to rank as a great nation. The terms "provincial," "isolated," and "parochial » are applied to our land, and these epithets are irritating to American pride and to our sense of conscious power. Our isolation heretofore has not been of a character the annexationists cared for. In regard to the isolation policy of the United States, Prof. James Bryce, M. P., a European statesman of no unfriendly bias, says, in his "American Commonwealth »: «Thus it is left to itself as no great state has ever been in the world; its citizens enjoy an advantage never before granted to a nation, of making their country what they will to have it." Again, Mr. Gladstone on one occasion, in comparing the United States and Great Britain, observed that "the United States has a national base for the greatest continuous empire ever established by man; the distinction between a continuous empire and one severed and dispersed over the seas is vital." According to these statesmen, the liberty to take an active part in international politics, only to the extent and in the way we deem best for our own interests, is an inestimable boon, which we owe solely to our being a geographically-isolated continental empire. This boon we jeopardize by seeking outlying colonies, and we irretrievably abandon it by acquiring island possessions like the Philippines. These islands being part of the chessboard of international rivalries and contentions, we, by our ownership of them, would become involved in all broils going on in regard to them.

(2) The American people have proved themselves the best home-colonizers the world has seen, but, thus far, they have had no experience in governing colonies. The planting of colonies for settlement and developing them into robust statehood is the field on which Americans may boast of marvellous achievements; but the working of their institutions at home drastically proves that there is small chance of their making a success in the management of colonies for exploitation and commerce. All the island possessions of Spain were of this character. They are no longer open to settlement, because they are settled already. As to numbers, the American immigrants would always form but an insignificant minority. Socially and economically, they would mostly be of the upper layers, merchants with part of their staff of clerks, some professional men, capitalists investing in plantations, accompanied by some overseers and factors, certain classes of manufactures, assisted by a few foremen and skilled hands, etc. The rank and file of our people would be but scantily represented, probably for a hundred years to come, because the United States offers them at least as good chances at home, and all other considerations of climate, genial surroundings, the material comforts they have learned to consider indispensable, must powerfully tend to dissuade them from emigrating to a tropical country. This means that

no organic ligaments can ever exist between these islands and the United States. The same life can never pulsate in the body of the Republic and in the colonies. The population of the latter is composed of very heterogeneous elements, in all essentials differing from us so much that the impossibility of their assimilation as a whole is patent to all who wish to see. It is admitted that on this head Cuba presents an infinitely more hopeful case than the Philippines. The Cubans could at least be made Americans in law, though it may take the lifetime of a generation to make them anything like Americans in spirit and in essence. To accomplish this with the Philippine Islanders, who must always continue to live in the same latitude and longitude, and therefore can never, like the Cubans, have the benefit of the educational influences exercised by close and constant contact with the main body of the Republic, would take more generations than we can foresee. By thus making into citizens great numbers of persons who have no understanding of things which we have for a hundred years studied and worked for and inherited would, assuredly, be introducing a new structural element into our political fabric, the total absence of which is at present one of the most distinguishing features of the United States as against all European states. By the spirit of our Constitution only one civic status exists in the population of this country, and that is the highest-citizenship. The acquisition of the Spanish colonies changes that permanently. Besides the citizens, there would be the subjects, and so long as the population is incapable of self-government, in the American conception of the term, they could not be admitted to citizenship. The possession of colonies with the bulk of the population condemned to the status of subjects, would be incompatible with the spirit of the Constitution, and would necessitate a new Amendment for the new condition of things. No Amendment could be devised which would adequately provide for the government of national colonies with a population consisting of subject races on the one hand, and not conflict with the government principle on the other. There are other objections of sufficient weight to call for serious reflection, though we cannot here allude to them. There are complications to be foreseen concerning the labor question, the race problem our tariff policy, the power for mischief in our objectionable machine and party politics and other minor problems, which create great risks in the undertaking of an expansion policy by our government and people.

For further facts and details on the negative side of this question, see the articles in the following periodicals: "The Independent," July 7, «< Dangers of Colonial Expansion"; "The Nation," July 28, "Justice Brewer's Warning against Colonial Expansion »; «The Outlook,» June 25, "Protest against Imperialism.»

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T IS noteworthy that, taking the civilized world as a whole, there are three social classes, the nobility and landed gentry, the merchants and manufacturers, and the workmen; three sources of wealth,-land, capital, and labor; three chief allocations of the price of products,-rent, profits, and wages; three principles dividing political parties,conservatism, liberalism, and socialism; three ages of civilized progress,-despotism, commercialism, and the age just dawning. But all these facts are different aspects of the same truth,- that there are three forces by which society is moulded,-military force, contract, and industry. The first of these is the most brutal. It dominates in the earliest stage of civilization, and those who wield it seize upon that source of wealth which is supplied by nature. The second depends on intelligence, yet looks chiefly to material good. It dominates in the second stage, and those who wield it take advantage of the necessitous circumstances of others to derive as large an income as practicable from their labor. The third depends on intelligence combined with conscientiousness, and looks upon man chiefly as an end in himself. It comes last in the series of economic development.

We have now to deal with the intermediate age, which I have termed the Commercial, because in it man is viewed mainly as an instrument of production, and is rated by the exchange-value of his product.

It has been complained that employers are apt to treat their employees as mere instruments of production; but this is only half the truth, for a man thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the commercial age regards himself also as an instrument of production, and production for the purpose of sale. He rates himself, and expects to be rated by others, according to the exchange-value of his product. It is not so much the quality of the product as compared with that of other products of the same kind, or

*Continued from SELF CULTURE for October, 1898, Vol. viii, No. 2, p. 176.

The above statement does not profess detailed accuracy. There are men who are neither landlords, merchants, nor workmen, but their social affiliations are with one of these classes. The price of purchased land and the interest thereon must be classed with rent; the interest on capital with profit. Natural products and forces must be classed with land. And so on.

its usefulness to mankind, as the ratio of the demand for it to the supply of it, which influences his judgment. If he is earning a large income, that fact does not lead him to relax his efforts, but nerves him to excessive exertions, until ease, health, and sometimes even life itself, are sacrificed. It is true he desires also to possess; but he prefers things which can be purchased rather than such blessings as can be acquired by ease or self-culture; and he especially sets his heart upon possessing something, however useless, which, owing to its rarity, few others can have. Nor is this mode of rating peculiar to the manufacturer and the merchant. The professional man, and even the poet and the preacher, are rated on the same principle. Hence the great reverence which was felt for wealth when Commercialism was at its zenith; a feeling which is dying out now that the commercial age is passing away.

Under this régime, competition is the great motive-power. Every man is expected to stand or fall by himself. His pecuniary position is expected to depend on his contracts, and freedom of contract becomes the watchword of the age.

Yet I do not think that changes of fortune became common until the introduction of machine power into industry. The landholding class was already, even then, being absorbed by the capital-holding class; while the working class remained a class apart. Even elementary education was not yet free, and much less was technical; and commerce, manufacture, and the learned professions, remained in the hands of the amalgamating upper and middle classes. Since transportation was difficult and expensive, markets were limited in area, and their demand could be easily ascertained. Since enterprises were not large enough to require much fixed capital, they could, if the demand for their products proved inadequate, be readily curtailed or abandoned, and the supply, both of wares and of labor-power, could be pretty nearly accommodated to the demand for them. Hence, the prices of wares and the remuneration for each class of work could be kept in a pretty constant ratio to their excellence and to its efficiency, supposing the money standard to remain constant. The result was that men of any given calling could earn about equal incomes as a rule, and exceptions were And men of the same social class, but

rare.

of different callings, also earned approximately equal incomes. Few individuals were wealthy, save those who had inherited the unequal distribution of a former age, and those who had used political influence as a means of advancement at the public cost. Nor could the inhabitants of one country draw much wealth from another, for the means of transportation were too tedious and costly. Consequently, men of every class had a livelihood and they accommodated their standard of living to their income. Class struggles, therefore, hardly existed. Every class accepted its position, and the problem of the distribution of wealth among the classes concerned in its production excited little interest. On the other hand, each nation was, to a large extent, economically isolated, and the problem of the distribution of wealth between one nation and another was of cardinal importance. Hence the prominence then given by economic writers to the relative wealth of nations, and the small attention given by them to the distribution of the proceeds of industry, as compared with the opposite procedure in our day. And with the above economic conditions the other lines of social life were coördinate.

As Regards Ethics.- Sympathy continued to be narrow, because classes continued to be strongly marked off, and localities and nations to be isolated. Patriotism was strong, and cosmopolitanism scarcely existed. The subordination of social classes was still believed to be of divine institution. Punishments continued to be severe, although the break-up of the military régime tended to their melioration; and they would probably have been milder if the accumulated wealth had been sufficient to support an elaborate prison system. Cruel punishments lingered longest in the military forces. There was no sympathy for criminals, and very little for debtors; but whether this was due to a sense of the enormity of crime, or to a lack of humanity, is questionable. There was not, however, much laxity of view on the subject of fair dealing, for the chance of becoming suddenly rich, and the risk of failing to earn an honest livelihood, were alike rare. Marriage was general, and viewed with favor, because almost all men were able to maintain a family according to the standard of living recognized as appropriate to their class. For the same reason no objection was felt against large families; and, when the young people grew up, their labors increased the aggregate wealth sufficiently to enable all to live, since the supply of each kind of labor-power could, as we have seen, be proportioned to the demand. The women of the middle class had, in general,, no source of maintenance save that which a father or a husband could provide. They, therefore, regarded the lifelong obligation of the marriage tie as a charter of priceless value to them, and treated the woman who dispensed with it as a traitress to her sex, since, if the practice had become general, men might have

been unwilling to bind themselves by a pledge of lifelong maintenance; but the same strictness did not prevail in court circles, where the women had independent fortunes. Among men public opinion permitted great moral debasement. Drunkenness was universal, and its encouragement was deemed a duty of hospitality; while brutally cruel sports were usual in the country, and brutally sensual amusements in the cities. This I think was due largely to the lack of other things to think about, when education was at a low ebb, and what there was of it was not calculated to exercise the higher intellectual faculties; while commercial life did not make such a demand on the intellectual powers as it does But it was also due to the barriers which obstructed the social intercourse of men with respectable women,— barriers set up as a guard against all risk of unchastity in the latter, and resulting in the moral sacrifice of men and of a limited number of women.

now.

As regards institutions, the tendency was necessarily toward republicanism, because birth-privileges are inconsistent with the aims of the plutocracy; although some such privileges survive far into the commercial age. But it was a republicanism in which the masses had little part. Uneducated, and knowing little of the world's affairs, they were unfit to take part in legislation, and they did not seek for it. The judges, legislators, and ministers of state came from the wealthy class, and public policy was directed and wars were waged, and tariffs were levied, in their interests. But it is a characteristic of human nature to justify every change by a philosophical maxim far wider than the change requires; and Commercialism, in times of revolution, laid down, as a bulwark against the claims of the nobility, certain sweeping maxims respecting the rights of man, which have aided that further movement by which Commercialism itself is being superseded.

Law, during this period, was directed to the abolition of personal privileges and the conservation of property rights. It equalized the legal rights and status of persons, and endeavored to define, though with much inconsistency, the sphere of personal rights. The criminal law has already been referred to. The distribution of wealth, as settled in the preceding age, was accepted without question. It was no part of the mission of Commercialism to equalize wealth; and to draw a line between one kind of wealth and another would have been impracticable. The laws respecting property were also left fundamentally unchanged; but by degrees all clogs on alienation were removed, all property was subjected to the payment of debts, primogeniture was abolished, and property rights in real estate were simplified and defined, with the result that the land-lord became transmuted into a land-owner. In regard to other matters, legislation takes the course of clothing the customs of merchants with the force of law,

and that of requiring the fulfilment of all contracts, except when morals or the "policy» of Commercialism would be interfered with by their fulfilment. "Freedom of Contract» becomes the shibboleth of the age; and though there are cases in English law in which the fact that a man has been forced by his necessities to make a contract more onerous to himself than to the other party is held to invalidate the contract, yet this principle is out of keeping with the age, and has only been applied in cases of mortgages, post-obit bonds, and sales of reversionary interests. is, however, a germ from which much may develop as Commercialism passes away. Finally, the desire of commercial men to know their position leads to laws permitting insolvent debtors to clear off past scores and begin anew.

It

Ecclesiastically, the commercial spirit tends to separate Church from State. Formerly, each had been a buttress in the other. The Church had inculcated submission to State authority, and the State had punished secession from the Church, and had secured to it its material wealth. But now, submission is found to be an incubus, the rise of new religious organizations is permitted, and all are made equal. Hence, a tendency sets in to mitigate theological asperities, and to restrict religion to the task of inculcating good conduct. The idea of divine sovereignty fades away, and the Deity is regarded as the source and inspirer of love,religion thus becoming a counterpoise to the hard selfishness stimulated by commercial life. The more classes are equalized so as to admit of comradeship between them, and the more travel is facilitated so as to admit of comradeship between nations, the more this change of view is seen. It has a precedent in early Christianity, when it was due to the intimate Comradeship subsisting among Christians. the same time, the discovery that nature operates by causal sequences leads to an attenuation of the idea of the Godhead, until it seems ready to vanish away.

At

In Esthetics the tendency is to realism. The classes who can afford to support art are too absorbed in the struggle for material goods to be capable of much sympathy for the ideal. This does not apply so much to poetry, because its function is to foreshadow rather than to portray; and the poets of the earlier part of the era are largely occupied with the praises of liberty, and often of licentiousness as a form of it. There was plenty of licentiousness before, but it was not founded on impatience of restraint.

It appears then, that, in the first sub-era of the commercial age, also, all the branches of social life were coördinate, and that they were tending to an equilibrium of equipoise, in which there should be two social classes, whose members should accept that position permanently; in which the wealth, and with it the refinement and intellectual culture of each member of the higher class, should tend

gradually to equality, and in which similar phenomena should present themselves in the lower class; in which supply should be proportioned to demand, and unemployment should be rare and occasional; in which the upper class should bear unquestioned rule, and the lower should fulfil their daily task, unmindful of public questions and of the future. To all this the world was quietly tending, when the introduction of natural forces as motive-powers, and of machinery as a hand to wield them, shook the system to its foundations, and brought in the second sub-era of the commercial age.

The introduction of machinery did not alter the principles upon which the commercial age was founded, but it caused those principles to produce other effects than before. By facilitating and cheapening transportation, it made it possible for capitalists in one country to establish enterprises in another. This reduced greatly the importance of the economic question of the wealth of nations. At the same time, the question of the distribution of the proceeds of industry became extremely important, and, with it, the question of overproduction and that of unemployment. For, the same facility of transportation enlarged the market of every producer and the number of his competitors, and so made it impossible to ascertain accurately the demand to which the supply of wares ought to have been accommodated. At the same time, the costliness of the fixed capital necessary for machine enterprises made it impossible to abandon them without great loss; and the loss arising from keeping machinery idle, as well as the smallness of the running expenses as compared with the product, made every enterpriser desirous of producing as much as possible. The result is overproduction and a fall in prices, until some enterprisers are driven out of competition, and old stocks are worked off. This throws many workmen out of employment, and their competition reduces the wages of the rest. same effect is directly produced by the substitution of machine for hand-power.

The

Besides, the channels of demand are changed much more frequently than during the earlier sub-era. The increase of income which the employer gains by saving the wages of the dismissed workmen is spent in different channels from those in which the workmen would have spent it; and the same holds true in the parallel case of a landlord evicting a farmer and utilizing the land for some purpose more profitable than agriculture. New discoveries and inventions, too, are continually leading people to spend their money in new channels; and changes of fashion affect a larger section than were affected when affluence was more rare. In all these cases the men who supplied the former demand lose employment. These men must, therefore, either learn new callings, or find unskilled employment, or be maintained

by charity. But the first course, which is the only means by which they can follow the demand, requires time and outlay; and the second is not largely available, because unskilled callings have been filled to overflowing by the number of skilled unemployed who have drifted into them. Generally, therefore, the unemployed become burthens on their friends, or on the community, or at best get a job occasionally; while their competition pulls down the wages of those who remain employed in their callings. In all the above cases, however, the unemployment is confined to the generation in which its cause occurs. Incomes must be spent somehow, even when they are "saved," and a falling off of demand in one channel must be attended by an increase of demand in another. Consequently, the rising generation can always find employment if they are rightly placed. But, as discoveries and inventions supersede labor now in one industry and now in another, unemployment is never without its victims.

From unemployment and the inadequate remuneration of men in overcrowded callings many results follow. Combinations to raise wages become common. The combining workmen resort to violence. An opinion arises that, if workmen were educated, they would see that freedom of contract, and the fixation of wages by the ratio of supply to demand, are laws of nature and so would desist from their vain efforts. Education is given, and the newspapers become daily and cheap. Wage-earners obtain the electoral franchise. The law is so altered as to permit them to combine for their own benefit, provided they do not influence others against taking their places. They study economic works, and scrutinize the basis of property rights. Fair wages and fair rents are desiderated, though it is impossible to define what a fair wage or a fair rent is, save that it is something which does not depend on the ratio of supply to demand. The discovery is made that, under machine industry, competition cannot ensure a subsistence, and the foundation of commercialism is shaken as regards wages and rents.

But it is also shaken as regards prices. For men engaged in industries which require a large fixed capital are obliged to combine in order to prevent their ruin by overproduction and low prices; and this is especially so in the large enterprises in which corporate capital is engaged. But this combination enables the combiners not only to avoid unfairly low prices, but also to fix unfairly high ones. It is, therefore, resisted by the public. Some other means of fixing price than the ratio of supply to demand becomes necessary. But the necessity is at first seen only as regards enterprises of transportation; and, even as regards them, it is stoutly resisted, so strong has the reverence for competition and free contract become in the minds of men. To attempt it in any other enterprises still seems a dream. Yet it is becom

ing plain that the principles of Commercialism are no longer adequate to our necessities, and that consumers and large producers cannot cease their strife so long as those principles remain in force.

Nor is this all. The ease of transportation brings population rapidly to new lands, and so facilitates the enrichment of land speculators. It also facilitates the enrichment of those who can obtain minerals. The great multiplication of corporate enterprise facilitates speculation in stocks. Frauds can be, and are, organized on a larger scale than before. From all thes causes fortunes are more frequently gained and lost than in the earlier sub-era; and, as a change in fortunes generally leads to a change of social position within a generation, the lines of social demarcation are continually changing; and here again equilibration becomes impossible.

With this economic and social unrest, we find a corresponding unrest in the other de partments of sociology.

Ethical ideals are undergoing rapid changes in some respects. The form, indeed, of ethical dogmas, like that of theological dogmas and legal rules, does not change until long after their meaning has been replaced by another; but, when we treat of the ethics of an age, we must look to the conduct in which public opinion acquiesces rather than to that of which it formally approves. The ease of transpor tation and migration has enlarged public sympathies to such a degree that cosmopolitanism bids fair to swallow up patriotism; and men begin to see the faults of their own nation, as well as those of others. This tendency is greatly strengthened by the cosmopolitan character of class-struggles, arising from the fact that all civilized nations present approximately the same economic phenomena. Criminals are more leniently treated than before, and are looked upon as needing training rather than punishment; seemingly because soine forms of crime often spring from penury, while penury springs from the economic conditions of the sub-era. Overproduction makes it so difficult to sell goods without lying about them that such lying is scarcely considered objectionable; and so many influential men have made fortunes by fraud that fraud is but little reprobated. But the chief change is in the views taken respecting unchastity and divorce. It is very important that the causes of this should be clearly understood. Owing to the economic conditions above explained, the number of men who cannot maintain a family at all is considerable, and the number who cannot maintain a family, or even a wife, on the scale usual among their social class is very large indeed, while class distinctions are still sufficiently well marked to make an unequal marriage exceedingly distasteful to the relatives, and an equal marriage with an inferior style of living exceedingly distasteful to the wife. The result is a strong pressure of