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winds about the stalks of certain sea-weed, those clothed with hair like fibers being generally chosen, and sends up every now and then tubular processes terminating in cups [Fig. 13]. In the living state, this

FIG. 13.

to back. Let us suppose, with him, that each one of these myriad cells is a baby's wicker cradle, which it resembles in shape; now let us take twenty thousand such cradles, glued side by side, so that the bulging upper

ANGUINARIA SPATHULATA. [FROM NATURE.]

variety is of a delicate rose-color, or glossy | white. In the figure, the cup-shaped cells are polyzoa, and the feathery fronds are the sea-weed to which they are clinging.

In other varieties, of which Crisea eburnea is a good example, the cells are long and tubular, arranged on a branching plant-like plan, with round orifices looking to opposite sides. This species belongs to the infundibulata, and forms a common, very minute, coralline, of which Fig. 14 is a representation.

Some of the most common, as well as the most beautiful of the polyzoa are the Flustra, or sea-mats. These develop, by lateral budding, into beautiful filmy textures, rivaling the most delicate lace. Fig. 15 gives, side by side, the representation of the texture of an exceptionally fine piece of round-point lace, B, and a bit of Flustra paraceta, A. The same magnifying power is used for both-100 diameters. Gosse, in describing a living specimen of flustra, uses such a felicitous figure that the temptation to borrow may be pardoned. It is the leafy seamat [Fig. 16] of which he is speaking. It spreads itself out, when mature, into a film about three square inches in area, which is composed of two layers of cells placed back

portion of one row of cradles shall fit into the concave curve which marks the side of the lower portion of the next row beyond it-quincunx fashion; when this is done, turn over the plate formed of the twenty thousand cradles, and fasten to its back twenty thousand more, arranged in the same way, and placed bottom to bottom,-this, in everything but size, will represent the three square inches of sea-mat. The head of each cradle is elevated above the level of the lower portion, and over each is drawn a thin transparent membrane with a curved slit over the pillow end. Such an opening may be seen in Fig. 15, A, a. Here and there about the surface, instead of the cradle, may be seen a tiny round box with a convex lid. To the naked eye, these look like the minutest of seed pearls studding the delicate lace. These are the avicularia of the flustra which open and shut their little lids as comically and energetically as do the birds' heads their beaks. Each cradle, it may be seen, sends out four stiff spines over the adjacent ones; these rise obliquely across the neighboring bed and guard it from many

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FIG. 14.

CRISEA EBURNEA. [FROM NATURE.]

dangers. To the cells containing the pearls there are no spines attached, as they would hinder the movement of the lids, nor on that side of the adjacent cells, as the avicularia. want no protection.

"Suppose, yet again," says Gosse, "that in every cradle there lies a baby, with its

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semicircular slit in the coverlid, and we see him gradually protruding his head and shoulders in an erect position, straightening his knees at the same time. He is raised half out of bed, when lo! his head falls open and becomes a bell of tentacles! The baby is the tenant polyp."

This fanciful description is so graphic, and so wonderfully suggestive of the appearance and movement of a polypide as it exserts itself, that it is worth more than many perfectly accurate accounts which would in the end be less true, because less intelligible.

These fragile little creatures, by means of the delicate filmy corals that they leave behind them, have written the records of their lives all over the rock tablets of the past. Just as the great mountains of ice in the polar seas, and the heaped-up masses of snow upon Alpine peaks are built, layer upon layer, of such delicate frost tracery as a clear cold night leaves upon our windowpanes, so the vast accumulations of the palæozoic lime-stones are the work of millions upon millions of these tiny polyzoa, heaping up beauty upon beauty, till every detail of delicate grace is lost in the mighty aggregation of solidity and strength.

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A VINTAGE SONG.

ONCE more the year its fullness pours
To cheer the heart of toil;
Once more we take with gratitude
The blessing of the soil.

I hear the children laugh and sing,—
They pull the grapes together;
And gladness breathes from everything
In this October weather.

The winter days were long and dark,
The spring was slow to come;
And summer storms brought fear and doubt
To many a humble home.

But rain and sunshine had their will
And wrought their work together,
And see! we heap our baskets still,
In this October weather.

My heart has had its winter, too,
And lain full bare and gray ;
I did not think a spring would come,
Much less a summer day.
How little did I dream that life
Would bring us two together,
And I should be a happy wife
In this October weather!

Doubtless the frosts will come again,
And some sweet hopes must die;
But we shall bear the passing pain,
And smile as well as sigh;-
Nor let us cloud with fears of ill

This golden hour together;
For God is in His garden still
In this October weather.

The Great Strike.

TOPICS OF THE TIME.

IT would not be a pleasant task to review the list of influences which led to the great strike. Some of them-more important than has been popularly imagined-have had little notice; and they lie so far back, or so deep down, that they are not likely to be talked about. That the railroad force of the country has been very badly demoralized, is evident enough; but if we should say that its demoralization had come mainly through its rulers and employers, we should be met with pretty universal incredulity, if not with indignant protest.

one.

The example which directors and managers have set to those in their employ has not been a good The men who have done the hard work of the railroads have looked on and seen others get rich by illegitimate means. They have seen whole boards of directors drop off gorged from schemes that have left the stock interests without a drop of blood in their veins. They have seen stock watered, tampered with, robbed. They have seen railroads which had absorbed the livings of trustful widows and orphans managed solely for the private interests of their presidents and directors. They have seen roads built with bonds that were lies, and were known to be lies. They have seen roads in ruinous competition with each other, while they were compelled by this competition to do their work at small wages. They have been made to work upon the Sabbath, and have been practically shut away from all religious instruction by those who, with sanctimonious faces and conveniently obtuse consciences, have "taken sweet counsel together, and walked to the House of God in company." The railroad

corporations are very few that have manifested the slightest interest in their employés, beyond getting out of them what it was possible to get for the consideration agreed upon.

All this is shockingly true, and all this has had a great deal more to do in preparing for the strike than most people have imagined. Yet there is nothing in this to justify the strike, or, rather, the form and features it assumed. Nobody in the world questions the right of any man to refuse to work for the wages offered him. Labor is a value which a large number of men put into the market for sale. If the man who has it to offer cannot get the price he asks for it, he has an undoubted right to withhold it, precisely as if his labor were a bushel of wheat, or any other commodity. The simple fact that he has been in the habit of selling his labor satisfactorily to a corporation gives him no claim upon the corporation. The fact that a man has sold iron, or oil, or coal, to a corporation, and has received his money for it, gives him no claim upon the corporation. He has parted with his value, received the equivalent, and there is the end. He has no right to insist that he will forever sell iron, or oil, or coal to the corporation at his own price.

Now, there are among these strikers-however bad some of them may be-good and true men, who are mistaken as to their rights. They do not own a dollar of the railroads they help to operate; they have not a power that is not delegated to them; they have no right except to the wages which they have agreed to work for. They have no right to keep others from working at wages at which they themselves refuse to work; they have no right to

obstruct the passage of trains; they have no right to attempt the control of property which does not belong to them. We do not doubt that many of the strikers have been shocked and disappointed at the outrages which have been committed in their name, or professedly on behalf of their cause. Such excesses were inevitable in the nature of the case. The moment the strikers took an illegal step-the moment they placed themselves outside of the law and beyond their right-they became the companions of thieves and outlaws, who recognized the relationship at once, and joined them, or undertook to lead them. They had a perfect right to refuse to work for the wages offered them. So long as they simply refused, and stood to argue the matter fairly they would have had the moral respect if not the sympathy of the people around them. The moment they laid a finger on property not their own, or undertook to control the running of trains, they became a mob of conspirators against the rights of property and the public order, and placed themselves upon even footing with the worst elements of human society.

And now that it is all over, it is a good time to ask once more what good has come from this strike, and what good has ever come of any strike. The laws of nature which, after all, govern the laws of trade, or are the laws of trade, can never be overcome or circumvented by a strike. Labor will always command its value-no more, no less. We mean by this not that it will not vary-not that it will not fall below or rise above its value at any time-but that during any ten years of industrial history it will command its average or aggregate value. Strikes are always mistakes; they are often crimes. Nothing under heaven but ignorance can make them anything less than crimes in all the future. This great strike has been a foul disgrace to the country. It has made us contemptible in the eyes of the world. It has done no good to any human soul. Nobody is the richer for it except some wretched thief. Property has been put out of existence, life has been sacrificed, the wheels of returning prosperity have been stayed, a distrust has sprung up between employers and employed, and absolutely no good has been accomplished.

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The day of the inauguration of trades unions and labor organizations in this country was a day the blackest and fullest of menace to the popular prosperity and peace that ever dawned upon the nation. They have been an unmitigated curse to employers and employed alike. The nature and purpose of many of these organizations are simply outrageous. They have been despotic toward their own members, oppressive toward the class in whose interest they pretend to have been established, impertinent and intermeddling. They have assumed the right to control property and business in which they had no more right than if they lived in the moon. They have practiced a despotism which would long ago have been howled out of existence if it had been indulged in by any other class, and now when many establishments are run entirely for the sake

of giving work to the laborer, and without the slightest hope of yielding profit to capitalists, they strike! There should be in the good sense and good principles of the great mass of laborers a reaction against this wretched crime, and this stupendous foolishness.

Pauperizing the Clergy.

WE had occasion, in a recent article on the general topic of pauperism, to speak of the bad influences of charitable aid when rendered to young men preparing for the Christian ministry. As everything we said was conceived in a spirit of the warmest friendliness toward the profession, we were not quite prepared for the acrid, not to say contemptuous, criticism with which it was received by a portion of the religious press. We had supposed that the desirableness of independent means in the acquisition of an education, for any profession, was beyond controversy. We had supposed that clergy and laity alike regarded it a misfortune to a young man to be in any way obliged to accept aid in preparing himself for the work of his life. Indeed, they undoubtedly so regard it still; and if it is for any other reason than that it tends to degrade and pauperize him, we have not learned it.

But one religious paper, which ought to be ashamed of its childishness, has undertaken to controvert this very widely held opinion. We have not its words before us, but the point it makes is that if it pauperizes a young man to have his education given him, it will pauperize him equally whether it is given him by the hand of charity or by the hand of his parents! Another religious paper copies this with approval! We should do both papers great injustice if we should assume that they do not know better than this. The sophistry is so puerile that one feels humiliated in being compelled to expose it. A man who takes the responsibility of introducing a child into existence assumes certain duties and obligations which place him in relations to his offspring such as he holds to no other human being. The child possesses certain rights in his father's labor, his acquired capital, his home, his conditions, that can never be alienated except by his crimes. Among these rights is that of a preparation for the work and duty of life. Now, the difference between the position of a boy who feels that in his education he is receiving his natural and legal right, and of one who knows that his education comes to him as a gift of charity to helplessness, is about as wide as can be conceived. Nobody knows this any better than the charity student himself. If he is manly, his position galls and worries him, and he is never happy until he has in some way paid off his debt. If he is not manly, it has a powerful influence in making him a pauper for life. We say, then, that the religious paper which declares that the influence of charitable aid is the same as parental is not candid. It knows better and ought to be ashamed of itself.

More plausible, and more candid without doubt, is a correspondent of a secular paper who compares

the student at West Point with the charity student. At West Point, a young man receives not only his tuition, but his support, without charge; and the influence of this education is not regarded as a pauperizing one. On the contrary, it is looked upon as a most honorable and stimulating one. Now, why should not an education bestowed by the government have the same effect upon the mind of the recipient as one bestowed by the gifts of the benevolent? We may state as a fact that it does not, and that everybody is conscious that it does not. We may assume, therefore, that there is a sound reason for this difference in the facts. The government thinks it worth its money to have an educated body of men, learned in the art of war, to be always ready for service. This body of men, in surrendering themselves to discipline, and holding themselves ready for what is expected of them, have the consciousness of rendering an equivalent for what they receive. They are ready to pay their debt in the only way in which it is desired to be paid, or can be paid. The aid they have received is in no possible sense a charity. It is given by the country for a consideration; it is accepted by the student who perfectly understands the nature of the equivalent he renders.

There are those, undoubtedly, who would undertake to point out a parallel between the church and the government, and to maintain that the young man who gives himself to the church renders an equivalent for all the church may do for him, in preparing him for service. We are not, however, talking about what may or might be, or what ought to be. We are talking about what is, and the simple fact is that the aid given to the students for the ministry is, and is felt to be, charitable aid. It carries no such self-respect with it as is entertained by the son who is educated by his father's money, in the enjoyment of a heaven-bestowed right, and no West Point pride, bred in an institution that takes no note of rich or poor, but identifies itself with the governmental interest and honor.

Whatever we may have written upon this subject, first or last,—and we have written a good deal upon it, we have had at heart the interest of the Christian ministry. The body is disgraced by a large and not rapidly diminishing mass of men who occupy in their parishes the position of paupers. How and when they became willing to be the constant recipients of gifts we do not know. We do not think they are the sons of men who were able to give them an education. We do not think they are men who wrought out their own education. We have no doubt that they are men who began by being helped, and who, to the disgrace of their profession, have remained willing to be the recipients of charity from year to year. If there is a man in this world who should be in independent circumstances it is the Christian teacher. Generous support is a matter of right, and any minister who will consent to receive the payment for his work with even the smell of charity upon it, is a pauper. This is what we ask for,-a body of men who hate charity as it relates to themselves, who are

"touchy" as it concerns their business rights, and who compel their parishes to understand that their money has its equivalent in ministerial work as truly as in any work. This, too, is what we ask for, a body of young men who will be willing to wait five years that they may earn money rather than touch a dollar of "help,"-a body that will enter the pulpit mortgaged to no society of old women of either sex, and with a sincere hatred of all the influences that tend to degrade their profession in the eyes of a practical business world. And we cannot conceive how anybody can find fault with these views and wishes and motives of ours, unless they touch to consciousness a pauper spirit within himself.

Regulated Production.

IN a recent number of "The Popular Science Monthly," we find an important and most suggestive article from the pen of O. B. Bunce, which attempts to enforce the policy of "regulated production." There is no question that the popular doctrine that the supply is always regulated by the demand, and that demand will always elicit supply, does not work with the requisite nicety or sensitiveness. A demand springs up, let us say, for paper. Immediately hundreds of mills start into action, each anxious to do its utmost to meet that demand with supply. They are operated night and day, and before they can feel the subsidence of the demand, the market is glutted. Then the mills are reduced to half time, or the gates are shut down altogether. Thousands of workmen and workwomen are either reduced in wages, or deprived of all wages; and then, of course, comes distress. They cease to be consumers of anything but the bare necessaries of life, and thus every interest with which they hold relations is made to suffer with them. They buy no cloth, they live in the cheapest quarters, they drop all luxuries, and their over-production becomes, in every respect, a popular disaster. The demand brought the supply, but the supply for a year was produced in six months.

We all remember with what opposition the introduction of labor-saving machinery was met in England. The laboring classes had an instinct that there was somewhere in it mischief for them. In this country, less opposition has been manifested, because the labor market, until within a few years, has not been over-supplied. In the development of a new realm there has been enough for everybody to do. It was not long ago in this country that the instincts of labor began to apprehend trouble from over-production. The labor-saving machinery was all invented, however, and in use, and the only remedy that seemed to offer was a reduction of the hours of labor-the shortening of the day's work. This could not work well, because it was not universal, and it was a clumsy resort in every respect. No manufacturer, paying a fixed sum for eight hours' work, could compete with another who paid only the same sum for ten, eleven and twelve hours' work. The matter got into the hands of demagogues, guilds and societies have

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