive no reason why it should not become an actor in the great melodrama of "grab."

But if socialism shall come, what then? Democracy has not failed because it has not been tried. Our ills have followed from violations of democracy and not because of its observance. It is trite enough to say, but not sufficiently learned, nevertheless, that this government was founded upon the principle of equal

rights. If that had been observed it seems inconceivable that we should suffer from the present evils. If it could be proven that the great industries of the land and our great industrial system could not have been built up except by special privilege yet has the end justified the means? Build up a few, but impoverish the many. The country as a whole is no richer. It is an argument that ends where it begins, except that human blood is consumed in its development. And that is the question. Are men but coral insects that build and die? Are we on a level with animals which devour each other for sustenance? This is where the argument ends; only the preachers and the teachers indulge in irrelevant conclusions of some sort; or latterly they have canonized Darwin and driven selfconscious intelligence in the control of human destiny from the economic field.

Lastly collectivism is the opposite of individualism. Perhaps a partial trial of the former might prove its own undoing and carry with it the downfall of paternalism as well. The pendulum ought to swing that way. If it did the cost would not be too much for the benefit derived.

MR. BRYAN'S CAMPAIGNS.

The period of American political history between 1896 and 1900 belongs distinctively to Mr. Bryan. When a retrospect shall be taken of it a long time hence he will stand out as the largest figure of all men then living in the United States. Indeed, during these four years he was the most influential individual in the country and none, not excepting Mr. McKinley, occupied a more conspicuous place in the public prints. Scribblers wrote their fingers off making note of his "futility," his "decline," his "rejection;" and found themselves astounded into silence at intervals by his lofty utterances upon the darkening complications that followed the campaign of 1896. Mr. Bryan's luminous influence for good steadily increased after his first defeat and in 1900, appreciative men of insight anticipated one of those recurrences of history, by which a great moral power takes hold of the destinies of a nation. The chilling shock to the ideals of liberty administered by his second defeat can never be fully expressed. Succeeding generations must mature and suffer before they can gather from the words which embodied the people's hope of him, and the words which recorded his loss of the election their deep and painful significance. This, however, is only that concrete failure over which the cynics and satirists of plutocracy have repeated their congratula