but paid their fines and with the aid of bankers and capitalists who went on their bonds, continued to run. Other places where unnecessary business was transacted were closed. A careful estimate, reached by competent, conservative citizens, showed that over 50,000 overworked men and women whose faces human greed was grinding, and who toiled 365 days in the year, were given one day in seven as a day of rest. And they were the happiest, most grateful persons I have ever seen. No intolerance was practiced and no necessary business interdicted.

But your humble speaker left the bench. The Sabbath desecrators at once took charge again. And Kansas City is today on Sunday one of the most wide open cities on earth. Not even barber shops are closed, as they are even in St. Louis and in most of our great cities. The Sabbath, as to a large part of our population, is ceasing to be a "holy day" and is rapidly becoming a holiday-a day of hilarity, debauchery, immortality, and pecuniary rapacity. Mammon in many lines of so-called business, is coming to regard it as his best day for money getting. Old Bacchus, maudlin and debauched with his crown of grapes about his head, is authorized by law to mount his chariot and drive his tigers up and down our streets six days in the week. On Sunday he must retire to his legalized haunts called saloons, but often only the front doors are closed. There are back doors and cellars and attics and adjoining dens of shame, and he manages to pour more of his fiery lava of Hell down the throats of our citizens and paint our beautiful streets redder with the blood of his murdered victims on the Sabbath than on any other day. All of our theatres are now open on Sunday, and Venus, dressed in tights, is dancing young men to perdition. (Here the moderator informed the speaker that his ten minutes had expired.)

A delegate: I move that the speaker's time be extended. Another delegate: I second the motion. From the audience: "Go on!" "Go on!" The writer cannot remember whether the motion was put or not. He remembers that the moderator said, "Proceed."

The speaker, continuing: I am in the home of Henry W. Grady. I stand with bowed head above his grave. Heaven preserve and protect his name and fame. As I looked not many hours since at the monument erected to his memory on one of the streets in this beautiful God-fearing Sunday-observing city, a gentleman born and reared in the North and who stood by me, said, "They tell me that Mr. Grady stood for all that is good and

pure and lofty." And he did. He was the dauntless friend of our Christian civilization. He was a chivalric apostle of brotherly love. He advised his countrymen to brush aside the ashes of the war, and, dedicating themselves to the Stars and Stripes, set about the task of repairing their fortunes and rebuilding their desolated homes. He preached the gospel of the "New South" more eloquently than any man living or dead.

And, my friends, you of this splendid audience assembled here from Richmond to El Paso and from Louisville to New Orleans, can bear testimony to the fact that this New South has experienced a development without a parallel in history. These sky-scrapers here in Atlanta, towering above the ruins of the sixties are typical witnesses of your marvelous growth. You can also bear testimony, my friends, to the fact that the hands that have wrought this wonderful material development throughout the Southland have rested on the Sabbath day, for, thank God, it can be truthfully said of the men of the South, that neither in adversity nor prosperity have they deserted the religion of their fathers.

My friends, commercialism is beginning to dominate some of the best men of my city. Members of the church, great merchants, bankers, capitalists sit down close to the minister on Sunday and say "amen," "amen," and then go down into the marts of trade during the week and say that Kansas City cannot keep abreast of other American cities in the great march of progress and observe the Sabbath. She cannot afford, they say, to permit her laborers to losé fifty-two days in every year. Come, I pray you, next May, and tell these men that this argument is a lie. Tell them that the law of nature, as well as the law of God, requires that man shall have one day in seven as a day of rest, and that the best progress is made when these laws are obeyed. Come as witnesses and give evidence to the fact that you have experienced the most marvelous development in history, whilst throughout this vast domain the Sabbath was observed. But I must not trespass farther upon your kindness and chivalry and take more of your time.

Representatives of the great Presbyterian Church of the South, in fifty-three years you have honored the imperial State of Missouri with but two visits, the last visit being twenty-six years ago. You have never been to Kansas City. This dauntless division of God's Army has never camped closer to us than three hundred miles. Texas has made a splendid fight on the floor of

this Assembly for one of its bustling, beautiful cities. But you have been twice in Texas since you were in Missouri. Heaven bless you men from Texas. The record shows that in no State in the Union is the law more splendidly enforced than in Texas. Your citizenship is of the very highest order. A magnificent plea has been made here for a progressive city in Virginia-"the mother of presidents," full of glorious history and achievements in both war and peace. The gentleman who made the principal speech for her said it would be inappropriate that so many commissioners, representing the thousands of Presbyterians in Virginia, should be compelled to travel all the way to Western Missouri, where members of the Southern Presbyterian Church were so few-it would be better that the few representatives from Missouri come to Virginia. If the proportion of numbers be as he says-and it is not disputed-then, for this very reason, you should come to our city, with its three hundred thousand inhabitants and with hundreds of thousands living close by. What a harvest is here presented for your labors. Remember the words of the divine Master, "Go." "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature."

The General Assembly of the Northern Presbyterian Church, about a thousand strong, has visited Kansas City. It is believed that they accomplished good for their great church by coming. I think I could name some congregations which the Southern Assembly has lost by not paying more attention to the great West. I make no complaint.

My friends, I thank you for listening to me. It was a great honor to have spoken to you. I honor other branches of the Church of Christ and expect to see thousands of their members on the shining shore. But it is but natural that I should love the church of my ancestors. My old father preached in this church. sixty-one years, and I now have a brother who has preached to his only pastorate twenty-six years. While the Presbyterian Church, along with other orthodox denominations, stands for the great fundamentals of the Gospel, I shall never leave it. It is not a question of whether or not the church is good enough for me, but the question is as to whether or not I am good enough for it. My voice to the church shall ever be, "Entreat me not to leave thee or to return from following after thee. For whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. The Lord do so to me and more also if ought but death part thee and me."

ARGUMENT AGAINST THE SINGLE TAX

(From campaign speech in 1912.)

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I

T SEEMS that I am now the victim of a storm of calumny and misrepresentation. I face it everywhere I go. The Single Taxers have mailed tens of thousands of bulletins throughout the State attacking me. The funds of millionaire Fels and others are being lavishly expended. Thousands of these bulletins, freighted with falsehoods, are anonymous. They are the nameless messengers of cowards. I see an attempted description of my farmbought and paid for with hard-earned money-tacked up all over the State, accompanied with malicious and anonymous falsehoods. The Single Taxers are desperate, and I seem to be the special object of their fury. A gentleman told me just before I left home on this trip that he heard eight of them make short speeches in the open air the other night at Kansas City, and I was the object of the denunciation of them all. I am told they have over fifty speakers going over the State, all of them abusing me. But I am not losing any sleep. I am making two full speeches every day, and have about covered the whole State. These anonymous falsehoods all relate to the Single Tax fight, and of themselves show from whence they come. But I have positive proof that they have been mailed out by Single Tax leaders. I could cause arrests and secure convictions if I were willing to swear that I thought these falsehoods had injured my personal character, but I do not believe they have.

A few weeks ago these Single Taxers were very happy. Everything in the fight was going to suit them. They thought their prospects were splendid. The battle was joined. The "issues were made up," as we lawyers put it. It was agreed, they said, that it was simply a question as to whether their propaganda would advance or lower taxes, and they were showing, they said, that to collect all taxes from real estate would lessen the burden. Lawyers, they said, were debating this question with

them. Men of letters and college professors and learned theorists were writing articles on their side. Anti-Single Tax orators were delighting them by debating with them the question of "unearned increments," "land values," "land sites," "unimproved lots in cities" and the like. But deep down in their hearts they were holding their secret purpose. As they passed this farm or that one, their mouths were watering as they dreamed of the time when the State would own it and they would have exactly the same right to occupy and enjoy it as the old pioneer, who by honest toil dug it from the forest. They were indeed happy. With the booty, as they thought, almost in sight, they were as happy as Byron's pirates in his Corsair as they dipped their oars in the waves and sang:

"O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,

Our thoughts as boundless and our souls as free,
Far as the breeze can reach the billows foam,
Survey our empire and behold our home.

O, who can tell save he whose heart has tried
And danced in triumph o'er the billows wide
The exulting sense the pulses maddening play,
That thrills the wanderer o'er this trackless way
That of itself can woo the approaching fight
And turn what some deem danger to delight.

Let him who crawls enamored of decay,
Cling to his couch and sicken years away.

Ours the brief epitaph in dangers day

When those who win at last divide the prey."

Ah, my friends, there are land pirates as well as pirates on the high seas, and those magic words of Byron in the above lines, "divide the prey," are the same words that were enthusing and delighting the Single Taxers as they looked toward the future a few weeks ago.

But these Single Taxers are mad now. They are furiousfurious at me, hence all this turning of their guns from others and leveling them upon me. They say I have "changed the issue on them." They say that "like a firebrand" I have gone over the State, telling audiences of excited men that the issue is not merely as to taxation or "land sites" or "land values" or "unearned increments," but that the question is as to whether or not their lands and houses are to be "confiscated," as Henry George expresses it-stolen from them-as I have put it. The people now