in "protecting industry," to protect the industrious, but to build up the wealth of capitalists.

What should be done? The nine million dollars annually paid the sugar growers of Louisiana is but a drop in the bucket to what the American government ought to do for labor. The sugar bounty goes into the coffers of rich planters. It does, indeed, give employment to negroes in cultivating cane, but does it increase their wages above that received by the blacks for work in the cotton and tobacco fields in states where no bounty is paid? If not a stalk of cane was produced in Louisiana the negroes would be better off than now. Why? Because the fields devoted to cane to enrich planters would produce corn and cattle, sheep and hogs, increasing the food and clothing supply within reach of the workers. The more profitable it is to produce sugar, the higher the price of land and the more difficult for the negroes to become owners of homesteads. The millions given the planters is no help to the toilers, and it was never designed to benefit them. If nine millions went directly and annually to protect the toilers of Louisiana, how long before each might own his coveted "forty acres and a mule?" At $20 per acre, the nine million would pay for 11,250 forty-acre farms annually, and in ten years for 112,500. Louisiana had in 1890 1,116,828 inhabitants, white and black-five to the family, gives 223,365 families. The cities had 265,392 population, or 53,078 families, leaving for the farms and villages 170,289 families of five. The $9,000,000 yearly bounty now bestowed as a free gift, on the land-holding class (mostly Yankees from the North) would give each family of the rural population a forty-acre farm in twenty years and besides there would remain $43,764,800 cash with which to build co-operative factories and homes for the workers in the towns and cities.

Why does our national government persist in bestowing bounties on the rich and making tramps of the toilers? I am a protectionist; but I would protect the toiling millions and not the speculative thousands. Let us not cry down protection as wrong in principle. The application of it has been wrong. To gain popular support for party it is always proclaimed "protection of labor," when it is meant only to protect capital. Do not the same lobbyists, when they have secured the passage by congress of protective measures-the toilers deceived by the shibboleth of "protection of industry" to vote for the measure do not the lobbyists hasten to Europe to secure immigrants to America so to intensify competition in the labor market that the wage price may be reduced to the minimum gauge of subsistence? And they persist in doing so in spite of laws passed at the demand of the labor unions to "prohibit the importation of contract labor."

But let us hold fast what has been gained and never declare against the principle of "protection." The toilers, when they control, and that glorious period is right at our doors, will profit by the "protective" precedents. In the days of Clay and Webster, labor was not a factor considered. In Kentucky, the home of Clay, chattel slavery existed. And in the north there were millions of acres of land open to pre-emption and entry at $1.25 per acre. Fair wages had to be paid factory workers or they would "take to the woods" literally, or the prairies. That is changed now, and wage slavery is reduced to a more cold-blooded system than was chattel slavery where toilers do not protect themselves through their trades unions. By the ballot wage slavery will be abolished, as was chattel slavery by the bullet.

HOME TALENT IGNORED.

305

YE 229TH LESSON.

Home Talent Ignored.

A glamour adheres to what is ancient or foreign. Home production is "nit." If, for instance, the Iowa State House be decorated by some one from New York-a "big city away off"-it will be grandly donea "wonderful work of art!" So all will think, for the critics will say so the "savants." Not so if done even better by an Iowa artist-and Iowa has capable ones. "A prophet is not without honor save in his own country and among his own kin." The same of the artist. Talent is not wanting at home; but public spirit to give encouragement to home talent is needed.

Who knows good work? Who knows that a bed of roses is beautiful? Everybody of common sense knows it. Everybody knows, too, the same of painting, poetry, oratory, music, etc., as a rule. What do professional "critics" know more than the common people? Take poetry, for instance. What did the critics say of Ossian? They pronounced this epic, when first published, "a greater work of genius than Homer's Iliad." What say they now since it has been proven that "Jammie Macpherson" was its author-an ordinary Scottish poet, and not the "ancient Gael?" They have no word to say. They are silent. Ossian is dead and buried. What will become of Shakespeare, if, indeed, it turn out to be true that Lord Bacon wrote the plays? Bacon the philosopher write them! If that is proven it extinguishes the "poetry" so the critics will determine, and the Bard of Avon will be buried in the same grave with Ossian.

Athens of old, enriched by slave labor, and by her victories over the Persians and the Greek colonies, gave her free citizens release from want by a minimum support, pensioning each from her common treasury. This enabled her to build up art; enabled her to rise to heights no other people have e'er reached below the skies. Under the leadership of Pericles the attention of that people was, for a time, changed from war to art. Why may not Des Moines do as well under as favorable conditions, to say nothing of the whole of Iowa? Slavery as it existed in ancient Greece does not exist here; but Des Moines is richer than old Athens ever was. Here steam and electricity do the work. What slavery did for Athens have inventions done for us; Let Christian ethics once prevail, there's none necessitous, And all men having leisure they will all combine to raise Proud monuments of greatness far 'bove those of former days. As we surpass the ancients now in useful works of skill, So, too, in works of genius we'll surpass them farther still.

I do not set myself up as a competent critic of painting. Who were the art critics of Athens when Pericles beautified the city? And who did the work? Natives of the town. King Solomon's temple was built by Phonecians. But Athens, a city little larger than Des Moines (ninety thousand: Des Moines has eighty thousand), built her own temples, decorated them, judged of the fitness of the work-Phidias the chief artist.

Gillies says: "In that period sculpture gained a sublimity from which the noble art could never afterwards but descend and degenerate. A republic hitherto inferior in works of invention and genius, produced in the single lifetime of Pericles those inestimable models of poetry, eloquence and philosophy which, in every succeeding age, the enlightened portion of mankind hath ever regarded as the best standard, not merely of composition and style, but of taste and reason. More works of elegance and splendor, more magnificent temples, theaters and porticos were erected within the walls of Athens than could be raised during many centuries in Rome."

So much, then, was the gain to a small city by relying on home talent and bestowing on home artists ample recompense and encourage

ment having faith and confidence in the brain and brawn of her own ons and not desparaging them by over-estimating the talent of the stranger.

YE 230TH LESSON.

America, and Peace and Progress.

In a survey of the history of ancient Greece, and especially during the period of her invasion by Xerxes, King of Persia, and the battles of Thermopylae, Salamis and Platea, one is led to realize the impotency of numbers and wealth and the omnipotence of true patriotism. An inconsiderable number of brave and public spirited men were more than a match for millions of slaves and mercenaries. The lesson taught is that the only admirable quality of human nature is unselfish devotion to the common weal. Comparing our own age and country with Greece and Persia of the Ancients, we observe that America is far in advance of ancient Greece in respect to a true understanding of social economy applied to nations. We have learned that to destroy

a state does not help rival states, or to destroy a city, help rival cities. Therefore peace and not war is the settled policy of the American republic. She sees her true glory to lie in building up and not in tearing down. A confederation of all the states of the world under one common flag of brotherhood, is the goal toward which the policy of our great government tends. The Pan-American congress, called together by James G. Blaine, was the first stone of the great temple of the United States of the World-America leading the world.

We have a wide extent of territory, like the empire of ancient Persia, but we have to teach the new lesson to mankind that a country, abounding in rich harvests of fruits and grains, may also be productive of great men. Ancient Persia, rich and fertile, was, in the char acter of her men, weak and feeble. They were enervated by wealth and luxury and the armies of Persia were no match for the armies of Greece. We have shown in our own history so far, bravery and devotion to country and liberty second to no people on earth ancient or modern. It is my opinion that, if we undertake to command the seas, no nation will be able to stand against us. The time may come when we shall assume the protectorate of all the weaker nations guaranteeing to each freedom and local self-government. India, Egypt and all the other nations and states dominated and enslaved by England, we may not by means of the sword; but by our influence at The Hague -restore to freedom, emancipating them from the yoke of a foreign master, more cruel and tryannical than were ancient Greece and Rome. The English speaking race we have a brotherly regard for, because they are our kindred by blood; but for the aristocracy of England we have no love to spare. We are the offspring of the Roundheads. We are the natural enemies of the Cavaliers.

But have we not reason to fear that the traditional character of the American people is undergoing a change? Our cities, beginning with Boston, and counting all, including New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City, and even cities south and further west, are foreign cities-the majority of their voting population being foreign and of foreigners born.

But the foreigners have come in search of liberty, and they, and especially their sons, stand ready to support our institutions and to fall in line to help on progress, not as in Europe by means of dynamite -but through the peaceful ballot.

HOPE FOR THE FUTURE.

307

YE 231ST LESSON.

Hope for the Future.

Can we reach it? Is there ground for hope that man may cease to prey upon his fellowman? Is it possible for the world to become better? It is better to-day than it was a hundred years ago. Who, today, in a civilized country, holds his fellowman a chattel slave? sells the child from its mother? the mother from her husband, and children, as horses, are sold? Wonderful has been the progress of humane ideas since I can first distinctly recall scenes of life-even sixty-five years ago. A half century has been as a thousand years of previous history. As Mr. Darwin explains in the "Origin of the Species," one change begets other changes. There must be an adjustment of the whole to the changed parts. When man ceased to walk on all fours and became a biped his whole body underwent a change. His spine assumed a different curvature and every muscle in the body took on a changed condition. So in society the wonderful inventions giving rise to new methods of labor and production have revolutionized society. With the advance of invention there is a general advance of the common intelligence. And the common intelligence is force. It

is power for good.

What man will do to make money, if not restrained, is not subject to limitation. What an individual will do a community of individuals will do, if they come to an agreement and no public sentiment oppose. Whole nations become robbers!-common murderers-tribes live by murder and incendiarism. The tribe of Matabele negroes of South Africa made a business of raiding neighboring tribes, burning villages, murdering all the men, old women and sick and helpless adults and making slaves of the younger men, women and children, and driving off the cattle. And how much better do the so-called "civilized" nations in their dealings with the uncivilized. We allow Americans to go to Alaska and take fish and seals that are the sole means of subsistence to the Esquimo-their dependence for food and clothing. The tribes so deprived of the means of living miserably perish. So in Hawaii four hundred Americans have taken possession of all the tillable lands of the island and the thirty thousand natives must starve or be colonized to some other island-or our government must feed and clothe them as it does our Indians-disinherited by cupidity. What do those sordid men, bent on getting rich, care who suffers? They care nothing. And our government gives those heartless robbers license to do the foul deeds of robbery and murder.

There can be no denial of the fact that England's dealings with India are murderous. The policy adopted in relation to that ancient and refined people depletes that fruitful land of the food product and leaves millions to perish of hunger. The object of her railroad system in that country is to transport to the seaboard wheat, rice, cotton, etc., to be shipped abroad when it is all needed in the country where produced for the adequate protection of the lives of the people, for India has four hundred millions of population. Eight millions starved to death in one year under British rule, though millions of bushels of wheat and rice were shipped from India to England and her colonies of that years' product. And the opium trade! The lands devoted to poppy culture would produce food products for the feeding of the famishing people; and the opium shipped to China is forced upon that unwilling nation by shot and shell from British ships! Such is "Christlan" civilization!

But there is hope. Humanity is getting the upper hand. The poor in our cities are beginning to be systematically cared for. We have organized "charity"; "associated charities" all wrong, of course: for what is one's by divine right ought not to be given as "charity." If a man have only what will satisfy his own hunger and he share that with another-there is charity. It implies self-sacrifice; but for

one to give to another what he himself can make no use of what another must consume or the product perish of natural decay-wherein is the virtue of the giving? Indeed, to withhold it is a crime. But this great and fundamental truth of Christianity is just beginning to dawn on the minds of the people.

Think of it! The food product of the world must be immediately --year by year-consumed, or it perishes of decay-rots! Then let it be distributed to all "according as every one has need" in a "Christian" way that is, as was done by the primitive disciples.

What, then, is the next forward step? It is merely to get upon the platform of primitive Christianity. How full is the New Testament of exhortations to love-not "charity"-when rightly translated. "The greatest of these is love." And what is the New Testament idea of love? All is common of the necessaries of life between those that love. This truth was recognized by the enlightened Greeks and Romans a long time before the Christian era. "Things beloning to friends are common," was the metto of the Pagan philosophers the words of Pythogorus, and repeated by Cicero and others. Then, if we love mankind as we love ourselves, we have nothing that belongs not in common to all. What we consume this year was, as a rule, produced last year. And the produce of last year will perish by natural decay if not consumed before the next year. It is impossible for any one to "own," according to nature, any more of last year's crop than what his own stomach may transform into blood, muscle, life-force, existence. Others' stomachs must digest the rest, or they perish of hunger and the food products decay and perish of natural rot. Give it then without friction to those who must eat it or perish or it be wasted by natural decay. It cannot be kept. But ship loads of food products have been dumped into the New York harbor, to keep the prices of products up, while thousands of the poor were starving in the city. Such is "business"; but it is not Christian.

What is Christian? Love.

Let all products be deposited in common depots of exchange, the depositors receiving checks good for other products, and so let distribution by society of the essentials of life be made, in a "Christian way to all men according as every man has need."

YE 222D LESSON.

Money and Manhood.

Two millionaires, enriched by city franchises, are alone blamable for the demoralization, crime and suffering prevalent in the capital city of Iowa. And what is wrong with these men? They are only overgrowths of a common plant. They rise above the common level, as certain stalks of corn in a field tower above the general level of the field of grain. But the comparison does not fit the occasion in one essential feature. The growth is not of corn, but rather of Canada thistles. These men lack the altruistic spirit, and he who lacks this is a savage. They have no regard for the common good. Had they said positively, earnestly, manfully, each of them, as any truly civilized man ought to, and would say:

"I will give up all my possessions and descend to the estate of a tramp, yea, yield willingly my living body to be burned to ashes at the stake before I will let at any price a building or a room to be used for an immoral purpose."

Had these two millionaires of Des Moines done this there would not be a liquor hell or a den of prostitution in the city today. The example of the two alone, standing on their feet, giants of manliness, giants of Godliness-disciples of Jesus, instead of giants of greed and