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with assorted fire-arms turned upon a thousand special curves and requiring in the handling some individual acquaintance. But the ancient cobbler is gone, or at least retired to a corner where he lives on taps and patches, and the gunsmith keeps a repair shop. Leather-working machinery and the introduction of the wonderful interchangeable system in mechanics now make it possible to turn out a hundred boots or a hundred rifles as nearly alike as a hundred drops of mountain dew. It may be questioned whether there are more men in the country to-day who can make a pair of boots than there were fifty years ago. The trade of the shoemaker has been subdivided into sixtyfour different trades. The mentality required in the workman has necessarily declined. Twenty years' steady work as a "heeler" or a "liner" or "crimper" or "shank-presser cannot possibly act as a mental stimulant. Given one man with all the conditions for the making and the fashioning of a shoe, as judgment, taste, and skill dictate in order to catch the customer, and you have a humble school for individual development in a trade. Given, upon the other hand, sixty-four men set to do sixty-four things that will accommodate themselves to one mould, and you have all the properties of a machine. The factory conditions of labor are now immeasurably more exacting than formerly, but the required mental grade of labor is lower. We have preserved the equation of a day's work by simplifying and patternizing the work, so to speak, and thus reducing individual judgment to a minimum. Private judgment in the workman means friction. The wage-earner of today is valuable in proportion to his reduction to a common standard. His arm is perfect when it swings by rule, and the temper of his trade spirit is perfect when it can be poured, as it were, into the factory matrix to cool.

The writer has in mind a Massachusetts village, where, a quarter of a century ago, it was a common thing for high school girls to choose between school teaching and working in a paper mill, and some of them followed both occupations at times. Indeed, the girls returning from work at night were in appearance and character not unlike bevies of school girls. The introduction and perfection of machinery led naturally to the employment of ignorant Frenchmen for foremen, and finally

French girls for operatives. The young men of the village sought clerkships in the larger towns where pay was not so large, but where there was still some play for individual character. This drift has been at work to a greater or less degree the country over in the manufacturing districts. The loss of individuality in labor is a loss in the sense of the dignity of labor, and this is a loss to the community. Owing to the need of increased capital, business firms, corporations, and trusts, have come into being in logical succession. A firm impairs the single merchant's individuality. A corporation trenches upon firm individuality, and the trust absorbs the individuality of many corporations. This a serious matter, and the member of a trust who sneers at nationalism for killing competition, is making sport of a theory of business that brings him his own dividends.

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Upon the other hand, all of the trade unions and workingmen's brotherhoods are established at the expense of individual freedom among wage-earners. It is a foregone conclusion that when capital conspires labor will organize; but the price paid for this organization is the material point in this discussion. Both the laborer and his employer lose caste with their fellows by antagonizing these fraternities and commercial alliances. The mill-owner who will not combine to regulate the production or the quality of his goods soon becomes known as a business crank;" while the non-union man is denounced as a "scab." The very opprobrium of these epithets fixes the low level to which individuality has sunk in public estimation. And the same thing, though in a less degree, was noticed in the last presidential campaign in politics. Good republicans according to the old standards, that is, the standards of 1860 and 1864, were rudely called "free traders" if they favored even a small reduction of the tariff, "friends of England" if they advocated fixity of tenure in the civil service, and even "copperheads" if they proposed amendments to the pension laws, or a reform in their administration. One cannot say how far this spirit of the martinet in the party is due to sympathy with the popularity of combinations and leagues in so many branches of activity.

And again, these critics who condemn nationalism because it removes the healthy conditions of competition seem to forget that the removal of competition in America both in the wholesale and retail business, which has been going on so long, is the direct result of business consolidation. When A. T. Stewart opened his Ninth Street retail store at New York, he sent scores of shop-keepers into bankruptcy or out of the business. There is now an A. T. Stewart in almost every considerable town in the Eastern and Middle States, and many in the West. There never was a time when the cream of the retail business was in the hands of so few men as to-day. The same consolidation in manufacturing has in a similar way limited the scope and diversity of competition. After all, the wonder is, not that the sale of the book "Looking Backward" is so large, but that no one had written such a book before. About all that nationalism can accomplish is to complete the sequence of trade combination as it now exists, and make a "straight flush," if one may borrow a phrase from the card-table, by giving Uncle Sam a "full hand" of trusts. One thing is as sure as the law of gravitation: We cannot stop where we are. There is no equilibrium in the present situation. George Rice, the Marietta (Ohio) petroleum refiner cannot go on paying freight on his wooden barrels, while the Standard Oil Company has the privilege of emptying their petroleum into tank cars, the tanks being excluded from the freight weight. Half a dozen trunk lines in league with the "Standard Oil" refuse to furnish Rice with tank cars, and if this combination is suffered to continue, Rice must eventually surrender to his creditors or to the "Standard Oil." In either event the oil trust is in no position to be alarmed. It is the individual who is caught between the two mill-stones now-a-days.

In view of the situation, thus hastily and imperfectly sketched, every true American, moved by a high and broad sense of citizenship, will turn to both political parties and ask them to present their remedial programmes. Neither party will care to defend the present state of things. In its extremest application the principle of local sovereignty and personal liberty as taught by the old democratic party would come very little short of anarchism; and who will say that the full logic of republican

ism as it is being worked out in our economy would not be nationalism pure and simple? This may seem a startling question to many, but let these many wander about the embattlements of our entrenched industries and see for themselves.

This country has not gotten over the habit of looking to the republican party for safe advice, and wise, brave leadership. Its grand principles have been woven into the very life of the Republic. The past is indeed secure, but what of the future? Abraham Lincoln, whose judgment as to the workings of a political principle was quite as penetrating as his moral intuitions, clearly foresaw a fearful struggle between corporate power and private interests in this country. He even feared that it would be as bitter as the anti-slavery fight. It rests, for the time being, with the party in power to battle against the realization of such substantial fears. The industrial policy of the republican party is being overworked. Old voters, who cannot form a new party and will not go over to the democracy, remain gloomily in their tents. There is, in fact, a distinctively whig republican tone to be found among men who never voted a democratic ticket. What are these whig republicans to do? Give up the old fight and embrace some socialistic group or nationalism or what not, or pour into the republican caucuses and fight this thing out in camp? Idle wonder at the extensive sale of a nationalist book should rather give place to a patriotic solicitude as to how the spread of such views may be made impossible. The republican party has been unwittingly teaching nationalism too long to quarrel at this late day with a few uneasy spirits who are exploiting far in advance of it.

MASON A. GREEN.

ARTICLE II.-HOW AND WHERE TO BEGIN REFORM.

"REFORM!" is the popular war-cry of our age. The word is on every tongue and its spheres of application are infinite in number and variety. To pose before the public as a reformer is the ruse adopted in these days by nearly every seeker after popular favor. So potent is the charm that whoever repeats it patiently and persistently, if he be possessed of a strong pair of lungs, is sure of a certain following, even though the cause for which he shouts is of the most trivial importance, and himself its most unworthy representative. Thus it has come to pass that the very atmosphere of America, and especially that of New England, is redolent with reforms of every kind. We have tariff reformers and temperance reformers, divorce reformers and dress reformers, social reformers and suffrage reformers, religious reformers, political reformers, ballot reformers, labor reformers, reformers of every imaginable tribe and species, from the great lion reformer whose roaring strikes terror far and wide and who aims at the overthrow of governments and threatens world revolutions, to the little squeak-voiced mouse reformer whose largest idea is to bring about some change in the management of his school district.

That there is need of reform in many quarters is a selfevident fact. The most determined optimist cannot delude himself into believing that the world is just right as it is, that the relations of society are perfectly harmonious, that existing institutions are not susceptible of improvement.

Equally clear to most minds is the fact that the great majority of those who assume the title of reformers are wholly unworthy of the name. Very frequently it happens that those who are loudest in their denunciation of others are themselves most worthy of rebuke. The lazy and indolent among the poor are quickest to discover the sins of their rich and thrifty neighbors. The inefficient and worthless workman finds most fault with his employer. On the other hand, the dishonest and arrogant among the rich and the unjust and oppressive employers are

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