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experiments of the Bland and Sherman laws. What silver wanted was not the demand, for that is unlimited. Silver has never yet lacked purchasers. What has been lacking since the abolition of the double standard is the fixed place of exchange between silver and gold, which can only be created by unlimited demand for both precious metals at a fixed ratio of values. Hence, limited coinage or limited purchases, such as were made in the United States from 1878 to 1894, are altogether inadequate. They wrought harm to the bimetallist cause, because their failure was exploited by the gold party, and because they stimulated the silver production. Had the United States declined every compromise and solely aimed at international bimetallism, the silver depreciation and the scarcity of gold would have been more severe in Europe, and a transition to bimetallism would long ago have been found."

As to the consequences of success by the silver party in the United States, Dr. Arendt makes the following prediction:

WARNING AGAINST SILVER MONOMETALLISM.

"If it is now desired to perpetuate the gold standard in Europe, let the government at Washington adopt free coinage of silver at the ratio of 1 to 16. At present, after the closure of the Indian mints, this step could not possibly have any other result than to make the American standard a silver standard. The price of silver of course would rise, but not to 59 pence and not permanently. The United States would have a standard not materially different from that of Mexico. All the disadvantages and all the advantages of a fluctuating and depreciated money standard would follow. Gold monometallism would be replaced by silver monometallism; the double standard would become nominal. No bimetallist can approve of this. Free coinage of silver in the United States would result in harm to Europe no doubt, but also in advantage. Perhaps the harm would predominate; but one thing is certain: the absorption of the American gold, the continual supplies coming from the American gold production, would for a long time to come relieve the European powers of all anxiety for their gold standard. The monetary anarchy would thus be perpetuated for a space of time beyond estimation. Only by insisting in all countries in an unequivocal manner on the international solution of the currency question can international bimetallism be attained. "No more experiments!" is therefore the only appeal which the European bimetallists address to those of America; no silver purchases, no silver coinage, otherwise than on the basis of international agreement; and no more abortive attempts to bring them about."

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?

Dr. Arendt, who was present in Brussels at the time of the Monetary Conference of 1892, declares that the failure of that conference was due to the fact that it was called at an inopportune time, and

that no practical proposals were brought forward. He insists that the United States alone cannot establish the double standard, and that free coinage in America would only mean a shift from the single gold standard to a single silver standard. He de-. clares that an international agreement is the only method by which a double standard can be established, and that European sentiment is working slowly but healthfully and surely toward that conclusion. His practical advice to Americans therefore is to maintain the gold standard without compromise for the sake of bringing Europe the more speedily to the point where an international bimetallic agreement will have to be made.

CARNEGIE ON POLITICS AS RELATED TO
PROSPERITY.

NDER the title of "The Ship of State Adrift,"

UNMr. Andrew Carnegie contributes the open

ing paper in the June North American Review. He points out the extraordinary prosperity of this country under President Harrison's administration, and the frightful contrast which the past few years have shown. Mr. Carnegie attributes the existing unfortunate conditions primarily to the legislation beginning with the Bland-Allison bill of 1878, which "attempted to push the United States from the solid rock of gold as the standard of value and to induce by artificial means a rival standard. He considers this a forcing of poison into the hitherto pure blood of the body politic, which from that day to this has

slowly and surely undermined the national health. Speaking as a Republican he takes the blame upon his own party. Even if President Harrison had been re-elected in 1892, Mr. Carnegie thinks that the country's business troubles would not have been averted. He thinks, on the other hand, however, that these troubles were greatly aggravated by the passage of the Wilson tariff bill, and that if the Republicans had remained in power the depression would not have been so severe. He sums up as follows:

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We have here, then, the two causes which are responsible for the drifting of the ship, for the lack of enterprise, for the stagnation in business, and for the failure of the United States to continue upon a career of progress.

"1. By her silver legislation she has lost the confidence of capital throughout the world and also at home. Europe will no longer invest its surplus in our railway bonds, real estate, or other securities. On the contrary, it has drawn hundreds of millions of capital from investment here, thus draining the country of its gold. Capital at home is almost as timid. It will not invest gold dollars worth one hundred cents permanently as long as a section of the people threaten to repay in silver dollars worth one-half in the markets of the world.

"2. The country has been shaken by a violent change in its fiscal system, and duties upon imports

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"This region has no natural boundaries. merges insensibly into the distinctively arid country on the west and into the humid country on the east. It extends from the Saskatchewan Valley on the north to the Gulf of Mexico on the south, and may be said, roughly speaking, to have a breadth of about two hundred miles. It has no topographical distinction from the rest of the great plains, except, perhaps, that it is less level than the country to the east that receives more rainfall, and less broken than the country farther west that receives less rainfall. The soil is a brown loam and would be highly productive if nature would only furnish about a dozen more inches of annual precipitation. The region is traversed by great rivers, fed by melting snows in the distant Rocky Mountains or in the nearer Black Hills ranges; but streams of local origin are few and far apart and are nearly dry in summer. Perhaps the most characteristic of these local streams is the James River, in the two Dakotas, which has a course of more than five hundred miles, draining a larger area than the entire state of Ohio. It has hardly any perceptible current during the months of July, August and September, and can be forded at almost any point. In the dry season it becomes little more than a series of waterholes. Indeed at one place in South Dakota a farmer sunk a well in the bed of the river last summer to get water for his stock. The James River is said to be the longest unnavigable river on the continent."

LIGHT RAINS, HOT WINDS.

"Light showers fall in June, but there are usually six or seven rainless weeks in July and August, and during this period there is always danger from hot winds that blow for two or three days, sucking the moisture out of the growing crops. In spite of the general diffusion of knowledge about climatology, many settlers on the great plains continue to blame the regions south of them as the birthplace of these dreaded winds. Thus the North Dakota people suppose that these winds start in South Dakota; the South Dakota people attribute them to Nebraska; the Nebraska people to Kansas, and the Kansas people to the Indian Territory,-all imagining that

the identical volume of hot air which blights their crops has traveled many hundreds of miles. The truth is that the hot winds, while they may prevail over a very large extent of country on the same days, are always of local origin, and are caused by the rarefaction of the air on broad areas of uncultivated and sun-scorched plains.

"The natural conditions must be combated--either by drawing upon the store of subterranean water through artesian wells, or by methods of tillage which will retain the surface moisture in the soil of the growing crops-if the many millions of rich acres which now lie open and vacant are ever to be made into farms and peopled by a race of intelligent cultivators, like that which already occupies, with contiguous homesteads, the adjacent prairie of the eastern portions of North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas."

HOW IT WAS SETTLED.

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Mr. Smalley proceeds to show how, during the flush times of the latter 'seventies and the early 'eighties," there was much railway building, followed by a large immigration, in this sub-arid region. This rapid settlement happened to be coincident with a period of two or three years of exceptionally large rainfall and consequent good crops; but those who made haste to choose this region for homes soon became disillusionized. The lack of rain in the summer time has made farming fatally uncertain. The consequence has been that most of the towns in the sub-arid belt have lost half the popu lation which they boasted ten or fifteen years ago. To put these assertions on a statistical basis Mr. Smalley proceeds as follows:

DESERTED VILLAGES OF KANSAS AND NEBRASKA.

"In 1890 Kansas had 1,427,096 people. In 1895 the state census found only 1,334,668 within her borders. The counties in the eastern part of the state, which enjoy a sufficient rainfall for agriculture, exhibited gains, but in the western-central and western counties there was an absolute loss of about 200,000 people-a greater number than is contained in the entire state of North Dakota. In some localities population has almost entirely disappeared. In sixty-two villages there was a total loss during the past year alone of 15,827 inhabitants. All these 200,000 people were forced to leave the western part of Kansas because they could not make a living. They were not frozen out, but they were dried out by the arid climate. They went to Kansas with high hopes of being able to make permanent and prosperous homes for themselves upon her rich prairie soil and in her mild climate, but they failed to reckon with nature and to take account of the fact that it is impossible to farm safely with only fifteen or twenty inches of annual precipitation.

"No state census was taken in Nebraska in 1895. The causes which produced the partial depopulation of the western part of Kansas were equally operative in western Nebraska, and if a census had

been taken it would undoubtedly have shown a decline in the total number of inhabitants during the five years in question, in spite of a considerable gain in the eastern counties, where the rainfall is fairly adequate for general agriculture. The state census of South Dakota for 1895 showed a total population of 330,975, against 328,808 in 1890, a gain of 2,167, which is far short of the natural rate of increase of a community of that size under the healthful conditions of farm life. The extreme western part of this state embraces the Black Hills mining region, which is prosperous and gaining steadily in population. Between this region and the region of sufficient rainfall in the eastern part of the state lies a belt of semi-aridity, similar in its general conditions to that which extends across Nebraska and Kansas, and in this belt there has been a noticeable decline of population. In North Dakota no census was taken in 1895, but the vote of that year showed some increase over that of 1890, warranting the conclusion that the loss of population in the central and western counties has been more than counterbalanced by the gain in the Red River Valley, which receives enough rainfall for prosperous agriculture."

ARTESIAN IRRIGATION.

As to the future of this region, Mr. Smalley is not altogether sanguine, but on the other hand he does not think the case hopeless. A large part of the region may become regularly fruitful through irrigation by means of artesian wells.

"It already begins to be evident that this vast belt of fertile land, as wide as Ohio and in length reaching across the whole United States and a portion of Canada,- -a belt already traversed by many railroads and occupied by a thin skirmish line of agricultural settlement,-will not be allowed to relapse into its former condition of a cattle range without another effort to subdue it for the uses of the farmer. In South Dakota a remarkable movement is in progress for irrigation by artesian wells. Nearly the whole of this state and of its northern neighbor is underlain with the water-bearing formation known to geologists as the Dakota sandstone, which forms a vast artesian basin, fed by the rivers that flow over and the rains that fall upon its western rim in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, the Big Horn Mountains and the Black Hills. This formation has been fairly accurately traced already by government explorations and by the sinking of artesian wells here and there to afford a water supply for towns, and the recent borings for irrigation wells confirm the earlier theories of the geologists. The water-bearing stratum is found at Yankton, in the extreme southern part of South Dakota, at a depth of six hundred feet. It is about a thousand feet below the surface in the central region of the state, and at Jamestown, in North Dakota, the well that furnishes fire protection and local water supply is down about fifteen hundred feet. The irrigation movement is at present confined to the lower James River Valley and the counties lying along the east

ern side of the Missouri River, in South Dakota. A single statement will show how important this movement has become. There are now more than eleven hundred wells completed or in process of boring. In many cases townships have bonded themselves to carry on this work; in others, farmers have combined to buy machinery and sink wells for themselves. Financial projects are now being formulated by which wells will be sunk by stock companies and sold to farmers on annual payments, with security in the form of mortgages on the land to be watered. The subsoil in this artesian basin holds water so well that experience has shown that it is not necessary to irrigate a field every year. Once thoroughly soaked the land will produce good crops for two and perhaps three years without further irrigation. This is a very great advantage, for it doubles and trebles the irrigating value of a given amount of water. Of course the natural rainfall helps out the crops and lessens the duty of the irrigation system. Thus good crops can be raised in this region with perhaps one-third or even less water than must be applied in more arid regions, such as Colorado, Utah, and Idaho, where little aid can be expected from rains and where the subsoil along the river margins is usually gravelly. The results of irrigation in South Dakota have been very favor able. Irrigated fields produced last year thirty-five bushels of wheat to the acre, while adjoining fields which depended on rainfall produced only twelve. It will be seen that with this enormous gain in the yield of crops, a well costing from two to three thousand dollars and watering an entire section of six hundred and forty acres will pay for itself in a single year."

How much of the sub-arid belt may be reclaimed by artesian wells, is a question for further experiment; and Mr. Smalley believes that this work of investigation should be undertaken by the United States government under the direction of the Department of Agriculture. The agricultural experiment stations also can do a great deal to discover and inculcate the best methods of soil culture in these regions of limited rainfall.

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THE STATE OF OHIO.

N the July Harper's President Charles F. Thwing, of Western Reserve University, has an informational paper on "Ohio" which possesses an added interest now by reason of the large part which that State and its leaders are playing in the coming Presidential campaign. President Thwing points to the fact that Ohio's development was geo graphically favored above most Western States by means of water communication. A great river was on its southern and eastern boundary, and on its northern a great lake, and the progress of a people in a new country is so largely measured by means of communication and transportation that the presence of these water routes possessed great impor

tance. And the natural resources of transpor tation were supplemented by the Ohio Canal and the Miami Canal, so that when in 1842 the system was finished, there were found to be 796 miles of navigable water open to commerce. At the beginning of the century Ohio had 45,000 people, ranking eighteenth among the States, but already by 1820 it had sprung to the fifth place with more than half a million; it now holds the fourth position in order of population, as Illinois has passed it in 1890 to take the third rank.

President Thwing shows how Ohio resembles the Massachusetts Bay Colony in having been developed under the leadership of great men. What the Winthrops, the Mathers, the Adamses, the Brewsters, and the Everetts were in Massachusetts, Putnam, Manasseh Cutler and Moses Cleveland were to Ohio.

OHIO MEN IN PUBLIC LIFE.

He says it is significant that the great men of Ohio had usually been men engaged in political life. "There are, of course, certain exceptions to which I shall allude, but on the whole the great men have been statesmen and generals. There are a few lawyers, Ohio born and bred, who can be seen from beyond the boundaries of the State so tall are they." President Thwing mentions Chief Justice Waite, Stanley Matthews and Thurman as examples. He notices the similarity between Ohio and Maine in having their great men political leaders.

"The origin of the remark made half in jest, half in earnest, as to the ubiquity of the Ohio man, lies largely in his ubiquity and power as a statesman. The causes that have contributed to this civic greatness are, of course, general and particular. One cause to which I allude is the ubiquity of the Ohio college. Ohio is a State of colleges. And yet it must be acknowledged that many of the great political leaders were not college men. Giddings was not. Wade was not. Chase was a graduate of Dartmouth. Ewing was a graduate of Ohio University, at Athens, and received the first degree of A. B. ever given in Ohio. Hayes was a graduate of Kenyon. Garfield was educated in part at Hiram, in Ohio, but finished his education at Williams. But the rank and file of these men who have made Ohio history have been college trained.”

The typical Ohio college of forty years ago was a very sorry institution, except in the nobility of its purposes and in the character of two or three men who sat in its professors' chairs. There were. of course, exceptions. The old Western Reserve College, at Hudson, was an exception, in which such teachers as Laurens P. Hickok, afterward president of Union, Professor Loomis of mathematical fame, Barrows, the great Hebrew scholar, President Bartlett, Clement Long, Henry N. Day, Professor Charles A. Young and the elder Seymour were gathered. But any college, poor in money and resources, if it be true and honest, may do a great work for the student if he be honest and not too poor.

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AN IDEAL NEWS SERVICE.

HE TELEGRAPH MONOPOLY" is the subject of a forcibly-written and exhaustive series of papers now running in the Arena. The author, Prof. Frank Parsons, in considering the evils of the present system, devotes much attention to the control of press dispatches now exercised by the Western Union Telegraph Company, and in this connection suggests a model system of newsgathering which we are sure many of our readers would rejoice to see adopted.

"It is a good thing," says Professor Parsons, "to gather the news to a central point and edit it to the country. An enormous amount of useless repetition is thereby avoided, and a better distribution of news secured. But very careful provision should be made to insure the impartiality of such editing and distributing. If the association were to open all newspapers on equal terms, and the editor-in-chief were elected by all the newspapers, each casting one vote, and were sworn to impartial service, subject to removal by a vote of dissatisfaction on the part of 15 or 20 per cent. of the constituent papers,--if any paper or papers choosing to pay extra for a special representative could have one entitled to a seat in the editing chamber with full access to all materials received, and authority to add a supplement to the chief's report, to cover important matters omitted or misstated by the chief, -if the report and supplements in full were sent to central points in various parts of the country, set up and sold as plate matter, at uniform rates, to all subscribing papers,—if each and every paper were free to criticise the dispatches.-then we should have laid the foundation for a free and impartial press. The very presence of the supplemental editors would probably, as a rule, prevent the necessity of supplemental reports by their potential effect upon the chief's reports.

"The first step toward the establishment of an unfettered press is a National Telegraph System carrying the news or renting wires at very low rates on condition of impartial editing and distribution of dispatches on some such plan as that outlined above or a better one. The chains of the Allied Monopolies will thus be broken, and the co-ordinate growth of intelligence and co-operation will gradually free the press in larger and larger degree from the limitations placed upon it by ignorance, prejudice, and the strife of competitive business and politics.

UNIFORM NEWS REPORTS.

"I hope the time will come when the news reports in chief and supplemental will be published each day at central points on sheets of uniform size devoted exclusively to condensed and classified statements carefully indexed and divided into sec tions with black-faced headings. A file of such sheets would constitute a day-book of the world's history free of all extraneous matter. A man could buy the news without purchasing several rods of

advertisements, and the cost would probably not exceed twenty-five cents a year to each subscriber. For the local news of towns, bulletin sheets, or, in many cases, bulletin boards would be amply sufficient. Some such organization of the business of distributing news is sure to come because of its inherent economy and its manifest advantages over the infinite confusions, entanglements, and duplications of the present system.

"With the growth of co-operation advertising will no longer be a battle of rival wares, each seeking to force itself upon the public by the size and multitude of its appeals, but will shrink to the moderate bulk required by its true function of affording information to those upon a quest. The mass of this service will also probably differentiate into a series of bulletins devoted exclusively to advertising.

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Freed from the burdens of obtaining, arranging and printing vast duplications of news and advertisements the papers will be able to devote themselves to the criticism of men and events, the enlightenment and amusement of mankind, and the molding of public opinion. Papers would live then, not because they controlled the press dispatches or had a large advertising patronage, but because they said something the people wished to hear, because their editors were leaders of thought, selected by the subscribers to represent large co-operative interests as is now the case with the church papers and trade journals, or drawn to the work by their love of it and adopted by a wide constituency because of demonstrated power."

TH

IMMIGRATION FROM ITALY.

HE newspapers for several months past have been publishing somewhat sensational accounts of the great increase in immigration from Italy to the United States, on the part of young Italians desirous of escaping the chances of being forced into the war of Italy against Abyssinia. The whole subject of Italian immigration is discussed with great care and with fullness of knowledge by Dr. J. H. Senner, United States Commissioner of Immigration, in the North American Review for June. Dr. Senner informs us that the newspaper reports have been greatly exaggerated.

THE STATISTICS.

"To dispel the notion that this year's influx is unusually large, I need but refer to the facts that immigration from Italy to the United States amounted in the fiscal year 1887-88 to 47.622, in 1888-89 to 51,558, in 1889-90 to 52,003, in 1890-91 to 76,055, in 1891-92 to 61,631, in 1892-93 to 69,437, the largest part of which in each year was crowded into the spring months.

"It is quite true that this year's immigration from Italy exceeds that of the two preceding fiscal years, 1893-94 and 1894-95, of 42,074 and 33,902, respectively; but during that period the tide of all commerce was

exceptionally low and immigration was likewise naturally affected. These years cannot, therefore, properly be taken as a basis for comparisons. It is also true that since about the middle of March there have been detained at this port an unprecedented number of immigrants, either for special examination or for deportation, but this condition was not due to any unusual undesirability on the part of these immigrants, but solely to the strict enforcement of the latest law (of March 3, 1893), which made it the duty of the Inspectors of the Immigra tion Service to detain for special inquiry every immigrant who was not clearly and beyond doubt entitled to admission. That it has been possible

with a very small force of available employees to preserve order and peace to the fullest degree upon Ellis Island, although as many as 1,020 immigrants, of whom over 500 were sentenced to deportation, have been detained over night, is convincing proof at least of the fact that the Italians, who form the largest percentage of the detained, are by no means as unruly, violent, dangerous or anarchistic as they have been assumed to be by the imaginative newsgatherers of the public press."

FORMERLY "BIRDS OF PASSAGE."

Dr. Senner reminds us that of all the Latin peoples the Italians alone have developed the migratory tendency to a degree almost equal to that of the Anglo-Saxons, and that it has not been the policy of the Italian government to interfere with emigration. Heretofore for a good many years the Italian laborers have been in the habit of crossing and recrossing the ocean, spending the busy part of the year in the United States and carrying their gains back to Italy. Certain sections of Italy have shown an especial prosperity due entirely to this fact.

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"But these advantages to the old country are about to cease definitely. The rigid enforcement of the Federal statutes since 1893 by the United States immigration officials has made it very hard for Italian birds of passage' to come and go at their pleasure. Besides, quite a large proportion of those who originally came to the United States with no intention of acquiring residence found the coun try so advantageous and congenial to them that they changed their minds, sent for their families and settled permanently within the United States, ac quiring, in time, rights of citizenship."

COMING NOW TO STAY.

The Italians are now giving up this habit of passing to and fro, and those who have had some experience of the United States are coming here for good and for all. Dr. Senner shows this to be the case by very interesting statistical data which he has gathered in the past three years. The Italian workmen already here are sending for their families, although when they first came over doubtless many of them expected to go back.

"The statistics carefully prepared at this station reveal the astonishing fact that, of some 94,700

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