of "rights" to a large class of the population. It indicates that there is danger in allowing any movement, however laudable, to progress too rapidly.

It is no endorsement of the presentday labor movement in the United States to say that at bottom it means the establishing of new institutions to perform the services which continued industrial progress and social growth is more and more in need of. It is properly to be questioned whether the present phase of the movement is establishing the right kind of institutions. This is exactly what is done in every case where opposition to the movement is in evidence. And this very opposition has

its effect in preventing an abnormal and in bringing into a normal development the very kind of institutions society is in need of. Through it the proper institutions will develop and in course of time will find their place and perform their work in the social organization. Largely through opposition to the extravagant demands of the labor leaders is the trade union, with its machinery for joint agreements between capital and labor, slowly developing into a permanent institution which in time will become as important to society as the political party, the church, the court of justice, or the school house. But this is to come only through rational opposition to the evils inherent in the labor movement.

There

What we call evil things are sometimes merely survivals of the sentiment and conduct of an earlier time. Sometimes evil is a form of degeneracy, sometimes it is the adaptation of new opinions to the carrying out of old villianies. are many new forms of evil in the world; but there are no new principles which can be called evil; there are no new tendencies which can be called evil, there are no new powers which in themselves may be described as evil.

That which remains from the old time persists in impulses which have been in human nature from the beginning, and in customs which in ruder times than ours were associated with the primitive instincts and passions. Hunger, thirst, the fighting impulse, with the desire to kill when fear or anger was excited, the impulses out of which the family has grown, earth-hunger, and the love of personal liberty are all as old as history. Associated with them until within a few years have been customs which went along with the claim by the ruling classes of the right to dispose of the persons and property of those who were dependent upon them. Of all these things there are survivals, which have come down to

our own time, and into the customs of society and of business.

The difference now is that things that a hundred years ago, in many countries, were done openly, are now done secretly. What was once taken by force is now taken by devices which bring about the same result as violence. There are no new vices, no new forms of gluttony, of licentiousness, vulgar display, or cruel oppression. Some vices have passed away, and are no longer even mentioned. Side by side in common life we see running two sets of events, two kinds of principles, two classes of men and women, the one tending always toward the improvement of life and the better organization of society, the other maintaining the lower forms of business, pleasure, and crime. There are vast and unusual developments of wrong-doing because there are vast and unusual powers to work with. Great intellect is being applied, with resources undreamed of a hundred years ago; and both for good and for evil the new forms of energy are coming under the control of mankind.

We have unusual conspiracies for the production of fictitious securities, and

the sale to the people of that which has no value. But the repeated failure of

these schemes shows that the discriminating power of the public is reaching a point where the pirates who have turned their attention to the stock market will soon be as unsuccessful on 'change as they would be on the high seas, if they kept to the trade of their ethical ancestors from whom they inherit their qualities. Gambling and unlawful speculation are vices surviving from the oldest times, taking on new and variegated forms of attraction day.

to

But, running alongside of these exciting pursuits and events in the lives of gamblers, speculators, and fools, we have, the steady business of the country, never so sound, so prosperous, so healthy, and so honest as it is today. All the gambling carried on between rascal promoters and the fools, their victims, might be abolished at a stroke without in any way affecting the honest business of the country and its prosperity.

We hear much about divorce with all its antecedent crimes and attendant evils.

There are a few thousand men and women among our seventy millions of people who have lost the restraints of home, the love of children, and the sentiment of the neighborhood, who have in their migratory lives slipped out from under the control of public opinion; and, rich or poor (mostly rich who were recently poor), they are rioting in their freedom from restraint. But they no more represent the sentiments of virtue, modesty, and fidelity which adorn the homes of the people than their lavish

luxury matches the ordinary spending of the people.

There is abroad what is often described as wide-spread suspicion of the church, revolt from religion and indifference to the moral law. Let the evils of which so much is made in our time be ever so great, when we read history we see no reason to believe that they are greater than ever before; but, if we pile up all the evidences of religious degeneracy and moral revolt, he who knows the people must see that with all this external evidence of decline there is a wide-spread loyalty to that which is sound, wholesome, and true in life and thought. Civil authority has been transferred from the preacher and the priest to magistrates; and that is well. But, with the passing of authority, naturally the preacher and the priest, the chapel and the church, have lost some of the control which they once exercised over the conduct of men. But we hold it to be true that, while there is less control exercised by the church, there is less need of it. The records of any colonial church, even so late as the early part of the last century, show, by the confessions made, that marriage by the common people and by church members was not so strictly guarded then as now. Events which would create scandal in the richest and most emancipated family today were confessed, legitimatized, and forgotten by very respectable people until recent times. The wheat and the tares grow together until the harvest; but in the wheat fields of the country the tares are everywhere disappearing, while the sound grain increasingly flourishes.

Vast, lone and limitless-nor anywhere
A single gleaming sail on its wide space-
Heaves the Pacific. Ever headlong race
The Billows eastward, save when one in air
Leaps high, to sink in foam and roar'd despair,
Unheeded by its fellows. What mad chase

Is this why drive they on at such a pace

Steadfast toward the east?

What seek they there? Where long gray breakers breast the windy beach, A slender girl, gold-haired, her face aflush With laughter, wantons with the waves that leap To her white arms' caress, and upward reach Her curv'd lips to kiss-Who would not rush From midsea landward, such reward to reap? -R. H. Basset in Sunset Magazine November.

It swelled into the rafters, an' bulged out into the sky;

The ol' church shook an' staggered, an' seemed to reel an' sway,

An' the elder shouted "Glory!" an' I yelled out "Hooray!"

An' then he tried a tender strain thet melted in our ears,

Thet brought up blessed memories an' drenched 'em down 'ith tears;

An, we dreamed uv ol'-time kitchens, 'ith Tabby on the mat.

Uv home an' luv an' baby days, an' mother an' all that!

An' then he struck a streak uv hope-a song from souls forgiven:

Thet burst from prison bars uv sin, an' stormed

the gates uv heaven;

The mornin' stars they sung together-no soul was left alone

We felt the universe wuz safe, an' God wuz on His throne!

An' then a wail uv deep despair an' darkness come again,

An' long black crape hung on the doors uv all the homes uv men;

No luv, no light, no joy, no hope, no songs uv glad delight

An' then the tramp, he staggered down an' reeled into the night!

But we knew he'd tol' his story, though he never spoke a word,

An' it wuz the saddest story thet our

ever heard;

ears had

He had tol' his own life history, an' no eye wuz dry thet day,

W'en the elder rose an' simply said: "My brethren let us pray.

Sam Walter Foss.