of many of the poor all faith in the genuineness of a religion whose Founder declared, 'All ye are brethren,' but whose disciples more often seem by their acts to say, 'Stand thou there,' 'Trouble me not,' when their brethren remind them not merely of their manifold needs, but of their just rights." The Protestant Lord Bishop of New York further said: "The growth of Wealth among us has resulted not in binding men together, but in driving them apart. The Rich are further from the Poor, the Employer from his Workmen, Capital from Labor, now than ever before. Too many know less and less how the poor live, and give little time or none at all to efforts to know. The wage of the Laborer may be, doubtless, in most cases, it is, larger than it was thirty years ago; but his wants have grown more rapidly than his wages, and his opportunities for gratifying them are not more numerous, but less.

He knows more about decent living, but his home is often not more decent, and daily grows more costly. His mental horizon has been widened, but fit food for it is no more accessible. Instincts and aspirations have been awakened in him, which are certainly as honorable in him as in those more favorably situated, but Wealth does little either to direct or to satisfy them. The manners of the Poor, it is said, are more insolent and ungracious than of old to the Rich, and this discourages efforts to know and serve them. I do not see why Poverty should cringe to Wealth, which is as often as otherwise an accidental distinction, and quite as often a distinction unadorned by any especial moral or intellectual excellence. But we may be sure that the manners of the Poor, if they be insolent, are learned from those of people whose opportunities should, at least, have taught them that no arrogance is more insufferable or unwarrantable than that of mere Wealth. And if we are reaping today the fruits of these mutual hatreds between more and less

favored classes, we may well own that the fault is not all on one side, and that it is time that we awaken to the need of sacrifices which alone can banish them.

"These sacrifices are not so much of money as of ease, of self-indulgent ignorance, of contemptuous indifference, of conceited and shallow views of the relations of men to one another. A Nation whose Wealth and Social Leadership are in the hands of people who fancy that day after day, like those of old, they can 'sit down to eat and drink and rise up to play,' careless of those who earn the dividends that they spend and pay the rents of the tenement houses that they own, but too often never visit or inspect, has but one doom before it, and that the worst. We may cover the pages of our Statute Books with laws regulating strikes and inflicting the severest penalties on those who organize resistance to the Individual Liberty whether of employer or workman; we may drill regiments and perfect our police; the safety and welfare of a State is not in these things, it is in the contentment and loyalty of its People. And these come by a different road. When Capitalists and Employers of Labor have forever dismissed the fallacy, which may be true enough in the domain of political economy, but is essentially false in the domain of religion, that Labor and the Laborer are alike a commodity, to be bought and sold, employed or dismissed, paid or underpaid as the market shall decree; when the interest of workmen and master shall have been owned by.both as one, and the share of the laboring man shall be something more than A MERE WAGE; when the principle of a joint interest in what is produced of all the brains and hands that go to produce it is wisely and generously recognized; when the well being of our fellow men, their homes and food, their pleasures and their higher moral and spiritual necessities shall be seen to be matters concerning which

we may not dare to say, 'Am I my brother's keeper?' then, but not till then, may we hope to heal those grave Social Divisions concerning which there need to be among all, as with Israel of old, 'great searchings of heart.'

American Socialists have seen the results of the work of Horace Greeley, and their Agitators, on Christianity, not only in the Church itself, but in the very ranks of Labor. Thus, in the local assemblies of the Knights of Labor in New York city, it is not unusual to see the cassock of priests like Father Huntington, and the clerical attire of clergymen with the enthusiasm of Rev. Dr. Benjamin F. Da Costa, who there unite with the working people and telling them to "organize," call their attention to the prophecy of Isaiah :

"The isles saw it and feared, the ends of the earth drew near and came. They helped everyone his neighbor and everyone said to his brother, 'Be of good courage.' So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smote with hammer him that smote the anvil. Let the people renew their strength, let them come near, let them speak, let us come together to judgment.'

But over all and around all, hover the echoes of the eternal ideals taught by the Carpenter's Son, who was crucified by wealth and power, and Socialists, whether they be Jew or Gentile, Agnostic or Positivist, Christian or Buddhist, accept his mission to the race as having been on behalf of the Proletariat and in opposition to the Plutocracy. And so the majority of the men and women of the Progressive Movement can repeat with Ernest Renan that :

"Humanity as a whole presents an assemblage of beings, low, selfish, superior to the animal only in this that their selfishness is more premeditated. But in the midst

of this uniform vulgarity, pillars rise toward heaven and attest a more noble destiny. Jesus is the highest of these pillars which show to man whence he came and whither he should tend. In him is condensed all that is good and lofty in our nature. He was not sinless; he conquered the same passions which we combat; no angel of God comforted him, save his good conscience; no Satan tempted him, save that which each bears in his heart. And as many of the grand aspects of his character are lost to us by the fault of his disciples, it is probable also that many of his faults have been dissembled. But never has any man made the interests of Humanity predominate in his life over the littleness of self-love so much as he. Devoted without reserve to his idea, he subordinated everything to it to such a degree that toward the end of his life, the Universe no longer existed for him. It was by this flood of heroic will that he conquered heaven. There never was a man, Sakya-Mouni perhaps excepted, who so completely trampled under foot family, the joys of the world, and all temporal cares. He lived only for his Father, and for the divine mission which he believed it was his to fulfill.

"As for us, eternal children, condemned to weakness, we who labor without harvesting, and shall never see the fruit of what we have sown, let us bow before these demigods. They knew what we do not know: to create, to affirm, to act. Shall originality be born anew, or shall the world henceforth be content to follow the paths opened by the bold creators of the ancient ages? We know not. But whatever may be the surprises of the future, Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship will grow young without ceasing; his legend will call forth tears without end; his sufferings will melt the noblest hearts; all ages will proclaim that among the sons of men there is none born greater than Jesus.'

F

CHAPTER VII.

GREELEY, A FARMER SOCIALIST.

'ARMERS, planters and ranchmen alike, whether they pursue the agricultural life out west, down south or in New England, are one and all complaining of the "hard times" caused by the merciless exactions of Capitalism, or as they call it "Wall Street." Matters have come to such a pass-and their murmurs are just—that strong ameliorative methods have been endorsed and are now being tried. The agricultural class, whether "bosses" or "help," are combined together, to the number of some 3,500,000, for political purposes in the People's Party, for Coöperation in the Patrons of Husbandry, otherwise Grangers, and for general defense in the Farmers' Alliances. And they are following, more or less, in "the footprints on the sands of time" made by Horace Greeley for their predecessors forty to fifty years ago.

The teachings of the Founder of the Tribune are bearing fruit, for the conditions they complain of now were seen clearly by him then, and they are simply symptoms of the disease from which the whole Civilized World has ever suffered. That disease is the Capitalist system of production and distribution which Greeley proposed to cure by the substitution of Fourierist Socialism, as already explained.

Horace Greeley, a descendant of farmers, a farmer's son, a farmer boy in his youth and a farmer for relaxation