have time for that. Politics is, therefore, almost necessarily left to men who are called politicians, and other men follow the lead of the politicians in their party and do what these accepted leaders expect them to do. That is, unless an abuse is patent, the body of a political party is either blind to it or thinks of it as an evil which cannot be avoided. A most flagrant example of such an evil, understood and yet endured, is the amount of bribery and corruption connected with almost every election, whether at primaries or at local, State, or National elections. Yet this corruption is a direct means of degeneracy for the country and politics in general, while it makes the power of citizens in voting almost null and void. Men cannot claim freedom and equal rights if the man who wins in an election is the man who has been able to buy the most votes. A man can be free only when his simple word in matters in which he is equally interested with other men counts for as much as any other man's.

What America and Americans need to-day more than votes, for the good of the Republic, is more independence, better moral ideas, and a clearer perception of the rights of man. Too many Americans, at the present time, are slaves of their physical needs. Some belong to their employers, and while most of them would prefer to have and to express their own opinions, whether by word or by ballot, they must be quiet, or they and their families may lack bread and butter. Others are so tainted with money worship that they submit to many things that are wrong to themselves or to their neighbors because they feel that they must do so or fail in proper respect to those who possess what they worship. In politics, aside from those who are honestly partisans, there are many bitten with the longing for office, and for the sake of the spoils they will wink at any wrong of which their particular party may be guilty. This has been said many times, yet men, in general, refuse openly to acknowledge that what the United States needs to-day, what the world needs, indeed, more than the bare right of suffrage more widely extended, is more independence and more wis

dom, that the right of suffrage may be used honestly and unselfishly for the best good of all.

Women are not hampered in a moral way by the many influences and responsibilities which bring their pressure to bear upon men. Women can be freer, more independent, if they wish to be so. They often claim a higher ethical sense than is given to men. To prove this, let them become informed upon serious matters and show first their intellectual capacity to study and understand the deep questions of government and statesmanship. Let them desire and cultivate more serious views of morals and religion, have more regard for the realities and less for the appearances of virtue. Let them strive to comprehend the meaning and effects of their own actions in small as well as in great things, and let them eschew the many petty sins, so widespread and demoralizing in their influence, of which they are too commonly guilty. They will then be clearer-eyed to the abuses of politics and better able to work for freedom.

Women need not wait, however, until their sex becomes perfect before they strive to exert an influence for good upon their government's affairs. They can do much in an immediate affirmative way by encouraging patriotism and educating children to understand the significance of republican institutions. If a boy grows up with a deeply grounded belief that not merely his own freedom but that of his neighbor is his sacred trust, he will be less apt to be a corrupt politician or to submit to corruption in politics. More than that, it might well become woman's province to watch for signs of wrong which creep so insidiously into everything. She could then denounce them immediately and perhaps speedily create a public opinion against them. The fact that the world is preserved in spite of so many evils proves that men, as a rule, prefer to do the right, when they know what it is. The tide of vice has its spring in a few vicious minds, and if discovered in its inception can be quickly stemmed and stopped.

Americans are patriotic; they desire the right for their

country more than for themselves; and if they were convinced that their Republic was menaced by any existing condition, they would be up in arms against it and crush it at any and every personal sacrifice. Women thus by vigilance can at the present time be true helpmates of men, as custodians of the government, and can purify politics without casting a vote. It may be a work of time, yet it is an absolute possibility, and because of that possibility a moral responsibility.

ASSASSINATION; ITS RELATION TO AMER

ICAN CITIZENSHIP

BY PRO PATRIA

OR the third time within the history of this country has

FOR

the life of its President been cut short by the mad hand of an assassin. In each instance the Executive was a man of exceptional ability and of pronounced individuality and personal magnetism. Lincoln was a man of the rarest type, whose integrity has never yet been questioned; Garfield was a man of parts, whose personal qualities endeared him to all who knew him at all intimately; while McKinley was one of the most cultivated and kindly of men, and was, moreover, a man of much force of character.

Such crimes as these reflect seriously upon our civilization, or upon the social and political conditions that prevail in what we regard as the greatest and most advanced industrial and commercial power in the world to-day, and the greatest republic in the annals of the world. For, is it not quite plain that these murdered Presidents were no mere despots, but the favored first-citizens of a free people-the chosen chief-heads of a great nation? How comes it, then, that the hand of a base assassin should in three instances be raised to cut short the life of the one man whom the people of a free republic most delighted to honor? These are questions we should do well to ponder. For it will not do to disclaim in a hurry all responsibility for the dastardly acts of these madmen-since whence comes, or what is the occasion of so much madness and crime?

It is in vain to protest and insist that these assassins are almost invariably "foreign devils," or are, at least, of foreign extraction, who prove "unfitted" for that exercise of

individual freedom and for the privilege of free institutions which their naturalization papers confer and permit of. For, of a truth, there must be some deep underlying cause for a condition of things which from time to time permits of such atrocities. Either it must be that our civilization is actually less "advanced" than we fondly believe it to be, or else there is something organically wrong, or defective, in a purely democratic form of government. But whatever the defects of a republic, or purely democratic state, may be, we cannot, as consistent republicans, who have tasted the sweets as well as the bitters of life under such a form of government, subscribe to or admit for a moment the justice of such a conclusion. For who that knows anything of the absurd class distinctions, ridiculous social prejudices, and extremes of pride and of abjectness which prevail in European monarchies and empires, and who that really cares at all for the good of his fellow-men and for the advancement of the race, would voluntarily surrender his "citizenship" for "subjection," of any militant type?

A man may be keenly alive to the defects and abuses of a democratic form of government, but he will not, if rightly constituted, or if a loyal citizen, regard such abuses and defects as organic. Rather will he strive manfully to mitigate such abuses, as far as in him lies, and help to bring about a better state of things. This he can always do, without any fuss or pantomime, by loyal performance of his duties as a citizen and by personal example. We must, therefore, adopt the former, rather than the latter, of these two hypotheses, or take it for granted that our civilization is not, after all, just what it should or might be. This may be humiliating to our pride, but it is the best we can do under the circumstances.

In the first place, it must be borne in mind that this country has constantly to assimilate a vast amount of foreign immigration, or to absorb, assimilate, and fashion with some sort of conformity and adaptation to American conditions and citizenship, tens of thousands of foreign-born and foreign-bred men, women, and children, every year, whose