And other products in like proportions, according as machinery has been perfected and can be used in the production.

The deductions made for management, transportation, wear and tear, etc., in the above calculations are very generous, because, under public management, as you will doubtless observe, the man engaged in management, bookkeeping, transportation, and industries that are not directly productive, must receive a compensation equal to that of the producer. All cannot tend the machines, nor can all be engaged in transportation or supervision. But it is evident that, under such public and collective industry, with the private profit-taker eliminated, the man who produced would expect to receive as much as the man who supervised or helped in the work of exchanging products. And, on the other hand, these latter would expect to be at least as well remunerated, for it would be the right of all to produce who could be made useful.

Under such a system, values being based on production, brain work that was needed in the process of invention, transportation, keeping accounts of produce, etc., and for all industry not “ornamental," would be compensated exactly as labor was compensated for work in the field, at the forge, or in the mine. And as all labor would be superabundantly remunerated, no one would have a right to object to this, or if he did, the public could conscientiously ask whether he was a man or a hog.

Art work could be compensated with honor. That is the chief object of an artist's toil now. Such work would be extra, engaged in as a labor of love, as it should be.

The teacher and the physician would be paid as well as the tiller of the soil or the miner, and would in addition receive honor according to merit.

The figures given above are based on the best machinery. As it might be fifty years before such machinery could be installed all over the country, this system should be put in practice gradually. Under public management, for example, it would be quite safe to award twenty dollars' worth of produce (necessaries of life or otherwise) per day to every worker as payment for a day's work as soon as the scheme was

in force. The amount could be increased at the rate of $10 worth a day each year till the limit was reached, which would be about $150 a day (in produce or luxuries) as soon as the machinery described was fully working. I speak in terms of dollars for the sake of making myself clear. As a matter of fact, money must have no place in this plan. If it is allowed, the evils we have suffered under from the "financier" will be possible. We must have time and labor as the only measures of value. And "if a man will not work, neither shall he eat."

P. S. Since the data for the above article were gathered, the great coal strike has taken place. Just before that strike, on June 19, a special despatch appeared in a St. Louis paper stating that the large corporations were waiting for such an opportunity as a strike would give them to put into the mines. the new mining machines that can dig 250 tons of coal per day, or fifty times as much as one miner can dig. How far they have profited by the opportunity time will show. It is pretty safe to say that another strike of the coal-miners will hardly succeed.

This leads me to reiterate that the only solution of the labor-displacing problem is public ownership. As the writer of the despatch referred to stated truly, this invention of steam diggers can ultimately only mean "the total extinction of the coal-miner as an industrial factor"-unless, it may be added, the whole people become owners of mines and machines.

On the subject of labor displacement, Congressman Dockery, in a speech at Paris, Mo., on Sept. 1, 1897, made the following startling statement: "Five hundred thousand men now do the mechanical labor that a few years ago furnished employment for 16,000,000." The writer of this thought an error had been made in reporting this statement, and wrote to Congressman Dockery, who confirmed the correctness of the report and vouched for the figures.

As between trusts and public management-the people's trust-we have the choice between enormous wealth for the few with comparative pauperism for the masses, and abundance for all. The choice is easily made.

THE CORPORATIONS AGAINST THE PEOPLE.

BY B. O. FLOWER.

I'

T IS of vital importance that the friends of popular govern

ment should grasp in a broad way the great basic issues involved in the titanic struggle of the present—a struggle upon which depends an issue no less momentous than the very existence of popular government. The conflict which is pending is between corporate power in the hands of a few on the one side and public interests and the people's rights on the other. Any narrowing of this issue, or any attempt to elevate one of the many evil consequences flowing from it so as to make a paramount issue of that which is partial, or only a single stem from the giant stalk, is a serious blunder which can serve only to divide the forces of progress. Even if the single reform, however beneficent, triumphed, it could in the nature of the case be at best but a partial success. Thus, monopoly in money, monopoly in transportation, monopoly in all public utilities, whether national, State, or municipal, and monopoly in commodities essential for man's life, comfort, or well-being, are the offspring of corporate control, of society's needs, and civilization's demands, in which the great profits of the few are acquired at the expense of the many. Against this evil, as the concrete representation of despotism in its latest role, all reformers, all friends of liberty, freedom, and justice should unite.

The forces of freedom and the forces of oppression are being rapidly marshalled, the lines of battle are being drawn. The tendencies of the opposing theories are no longer vague or doubtful. If the corporations are to continue, a popular government cannot live, any more than liberty can exist under the rule of absolutism. Here is a fact for thoughtful people to consider. The corporations, as we shall presently see, are the sworn enemies of public rights, individual independence,

common justice, and that wholesome liberty which marks a free government.

Nothing is gained by pursuing the ostrich policy. It is neither manly nor safe to disguise the naked facts, which are no longer disputed questions among honest and informed citizens. The situation in the United States to-day reminds one of a certain Eastern legend. Abdallah, an oriental prince, was one day reclining on his couch, sipping his wine, listening to the music of birds, and enjoying the rich fragrance wafted from his garden of roses, when a beautiful fly entered his apartment and poised on the edge of his wine-cup; he watched the little insect with interest until it flew away. The next day it returned to his cup, and so on, each successive day finding the little visitor at the prince's lonely board. In a short time Abdallah became strongly attached to the fly; he encouraged, humored, and petted it, never noticing how rapidly it was growing, nor the strange transformation that was gradually taking place, by which the once small and inoffensive insect was assuming the form of a man, and later that of a giant. With the growth of the intruder the vigor, health, and greatness of the prince diminished. Abdallah became so fascinated with his visitor that he gave him the right of his house; and when his self-invited guest, after appropriating some of the prince's most prized treasures, gave them back to Abdallah, the poor potentate went into an ecstasy over the generosity of his guest, wholly oblivious of the fact that the little returned was but a moiety of his own wealth which the interloper had appropriated. With the ascendency of the giant that had once been a fly came the complete transformation of the prince. He lost all capacity for reason and selfgovernment, and reflected only that which the giant desired him to manifest. Hence he became a cringing lackey at the feet of a soulless tyrant. Under this fatal spell Abdallah dismissed, degraded, or destroyed all his true friends and faithful servants and followers, putting in their place the wily tools of the giant. Then another change came over the unhappy prince; the fascination of love changed to the fascination of fear. The warnings of his old friends had been mocked, their fidelity had been rewarded with disgrace, and

now the prince felt himself a powerless victim of one who was a stranger to every high or holy sentiment. One morning the prince rose not. His servants entered his apartment to find him dead. It was whispered that the print of the giant's thumb was on his throat.

This legend is suggestive. The corporations have ensnared our nation as did the apparently harmless and beautiful fly. They have been tolerated until they have gained power and a firm foothold in the government throughout all its ramifications. Moreover, and worse, the great opinion-forming agencies of the age have come under their power. Silently, secretly, but with the one central thought of mastery through consolidation and triumph through organization, a few men have banded themselves together and have seized upon various sources of wealth,-sometimes the wealth which nature through countless ages has prepared for all the children of earth. In other instances, those things which, arising from and being dependent upon society, clearly belong to the people collectively, have been seized upon and utilized for the benefit of the few; while a third method of accumulating wealth has been through indirect oppression by securing a monopoly of the products which enter largely into modern life, a monopoly rendered possible through the protection afforded by government and the aid of those who had already grown powerful through the control of nature's treasuries and society's opportunities. These class favors and special privileges have been frequently supplemented by acts which, to say the least, have been glaringly immoral, such as the watering of stock and gambling with loaded dice. In this manner have the corporations advanced step by step till the warnings of statesmen and scholars, which a few years ago were denounced as absurd and demagogical, are no longer questioned.

The great power of corporations is fed by sources of wealth which belong to all the people, and the unjust appropriation of which by a few entails that natural suffering upon the social body which an infraction of hygienic law entails upon the physical body. Thus, nature has provided land rich in productive power; she has stored light and heat in her secret