stead of the one), he would see continued. But he would not consent that money be voted except to give employment to the workers and nothing to them as charity. Give all men an opportunity to create wealth and all will gladly embrace it.

It is but a step in advance to prepare conditions so that the labor that now is employed spasmodically and periodically, strikes today, importations of foreign contract labor to displace American toilers tomorrow the grinding down to the starvation point of the dupes brought here by "captains of industry" from Bohemia, Italy, Scandinavia, Hungary, Poland, or other foreign lands, to be shot down by armed thugs, it is only a step in advance to give protection directly to the laborers instead of the capitalistic employers, with no change of system, but only a continuance of legislation along the same line of method that has been followed for a hundred years-the government building directly, instead of indirectly, manufactories, railroads, etc., not to benefit capitalists, but to eliminate that factor from the social equation. In a word, labor only, and not capital to be regarded, private capital and speculation being rendered non-existent, proceeding along the line of precedent, so that the cry of "unconstitutional" cannot be raised by the enemy.

Will the capitalists (who alone have been regarded by government and made rich by "protective legislation," even Louisiana planters who accepted quite willingly nine million dollars annual sibsidy bestowed in 1890) object to the extension of the benefits of protective legislation to the ninety and nine? Of course they will repeat the old cry of the reactionists, "unconstitutional;" but they cannot stop the wheels of the car of progress. What if capitalists do suffer loss as the people have been made to suffer? What if all their ill-gotten wealth turns to ashes in their hands? Will the people shrink from the duty of reclaiming from robbers the stolen goods? The cry of "socialism" will not be regarded by the people when they begin to move. enemy beaten in argument resorts to calling names, always.

The

There is not a millionaire in the United tates who has not been made so by legislation. "Protective legislation" hitherto has meant "creation of millionaires by law." I believe in "protection of labor." I am a Whig, but protection has been no protection. It has been only robbery. Take New England, for example. Where are her yeomanry? Destroyed. By what? "Protective legislation." But for protective legislation her farms would now be tilled. Protective legislation destroyed the prices of agricultural products, made only manufacturing profitable, placed mortgages on all the farms, made millions of loan agencies, millions of tramps, thousands of suicides, filled the cities with prostitutes, destroyed the middle class and built poor houses, asylums and penitentiaries by the hundreds, yea, thousands.

I do not admit that protection is wrong. But I do admit that it has not been honestly or rightly applied. A class and not the mass have seized upon its benefits. There is a proper protection; but it is not "the protection of speculation." It is the "protection of labor." No other protection has ever been voted by the people. "Protection of labor" has always been the shibboleth of protectionists, and the protection of labor is possible and right.

It is for congress and the state legislatures to begin the work of true protection immediately and carry it through to completion without delay. The people advance along the path of evolution, it becoming revolution only when held back, like the waters of the Kenemah valley that finally broke down all barriers, carrying all before them. No compromise can save the wage system. It will be abolished and co-operative industry will take its place. The benefits of invention will be made common. The government will go forward to protect the industrious by preparing the way for the employment remuneratively of all the workers, equalizing opportunities so that every child born will have an even start in the race of life with every other child.

There must be a line drawn and definitions made of duties so plain that all will see and conform to them. One duty is that of the individual to the community. This must be fixed so that it will be lived up to. In the army the penalties are severe for failure of the individual soldier to come up to the line marked out. If he sleep on his post, it is death. Leaving the army out of the question (for war, with all that pertains to it, is wrong), punishment, in the sense of penalty, pain, suffering, is inhumanly wrong. Means are not wanting to lead men to the strict discharge of duty without penal suffering. Religious regard should be shown for the dignity of manhood in the management of men. No hand should be laid by man on his fellowman that is not done in love and most respectful kindness. No word should be spoken that is not an expression of tenderest regard for the wellbeing of the one spoken to. And society must not infringe on liberty -perfect freedom of each to choose his profession and go forward as free as a child at play.

Is it not possible for all men to work together with no more friction than among children at play? and may not the little work necessary for each man to do that all may be well to do, if each man do his part, be done gladly by each in his chosen line? It has not been a century since in England the death penalty was inflicted for more than a score of so-called "felonious crimes," and, for minor offences, the lash, branding and the cutting off of the ears and of the hands were resorted to. Were those punishments right and necessary? They were not. Neither is any punishment right or necessary. Strict rules of life and conduct are essential and no man or woman will fail to do his or her part or to walk in the straight path when conditions of life are made what the community can make them.

Hence the duty of the community to the individual is momentous. Here a volume could be written to shadow forth the duties incumbent on the community toward the one-on organized society toward the individual. But the first thing that society is bound to do is to guarantee to each his equitable and equal share of the essentials of life. This is the insurance that society is bound to establish. If it has not done this hitherto it is because society has not ceased to be Pagan and has never yet become Christian. This no Christian man can deny who has read the Acts of the Apostles and studied the sayings of Jesus and His priimtive disciples. It is to assure to each the essentials of life that society exists. It is strange if this truth is not patent to every mind.

The community holds in trust for the good of all the product of the labor of all the members of society, and in all nations it has ever been the custom to use not only the common product for the common defense, but to claim the personal service in war of each individual fit to bear arms. This shows how little is left to the individual which is not controlled by the community. Nothing is left to him. Even the right to life is held subordinate to the common welfare. The common welfare is paramount.

While society can demand that the individual stand forth in the front rank on the battlefield-join the forlorn hope to march to certain death, it cannot withhold from him while living the essentials of food and raiment. It is bound to assure the individual against hunger and cold. And this duty of society to the individual is operative in time of peace as well as in time of war; in the village, town and city as well as it was in the Andersonville prison pen. And think of it, since the enemy is bound to furnish the essentials of life to his prisoners of war, how much more are we bound to care for the poor in our midst.

What are we so-called "reformers" making so much noise about, if in the nature of things, all the essentials of life are already common and the community does now feed the hungry poor and clothe the naked poor and even feed and clothe prisoners of war; what is out of fix? Has not the New Jerusalem already descended on the earth? Is there not a poor-house in every county in the United States and are there not overseers of the poor in every village, town and city?

It

What is wrong? Society stands aloof from the individual. says to him, "This is mine exclusively," and it holds him at arm's length. He is made to feel that he is not in his own house, but in the house of a stranger. The truth is that society holds nothing of its own right exclusively. All it has is the property of the individuals that compose it, and it is contributed as an insurance fund that the hungry may be fed and the naked clothed. And the hungry have as good a right to the food that they lack and the clothing as the widow to the insurance money due on the death of her husband. So liberally should the destitute poor be cared for by society that they may not know their poverty any more than does the deserving veteran know his poverty that draws a pension ample for his needs.

We reformers then only object to the manner of the doing. What belongs to the poor is his, and food and raiment belong to him by natural right, nor has any official any right to humiliate the widow and the fatherless or to treat the tramp as an alien or criminal. If any be hungry let them be fed, if naked let them be clothed. The stranger should be received with hospitality and his absolute needs satisfied gladly. No man should be punished except for crime, and poverty is not crime.

But there is an antecedent duty of society to the individual. It is that employment be placed within easy reach of each so that no one can say, "I could not find remunerative work," and work that is congenial. "Happy is the man that can freely choose his profession," says the ancient philosopher Seneca. And we see this to be true of children. Their play is their employment, their "profession." If every one that must share the existing product-the stock in handhas not done his part in its production whose fault is it? It is the fault of society. Society may furnish to the individual work-congenial and pay him good wages for doing it. Nothing to lessen his self-respect should society inflict on the individual.

YE 5TH LESSON.

A Broken Home.

The family of Frank Freiberg of Chicago were lately evicted from their home at 328 Claybourne avenue, "because the father had been ill and his funds gave out."--Record-Herald.

The whole family were found by the police sleeping mostly in garbage boxes and eating whatever they could find in alleys. "The case of this man," said Justice Geo. W. Underwood, "was that of an unfortunate father unable to face the battle of life." He was brought before Judge Geo. W. Woods of the police court charged with vagrancy and presenting, says the Record-Herald, "the spectacle of a man, his wife and four of their homeless, ragged and starving children that moved the court to remark that 'race suicide was defensible when parents were too poor to provide homes.'

Mayor Dunne, when his attention was called to the case by a Record-Herald reporter, gave utterance to a truth that ought to be written in letters of gold on the pages of the bible of the ages. He said: "When parents cannot or will not care for their children the state must step in." Rev. R. A. White said: "The trouble with us,

AN IMPERATIVE LAW.

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in this country, is that we have many people of means and ability who ought to have children, but don't have them." Rev. John Merett Driver said: "The truth is that the poor devote more time and attention to their children than the rich. While children are incidental to the life of the rich, they are the sum total of existence to the poor. It is not a question of condition but of people. Love will always find a way to support one more." Rev. John Watson Myers said: "I believe with Roosevelt in large families. Almost all parents with large families get along well in the world. There is nothing like putting responsibility in a man to develop him."

So much to the credit of the Christian ministtry.

Per Contra.

Rev. Samuel Fellows, bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church of Chicago, said (according to the Record-Herald): "Much of the misery and trouble, of those who earn little money, comes from the A man fact that they pay no attention to the restriction of offspring. who gets $1.50 a day marries, children come and it is impossible to feed, clothe and educate them; then the mother must take up the burden of bread winning and the children left to themselves with the result that they become wild and sometimes dangerous to society."

I say why not, in such a case as this, "the state step in" and "lend a hand?" Would it not cost less to do this than to meet the expense of courts and prisons to punish those who by neglect become "wild and dangerous to society?" But this were unnecessary if wage industry assured to the toilers the allowance that chattel slaves had assured them, that is to say, food, clothing, shelter, medical care and offspring not "restricted." The one above all others of God's laws that should be held inviolate by married couples is the law of procreation. Diabolical the suggestion-"restriction of offspring!" But the climax of insanity-yea, of downright diabolism, was reached when Dr. Sherrin, medical superintendent of the Visiting Nurses' Association of Chicago, said: "I do not want to go as far as Dr. Osler and recommend the use of chloroform, but if large families of children, among people who are unable or unwilling to provide for them, could be prevented in a humane and legal way it would certainly abolish much misery and suffering."

In America-the most productive country on earth, rich enough in products to supply all mankind with the essentials of life-a land of millionaires and billionaires-made so by their having "kept back by fraud the hire of the laborers," and "who live in pleasure on the earth and are wanton, ** have condemned and killed the just"by shooting them down by the thousands for striking for fair wages -toilers not so well provided against the possibility of suffering from cold, hunger and nakedness as were the negro slaves of the southis it not audacious, yea criminal, the suggestion (to those who by their labor have produced all the nation's wealth) to "restrict offspring!' Why did not the learned bishop, instead of coddling the rich, read to his congregation James V, 1 to 6, and take for the texts of his homily: "Whoso hath this world's good and seeth his brother have need and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" and "Bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ?"

Let every married person say (in spite of the rant of bishops, judges and M. D.'s): "Suffer little children to come unto me and

forbid them not."

YE 6TH LESSON.

An Imperative Law.

An Imperative Law.-What is it? "And distribution was made to all men according as every man had need." Was that done in accordance with an imperative law of God? A law as binding as that which

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AN IMPERATIVE LAW.

directs the mother to give suck to her child. Let her refuse obedience to this mandate and the babe dies in her arms. Can the mother be guiltless and refuse nourishment to her new born child? Can society refuse to make distribution to all men according as every man has need? Whoever does not receive of the essentials of life according as he has need perishes of want or is subject to dreadful suffering. To distribute the essentials of life to all men according as every man has need is the primary end for which society exists. The perfect accomplishment of this primary end of social organization implies the perfection of the social system. confined to state lines. It is world-wide. This is a recognized truth; And this obligation is not and when famine visits any part of the mundane world the people in every other part feel it to be their bounden duty to give of their abundance to supply the wants of the famine stricken. obligation felt only by the so-called "Christian world" to be bindNor is this ing; for the emperor of China sent a contribution to the destitute of Chicago, at the time the fire fiend had done there his evil work. At this moment there is revealed to my mind a stupendous truth, viz: That the first and sole duty of the social reformer is to insist that "distribution be made to all men according as every man has need." This must be insisted upon alone and disconnected; an isolated factotum, like the unity of God to Islam-in itself a complete end, in itself sufficient. Is it right? It is acknowledged by all men to be right. "Your abundance to supply their want that their abundance may be The starving must be fed and the naked clothed. a supply to your want that there may be equality" the language of

St. Paul.

But "what is everybody's business is nobody's business"—as true as an axiom. Its meaning is that what is the business of the community in its united capacity should be done through responsible officials and not be left to private charity. then the tramp should be anchored in one place and not be driven If vagrancy is a crime, away to other localities. He should be cared for right here. the lands and tools of production and money monopolized by a favored and incorporated few, all cannot be employed remuneratively unless society make provision specially to that end.

With

Can it be truthfully contended that what is in the world, of the essentials of life, does not belong in common to all, when finally it must be apportioned to all according as each has absolute need? Try withholding from any one his essential share and he dies of starvation and exposure. each his essential portion when if not consumed, the product itself And what good can it be to withhold from must perish of decay? Suppose a half dozen men cast away upon an island with food enough for the subsistence of all; but suppose four of the men forcibly prevent the other two, or, two of them, by having possession of guns, prevent the unarmed four from having any share of the food. starvation, and the rest cannot eat all there is, so that the part held Those prevented from eating, die of out of reach of their companions, perishes of decay. That is the way it must be in society on the continents. There is plenty for each and all. Let distribution be made, in a Christian way, "to all men according as every man has need," since the unconsumed supplies must speedily perish of natural decay. Both perish, the indi- · vidual deprived of life's essentials and the essentials of which he is deprived.

We must recognize that the rights of man are superior and paramount to the (so-called) "rights of property." There exists no

property right in the presence of the higher right of life.

But today American society, as well as society everywhere in Christendom, is only organized wrong-doing. The wrong of today may be expressed in scriptural language, viz: borers, who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back "Behold the hire of the la