matter for study and comparison. Those who regard what is simple and artless as shallow and beneath the dignity of earnest students, who think lightly of "Der Glockenguss zu Breslau" because it is not a "Kraniche des Ibykus" or yet an "Erlkönig," who contemn "Die schöne Müllerin " in comparison with a "Maud" or a "Fra Lippo Lippi," may pass our poet by; but as long as that which comes from the heart shall go to the heart his name must keep an honored place among those which are to live and be loved.

James Saft Hatfield

ART. VII. THE INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION.

CAN our economic-social order be mended? The question. suggests that it is unsatisfactory; but it is the normal condition of human things to be unsatisfactory. The discontent with it, however, is not of so acute and epidemic a nature as the most discontented persons allege it to be. A vast number of industrious and conscientious persons are quite satisfied with it, though only a few of them are rich or prosperous. Such persons would admit that our economic ways are defective; but if pressed to think about it they would say that no great change can be made in their day, that any change involves danger of reaching a worse state of affairs, and that top-to-bottom reconstruction means, at all events, a chaotic condition for a time. Those who are certain that a new order can be effected, so to say, by touching a button are at the other extreme, and enjoy a happy confidence in their specific cure for our real and imaginary ills. In fact, this generation may be divided into three groups on this question: (1) those who are perfectly satisfiedthe invincible conservatives; (2) those who are completely dissatisfied the impracticable radicals; and (3) those who are awake to the defects of the existing order, but do not believe a perfect order possible, and desire gradual and evolutionary change. The last group contains most thoughtful people. The first is made up of the rich and prosperous or, rather, of a part of them. The second consists of a small number of half-truth thinkers and a following attracted by the half-truth's simplicity and further moved by personal dissatisfaction. Their following contains the greater number of those who know that they have failed and wish to remove the blame for their failure from their own shoulders.

For ten years we have been told that there is universal unrest. This has never been true, and it is less true than it was in more prosperous times. A part of the restless people have lost confidence in panaceas and are trying to make the best of the inevitable world assigned to them by Providence. The vociferousness of the dissatisfied creates the belief that they are a multitude. The noisy, the confident, and the one-idead easily assume that all the people think and will as they do.

But even in hard times an air of resignation, if not of contentment, pervades our populations. No more serious mistake has been made than that of a few persons who, during the strike of last July, saw in vision a new order springing out of the slums and saloons of Chicago. The easy way in which oldfashioned social discipline by clubs and muskets dissipated a mob and a socialistic mirage contains a volume of instruction for the prudent and judicious. The economic-social order has for a long time been undergoing a gradual process of amendment. We are living in an order of progress. The belief that we are exhausting the resources of the present order, that things are going from bad to worse, that a collapse is not far off, is mere insanity-the product, that is to say, of minds out of health. The proof that in this century an amazing progress has been made in the horizontal diffusion of the blessings of life is so bulky and so self-evident that it is impossible to marshal it in all its force. The man who doubts it cannot appreciate the historical perspective. The expending of wealth for the general welfare in innumerable ways, from street lighting and practically free mails all the way up to public schools and free libraries, has immensely increased. The vast sums gathered by taxation and invested in the common welfare indicate a progress in the near past and a sure advance in the near future. The change for the better in the economic condition of the working people is simply so marvelous that words cannot describe it. That railway employees, taken all together, receive higher salaries than preachers and teachers, taken all together, is a fact not doubted. But what a change in the condition, the relative position, of this class of workmen does it indicate!

The increase in the number of the poor is an almost necessary consequence of our importation of European paupers; but we have seen no proof that there is any relative increase of paupers of American stock. These paupers existed fifty years ago, and still exist. Their fons et origo are moral, not economic, now, as they were in 1845. The pauper, as a rule, develops, not out of this or that civilization, but out of himself. Distinguishing between the pauper and the poor, the latter owe to bad judgment, to fraud, and to misfortune-such as ill health-their pitiable condition; and they are constantly helped to regain their feet by Christian charity. Probably no community has

more deserving poor than it can provide for. There is a simulated poverty-and it has been growing for years—that of the tramp class, whose poverty is the result of indolence and moral deterioration. The occasion for the growth of this class has been furnished, not by hard economic conditions, but by the infinite charity of the people who feed tramps as cheerfully as they feed their own children. There is not a gleam of evidence that the poor-the not rich-are growing poorer. Many of them are growing rich. Considered as a whole, our population standing between the rich, on one side, and the destitute, on the other, is plainly richer, better housed, clothed, and fed than it was fifty years ago or thirty years ago. The rich here referred to are not numerous; the destitute are not numerous. The practically comfortable and prosperous, including a vast body of workmen, farmers, and traders, are a great multitude. There are few fortunes that were not amassed by living owners. Every community has men whose character and skill have built up comfortable fortunes.

Assuming that we wish to make a great change in economic conditions, what group or groups do we desire to benefit? Surely not the paupers-that is to say, those who are born so, who have a genetic affiliation with destitution. They are worth saving, but no possible social change could redeem them; the work must be done inside, not outside of them. Surely not the tramp group. They can be cured by substituting a stoneyard, where food can be earned, in place of the exuberant charity of every kitchen door. Possibly the poor may be regarded as the beneficiaries of a reform which would make their poverty impossible-a worthy object, if the cost of it be not the greater evil. It will be found that the real reason why economic revolution is desired springs out of the discontent of groups having now all the goods they can wisely use, a part of which they use unwisely, or from an indolent and vicious group. The immense cost of the American saloon is partly the explanation of this discontent. Workmen who cannot spend all their wages for drink and still support their families are the natural prey of the socialist. The impossibility of wasting all these millions in drink and still having the means of comfort is the most distinct cause of discontent with our social order. It is noticeable, too, that whenever a man loses his

fortune by rash speculation he is apt to become enamored of some dream of social redemption. He is partly in the mood of the fox that lost his tail in a trap; partly, also, he is seeking to hide his personal contribution to his own misfortune. Now, is it worth a revolution to provide for our whisky bills without drawing upon family support? Should we "reform" in order that men who already possess may have what they will consider a fairer share? Is it possible to satisfy them? And can anyone tell us what is a fair share? Do we think it possible to make and keep happy those men who gamble away fortunes in speculation? In each case there is an easier relief than revolution. Stop drinking, stop envyings, stop rash speculation; that is to say, if the unhappy groups choose to do so they can work out the reforms required in their behalf.

It is plain that our largest reform remains a religious and moral one. It is character, rather than conditions, which needs improvement. Nor are we in this matter of character worse off than we were half a century ago. If some bad growths have been imported, on the other hand clear evidences of improvement appear in the steady growth of Church membership and in the social gains through public education. An American town mainly filled with American people has a better population than it had a half century back. But the weak places are conspicuous, because they are in large towns. These spots are marked by frequent saloons and a babel of tongues. And the saloons, unbelief, and laziness combine to weaken character outside the area of foreign populations. We have the old duty of preaching the Gospel, and the newer one of protecting our youth against the saloon-a growth of the half century and a markedly dangerous one; for a half century ago intemperance used the bottle or the jug—and a still fresher duty of social cultivation of the poor, with the aim of making the idle industrious and the thriftless thrifty.

A few words must be given to the contention of those who maintain these propositions: "The relatively poor have not their fair share. Granted that we are not destitute, it remains our grievance that so large a part of the wealth made in the half century is in few hands. Granted that ability has produced it in large part, we claim to have produced much more of it than we have received." The ultimate problem here put