century lie in a narrow compass. We can more advisedly demur or join issue and go to the country after reviewing from its peaks and promontories the nation's controversy with the Republican party. Yes! the search-lights will be turned on in 1900 which were off in 1896. It will not be so easy to pack the jury in 1900. We felt the secret crime of 1896 beating at our heart, rising to our throat, demanding disclosure. We thought the whole world saw it in our faces, read it in our eyes, and heard its workings in the very silence of our thoughts. The capacities of our statesmen are so ample, their activities so indefatigable; the noble improvement in statesmanship which omits from the programme the purchase of voters and the larceny of returning boards, I fear, is reserved for later times.

The threads which we think are in our hands to work with grow more and more entangled. At times it looks as if reason, human and divine, had deserted the Republican party, as if "God," to use Luther's saying, "was wearied with their game and flung the cards under the table." The Republican who prattles of stealing States in November dotes; his senses fail him. Under the huge shadow of the Colossus Child of Nebraska the prostrate might and majesty of the plain people will instantly arise, and the swollen toads and venomous spiders of Trust must quickly get out of the way. One man armed with the rights of the people is more than a match for millions who would rob them of their constitutional guarantees of equality of right by due process of law.

SENATOR: That is what I term the other side of the

case.

PRESIDENT: No! I propose out of the love I bear my country to try the case fairly. The American eagle, in his pride of place, is not by mousing owls to be hawked at and killed. Instead of carping at his platform, let us

strive to answer the arguments of the child of the Democratic revolution.

SENATOR: As I suggested, to comprehend the mischievousness and ascertain the graveness of the public charges, let us commence at the commencement of the commonwealth's cause. Let us formulate them under general di

visions.

Their substance is comprehended in that one word which embraces the history of the world-Taxation! In prehistoric, mediæval, and modern ages, in Asia, as in America to-day, Taxation has been the Pandora box of despotism. No economist of repute has denied that the distribution of wealth is made by human institution solely. The gravamen of the Nebraskan's count is that the Republicans have debauched the national conscience.

PRESIDENT: How?

SENATOR: By a Caligula-Pharaoh-like legislation which has decreed injustice by law. The contention is that pampering providence in favor of class greed, which by an iron law of wages kept the laborers down to a minimum existence in the sixteenth century, for a quarter of a century, through indirect taxation, has been stealthily plundering all other than the moneyed interested classes in America. No more than the briefest possible examination of this great question is possible. Any summary of the fiscal forces of Taxation which have changed by financial legislation the distribution of wealth commences with nearly three billions of bonds issued during the progress of the war. Famous statisticians, partisans neither of conservatism nor of radicalism, show that seven-eighths of American families hold but one-eighth of the national wealth, while 1 per cent. hold more than the remaining 99. (Presents a table which PRESIDENT reads.)

PRESIDENT: The corporations are draining the purple sap from the body of the people.

SENATOR: The whole story can never be told. The new is worse than the old Sectionalism.

PRESIDENT: Both are aristocracies. Public sentiment at the South was the child of slavery; aristocracy at the North is the child of the corporations.

SENATOR: If we except the income tax, which was about one-seventh of the public revenue, the burdens of the war enriched the class ablest to bear taxation.

In this respect it was in England under Pitt at the close of the Napoleonic wars, as in America, under the Republican administration; in 1860 our national debt was $60,000,000; in 1865, $2,267,000,000. Two thousand millions of slave property was destroyed by the war, but $2,674,000,000 of property in taxes was created. We destroyed plutocracy of slaves to establish a far richer plutocracy of capital. Mr. Van Oss estimates that the capitalized extortion on railroads upon which we pay dividends is upward of two thousand millions. For the sectional policy which injured the South we have exchanged a corporation policy which enriches the rich of the East. The United States census shows that three-fourths of the railroads and oneninth of the real estate and mortgages in the South and West are owned in the East or in Europe. The average

wealth of the East is double that of the South and West. The East and foreigners hold $31,500,000,000; the West and South $33,500,000,000. The East has 30 per cent., the South and West 70 per cent. of the population.

PRESIDENT: Have you a table showing who pays city

taxes?

SENATOR: The Massachusetts Labor Bureau shows that four-fifths among those paying taxes held less than onefifth of the property, while one-fifth held nearly as much property as all the rest. (Presents table, which PRESIDENT reads.)

PRESIDENT: When was this taken?

SENATOR: In 1873.

PRESIDENT: What is the last report?

SENATOR: In 1893. It shows that the list of property owners taxed over $1,000 possess almost two-thirds of the taxable property.

PRESIDENT: How about New York City?

SENATOR: Interstate reports show that one-fourth of those who died left no estate whatever but clothes and household furniture. There are 331,000 families in New York, and two-thirds are propertyless.

The small estates represent scarcely 4 per cent. of the property; the estates exceeding $50,000 were three times as valuable as all the remainder. The concentration of wealth in New York is substantially the same as in England. Its wealth, excepting Boston, is more valuable than

all the States between Washington and Texas. The families of wealth in the United States are numerically larger than in Great Britain, despite the difference in population.

PRESIDENT: What is the minimum concentration of incomes in Great Britain?

SENATOR: Leroy-Beaulieu's statement does not disprove that 1 per cent. receive more than 35 per cent. of the income, while 10 per cent. receive alone double as much as the 90.

PRESIDENT: What are the shares of Labor and Capital under the British System?

SENATOR: Twenty-six hundred millions.

PRESIDENT: What is the average yearly earnings given by the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics?

SENATOR: 251,656 employees of private firms receive $363.23; 161,316 employees of corporations, $333.22.

PRESIDENT: What is the income of the nation?

SENATOR: One-sixth of the property, labor, and superintendence.

PRESIDENT: Do you mean upon sixty-five billions of national wealth?

SENATOR: Oh, no! Household furniture pays no interest. Capital receives not less than two-fifths of the