somethin' was wrong. Got any horses ?" I never see sich fools as these valley ranchers are. I skeered some of 'em so they didn't wait to hitch up, but come in with their women an' young 'uns on horses' an' some runnin' a-foot. We'll have plenty of time to git clean outen the country.

They're all over the country.

The brothers laughed, but Joel was grave. "I worked hard fer that thar place-me an' the old woman."

"We kin git another jist as good."

They were free in a few minutes, and Lick managed to catch four fresh horses, attracted by the unwonted comfort and weather-proof character of the stables, as well as the manifestations of luxury from within. By daylight, although every ranch south of the garrison was deserted, all stood unharmed; and also by daylight the Hidewilders were at home, chuckling over the success of Lick's ruse, and inclined to ignore past disgrace in this new manifestation of the capabilities of genuine Hidewilder spirit.

The family gathered under the walnut for greetings, and then Joel took off his hat and looked around on the high, fantastic red hills, the tangle of boughs that was understood to be the cañon, on the reddening sky as the sun came up. The wind, laden with a true cañon smell, dear to the heart of every mountaineer, brushed through his thin grey hair, and the children's faces grew serious, as the old man's face saddened and paled. "Thar ain't an acre of it our boys'," he said at last, "not an acre. It come to me easy, though I've worked hard to keep it a-goin'. But we kaint stay here in any peace. Thar's no laws to protect cattle-men agin jack-legged Greasers, an' I reckon we'd better move on to New Mexico, whar thar ain't so many Injuns an' cunnin' low-down sheriffs. It's kinder hard, seein' you was raised here, an' calculated it was yourn. Yes, it's kinder hard," he concluded, with a deep sigh.

VOL. IX.-16.

Lick had remained in the background. As yet he had not drifted into his old relations to things. He thought of Kansas waiting for him on the Salt, but concluded he could not go back just now. Dad needed all his boys; but he supposed when the family was re-established he would resume his previous position in relation to them, and go back to his partner. While the boys were not dispirited, but swore vigorously at Arizona in general, he kept to himself, and wandered over the place-by the springhouse he had built for his mother, up the creek where he and Martha had fished so much during the two long summer vacations that had broken their short stay in Prescott. He did not consider his brothers unjust, nor his mother's timid greeting cold and selfish. His old self-satisfaction had received a heavy blow. He considered his luck unexplainable, his family's share in it justifiable, and was humbly prepared to follow his brothers as long as he might be needed, and then hide away on the Salt.

The tin horn that he had heard and obeyed for almost two decades of years, called him again to the house. Lucinda and her mother had gathered what household effects it was easiest to carry. There was not much. The family was too shiftless to design improvements on the things Mrs. Hidewilder had brought from Missouri. They had always camped, so to speak, at Red Oaks.

When the wagons were loaded, heads were counted, and Martha was found missing. Where was she? At Markle's. She had spent most of her time there, sincewell, for four or five months. Was she coming? It was supposed she would come with the first herd of the cattle that Markle would drive to their new range. They fired the old house and departed. They were silent all that day, the boys keeping ahead with the horses they were driving to the new range.

Two days after, the stage to Santa Fé

When everyone who wishes to change existing social and industrial conditions, be he the advocate of state supervision of railroads and telegraphs, or the fierce propagrandist of revolution, is called a socialist, it may seem difficult to define the subject of this paper. All advocates of socialism may, however, be divided very roughly into two great wings, the state socialist and the anarchist. Of the former I wish particularly to speak, as it alone has a logical basis. Scientific socialism may be defined as every aspiration toward the improvement of society. by the introduction through state action of greater equality of social conditions.

Socialism," says Scheel, the German economist, "is the philosophy of political economy of the suffering classes." There would be no socialism if all were in as comfortable circumstances as most of those that may read this. To understand this question we must endeavor to place ourselves for the time in the position of the wageearners of our large factories. Unless we do this, we can never appreciate the labor question and the proposed solution of it termed socialism. "The poor ye have always with you," said Christ; but the depth of this poverty, its hopelessness and despair, are realized by few save the sufferers. After an extended tour among the islands of the South Pacific, Mr. Huxley, the English scientist, was forced to confess that the life of the wild cannibals there was preferable to that of scores of thousands in London.

The majority of our working men are better off than a generation ago, as the statistics of Robert Giffen prove, but there is nothing in his figures to show that the lowest class of the working men have risen much above a purely animal existence

that is a reproach to our civilization, however difficult may be the problem of its elevation. "It may well be the case," says Professor Thorold Rogers', "and there is every reason to fear it is the case, that there is collected a population in our great towns, which equals in amount the whole of those who lived in England and Wales six centuries ago, whose condition is more destitute, whose homes are more squalid, whose means are more uncertain, whose prospects are more hopeless, than those of the peasant serfs of the Middle Ages or the meanest drudges of themediæval cities. "The testimony of the great metaphysician Lotze, is equally striking. "It is only in the south, with its mild climate, that there still remains any charm about the life of the majority; the vast and needy masses of the civilized nations of the north pass their existence, even now, in such dwellings and under such conditions as to clothing and household furniture, as must be hardly less repulsive than the hovels in which, thousands of years ago, oppressed Asiatics hid themselves away from their tyrants."

In this country, until lately, we have not had such a destitute class, and have fancied ourselves forever free; but with the rapid appropriation of our free land—an outlet for labor that has done very much to keep up wages and with the extraordinary increase of our population through birth and immigration, the time is coming when this. terribly competitive age will press harder and harder upon the weaker portion of those struggling for existence, until the prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread," will rise with a fearfully literal meaning from the lips of millions. After due investigation, and after finding the average wages in PennWork and Wages, p. 186.

2 Microcosmos, English trans. vol., II, p. 387.

sylvania to be only seven dollars and a half per week, the Commissioner of Industrial Statistics remarks that "the present amount of wages usually paid does not give to the wage-worker comfortable means of support and enable him to lay by even a moderate fund to meet the exigencies he is almost certain to encounter." Henry George, who, though disclaiming socialism, has done a vast deal to promote it, thus eloquently and truthfully writes: "This association of poverty with progress is the great enigma of our times. It is the central fact from which spring industrial, social, and political difficulties that perplex the world and with which statesmanship, and philanthrophy,and education grapple in vain. From it come the clouds that overhang the future of the most progressive and self-reliant nations. It is a riddle which the Sphinx of Fate puts to our civilization, and which not to answer is to be destroyed."

What wonder that any system of social reforms, however crude, which confidently claims to abolish poverty, secure remunerative employment to all, advance civilization, and realize that noble ideal, benefit in proportion to merit, reward in proportion to desert, what wonder, I say, that such a plan of social transformation should be gladly, yes, recklessly, welcomed by the discontented and the suffering. Says Frederick Harrison, "A social question there is, and not all the policemen and soldiers in Europe will suffice to prevent that social question from making itself felt."

In approaching the study of this question, we must first rid our minds of certain erroneous impressions which, despite repeated denials, rise, like Banquo's ghost, to distract our minds.

It is believed by many that the socialists wish all property to be equally divided. Not a prominent socialist ever advocated such an absurdity. It is proposed that the state should take charge of production,

1 Report for 1884, p. V.

2 Progress and Poverty, p. 9.

leaving to everyone ownership in his income, which he is to receive in proportion to his services as the servant of the state.

Neither are the leaders ignorant, uncultivated men. Karl Marx was regarded by Professor Lange as one of the ablest political economists that ever lived. Another authority pronounces him "one of the sharpest thinkers and ablest dialecticians ever possessed by economic science;" and almost as much could be said of Rodbertus. Marx married the daughter of a Prussian minister of state; Rodbertus was a minister of state; Lassalle won the heart of the daughter of a Prussian minister. Nor is it true, as many suppose, that socialism is necessarily opposed to Christianity-although many of our wouldbe reformers are drifting toward infidelity, impelled thereto in many cases, we fear, by the unsympathetic, worldly spirit of some of our churches. Christianity is opposite, but not antagonistic, to socialism. The former seeks to elevate humanity by raising the individual; the latter by improving his environment. Both methods have their place. We persuade men to sign the pledge; we also legislate against the sale of liquor. In its objects, its interest in humanity, and its demand for self-sacrifice, although not in the motives for its exercise, socialism more nearly resembles Christianity than does any other scheme devised for man's improvement; and its leaders are entitled to our respect and sympathy, even though their plans for the millennnium may be but castles in the air.

Socialism, it has been well said, is based on two facts and a theory. One fact-that of the great suffering and inequality in the world-we have referred to. The other fact is still more important. This inequality is increasing. The contrasts of poor and rich are constantly growing greater. Wage earners, though enjoying more comforts than ever before, do not receive a proportionate share of the benefits of machinery. The improvement in their condition does not.

keep pace with the advance of society. The rich are growing richer faster than are the poor. Our most reliable statistics confirm this popular belief. They show that while the wages of workmen are increasing absolutely, they are a less and less proportionate share of the product, while the share of the product going to capital is increasing both absolutely and relatively. The decline in the rate of interest, which Edward Atkinson, following Bastiat, relies on for disproof, does not necessarily furnish it. If, as is true of most industries, more capital is now employed in the way of costly plant than formerly, then a lower rate of interest is not inconsistent with a greater relative as well as absolute share of the product going to the capitalist. For example, five per cent. on $20,000 fixed capital, which must be repaid from the product, is a greater share of it than seven per cent on $10,000. Rodbertus, the founder of scientific state socialism, first clearly called attention to this portentous tendency of the wage system to give the increasing number of employes a decreasing share of the product. Hence come necessarily, he showed, hard times and panics, for the workmen are only able to purchase a less and less proportion of the product. Now most of the sales of the great staples of wheat, cotton, and iron goods must be to employes, if at all, since they are the majority of the community. As a result of the above law, the sale and consequent consumption of these articles do not increase with the supply. Factories must stop running, workmen must beg for food,' until the surplus is consumed by the rich or given in charity to the poor. Industry again commences, and the process is repeated, with ever increasing separation of classes.

This explanation of crises may not account for all, but will, I think, for many. At least the main facts are confirmed by the 167,415 persons in Massachusetts, or one in seventynine of the population, were wholly or partially supported by the State in 1885.

United States census, which shows that, whereas labor received in all the industries of the United States in 1850, 51 per cent of the value of the net product, after deducting the cost of the raw material, it received in 1880 only 48.3 per cent. The accurate statistics of Massachusetts compiled by Hon. Carroll D. Wright are of like import. Schoenhof states that in 1669 in the woolen industry of France, which employed 60,000 workmen, labor was paid 60 per cent. of the product; in 1812, 43 per cent.; in 1872, 25 per cent.

Prof.

Finding the facts on which socialism is based thus confirmed, let us turn to the theory. "Social movements," says Professor J. B. Clark of Smiths College, "have a doctrinal basis ...... It is not mere inequality that is likely to create tumults. The wild partisans of labor talk to the wageworkers not merely about sufferings, but wrongs. Something is said to be unjustly withheld from them; there is a question of equity involved, and this requires an appeal to abstract principles." The theory that labor is the sole source of value, and therefore the only rightful possessor of the entire product, is the sine qua non, the foundation, of socialism. Insisted on again and again by Marx, on it hangs the "law and the prophets." For if labor produces all value, then whatever is withheld from the laborer by the capitalist and employer in the shape of interest, rent, and profits, and especially the latter, is robbery, and our present industrial system, resting on such a basis, is radically unsound.