Tim may have plenty of clubs to hold over the foreigner's head.

So between boss and immigrant grows up a relation like that between a feudal lord and his vassals. In return for the boss's help and protection, the immigrant gives regularly his vote. The small fry get drinks or jobs, or help in time of trouble. The padrone, liquor-dealer, or lodging-house keeper gets license or permit or immunity from prosecution, provided he "delivers" the votes of enough of his fellow-countrymen. The ward boss realizes perfectly what his political power rests on, and is very conscientious in looking after his supporters. Of the Irish "gray wolves" in the Chicago council I was told, "Each of them is a natural ward leader, and will go through hell-fire for his people and they for him."

To the boss with a hold on the immigrant the requirement that the poor fellow shall live five years in this country before voting presents itself as an empty legal formality. In 1905 a special examiner of the Federal Department of Justice reported: "Naturalization frauds have grown and spread with the growth and spread of the alien population of the United States, until there is scarcely a city or county-seat town . . . where in some form these frauds have not from time to time been committed." In 1845 a Louisiana judge was impeached and removed for fraud, the principal evidence being that he had issued certificates to 400 aliens in one day. The legislature might have been more lenient could it have foreseen that in 1868 a single judge in New York would issue 2500 of such certificates in one day! The gigantic naturalization frauds committed in the Presidential campaign of 1868 resulted in an investigation by Congress and in the placing of congressional elections under Federal supervision. During the month of October two New York judges issued 54,000 certificates. An investigation in 1902 showed about 25,000 fraudulent certificates of naturalization in use in that city.

There is hardly need nowadays to recount what Tim and his kind have done with the power they filched through the votes of Giuseppe and Jan and Michael. They have sold out the city to the franchise-seeking corporations. They have jobbed public works and pocketed a "rake

off" on all municipal supplies. They have multiplied jobs and filled them with lazy henchmen. henchmen. By making merchandise of building laws or health ordinances, they have caused an unknown number of people to be crushed, or burned, or poisoned. Worst of all, by selling immunity from police interference to the vice interests, they have let the race be preyed on and consumed in the bud. Thanks to their "protection," a shocking proportion of the population of our cities of mixed population is destroyed by drinking, dissipation, and the diseases of vice.

It is in the cities with many naturalized foreigners or enfranchised negroes that the vice interests have had the freest hand in exploiting and degrading the people. These foreigners have no love for vice, but unwittingly they become the cornerstone of the system that supports it. The city that has had the most and the rawest foreign-born voters is the city of the longest and closest partnership of the police. with vice. Tammany Hall first gained power by its "voting gangs" of foreigners, and ever since its Old Guard has been the ignorant, naturalized immigrants. Exposed again and again, and thought to be shattered, Tammany has survived all shocks, because its supply of raw material has never been cut off. Not the loss of its friends has ever defeated it; only the union of its foes. The only things it fears are those that bore from within-social settlements, social centers, the quick intelligence of the immigrant Hebrew, stricter naturalization, and restriction of immigration.

In every American city with a large, pliant foreign vote have appeared the boss, the machine, and the Tammany way. Once the machine gets a grip on the situation, it broadens and intrenches its power by intimidation at the polls, ballot frauds, vote purchase, saloon influence, and the support of the vicious and criminal. But its tap-root is the simple-minded foreigner or negro, and without them no lasting vicious political control has shown itself in any of our cities.

The machine in power uses the foreigner to keep in power. The Italian who opens an ice-cream parlor has to have a victualer's license, and he can keep this license only by delivering Italian votes. The Polish saloon-keeper loses his liquor license if he fails to line up his fellow

countrymen for the local machine. The politician who can get dispensations for the foreigners who want their beer on a Sunday picnic is the man who attracts the foreign vote. Thus, until they get their eyes open and see how they are being used, the foreigners constitute an asset of the established political machine, neutralizing the anti-machine ballots of an equal number of indignant American voters.

The saloon is often an independent swayer of the foreign vote. The saloonkeeper is interested in fighting all legal regulation of his own business, and of other businesses-gambling, dance-halls, and prostitution-which stimulate drinking. If "blue" laws are on the statutebook, these interests may combine to seat in the mayor's chair a man pledged not to enforce them. Even if the saloon-keeper has no political ax of his own to grind, his masters, the brewers, will insist that he get out the vote for the benefit of themselves or their friends. Since liberal plying with beer is a standard means of getting out the foreign vote, the immigrant saloon-keeper is obliged to become the debaucher and betrayer of his fellow-countrymen. In Chicago the worthy Germans. and Bohemians are marshaled in the "United Societies," ostensibly social organizations along nationality lines, but really the machinery through which the brewers and liquor-dealers may sway a foreign-born vote not only in defense of liquor, but also in defense of other corrupt and affiliated interests.

The foreign press is another means of misleading the naturalized voters. These newspapers-Polish, Bohemian, Italian, Greek, Yiddish, etc.,-while they have no small influence with their readers, are poorly supported, and often in financial straits. Many of them, therefore, can be tempted to sell their political influence to the highest bidder, which is, of course, the party representing the special interests. Thus the innocent foreign-born readers are led like sheep to the shambles, and Privilege gains another intrenching-tool.

THE LOSS OF POLITICAL LIKE-MINDEDNESS

IF the immigrant is neither debauched nor misled, but votes his opinions, is he then an element of strength to us?

When a people has reached such a degree of political like-mindedness that fun

damentals are taken for granted, it is free to tackle new questions as they come up. But if it admits to citizenship myriads of strangers who have not yet passed the civic kindergarten, questions that were supposed to be settled are reopened. The citizens are made to thresh over again old straw-the relation of church to state, of church to school, of state to parent, of law to the liquor trade. Meanwhile, ripe sheaves ready to yield the wheat of wisdom under the flails of discussion lie untouched. Pressing questions-public hygiene, conservation, the control of monopoly, the protection of labor, go to the foot of the docket, and public interests suffer.

Some are quite cheerful about the confusion, cross-purposes, and delay that come with heterogeneity, because they think the variety of views introduced by immigration is a fine thing, "keeps us from getting into a rut." The plain truth is, that rarely does an immigrant bring in his intellectual baggage anything of use to us. The music of Mascagni and Debussy, the plays of Ibsen and Maeterlinck, the poetry of Rostand and Hauptmann, the fiction of Jókai and Sienkiewicz were not brought to us by way of Ellis Island. What we want is not ideas merely, but fruitful ideas, fructifying ideas. By debating the ideas of Nietzsche, Ostwald, Bergson, Metchnikoff, or Ellen Key, American thought is stimulated. But should we gain from the introduction of old Asiatic points of view, which would reopen such questions as witchcraft, child-marriage, and suttee? The clashings that arise from the presence among us of many voters with medieval minds are sheer waste of energy. While we Americans wrangle over the old issues of clericalism, separate schools, and "personal liberty," the little homogeneous peoples are forging ahead of us in rational politics and learning to look pityingly upon us as a chaos rather than a people.

POLITICAL MYSTICISM VS. COMMON
SENSE

IF you should ask an Englishman whether the tone of political life in his country would remain unaffected by the admission to the electorate of a couple of million Cypriotes, Vlachs, and Bessarabians after five years' residence, he would take you for a madman. Suggest to the German that the plane of political intelligence in

acted, in 1591, when Shakspere was twenty-seven years old, and eight years later was rewritten and much improved by him. It was first published in 1597, in quarto form, that publication being piratical and not bearing the author's name. It is positively known to have been acted prior to

yore,

When joy was one large dream, and life no

more.

BRYAN WALLER PROCTOR.

NLESS Shakspere wrote "Titus Andronicus," which, for cogent reasons, is incredible, though possibly he touched it here and there, the first tragedy that he composed is "Romeo and Juliet," and, notwithstanding errors of taste and blemishes of style,-meaning occasional vulgarity, a florid excess of fanciful images, and the dissonant artifice of many rhymed couplets, -it is one of the most profoundly affecting, and therefore most salutary, tragedies in existence. The precise date of its composition has not been ascertained, neither has the precise date of its first representation. Such testimony as diligent research has collected signifies that it was written not earlier than 1591 and not later than 1595.

The weight of the testimony tends to prove that it was written, and probably

that volume the tragedy stands as the world now possesses it. Two additional quartos were published in 1609. In the first folio, 1623, the play was reprinted from the "amended" quarto.

Even in his earliest writings Shakspere exhibits intuitive knowledge of human nature, but enthusiasts who have ascribed to him subtle, complex purposes in his "Romeo and Juliet" have forgotten, or been willing to forget, that in almost every fiber of it the play is a dramatic amplification of "The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet" (1562), a labored poem by Arthur Brooke. It is a marvelous amplification, indeed, ingenious, affluent, eloquent, fervent, beautiful, one which gives limbs to the story, causes it to move, and

thus to become dramatic; but, all the same, it is the elaborate expansion of an earlier work by another hand. The only new ingredients of invention in the play are the delightful character of Mercutio and the dramatic employment of Paris in the churchyard scene. In development of plot and arrangement of incidents the drama follows the poem. If any person had a darker design than that of telling a tragical love-story in a plain, straightforward manner, it was Brooke, not Shakspere. Brooke's poem was based on material derived from old Italian writings, and from an English play that had been produced prior to the making of his poem, and therefore prior to the composition of Shakspere's tragedy.

EARLY REPRESENTATIONS

THE first representative of Romeo was Richard Burbage, but no description of his performance is known. The contemporary "Elegy" on his death, which came to light in 1825, implies that his acting was effective, lamenting that

Poor Romeo nevermore shall tears beget, For Juliet's love and cruel Capulet. The first representative of Juliet was a male, and it is difficult to believe that the spectacle thus presented could have created the requisite illusion.

From the time of Richard Burbage, who died in 1619, to that of Thomas Betterton (1635-1710), "Romeo and Juliet" remained unacted; but on March 1, 1662, Sir William Davenant presented it at the theater in Lincoln's Inn Fields, with a fine cast, including the admired actor Henry Harris as Romeo, Betterton as Mercutio, and Mary Saunderson as Juliet. Harris's performance of Romeo is not described, but probably it was sympathetic and winning. Harris possessed the advantages of fine face and person, as is shown by an authentic portrait of him, and he was a versatile and accomplished actor, as indicated by the record, sparse though it be, of his professional achievements. Miss Saunderson, who, in December, 1662, became Mrs. Betterton, and was one of the first female players to appear on the English stage, is, in the old records, highly commended as an actress, and doubtless her Juliet was competent. Some time after

effecting this revival of Shakspere's tragedy, Davenant produced, apparently with the same cast, an adaptation of it made by James Howard, brother-in-law of the poet Dryden, the peculiarity of which was "a happy ending," the lovers being preserved alive. Howard's play was not printed, and presumably it is lost. Davenant alternated that adaptation with the unchanged original of Shakspere, so that the performance was that of tragedy on one day, and that of tragi-comedy on another.

Eighty-two years passed before the next revival of Shakspere's "Romeo and Juliet" was accomplished. The fine dramatic genius Thomas Otway (1652-1685) had meanwhile incorporated much of the language of Shakspere's tragedy into a play, comprehensive of political incidents in the life of the Roman consul Caius Marius, as related by Plutarch, which was acted at Dorset Garden in 1680, Betterton appearing as Caius Marius and Elizabeth Barry as Lavinia. Barry as Lavinia. The juvenile hero of that play, Marius the Younger, is virtually Romeo, while the juvenile heroine, Lavinia, is Juliet. Otway's tragedy, entitled "Caius Marius," held the stage intermittently for more than sixty years, Shakspere's "Romeo and Juliet" remaining abeyant. It reappeared, however, September 11, 1744, at the Haymarket Theater, "revived and altered" by Theophilus Cibber, the son of old Colley. The adapter played Romeo, and Jenny Cibber played Juliet. The character of their performances is unknown. One of the memoirs of T. Cibber states that his person was "far from pleasing," his voice a "shrill treble," and his features "rather disgusting," in which case he could not have looked like Romeo. His adaptation excluded all that part of the original which relates to Romeo's passion for his first charmer, Rosaline, and all that relates to old Capulet's feast, and it used the expedient, taken from Bandello's novel about those lovers, of causing Juliet to awaken in the tomb before the death of Romeo, who, meanwhile, had swallowed poison,so that the wretched husband and wife were permitted to have a brief farewell, this being terminated by Romeo's decease and Juliet's suicide. That expedient was afterward adopted by David Garrick, to whom the invention of it has been incorrectly attributed. Garrick wrote and in