The Independent 1909-01-21: Vol 66 Iss 3138
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e Twdepenier VOL. LXVI° NEW YORK, THURSDAY, JANUARY 21, 1909 GRAND RAPID: No. 3138 Survey of the World Mr. Tillman made a long speech in the Senate, on the 11th, in reply to the charges set forth in the President’s let- ter to Senator Hale. The galleries were crowded. He admitted that the letters publisht were genuine, but contended that he had been guilty of no falsehood when he said, on February 19th, 1908, that he had not “undertaken” to buy any land in the West. By “undertaken” he had meant “contracted.” He had coni- templated the purchase of some of the land, but he had made no agreement, nor had he paid any fees. While talking with Attorney-General Bonaparte about the resolution for a Government suit, he had spoken of his desire to buy a part of the land. He had a right to buy land, and he had not deceived anybody, had told no lies, had broken no laws. Much of his speech was an attack upon the President, who, he said, had been guilty of a gross breach of propriety in publishing the letter before the committee had had an opportunity to examine it. Mr. Roose- velt was a skilful advertiser and realized the importance of getting in the first blow, even if it was below the belt; he cared nothing for courtesy, custom or decency ; had used his great influence to blacken his (Tillman’s) name; was moved by personal malice and sought re- venge because he had denounced his in- vasion of the rights of Congress and his brutal and cruel treatment of Mrs. Mor- ris. “Theodore Roosevelt enjoys to the limit the feeling of getting even with Ben Tillman, and lays on the big stick with the keenest relish, doubtless believing that the pitchfork has gone out of busi- The Tillman Charges ness.” The President had made “a false declaration” and had attacked a man whose integrity had never before been questioned. In the course of the address he narrated the history of his correspond- ence and negotiations with the firm in Oregon, asserting that in his attack upon Dorr, the advertising land speculator, he had exposed a swindler. If he had ob- tained the land in question, there would have been only 1,440 acres, but the Presi- dent’s “dear friend Harriman” was hold- ing unlawfully 2,000,000 acres. He de- manded an investigation by the Senate, and promised in additional speeches to show the people the real character of “the man they have bowed down to.”——-On the following day, in a publisht state- ment, Attorney-General Bonaparte de- nied that Mr. Tillman had spoken to him of his desire to buy a part of the land. “He never told me a word of any con- nection on his part with an arrangement to acquire some part of these lands, nor that he intended, expected, or even de- sired at that time to make any such pur- chase.” Mr. Tillman, he added, had asserted that he was acting only in the public interest. Whereupon the Senator remarked that he was willing to set his oath against the Attorney-General’s.—— Mr. Tillman made another speech on the 14th, attacking the Attorney-General and the Postmaster-General, whom he called “bhootlicks.” All the Cabinet officers, he said, were in league to ruin him. “I know the character of the men I am deal- ing with. They would not hesitate at anything, even assassination.” Altho Mr. Tillman insists, the Senate is not in- clined to make the investigation which he demands, and his friends argue that
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116 such an inquiry is not needed for his de- fense. od Senator Foraker attacked the Presi- dent on the 12th in a long speech about the dismist negro soldiers. He asserted that the $15,000 paid to the two detectives who obtained the confession recently made public had been improperly taken from the emer- gency war fund of $3,000,000 created in 1899, and that the employment of private detectives was in flat violation of a statu- tory prohibition. The President, he said, had tried to bolster up his case in this way after asserting repeatedly that the evidence against the dismist soldiers was “conclusive and overwhelming.” Speak- ing of this use of detectives, he said: Mr. Foraker Assails the President “It is atrocious, revolting, shocking to every sense of fairness, justice and even common decency. No language can completely describe such a shameful performance, and I do not exempt anybody from that remark who has been ‘connected with it, from the highest to the lowest.” The President had even committed the serious offense of holding out to the sol- diers a reward for their testimony: “It does not lessen the gravity of his offense that it appears to be imperceptible to him, or, if not so, that he has become utterly oblivious to all the restraints of law, decency and pro- priety in his mad pursuit of these helpless vic- tims of his ill-considered action. No precedent for anything so shocking can be found in all the history of American criminal jurispru- dence.” He sought to show by affidavits that the detectives had been guilty of perjury and subornation of perjury. Speaking of his own letter to one of the soldiers, he said he had doubtless written some letters needing explanation, but never since leaving his mother’s knee had he written one of which he was ashamed or that needed to be explained by lying. Mr. lodge pointed out that the employment of the two detectives was not in violation of the statute, because they were not “employees of the Pinkerton Detective Agency or a similar agency.” as In a special message, on a poeta the 15th, the President m Metoed vetoed a bill authorizing one Standish to build a dam across the THE INDEPENDENT James River, in Missouri, for the purpose of generating electric power. He insists, as in his veto of the Rainy River bill, upon a license fee which may be in- creased in the future, and a definite term for the privilege, with other safeguards and limitations in the interest of the pub- lic. He would also provide for a for- feiture of the license whenever the holder of it joins any unlawful combination in restraint of trade. Reports of the Bureau of Corporations are cited to show that at least 1,046,000 horse power, or more than 19 per cent., of the water power (5,300,000 horse power) now in use by power plants in the United States, is held by “thirteen large concerns, of which the General Electric Company and the West- inghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company are the most important.” Moreover, there is some evidence that these concerns really control 33 per cent. A marked concentration of control has taken place in the last five years: “The people of the country are threatened by a monopoly far more powerful, because in far closer touch with their domestic and in- dustrial life, than anything known to our ex- perience. A single generation will see the ex- haustion of our natural resources of oil and gas and such a rise in the price of coal as will make the price of electrically transmitted water power a controlling factor in transportation, in manufacturing and household lighting and heating. Our water power alone if fully de- veloped and wisely used is probably sufficient for our present transportation, industrial, municipal and domestic needs. Most of it is undeveloped and is still in national or State control. “To give away without conditions this, one of the greatest of our resources, would be an act of folly. If we are guilty of it our children will be forced to pay an annual return upon a capitalization based upon the highest prices which the ‘traffic will bear. They will find themselves face to face with powerful inter- ests intrenched behind the doctrine of ‘vested rights’ and strengthened by every defense which money can buy and the ingenuity of able corporation lawyers can devise. Long before that time they may, and very probably will, have become a consolidated interest con- trolled from the great financial centers dic- tating the terms upon which the citizen can conduct his business or earn his livelihood and not amenable to the wholesome check of local opinion; “I esteem it my duty to use every endeavor to prevent this growing monopoly, the most threatening which has ever appeared, from being fastened upon the people of this nation.’
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SURVEY OF THE WORLD Senator Hopkins, a mem- ber of the Senate’s Canal Committee, has intro- duced a bill increasing from $135,000,- 000 to $500,000,000 the authorized issue of bonds for the construction of the Pan- ama Canal. This is generally regarded as indicating the committee’s conviction that the cost of the work will largely ex- ceed the original estimates, and possibly as pointing to a forthcoming decision in favor of the sea-level plan. Members of the House committee who returned from the Isthmus last week say the pres- ent canal administration is “vigorous, efficient and worthy of public confi- dence,” and predict that, under the direction of the present authorities, “if they are left undisturbed,” the canal will be completed in 1915. A settlement of disputes relating to the secession of Panama has _ been reached by treaties which were signed last week by Colombia, Panama and the United States. Colombia recognizes Pan- ama’s independence. Panama agrees to Panama Canal Topics assume a part of Colombia’s national debt and to pay $2,500,000, as her share, in ten annual instalments. The money is to be furnished by the United States, in ac- cordance with the provisions of an ex- isting treaty. Steps were taken on the 16th by the Government at Washington in a libel suit against the New York World and the Indianapolis News for publishing the charges of corruption (re- lating to the purchase of the Panama Ca- nal Company’s property) to which Mr. Roosevelt referred in his letter of De- cember Ist to William Dudley Foulke and in his special message of December 15th. Correspondents of the World, the News and the New York Sun at Wash- ington were summoned to testify there before a Federal grand jury in the case of the United States vs. the Press Pub- lishing Company (the corporation that publishes the World) ; the correspondent of the Brooklyn Eagle was summoned to testify before a Federal grand jury in New York, together with a World editor and the World company’s secretary ; and four persons connected with the News were required to testify in Indianapolis. A suit of this kind, in which the Govern- ment is the complainant, is said to be 117 without precedent. Some lawyers assert that it cannot be maintained. J Patrick Calhoun, presi- dent of the street rail- way company in San Francisco, is now on trial there before Judge Lawlor, who recently sentenced Abraham Ruef. The charge is that he offered a bribe to a supervisor. There are seventeen indictments against Cal- houn, all relating to the overhead trolley franchise, for which it is said that $250,- 000 was paid. He is a director in several large Eastern corporations. Mr. Heney has charge of the prosecution, and is con- tinually guarded by several policemen. The courtroom is the one in which Heney was shot by Haas. During his recent visit to the East, Mr. Heney made an address at a luncheon of the City Club in Philadelphia, in the course of which he said: “The causes of corruption are the same in ail cities. In San Francisco we found two ele- ments at work. Coming from one source was the public service corporation and from an- other were the saloons and dives, while behind our backs these forces joined hands. In this unholy alliance the boss was the connecting link, but he was simply the agent of the real boss—the big business man who wanted to ex- ploit the public service corporation. The polit- ical boss was really the small duck in the pond. Behind him was the public service corporation and the Southern Pacific Railroad. According to my deduction, the head of the legal depart- ment of the Southern Pacific Railroad, W. E. Herrin, was the boss behind the apparent boss. But I am convinced that Herrin was after all the tool of the actual boss—Harriman. We must. reason from cause to effect. The cor- ruption of the city life in San Francisco was not found in the deals made by Ruef, but was due to the fact that Harriman wanted to use certain men. Our real boss sits in New York City and reaches across the country in work- ing out his schemes.” At Pittsburg, on the 12th, Charles S. Cameron, president of the Tube City Street Railroad Company, was found guilty of attempting to bribe Pittsburg councilmen to vote for a franchise he de- sired. One of the witnesses against him was William A. Martin, who, as a coun- cilman, undertook for $70,000 to procure the legislation, and who is now serving a term in the penitentiary for his corrupt action. Martin carefully avoided giving any testimony injurious to the . seven councilmen recently indicted. San Francisco Bribery Cases
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118 Official announcement is made that an agreement with Venezuela has been reached by Special Commissioner Bu- chanan. Altho no. definite statement is publisht, it is understood that the five An Agreement with Venezuela THE INDEPENDENT 4th. The world knows now, he says, that he did not leave Venezuela to evade re- sponsibilities. He adds that he intends to return as soon as his health will permtt, but that he will live in Venezuela as a private citizen. He is confined to his A SHATTERED DWELLING pending claims or causes of controversy will be referred to The Hague tribunal, and that a new treaty will provide for a settlement of all future disputes by arbi- tration. Dr. Paul, whom President Go- mez sent to Europe, is engaged in adjust- ing the dispute with the French Cable Company (upon which a fine of $5,000,- 000 was imposed), and he predicts that friendly relations with all European Powers will soon be resumed. Castro, he says, will be treated as an outlaw if he returns to Venezuela, and any armed ship in which he may sail will be regard- ed as a piratical craft. In Berlin, Castro is recovering from a severe and danger- ous surgical operation, performed on the AT MESSINA. bed, and the surgeons say a month must elapse before he will be able to travel. & Several bills recently intro- duced in the California Legislature by Grove L. Johnson, of Sacramento, a prominent lawyer, have excited much hostile com- ment in the Japanese press. One of these bills empowers municipalities to segre- gate and coi.trol Japanese and Chinese residents, and is designed to enable the San Francisco authorities to confine the Japanese of that city within the limits of Chinatown. It also empowers other towns to establish Oriental quarters for Japanese and Chinese. Another bill ex- Bills Hostile to Japanese
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SURVEY OF cludes Japanese from the public schools. The third says that no Japanese shall be a director of a corporation. This, it is admitted, is aimed at the business of the Japanese, who are accustomed to use the corporate form in the management of their business affairs. Another bill pro vides that no alien shall own land. Mr Johnson is an influential member of the Legislature, and there are indications that he has considerable support in San Francisco and elsewhere in the State. Japanese newspapers express surprise and some indignation. Those which rep- resent the Opposition attack the Govern- ment, saying that it has been deceived and has accepted with too much haste the advances and promises of the United States. Reports from Japan say that American residents are greatly em- THE WORLD 119 Roosevelt regards the introduction of the bills as a violation of the understanding reached two years ago, when it was agreed that the questions involved should be left to our national Government. Of- ficial reports show that for the twelve months ending with November, 6,017 Japanese came to this country and 5,832 went out of it. The net increase of only 185 is said to indicate that Japan is faithfully observing the agreement con- cerning immigration. & One of the most astonish- ing things about the earth- quake is the length of time after the disaster that living persons con- tinued to be found among the ruins. More than once the search for survivors The Messina Earthquake THE EFFECTS OF THE MESSINA EARTHQUAKE. barrassed, as the bills tend to remove the good impressions caused by the visit of the battleship fleet and the new peace agreement. It is said that President was abandoned, to be again renewed when by chance another was found. Un- til the nineteenth day the rescues contin- ued, the last being an aged and decrepit
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120 woman, unconscious, but still breathing. Most of those found late were, however, children, for they withstood the shock, fright and anxiety better than their elders. A five-year-old boy was found alive and well in the ruins of Reggio two weeks after the earthquake. Two girls and a boy were entombed for eighteen days in a pile of ruins near the Church of the Apostles in Messina. They had a sufficient supply of oil, wine, onions and water to keep them from starvation, and they had dug themselves out far enough for their cries to be heard by passing sol- diers. A man who had been caught across the waist by the fall of his house and had watched his wife and four chil- dren die without being able to help them, was rescued on the fourteenth day. The bodies of Arthur S, Cheney and his wife, the only native Americars to perish in the earthquake, were dug out of the ruins of the Consulate, after many days of labor, by the bluejackets of the “Illinois.” Consul Cheney was a Yale graduate of the class of 88, and was appointed to Messina two years ago. In the débris of the orange and lemon stores the bodies of nearly a hundred employees were found together. The stormy weather that has prevailed during the past week has added to the difficulty of rescue and to the misery of the refugees. Slight earth- quake shocks continue in southern Italy, and on the morning of the 13th a shock in the northern part excited great alarm among the inhabitants of Lombardy, Piedmont, Tuscany and Venice, altho it did little damage, and there is no reason to suppose it was connected with the Messina earthquake. Temporary towns of wooden buildings are being erected near the ruined cities, and they will prob- ably be rebuilt under governmental regu- lations as to construction. Many of the survivors refuse to leave their native towns on any conditions. Water and lights have been restored in Messina, and the shipping of oranges and lemons has recommenced. & The Turkish Govern- ment has agreed to withdraw its objections to the annexation by Austria-Hungary of Bosnia and Herzegovina in consideration Turkey Accepts an Indemnity THE INDEPENDENT of an indemnity of about $11,000,000. In addition to the pecuniary compensation to Turkey, Austria abandons her rights in Novi-Bazar; consents to an increase in the customs up to 15 per cent. ; admits certain monopolies; and agrees to the suppression of Austrian post offices, in Turkish territory where no other foreign post offices exist, should the Porte desire it, and to the abrogation of certain old privileges over Albanian Catholics. This amount of cash will be of very great service to the newly establisht Government in this crisis. The boycott against Austrian steamers in Turkish ports, however, will not be called off un- til the affair is completely settled. The acceptance by Turkey of Austria’s offer removes the chief question which would have to come before the proposed Inter- national Conference of the Powers sig- natory to the Berlin Treaty. Austria, as well as Germany, is anxious to have the Powers agree about the necessary modi- fications of the treaty without holding a conference. It is uncertain yet whether England will consent to this. The set- tlement of this question reduces the chances that Servia and Montenegro will be able to secure satisfaction for the in- fringement of their rights, or, rather, the disappointment of their hopes, by the an- nexation of the two provinces by Aus- tria. They continue their warlike prepa- rations, and the Servian Cabinet has for the third time tendered its resignation to King Peter. The financial announce- ments of the program of the new Turkish Government was made before the Parlia- ment on January 13th by the Grand Vizier Kiamil Pasha. He reviewed the history of the events that had led to the formation of a constitutional. government and exprest the hope of soon seeing Tur- key on a level with other great European nations. A British expert would aid in the reorganization of the customs service and British, German and French capital- ists would come to the aid of the govern- ment in the reform of the finances. Mil- itary reforms would be under the Ger- man instructors and the naval matters under British. Kiamil Pasha said that the protecting Powers would not assent to the annexation of Crete to Greece, and the matter would be arranged on the
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SURVEY OF basis of a retention of Turkish sov- ereignty. st In spite of the refusal Reform in China of the representatives of other foreign govern- ments to join with them in some form of a protest against the dismissal of Yuan Shi-kai, the British and American minis- ters, Sir John Jordan and W. W. Rock- hill, called together upon Prince Ching. president of the Foreign Board, to in- quire whether the dismissal indicated any intention of abandoning the progressive policy. Prince Ching, who has been on terms of-personal friendship with the two ministers, received them kindly and as- sured them that the action did not indi- cate any change in policy on the part of China. It is semi-officially explained that the ministers took this step not “with any view to interference in China’s in- ternal affairs but because of the existence of special circumstances in which it was feared British and American interests in China might be prejudicially affected by the change and it was felt that the Chinese Government ought to have taken these special circumstances into ac- count.” Japan did not act with her ally, Great Britain, in this matter, but held with the other Powers that it was an impropriety to inquire into the internal affairs of an- other nation. It is understood that Tang Shao-yi, who has been in Washington on a friendly mission to this country, will not be at once recalled, but will be per- mitted to continue his tour, of the world, spending a fortnight in each country he visits, and reaching Pekin about April. The appointment of Liang Ten-yun to succeed Yuan Shi-kai in one of his offices also indicates that the reactionary policy is not dominant, for Liang is a Yale graduate and a supporter of Yuan. The Pekin correspondent of the London Times gives the following interesting de- tails of the changes that have recently been made in the Chinese capital: “Macadamized roads, improved drainage, streets kept clean, the side stalls moved into roomy bazaars or markets, traffic handled by trained police in uniform, modern public build- ings with the stately pile of the new Foreign Office at their head, electric light, carriages and broughams in place of chairs or carts, im- proved schools with students in uniform, who play games, are daily given physical drill, and have annual sports, public reading rooms and THE WORLD I2!I lecture halls, and an intercourse with foreign- ers never before known, daily newspapers with topical illustrations, zoological gardens and botanical gardens, beautifully laid out, where even the highest Chinese do not disdain to drive with their wives and children—all these are changes as striking as the growth of female education and the crusade against opium. Chinese exclusiveness is being profoundly mod- ified by these changes.. The highest princes in the land, the brothers and cousins of the Em- peror, now drive along macadamized roads in foreign carriages or motors to dine in foreign style at foreign hotels in the common room with the cosmopolitan guests.” & Admiral Rojestvensky Foreign Notes died on the 14th at St. Petersburg of neuralgia of the heart. He was in charge of the Russian fleet which left Libau on October 16th, 1904, for Vladivostok, and was de- stroyed by the Japanese at Tsushima. He was tried by a court-martial for coward- ice in surrendering his flagship, but was acquitted. The Socialists of Dresden made a demonstration in favor of elec- toral reform, and in attempting to force their way into the palace of the King they came into conflict with the police and a number of them were seriously in- jured. In the port-wine growing re- gions of Portugal the depression in the trade has culminated in rioting. At Regoa a mob fired upon the troops, who in turn charged it with bayonets—— The American battleships on their tour around the world are being received with great cordiality and popular interest at Malta, Athens, Villefranche, Nice and Marseilles, altho care is being taken to preserve the unofficial character of. the visit. Rear-Admiral Sperry, in command of the fleet. was given the honor of pri- vate audience by King Victor Em- manuel at the Quirinal.. The King ex- prest his deep appreciation of the ser- vices that had been rendered by the fleet in the earthquake disaster and his grati- tude for the financial assistance of the American people. The decline of the birth rate in France, which has for many vears caused serious alarm for the future of the country, seems to have been checked. The official figures for the first six months on 1908 show that the births exceed the deaths by 11,000. In the cor- responding period of last year the deaths exceeded the births by 55,000,
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Harvard’s New President BY EDWARD HENRY CLEMENT Latety Epitor-In-CHIEF OF THE Boston TRANSCRIPT. stamped “U. S. S.”.in his cradle, “H. U.” must have appeared on the brow of A. Lawrence Lowell at the same tender age. The names of the two great cotton manufacturing towns of Massa- chusetts form the nomen and cognomen of this Boston patrician of the American Republic. If there ever was an aristoc- racy in the world based on service and earning in its keep, maintaining itself by force of character, quality of brains, and energy in its activities, it is that which won and held for Massachusetts, handi- capped as she is by the New England climate and soil in the agriculture of a great agricultural country, her early pre- eminence in manufactures. The mercan- tile princes of Boston, who took up the fight in trade and politics, who main- tained their statesmen at Washington (of whom Daniel Webster was one) to see to it that King Cotton be left a free hand | F Henry Cabot Lodge was, as they say, in the South to supply them with their raw material, are represented in the new Harvard president’s Abbot Lawrence. 3orn thus in the purple, the future head of Harvard University was, never- theless, as rigorously trained and disci- plined and exercised in the science and art of lucrative law practice, of invest- ment and speculation, as tho he had had his own way to make in the world. And all the while that “the main chance” has been steadily and successfully kept in view, the higher ambitions of the intel- lectual life have been as sedulously culti- vated. Twenty vears of law practice and keen, conservative investment of capital and trust funds in his keeping syn- chronize with twenty years of literary work of the most solid kind, essays on government, employing the modern sci- entific methods of comparative study of representative nationalities. The earliest of these sinewy, austere essays on government commanded atten- tion and gave their author place as a standard authority. His works were at once received into the curriculum of col- leges. The latest has been crowned with I22 prenomen, a genuine international triumph, ac- claimed in England itself, of whose po- litical institutions it treats, as brilliantly as exhaustively, a work better than Eng- land itself has yet produced on the sub- ject. If Professor A. Lawrence Lowell were a Frenchman, “The Government of England” would make him a Member of the Institute. It is hardly possible to ex- aggerate the merits of this powerful, as well as massive, work, at once painstak- ingly accurate, judicial, profound, yet readable, graphic, and “up to date.” General principles and concrete details are treated with equal facility and sure- handedness. Both the philosophy and the external phenomena of British po- litical conditions, both the rules and the exceptions, both the historical relations and precedents and the present practice, are set forth witlr keen insight, weighed with judicial acumen and judicial can- dor, temper and justness. To be sure, the “modern movement,” the new and extraordinary social drift, finding ex- pression of late in general old-age pen- sions and in the agitation for assessing land valuation and collecting of land- holders the unearned increment for the public treasury, and the taking over, in large numbers of cities, of the public utilities to be run for and by the public, are not dealt with; but this may well be attributed (as indeed is suggested in one place by the author) to their being as yet in the controversial stage; tho, again, this is questioned by so sound and well informed a critic as Mr. Edward Porritt, whose book on “The England of Today” has recently brought him a lectureship at Harvard, and who insists that no phase of politics is today less in the region of controversy than municipal control of public utilities, to which indeed he at- tributes the model municipal govern- ments of Great Britain. Barring this avoidance of what the author regards as moot questions, “The Government of England” is a very encyclopedia of Brit- ish politics. Mr. Bryce, who has been con- sulted at many stages of its preparation ; Mr. Dicey, most captious of critics, per-
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HARVARD'S NEW PRESIDENT haps the very highest contemporary Eng- lish authorities, have pronounced it un- equaled as a compendium of such mat- ters—a treatise on English institutions without its peer in the language. It was for this marked and peculiar talent (of tracing political institutions and movements to their sources), devel- oped by Mr. Lawrence Lowell, that the professorship at Harvard, which he has filled for nearly ten years past, was, in- deed, establisht in the first place. This lectureship is maintained out of the funds hequeathed by the distinguisht _ politi- cal reformer, Dor- man 6, Eaton, to found a chair of “The Science of Government.” Un- der Mr. Lowell it has turned out to be one of the most popular of the uni- versity courses, al- tho the professor has taken care that it should become no “snap” for idlers. He has re- quired rigorous collateral reading on assigned sub- jects, and has re- lentlessly tested his students in weekly conferences. Nev- ertheless, the num- ber of undergrad- uates taking the lectures have aver- aged 400 per year, and their interest and enthusiasm have made Professor Lowell one of the best known and most popular of the Harvard faculty with the undergraduate body. For some years, then, this representa- tive of the very quintessence of Boston’s Back Bay wealth, cultivation and social authority, has been within a single step of the chair certain to be vacated in the order of Nature at no distant day. Never was there a more perfect exhibition of the adaptation of means to ends than in the training and preparation of Abbott Lawrence Lowell for the great post he was destined to fill. It had all begun even in the cradle with the dower of per- President A. LAWRENCE LOWELL, of Harvard. 123 fect physical health; if all the “luck” of the fortunate in the world were as fore- handedly thought out and prepared for as the Lowells’s there would have been no such word as luck in the language. All the kinds of work that Professor Lawrence Lowell has kept in hand dur- ing the past twenty years, his books and his business, his dips into politics and school committee, and civic work, his service as a member of the faculty of the Institute of Technology, as well as of the faculty ‘of Harvard, his recent grand strategy for the union of these two great _ institutions in a “merger” (which many be- lieve only post- poned)—all these would have been impossible to one less broadly grounded in the physical basis of bodily strength and health. Ath- letics he pursuéd at college no less strenuously than those who have no other interest, tho, as a matter of fact, he always stood among the first of his class. At twen- ty-one he was the winner in a mile run with a record that looks well for professional sprint- : ing today. He was also a leader in the students’ so- ciety fun - going, and a member of the Hasty Pudding and even of the naughty “Institute.” His genuine love of sport in a sportsmanlike spirit makes him an enthusiastic yachtsman, and his feats in the daring management of sailing boats at his Cape Cod summer home are wont to excite the wonder and envy of mere landsmen on vacation at the Cotuit hotels. A broad, columnar neck and throat, usually drest with a low collar, as if demanding plenty of room and air, tells at once of the perfect physi- cal condition of the man at fifty-two, with his crisp chestnut hair and mus-
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124 THE INDEPENDENT tache and -healthy bronze complexion. The latest field in which his honors have. been won, the scene of the crucial tests that finally secured his practically unopposed election, was in the faculty meetings at Harvard. Here he showed himself, as he had done while a member of the Boston School Board, a positive, constructive, sane and practical promoter of progress and efficiency. It is claimed today by some of his supporters that every essential feature of his forward policy as a school committee man, tho baffled then, has, after many days, be- come in turn embodied in the practice of our public education. : As illustrating the forceful originality and fertility of Mr. Lowell’s mind work- ing upon problems of education, take the Lowell Institute “School for Industrial Foremen,” now in its fifth year. It is in effect “university extension” of the ben- efits of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the “evening school,” so to speak, of that great and severe engineer- ing college for the benefit of wage work- ers busy thru the day. It is no charity fare, this course, so far as quality is con- cerned, as may be judged by the fact that calculus is required in mathematics the first year. -(Professor Lowell was al- ways taking highest honors in mathe- matics in his own college course.) The object is to train the fittest thru natural gifts, tested by the process of selection in this rather severe course, for positions of industrial superintendence. Mr. Lowell has always agreed with Kipling’s notion that the strength of an army may lie, af- ter all, not so much in the staff and regi- mental commanders as in the non-com- missioned officers ; and this entirely origi- nal scheme of Mr. Lowell’s was “framed up” to supply the non-commissioned of- ficers of industry, the sergeants and cor- porals, that is to say, the foremen of shops with any number of men from 3 or 30 or 300 under them. The pro- fessors of the Institute of Technology give the instruction, and the examina- tions are the same for the same courses as those prescribed for the diploma of the institute, and the certificate of the School for Foremen has proved as valua- ble as the former in the market for indus- try. Over fifty a year graduate from this school. The other “concrete case” of Mr. Lowell’s progressive and demo- cratic enterprise in the educational field is his Lowell Institute “evening school” with Harvard professors pledged to give the classes the same quality in character of instruction as they give at Cambridge. There are three great democratic Bos- ton classes on this foundation, deriving its support, of course, from the trustee (Mr. Lawrence Lowell) and the funds of the Lowell Institute. The classes have to assemble in various halls about the city, as the institute has no real estate of its own. There is a class in English, an- other in philosophy, and a third in Pro- fessor Lowell’s own specialty, “The Sci- ence of Government.” He did not call on his fellow-members of the Harvard faculty to give more of themselves than he offered of himself; his lectures are the same as those to his classes at Cambridge, and he addresses at each session of this extension school about too students. The class in philosophy has 200 enrolled stu- dents and that in English 700. There is besides—and perhaps they were the in- spiration of Mr. Lawrence Lowell’s gen- erous “university extension’”’—the teach- ing of science at the Natural History ‘Museum founded by his grandfather, and the lectureship on theology employing the professors of the Harvard Divinity School. The new president of Harvard will be the sixth generation of his family of dis- tinguisht graduates of Harvard, and the fifth generation to have a hand in the inner directing management and control of the corporation. During seventy years out of the past one hundred and twenty- five some member of his family has been a Fellow, beginning with the John Low- ell, of Newbury, whose democratic decla- ration, anticipating and surpassing in sweeping faith that of Jefferson’s, was embodied in the Massachusetts Bill of Rights in the eighteenth century, as above noted. The Republic will take no harm from an aristocracy founded in that spirit and expressing itself in its latest generation in the “School for Foremen” at “Tech,” and the great democratic classes of school teachers and clerks in English and philosophy and government taught in the regular Harvard curricu- lum by Harvard professors. Boston, Mass.
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Leaves from the SUI SIN FAR. Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian BY SUI SIN FAR HEN I look back over the years W I see myself, a little child of scarcely four years of age, walking in front of my nurse, in a green English lane, and listening to her tell an- other of her kind that my mother is Chi- nese. “Oh, Lord!” exclaims the in- formed. She turns me around and scans me curiously from head to foot. Then the two women whisper together. Tho the word “Chinese” conveys very little meaning to my mind, I feel that they are talking about my father and mother and my heart swells with indignation. When we reach home I rush to my mother and try to tell her what I have heard. I am a young child. I fail to make myself in- telligible. My mother does not under- stand, and when the nurse declares to her, “Little Miss Sui is a story-teller,” my mother slaps me. Many a long year has past over my head since that day—the day on which I first learned that I was something differ- ent and apart from other children, but tho my mother has forgotten it, I have not. I see myself again, a few years older. I am playing with another child in a gar- den. A girl passes by outside the gate. “Mamie,” she cries to my companion. “I wouldn’t speak to Sui if I were you. Her mamma is Chinese.” “T don’t care,” answers the little one 125
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t36 THE INDEPENDENT beside me. And then to me, “Even if your mamma is Chinese, I like you bet- ter than I like Annie.” “But I don’t like you,” I answer, turn- ing my back on her. It is my first con- scious lie. I am at a children’s party, given by the wife of an Indian officer whose children were schoolfellows of mine. I am only six years of age, but have attended a pri- vate school for over a year, and have al- ready learned that China is a heathen country, being civilized by England. However, for the time being, I am a merry romping child. There are quite a number of grown people present. One, a white haired old man, has his attention called to me by the hostess. He adjusts his eyeglasses and surveys me critically. “Ah, indeed!” he exclaims, “Who would have thought it at first glance. Yet now I see the difference between her and other children. What a peculiar color- ing! Her mother’s eyes and hair and her father’s features, I presume. Very in- teresting little creature!” I had been called from my play for the purpose of inspection. I do not re- turn to it. For the rest of the evening I hide myself behind a hall door and re- fuse to show myself until it is time to go home. My parents have come to America. We are in Hudson City, N. Y., and we are very poor. I am out with my brother, who is ten months older than myself. We pass a Chinese store, the door of which is open. “Look!” says Charlie, “Those men in there are Chinese!” Eagerly I gaze into the long low room. With the exception of my mother, who is English bred with English ways and manner of dress, I have never seen a Chinese per- son. The two men within the store are uncouth specimens of their race, drest in working blouses and pantaloons with queues hanging down their backs. I re- coil with a sense of shock. “Oh, Charlie,” I cry, “Are we like that?” “Well, we’re Chinese, and they’re Chi- nese, too, so we must be!” returns my seven-year-old brother. “Of course you are,” puts in a boy who has followed us down the street, and who lives near us and has seen my mother: “Chinky, Chinky, Chinaman, yellow-face, pig-tail, rat-eater.” A num- ber of other boys and several little girls join in with him. “Better than you,” shouts my brother, facing the crowd. He is younger and smaller than: any there, and I am even more insignificant than he; but my spirit revives. “I'd rather be Chinese than anything else in the world,” I scream. They pull my hair, they tear my clothes, they scratch my face, and all but lame my brother; but the white blood in our veins fights valiantly for the Chinese half of us. When it is all over, ex- hausted and bedraggled, we crawl home, and report to our mother that we have “won the battle.” “Are you sure?” asks my mother doubtfully. “Of course. They ran from us. They were frightened,” returns my brother. My mother smiles with satisfaction. “Do you hear?” she asks my father. “Umm,” he observes, raising his eyes from his paper for an instant. My child- ish instinct, however, tells me that he is more interested than he appears to be. It is tea time, but I cannot eat. Un- observed I crawl away. I do not sleep that night. I am too excited and I ache all over. Our opponents had been so very much stronger and bigger than we. Toward morning, however, I fall into a doze from which I awake myself, shout- ing: “Sound the battle cry; See the foe is nigh.” My mother believes in sending us to Sunday school. She has been brought up in a Presbyterian college. The scene of my life shifts to Eastern Canada. The sleigh which has carried us from the station stops in front of a little French Canadian hotel. Immedi- ately we are surrounded by a number of villagers, who stare curiously at my mother as my father assists her to alight from the sleigh. Their curiosity, how- ever, is tempered with kindness, as they watch, one after another, the little black heads of my brothers and sisters and my- self emerge out of the buffalo robe, which is part of the sleigh’s outfit. There are six of us, four girls and two boys; the eldest, my brother, being only seven years of age. My father and mother are A = fA
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wmseewewewHewAN™ ee eEeE still in their twenties. “Les pauvres en- fants,” the inhabitants murmur, as they help to carry us into the hotel. Then in lower tones: “Chinoise, Chinoise.” For some time after our arrival, whenever we children are sent for a walk, our footsteps are dogged by a number of young French and English Canadians, who amuse them- selves with speculations as to whether, we being Chinese, are susceptible to pinches and hair pulling, while older per- sons pause and gaze upon us, very much in the same way that I have seen people gaze upon strange animals in a men- agerie. Now and then we are stopt and plied with questions as to what we eat and drink, how we go to sleep, if my mother understands what my father says to her, if we sit on chairs or squat on floors, etc., etc., etc. There are many pitched battles, of course, and we seldom leave the house without being armed for conflict. My mother takes a great interest in our bat- tles, and usually cheers us on, tho I doubt whether she understands the depth of the troubled waters thru which her lit- tle children wade. As to my father, peace is his motto, and he deems it wisest to be blind and deaf to many things. School days are short, but memorable. I am in the same class with my brother, my sister next to me in the class below. The little girl whose desk my sister shares shrinks close against the wall as my sister takes her place. In a little while she raises her hand. “Please, teacher !” “Yes, Annie.” “May I change my seat?” “No, you may not!” The little girl sobs. “Why should she have to sit beside a——” Happily my sister does not seem to hear, and before long the two little girls become great friends. I have many such experiences. My brother is remarkably bright; my sister next to me has a wonderful head for figures, and when only eight years of age helps my father with his night work accounts. My parents compare her with me. She is of sturdier build than I, and, as my father says, “Always has her wits about her.” He thinks her more like my mother, who is very bright MENTAL PORTFOLIO OF AN EURASIAN 127 and interested in every little detail of practical life. My father tells me that I will never make half the woman that my mother is or that my sister will be. I am not as strong as my sisters, which makes me feel somewhat ashamed, for I am the eldest little girl, and more is expected of me. . I have no organic disease, but the strength of my feelings seems to take from me the strength of my body. I am prostrated at times with attacks of nerv- ous sickness. The doctor says that my heart is unusually large; but in the light of the present I know that the cross of the Eurasian bore too heavily upon my childish shoulders. I usually hide my weakness from the family until I cannot stand. I do not understand myself, and I have an idea that the others will despise me for not being as strong as they. Therefore, I like to wander away alone, either by the river or in the bush. The green fields and flowing water have a charm for me. At the age of seven, as it is today, a bird on the wing is my em- blem of happiness. I have come from a race on my moth- er’s side which is said to be the most stolid and insensible to feeling of all races, yet I look back over the years and see myself so keenly alive to every shade of sorrow and suffering that it is almost a pain to live. If there is any trouble in the house in the way of a difference between my father and mother, or if any child is pun- ished, how I suffer! And when harmony is restored, heaven seems to be around me. I can be sad, but I can also be glad. My mother’s screams of agony when a baby is born almost drive me wild, and long after her pangs have subsided I feel them in my own body. Sometimes it is a week before I can get to sleep after such an experience. A debt owing by my father fills me with shame. I feel like a criminal when I pass the creditor’s door. I am only ten years old. And all the-while the ques- tion of nationality perplexes my little brain. Why are we what we are? I and my brothers and sisters. Why did God make us to be hooted and stared at? Papa is English, mamma is Chinese, Why couldn’t we have been either one thing or the other? Why is my mother’s race despised? I look into the faces of
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THE INDEPENDENT my father and mother. Is she not every bit as dear and good as he? Why? Why? She sings us the songs she learned at her English school. She tells us tales of China. Tho a child when she left her native land she remembers it well, and I am never tired of listening to the story of how she was stolen from her home. She tells us over and over again of her meet- ing with my father in Shanghai and the romance of their marriage. Why? Why? I do not confide in my father and mother. They would not understand. How could they? He is English, she is Chinese. I am different to both of them—a stranger, tho their own child. ‘What are we?” I ask my brother. “It doesn’t matter, sissy,” he responds. But it does. I love poetry, particularly heroic pieces. I also love fairy tales. Stories of everyday life do not appeal to me. I dream dreams of being great and noble; my sisters and brothers also. I glory in the idea of dying at the stake and a great genie arising from the flames and declaring to those who have scorned us: “Behold, how great and glorious and noble are the Chinese people!” My sisters are apprenticed to a dress- maker; my brother is entered in an of- fice. I tramp around and sell my father’s pictures, also some lace which I make myself. My nationality, if I had only known it at that time, helps to make sales. The ladies who are my customers call me “The Little Chinese Lace Girl.” But it is a dangerous life for a very young girl. I come near to “mysteriously disappear- ing” many atime. The greatest tempta- tion was in the thought of getting far away from where I was known, to where no mocking cries of “Chinese!” “Chi- nese!” could reach. Whenever I have the opportunity I steal away to the library and read every book I can find on China and the Chinese. I learn that China is the oldest civilized nation on the face of the earth and a few other things. At eighteen years of age what troubles me is not that I am what I am, but that others are ignorant of my superiority. I am small, but my feelings are big—and great is my vanity. My sisters attend dancing classes, for which they pay their own fees. In spite of covert smiles and sneers, they are glad to meet and mingle with other young folk. They are not sensitive in the sense that I am. And yet they understand. One of them tells me that she overhead a young man say to another that he would rather marry a pig than a girl with Chinese blood in her veins. In course of time I too learn shorthand and take a position in an office. Like my sister, I teach myself, but, unlike my sister, I have neither the perseverance nor the ability to perfect myself. Be- sides, to a temperament like mine, it is torture to spend the hours in transcrib- ing other people’s thoughts. Therefore, altho I can always earn a moderately good salary, I do not distinguish myself in the business world as does she. When I have been working for some years I open an office of my own. The local papers patronize me and give me a number of assignments, including most of the local Chinese reporting. I meet ‘many Chinese persons, and when they get into trouble am often called upon to fight their battles in the papers. This I enjoy. My heart leaps for joy when I read one day an article signed by a New York Chinese in which he declares “The Chinese in America owe an everlasting debt of gratitude to Sui Sin Far for the bold stand she has taken in their de- fense.” The Chinaman who wrote the article seeks me out and calls upon me. He is a clever and witty man, a graduate of one of the American colleges and as well a Chinese scholar. I learn that he has an American wife and several children. I am very much interested in these chil- dren, and when I meet them my heart throbs in sympathetic tune with the tales they relate of their experiences as Eura- sians. “Why did papa and mamma born us?” asks one. Why? I also meet other Chinese men who compare favorably with the white men of my acquaintance in mind and heart qual- ities. Some of them are quite handsome. They have not as finely cut noses and as well developed chins as the white men, but they have smoother skins and their expression is more serene; their hands are better shaped and their voices softer. Some little Chinese women whom I interview are very anxious to know whether I would marry a Chinaman. |
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do not answer No. They clap their hands delightedly, and assure me that the Chinese are much the finest and best of all men. They are, however, a little doubtful as to whether one could be per- suaded to care for me, full-blooded Chi- nese people having a prejudice against the half white. Fundamentally, I muse, all people are the same. My mother’s race is as preju- diced as my father’s. Only when the whole world becomes as one family will human beings be able to see clearly and hear distinctly. I believe that some day a great part of the world will be Eura- sian. I cheer myself with the thought that I am but a pioneer. A _ pioneer should glory in suffering. “You were walking with a Chinaman yesterday,” accuses an acquaintance. “Yes, what of it?” “You ought not to. It isn’t right.” “Not right to walk with one of my own mother’s people? Oh, indeed!” I cannot reconcile his notion of right- eousness with my own. I am living in a little town away off on the north shore of a big lake. Next to me at the dinner table is the man for whom I work as a stenographer. There are also a couple of business men, a young girl and her mother. Some one makes a remark about the cars full of Chinamen that past that morning. A_ transcontinental railway runs thru the town. My employer shakes his rugged head. “Somehow or other,” says he, “I cannot reconcile myself to the thought that the Chinese are humans like ourselves. They may have immortal souls, but their faces seem to be so utterly devoid of expres- sion that I cannot help but doubt.” “Souls,” echoes the town clerk. “Their bodies are enough for me. A Chinaman is, in my eyes, more repulsive than a nigger.” “They always give me such a creepy feeling,” puts in the young girl with a laugh. “I wouldn’t have one in my house,” declares my landlady. “Now, the Japanese are different alto- gether. There is something bright and likeable about those men,” continues Mr. K. MENTAL PORTFOLIO OF AN EURASIAN 129 A miserable, cowardly-feeling keeps me silent. I am in a Middle West town. If I declare what I am, every person in the place will hear about it the next day. The population is in the main made up of working folks with strong prejudices against my mother’s countrymen. The prospect before me is not an enviable one—if I speak. I have no longer an armibition to die at the stake for the sake of demonstrating the greatness and no- bleness of the Chinese people. Mr. K. turns to me with a kindly smile. “What makes Miss Far so quiet?” he asks. “T don’t suppose she finds the ‘washee washee men’ particularly interesting su‘)- jects of conversation,” volunteers . the young manager of the local bank. With a great effort I raise my eves from my plate. “Mr. K.,” I say, ad- dressing my employer, “the Chinese peo- ple may have no souls, no expression on their faces, be altogether beyond the pale of civilization, but whatever they are, I want you to understand that I am—I am a Chinese.” There is silence in the room for a few ninutes. Then Mr. K. pushes back his plate and standing up beside me, says: “T should not have spoken as I did. I know nothing whatever about the Chi- nese. It was pure prejudice. Forgive me!” I admire Mr. K.’s_ moral courage in apologizing to me; he is a conscien- tious Christian man, but I do not remain much longer in the little town. I am under a tropic sky, meeting fre- quently and conversing with persons who are almost as high up in the world as birth, education and money can set them. The environment is peculiar, for I am also surrounded by a race of people, the reputed descendants of Ham, the son of Noah, whose offspring, it was prophe- sied, should be the servants of the sons of Shem and Japheth. As I am a de- scendant, according to the Bible, of both Shem and Japheth, I have a perfect right to set my heel upon the Ham people; but tho I see others around me following out the Bible suggestion, it is not in my na- ture to be arrogant to any but those who seek to impress me with their superiority,
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130 THE INDEPENDENT which the poor black maid who has been assigned to me by the hotel certainly does not. My employer’ s wife takes me to task for this. “It is unnecessary,” she says, “to thank a black person for a service.” 5 The novelty-of life in the West Indian island is not without its charm. The sur- roundings, people, manner of living, are so entirely different from what I have been accustémed to up North that I feel as if I were “born again.” Mixing with people of fashion, and yet not of them, I am not of sufficient importance to create comment or curiosity. I am busy nearly all day and often well into the night. It is not monotonous work, but it is cer- tainly strenuous. The planters and busi- ness men of the island take me as a mat- ter of course and treat me with kindly courtesy. Occasionally an Englishman will warn me against the “brown boys” of the island, little dreaming that I too am of the “brown people” of the earth. When it begins to be whispered about the place that I am not all white, some of the “sporty” people seek my acquaint- ance. I am small and look much younger than my years. When, however, they discover that I am a very serious and sober-minded spinster indeed, they retire quite gracefully, leaving me a few amus- ing reflections. One evening a card is brought to my room. It bears the name of some naval officer. I go down to my visitor, think- ing he is probably some one who, having been told that I am a reporter for the lo- cal paper, has brought me an item of news. .I find him lounging in an easy chair on the veranda of the hotel—a big, blond, handsome fellow, several years younger than I. “You are -Lieutenant quire. He bows and laughs a little. The laugh doesn’t suit him somehow—and it doesn’t suit me, either. “If you have anything to tell me, please tell it quickly, because I’m very busy.” “Oh, you don’t really mean that,” he answers, with another silly and offensive laugh. “There’s always plenty of time for good times. That’s what I am here for. I saw vou at the races the other ?” IT in- day and twice at King’s House. My ship will be here for —— weeks.” “Do you wish that noted?” I ask. “Oh, no! Why—I came just because I had an idea that you might like to know me. I would like to know you. You look such a nice little body. Say, wouldn’t you like to go out for a sail this lovely night? I will tell you all about the sweet little Chinese girls I met when we were at Hong Kong. They’re not so shy ” I leave Raita Canada for thé Far West, so reduced by another attack of rheumatic fever that I only weigh eighty- four pounds. I travel on an advertis- ing contract. It is presumed by the rail- way company that in some way or other I will give them full value for their transportation across the continent. I have been ordered beyond the Rockies by the doctor, who declares that I will never regain my strength in the East. Nevertheless, I am but two days in San Francisco when I start out in search of work. It is the first time that I have sought work as a stranger in a strange town. Both of the other positions away from home were secured for me by home influence. I am quite surprised to find that there is no demand for my services in San Francisco and that no one is par- ticularly interested in me. The best I can do is to accept an offer from a rail- way agency to typewrite their correspon- dence for $5 a month. I stipulate, how- ever, that I shall have the privilege of taking in outside work and that my hours shall be light. I am hopeful that the sale of a story or newspaper article may add to my income, and I console myself with the reflection that, consider- ing that I still limp and bear traces of sickness, I am fortunate to secure any work at all. The proprietor of one of the San Francisco papers, to whom I have a let- ter of introduction, suggests that I ob- tain some subscriptions from the people of Chinatown, that district of the city having never been canvassed. This sug- gestion I carry out with enthusiasm, tho I find that the Chinese merchants and people generally are inclined to regard me with suspicion. They have been im- posed upon so many times by unscrupu- ee. Oi Oe ie ee oe. Bee al ee a i i as —. © eh
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MENTAL PORTFOLIO OF AN EURASIAN lous white people. Another drawback— save for a few phrases, I am unacquaint- ed with my mother tongue. How, then, can I expect these people to accept me as their own countrywoman? The Americanized Chinamen actually laugh in my face when I tell them that I am of their race. However, they are not all “doubting Thomases.” Some little women discover that I have Chinese hair, color of eyes and complexion, also that I love rice and tea. This settles the matter for them—and for their husbands. My Chinese instincts develop. I am no longer the little girl who shrunk. against my brother at the first sight of a Chinaman. Many and many a time, when alone in a strange place, has the appearance of even an humble laundry- man given me a sense of protection and made me feel quite at home. This fact of itself proves to me that prejudice can be eradicated by association. I meet a half Chinese, half white girl. Her face is plastered with a thick white coat of paint and her eyelids and eye- brows are blackened so that the shape of her eyes and the whole expression of her face is changed. She was born in the East, and at the age of eighteen came West in answer to an advertisement. Living for many years among the working class, she had heard little but abuse of the Chinese. It is not difficult, in a land like California, for a half Chi- nese, half white girl to pass as one of Spanish or Mexican origin. This the poor child does, tho she lives in nervous dread of being “discovered.” She be- comes engaged to a young man, but fears to tell him what she is, and only does so when compelled by a fearless American girl friend. This girl, who knows her origin, realizing that the truth sooner or later must be told, and better soon than late, advises the Eurasian to confide in the young man, assuring her that he loves her well enough not to al- low her nationality to stand, a bar sinis- ter, between them. But the Eurasian prefers to keep her secret, and only re- veals it to the man who is to be her hus- band when driven to bay by the Ameri- can girl, who declares that if the half- breed will not tell the truth she will. \Vhen the young man hears that the girl le is engaged to has Chinese blood in her 131 veins, he exclaims: “Oh, what will my folks say?” But that is all. Love is stronger than prejudice with him, and neither he nor she deems it necessary to inform his “folks.” The Americans, having for many years manifested a much higher regard for the Japanese than for the Chinese, several half Chinese young men and women, thinking to advance themselves, both in a social and business sense, pass as Japanese. They continue to be known as Eurasians; but a Japanese Eurasian does not appear in the same light as a Chinese Eurasian. The unfortunate Chi- nese Eurasians! Are not those who compel them to thus cringe more to be blamed than they? People, however, are not all alike. I meet white men, and women, too, who are proud to mate with those who have Chinese blood in their veins, and think it a great honor to be distinguished by the friendship of such. There are also Eu- rasians and Eurasians. I know of one who allowed herself to become engaged to a white man after refusing him nine times. She had discouraged him in every way possible, had warned him that she was half Chinese; that her people were poor, that every week or month she sent home a certain amount of her earn- ings, and that the man she married would have to do as much, if not more; also, most uncompromising truth of all, that she did not love him and never would. But the resolute and undaunted lover swore that it was a matter of in- difference to him whether she was a Chi- nese or a Hottentot, that it would be his pleasure and privilege to allow her rela- tions double what it was in her power to bestow, and as to not loving him—that did not matter at all. He loved her. So, because the young woman had a married mother and married sisters, who were always picking at her and gossiping over her independent manner of living, she finally consented to marry him, record- ing the agreement in her diary thus: “I have promised to become the wife of on , 189 , because the world is so cruel and sneering to a single woman—and for io other reason.” Everything went smoothly until one day. The young man was driving a pair
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132 of beautiful horses and she was seated by his side, trying very hard to imagine herself in love with him, when a Chinese vegetable gardener’s cart came rumbling along. The Chinaman was a jolly-look- ing individual in blue cotton blouse and pantaloons, his rakish looking hat being kept in place by a long queue which was pulled upward from his neck and wound around it. The young woman was sud- denly possest with the spirit of mis- chief. “Look!” she cried, indicating the Chinaman, “there’s my brother. Why don’t you salute him?” The man’s face fell a little. He sank into a pensive mood. The wicked one by his side read him like an open book. “When we are married,” said she, “I intend to give a Chinese party every month,” No answer. “As there are very few aristocratic Chinese in this city, I shall fill up with the laundrymen and vegetable farmers. I don’t believe in being exclusive in democratic America, do you?” He hadn’t a grain of humor in his composition, but a sickly smile contorted his features as he replied: “You shall do just as you please, my darling. But—but—consider a moment. Wouldn’t it be just a little pleasanter for us if, after we are married, we allowed it to be presumed that you were—er— Japanese? So many of my friends have inquired of me if that is not your na- tionality. They would be so charmed to meet a little Japanese lady.” “Hadn’t you better oblige them by finding one?” “Why—er—what do you mean?” “Nothing much in particular. Only— I am getting a little tired of this,” taking: off his ring. “You don’t mean what you say! Oh, put it back, dearest! You know I would not hurt your feelings for the world!” “You haven’t. I’m more than pleased. But I do mean what I say.” That evening the “ungrateful” Chi- nese Eurasian diaried, among other things, the following: “Joy, oh, joy! I’m free once more. Never again shall I be untrue to my own heart. Never again will I allow any one to ‘hound’ or ‘sneer’ me into matri- mony.” THE INDEPENDENT I secure transportation to many Cali- fornia points. I meet some literary peo- ple, chief among whom is the editor of the magazine who took my first Chinese stories. He and his wife give me a warm welcome to their ranch. They are broad- minded people, whose interest in me is sincere and intelligent, not affected and vulgar. I also meet some funny people who advise me to “trade” upon my: nation- ality. They tell me that if I wish to suc- ceed in literature in America I should dress in Chinese costume, carry a fan in my hand, wear a pair of scarlet beaded slippers, live in New York, and come of high birth. Instead of making myself familiar with the Chinese-Americans around me, I should discourse on my spirit acquaintance with Chinese ances- tors and quote in between the “Good mornings” and “How d’ye dos” of ' editors, “Confucius, Confucius, how great is Confucius, Before Confucius, there never was Confucius, After Confucius, there never came Confucius,” ete., cte., Cc. or something like that, both illuminating and obscuring, don’t you know. They forget, or perhaps they are not aware that the old Chinese sage taught “The way of sincerity is the way of heaven.” My experiences as an Eurasian never cease ; but people are not now as preju- diced as they have been. In the West, too, my friends are more advanced in all lines of thought than those whom I know in Eastern Canada—more genuine, more sincere, with less. of the form of religion, but more of its spirit. So I roam backward and forward across the continent. When I am East, my heart is West. When I am West. my heart is East. Before long I hope to be in China. As my life began in my father’s country it may end in my mother’s. After all I have no nationality and am not anxious to claim any. Individuality is more than nationality. “You are you and I am I,” says Confucius. I give my right hand to the Occidentals and my left to the Orientals, hoping that between them they will not utterly destroy the in- significant “connecting link.” And that’s all. SeattLe, Wasu.
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' Fa ve WwW Pree Se nt ee College Entrance Requirements in Theory and Practice BY JOHN G. BOWMAN [One of the first difficulties encountered by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advance- ment of Teaching in standardizing American universities was the impossibility of obtain- ing from their catalogs alone a correct idea of the actual conditions prevailing in the uni- versities. In some colleges the catalog seems to represent, not the actual practice, but an ideal, if not unrealizable, at least unrealized. The forthcoming report of the Foundation will contain a comparative study of the admission requirements of American colleges and of the rigidity of their enforcement. In the following article Mr. Bowman, secretary of the Foundation, shows how much the admission of conditioned and special students may modify the official stipulatiors.—Ep1ror. ] HE progress toward uniformity in college requirements for admis- sion has been so far successful that practically all colleges and univer- sities of adequate financial resources have either adopted a minimum standard rest- ing upon the four-year high school, or are making toward it as rapidly as local and institutional conditions will permit. Meanwhile, the existence of irregularities in the admission of conditioned and of special students must be regarded as an anomaly that tends to make the uniform- ity nominal rather than actual. I venture to question the wisdom of the varying treatment of an educational standard al- ready agreed upon and announced. Admission with conditions is intended, in theory at least, to render unnécessary the loss of a year to students who fail by a small margin to fulfill the regular re- _ quirements for admission. Such practice a generation ago had far more justifica- tion than at the present time. When high schools were comparatively few in num- ber and courses in them meager, the col- leges supplemented the work in these schools and permitted students to enter courses for which they had not oppor- ‘tunity for complete preparation. There was no idea of competition between the high schools and colleges for students, and under such conditions no one would doubt the value of discretion on the part of a college faculty in admitting deficient students. But since-that time the devel- opment of secondary schools has rapidly changed the relations between colleges and schools. A concession designed for narrow application has been so widely ex- tended in practice that a large part of the incoming class of a college is frequently conditioned; and leniency, theoretically justifiable if involving one or two slighi conditions, has developed into indiscrim- inate charity. Such practice tends to defeat a real cooperation between the schools and colleges. Uniformity of entrance requirements disappears when a large part of the stu- dent body may gain admission, not by meeting the stated requirements, but on terms which vary from one institution to another. At Amherst, for example, ap- plication for conditional admission is “considered on its merits”; at Cornell the decision rests with the faculty concerned ; at Johns Hopkins with a committee; Drake University waives two units; Marietta College concedes three units; Trinity College four; and the catalogs of New York University, Hobart, Lehigh, Princeton, Smith, Pennsylvania, Vassar and the University of California, and oth- ers, give no information as to how the matter is handled. College catalogs usually state definitely the requirements for regular admission, and when no reference is made to a pro- vision for conditioned students there may be some implication that no such provi- sion exists. But the fact is that practi- cally all colleges accept conditioned stu- dents and the omission is not serious or misleading. The objection has been made to a full statement of the require- ments in the catalog that this would tend to endanger a thoroly honest stand in the admission of students; that it is wiser to admit a bright, strong student with two or three conditions than to admit another who may have only one condition, but 133
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134 who is reported as slow, or careless, or not physically strong; and further, that it is difficult, if not impossible, to formu- late regulations which will indicate defi- nitely the working of a wise and flexible discretion of a faculty. These objections are not without force, and probably account for the fact that in so many instances no reference is made to the provision. But in my judgment the time has come when the entire ques- tion should be reconsidered by college authorities, with a view to their best in- terests and the interests of the secondary schools. A few instances of the results of the present practice may be helpful. Out of 697 students admitted directly from the secondary schools into the fresh- man class at Yale University this year, 391 were conditioned. In other words, 57 per cent. of the incoming class at Yale did not meet the stated requirement of 14.5 units.* At Columbia, 145 men were admitted by examination into the college of the university. Seventy of these 145 freshmen met fully the requirements of 14.5 units. Of the 75 freshmen who did not present the full standard the defi- ciencies ranged from half a unit to seven units. Nineteen men were deficient in four units or more, that is, in at least one full year’s work. In addition to this, ten boys, from seventeen to nineteen years of age, who succeeded in passing in the examinations only 3.5 to 8.5 units, were admitted as “non-matriculated students.” At Harvard, 58 per cent. of the class of 607 freshmen in 1907 presented less than the full requirements. The conditions were not restricted to any one subject or to any particular group of subjects. Similarly, at Amherst, in 1908, 49 out of 165 were admitted with conditions. Twelve of the 49 students were deficient three or more units. At the University of Illinois, 218 students were conditioned out of a total of 482; at Wellesley, 88 out of 383; at Cornell, 153 out of 862; at Princeton, 201 out of 360. At New York University, 36 men out of 41 were ad- mitted with deficiencies into the univer- sity college. In the above instances stu- dents admitted from other colleges and those admitted as special students are not taken into consideration. In some in- *The unit is a course of five periods weekly thru- out the academic year of the preparatory school, THE INDEPENDENT stances, as at Cornell and the University of Illinois, the number of conditioned stu- dents includes those whose academic work, while not satisfying in full the pre- scribed entrance requirements, provides surplus entrance credit in other subjects. Such students are, of course, only techni- cally deficient. These figures, while they represent the practice at each institution named, do not readily lend themselves as a means of comparing the practice at institutions which admit by examination only with institutions which accept certificates for admission. Thus, at Columbia, students are admitted only upon examination. The great proportion of students who are con- ditioned at Columbia have studied the various subjects. At New York Univer- sity, on the other hand, students are ad- mitted with certificates. Under this plan, when a student is conditioned, it means, generally, that he has not studied at all the subjects in which he is deficient. There is evidently less justification for a conditioned enrollment in the latter than in the former. The data given, however, indicate with sufficient clearness that there is a wide margin between the announced standards of entrance and the actual bases of ad- mission. In this twilight zone of irre- sponsibility there is a full field for the exercise not only of wise discretion, but also of indiscriminate excuse for unfaith- ful work, and above all an opportunity for the sharp-witted boy to play the col- lege against the high school, at the ex- pense of both. Many of the boys admit- ted with heavy conditions even in the stronger institutions come from first-class high schools and academies, to which they should have been returned until they were ready for college. Some who were not able to make creditable marks in high schools sought and obtained entrance to college after a half-completed course. In one case a candidate for admission as a special student frankly gave as a reasor for his application the fact that he had failed to pass the entrance examinations. The sympathetic committee was unable to turn away from so ingenuous a plea. He was admitted. Obviously, the adjustment between the college and the school is not perfect, but leniency on the part of the college does
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COLLEGE ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS not improve the situation. The difficulty arises from the lack of clearness as to just what the entrance requirements actu- ally denote. The catalog statements rep- resent them as indispensable: “A student who wishes to enter College must pass” such and such examinations for admission. It is.not stated just why the particular requirements are set up as thus fundamental, but one of two theories must be implied: the requirements em- body an indispensable minimum of knowledge or they represent an indis- pensable minimum of training. In other words, an ordinary boy, in order to have a good chance of success in college, must either know the ground covered by the requirements, or he must at least have had the mental drill to be obtained thru their mastery. In either event the college is illogical when, after thus setting up its minimum, it proceeds freely to make exceptions to it. The records show that a large part of the incoming class has conditions, vary- ing from one unit to five or six, and sometimes more. In the face of such administration it is impossible to main- tain that the entrance requirements are a real minimum ; they are at best an osten- sible minimum, any part of which is liable in-‘most colleges to temporary suspension and occasionally to complete abrogation. It would seem that, to bring order out of this chaotic situation, it is necessary, first, to decide what the minimum is actu- ally meant to accomplish, and, second, what it must embody in order to achieve this purpose. So much being clear, it must be enforced as the sine qua non. Such a minimum would not be by itself the basis of college entrance, but an in- evitable. preliminary thereto. The stu- dent should unquestionably be required to do much more than this minimum be- fore being admitted. In determining the content and extent of the additional stud- ies, an entirely new set of considerations enters. The present arrangement fails to distinguish the general from the individ- ual factor. In consequence, the entire situation is involved in confusion, the one sure result of which is to habituate young students to notions of promotion despite superficiality and failure. The special student is on a somewhat different basis. This provision is more 135 in the nature of an equity proceeding, de- signed to supply a certain degree of elas- ticity to an otherwise rigid system of entrance examinations. It furnishes a way of meeting the needs of mature and serious persons who for one reason or another have not pursued the regular educational routine, and who, thru ex- traordinary effort, have won a second chance; their seriousness of purpose, their maturity in development, amply compensate a technical deficiency in en- trance units. No sensible person would propose to exclude from academic privi- lege the student who, relatively late in life and after a sobering experience, thus gains access to collegiate opportunities. An analysis of the special student en- rollment, however, discloses the fact that, instead of being limited to the use just indicated, the classification in question has likewise become a means of reducing or of evading entirely the entrance re- quirements. Unsuccessful candidates for admission urge and the college agrees that a system of entrance examinations does injustice to certain individuals tem- peramentally unsuited to display their acquisitions thru written examinations. There is no doubt that this at times hap- pens, tho by no means usually in the cases in which it is alleged to have occurred. But in any event the remedy fails. Fur- ther, it is urged that thru admission as special students college advantages may be extended to those who have had no access to adequate secondary schools. Whatever merit this contention may once have had, it has now lost most of its force. The enrollment of special stu- dents has increased, tho the cogency of the argument has steadily diminished. The terms in which college catalogs usually handle this subject are so vague that one is prepared to encounter great laxity and inconsistency in the actual ad- ministration. Harvard required sixteen units for entrance, but it admits as spe- cials, without examination, students who are fit “to pursue the particular courses they elect.” Out of 2,277 undergradu- ates there are 231 specials. The Johns Hopkins University requires fifteen units for entrance; it admits with eight units those “qualified by age, character, attain- ments and habits of study.” Out of 165 undergraduates, 23 are specials. The
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136 THE University of Pennsylvania requires 14.5 units for entrance, but it admits specials on certificates covering requirements for desired courses only. Out of 299 stu- dents in liberal arts, 35 entered on these terms. Adelphi College requires 14.5 units, but it admits “specials” of mature age on “satisfactory evidence of profi- ciency”; and, in consequence, it has 52 unclassified students out of a total of 170. It is clear that vague descriptions such as I have quoted will not bar out unfit, undeserving and incompetent applicants. If the regular procedure is in danger of being suspended in behalf of candidates who allege that they are mature and qualified, quoting the local clergyman and the family physician in support of the allegation, the college must create some effective machinery for intelligently and severely passing on such applications. A faculty committee, which, for. adminis- trative purposes, is liable to reduce itself to a secretary, acting on a few written documents. submitted by the candidate himself, cannot avoid or effectively check abuse. In consequence, a measure de- signed to relieve mature workers of tests no longer important to them has become a back door for the admission of a mis- cellaneous collection of students of all ages and types, many of them boys of average freshman age, who did not real- ize the clumsiness or difficulty of admis- sion requirements until they themselves had failed to meet them. INDEPENDENT The facts recited above are suggestive. They may indicate any one of several things. For instance, the desire for num- bers being keen, lax provisions for the admission of special and of conditioned students may mean that a rigidly en- forced entrance standard would threaten seriously to cut down enrollment, and that extraordinary measures have been devised to offset their effect. If this view is correct, the college has embarked upon a dangerous course which threatens its sincerity and its efficiency. Or again, the facts may signify that there is no very close connection between fulfilled require- ments and college performance, in which case it is held wise to admit deficient stu- dents of average age, or older, and to wipe out their deficiencies by some other method than thru the entrance machinery. If this be true, it is time, not to make exceptions that confuse all standards and demoralize students, but seriously to face the problem of organizing preparatory education on a basis that is really vital and indispensable, and of devising ma- chinery capable of enforcing it. It is bad pedagogical procedure to tell the pro- spective candidate that entrance to college involves a specific previous achievement, and then to familiarize him with the spec- tacle of frequent cases in which he learns that the terms have been partly or wholly waived. The ethical and scholarly stand- ards would be higher if a less pretentious requirement were unflinchingly enforced. New York Cry. The Tariff and Matrimony [Altho we did not request any replies to the article in our issue of December 3d by “A Young College Graduate,” from our readers. we received a surprisingly large number of letters and articles Unfortunately we have been unable to give space to any of them, except the following, which expresses the general consensus of opinion and which the author desires publisht anonymously.—EpzrTor. ] N a recent number of THE INDEPEND- | ENT appeared an article on “The Tariff and Matrimony.” Even if the tariff were lowered and the neces- sities of life became cheaper (of which there is some doubt), it would seem, per- haps, after careful examination, that the fault of fewer marriages lies often within ourselves. I was one of a family of four and’ my father earned $60 per month. For the same grade of work I am now earning $100 per month. When my father bought a suit of clothes the price he paid was $15. As my monthly wages are 6634 per cent. above that of my father, this would warrant me in the purchase of a suit of clothes that would cost $25, and without
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THE TARIFF AND MATRIMONY a doubt this suit that 1 am able to pur- chase for $25 is as good or even hetter than the suit that he purchased for his $15. But no; the suit of clothes that I purchased cost $45, or, in other words, 1 have paid $20 to satisfy my taste or vanity, whichever you will. Then in the matter of theaters. My father went to the theater three or four times a year; I go as many times in a month. In this respect my expenditures are twelve times as great as those of my father. When he smoked he smoked a pipe; I smoke cork-tipped cigarettes that cost a cent apiece. As a young man, of his $60 a month there was perhaps $30 to pay for living expenses, leaving him $30 which he might save or spend to satisfy his tastes or pleasure. Of my salary there is about $50 that I pay for living expenses, and the balance of $50 I may save or spend as I see fit. He saved most of his $30 and | spend most of my $50. He had the foresight to save for a fu- ture day when he would need the money ; I, like many others, have not the same foresight, and some day I shall rue it. Perhaps then I shall look for some out- side cause to which to lay the blame, without examining myself at all. It is not easy to economize; and we of the present day find it hard to deny ourselves things that we want, and as we earn more money than our fathers we are very apt to give in to our temptations rather than to go thru the moral struggle to deny ourselves the things that our better judg- ment tells us we should. When the time of marriage came to our fathers they had trained themselves in the matter of econ- omies, and. when the extra expenses came, which are sure to come with matri- mony, they were better able to meet them, as they had had this training. As a pupil attending high school I be- came attached to a young woman, and when I left school and started out into the world it was my purpose to win a position that would enable me to make a suitable home for her. In the trend of the times she also went out into the world of work and for several years earned as much as I was earning. Dur- 137 ing this time her tastes became expen- sive; she was not contented with what satisfied her mother. It would have been hard for her to give up her independence for the home that I was then able to offer her; her mother did not have nearly as much to give up. Fortunately or unfor- tunately for me, she became tired of wait- ing and married some one a good deal older than herself. He had been long enough in the business world to have secured a place and a good salary. I am now a little over thirty years of age.and for the last ten years 1 have not been out of employment, and my salary during that time has been over $1,000 a year. I have never married; not be- cause I do not love home life, but rather because I do not care to run the risk. What risk? I am afraid that I would not be happy and God at least intended that his children should be happy. Then there is not only the risk that | would not be happy myself, but also the risk that the woman that I would marry would not be happy, and that would be the greatest risk of all. Look about you among the young mar- ried people and what will you find? How many of the wives of today are doing their own housework? How many of our mothers had hired help? Many of the young husbands are not able to econ- omize and manage the affairs of the fam- ily as their fathers have been able to do before them; both wives and husbands not having that religious horror of debt that their forefathers and mothers had; living beyond their means, purchasing things that they could easily do without, not knowing when they will be able to pay for them. It is well known that peo- ple are placing mortgages on their homes to buy automobiles. If the home was sold by foreclosure could we lay the blame to the protective tariff? Let us be honest with ourselves. There are fewer marriages and fewer homes not because we are materially worse off than our fathers, but because we are not satis- fied with what they were satisfied. Our tastes have grown out of proportion to our salaries, and he who dances should pay the fiddler and not complain. Boston, Mass.
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Recent American Excavations in Crete BY EDITH H. HALL, Ph.D. {Miss Hall, after graduating at Smith College and taking postgraduate courses in arche- ology and Greek at Bryn Mawr, was from 1903 to 1905 a student at the American School at Athens, spending much of her time in Crete.—Eprrtor.] LTHO the politics of Crete have A come again into the foreground of the world’s attention by reason of her recent appeal for annexation with Greece, the archeological discoveries which are being made in the island are not attracting either the notice they de- serve or that which was accorded to the ace consisted of a complex of rooms, public and private, grouped about a cen- tral court. Hardly less brilliant was the work of the Italian mission at Phaistos, where another palace, similar in extent and character, was discovered. The ex- cavations at Knossos alone turned legend to history; we know now that King Fic. 1.—THE MINOAN TOWN (C. 2000-1500 B. C.), On the Island of Pseira, excavated in 1907. earlier and more dramatic discoveries on Cretan soil. The most brilliant of these early excavations, it will be remembered, were made at Knossos, where Dr. Evans, of Oxford, uncovered a vast palace, ex- tending over several acres and indicating a civilization far more advanced than any one would have dared to ascribe to the eighteenth century B. C. The pal- 138 Minos really lived and that his labyrinth was none other than the Knossos palace. But scholars were not satisfied with this de- lightful fact ; they have set out todetermine and characterize the successive’ stages of Cretan civilization from the neolithic age to the time of Solon. To this end the excavation of smaller sites is quite as important as the discovery of palaces,
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Fic. 4.—THE ISLAND OF MOCHLOS, WHERE EXCAVATIONS WERE MADE LAST SPRING. To the right and left of the church are shown the houses which have been cleaned; on the west cliff may seen the narrow pathway from which the chamber tombs opened. In the foreground are the excava- tors’ tents. 5.—CHAMBER TOMB WITH ANTE-CHAMBER, As it appeared when excavated.
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INDEPENDENT i ‘a } = Fic. 6—GOLD ORNAMENTS FROM THE MOCHLOS TOMBS. Dating from the early Minoan period (before 2000 .,, C.). They are the oldest gold ornaments yet found in Crete. and accordingly the work of the British Greek scholar, Mr. Xanthoudides, at School at Athens, at Zakro and Palaio- Kouniasa, has thrown much light on the kastro, of the American archeologist, character and chronology of this prehis- Mrs. Hawes, at Gournia, and of the toric age.
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RECENT AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN CRETE Two more “Minoan” sites have re- cently been located and uncovered by the 141 tions have not yet been publisht, but Mr. Seager has kindly given permission that Fic. 2—PAINTED JAR (AFTER A DRAWING) FROM PSEIRA. This jar stands about three feet high. ground of the clay. the horns, had religious significance. American explorer, Mr. R. B. Seager. he first of these sites, on the island of Pseira, was excavated for the American [xploration Society of Philadelphia; the second, on the island of Mochlos, for the \merican School of Classical Studies at Athens. The results of these excava- The decoration is applied in dark glaze with superadded white to the ‘ In the upper zone of decoration the bulls’ heads, with double axes and lilies between some preliminary account of them should be given here. The island of Pseira lies a few miles from the mainland of Crete, just north of the modern village of Kavousi. Meas- uring scarcely two kilometers in length, and one in breadth, it is void both of wa-
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142 ter and of any siz- able vegetation, and sustains today no other popula- tion than an occa- sional flock of goats, which are rowed over for a winter’s grazing. Mr. Seager’s at- tention was first called to this isl- and in 1903, when a Turkish boat- man spread the news thruout the neighboring _vil- lages that ancient potsherds were to be found in abun- dance upon its rocky slopes. In 1906, after com- pleting excava- tions at Basiliké, Mr. Seager moved a part of his force THE INDEPENDENT TM 2 as AEE Fic. 8—GOLD SIGNET RING, Showing a goddess with the sacred tree in a boat. of workmen across to Pseira, and made trial excava- tions which at once revealed a Minoan town of considerable im- portance. In 1907 this town site was further examined, and a cemetery of thirty-three graves was discovered and opened. The island seems to have been a flourishing outpost of the sea power of Crete in the days of the Knos- sos palace, but when this mari- time ‘kingdom fell it was abandoned, and remained un- inhabited until the epoch, Roman Fic. 7—STONE VASES FROM THE MOCHLOS CEMETERY. These vases are made of exquisitely veined marbles, breccia, steatite, etc. They belong to an early period, prior to 2000 B. C., and probably show Egyptian influence. eggshell. Some of them are as thin as an
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- RECENT AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN CRETE when again some kind of settle- ment was establisht there. From Roman times until today it has lain undisturbed. The importance of Pseira as an outpost of Minoan power is due to the good harbor, which lies on the east coast .of the island, and which would have afforded ample shelter for sailing craft 2,000 years before Christ, as it does today for small boats beset by storms. Fic. 3—TERRA COTTA FIGURINES OF BULLS. They were found in the Pseira houses and were sup- sedly used in domestic shrines as a_ substitute or the actual proprietary offering of a live bull. On the steep cliffs that flank this harbor was built the town (Fig. 1), intersected by narrow paved streets, which now skirt the hillside, and now rise in broad flights of stairs from the landing to the summit of the cliff. The houses, which were huddled close together as in a mod- ern Cretan village, were built two stories high. of roughly drest slate or limestone blocks, quarried in the island. This mas- sive material, when it fell in ruins, sadly damaged the vases and other small ob- jects within the rooms; yet from the 150 143 rooms uncovered important finds were forthcoming—finds which may seem in- significant compared with the statues and frescoes found within the houses of Pompeii, but which are yet of priceless value for those bent on wresting from the earth the secrets of early A°gean civ- ilization. Among the objects found, pottery, which is the most indestructible of all the works of men’s hands, plays a conspicu- ous part. There were found not only large and handsome painted jars (Fig. 2), attesting the high degree of artistic skill attained in that far-away time, but also quantities of fragments of pottery packed here and there beneath the dirt floors. Such small deposits are of an earlier date than the vases found above the floors, and bear important evidence as to the earlier occupation of the town; in this case they show the town to have been inhabited in the third millennium B. C., in what is known as the early Min- oan III period. Besides vases of clay there came to light a remarkable series of stone vases, surpast only by those found this year at Mochlos; some small terra-cotta figures of bulls (Fig. 3), ex-
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144 celling in their modeling all terra-cotta statuets hitherto found in Crete; and, lastly, some fragments of a painted gesso duro relief, which show the elegant ap- pointments of the better class of houses even on this barren island. The cemetery contained, as I said, thirty-three graves, dating from the early Minoan period (before 2000 B. C.) and the middle Minoan period (shortly after 2000 B. C.). Many of them were crammed with vases of clay and stone. The types of these graves were of great importance; some were of the “rock- shelter” type, in which the bodies were laid beneath a jutting shelf of rock, while others were of the cist type, in which a grave is lined with slabs and covered with a capping stone. The rock- shelter type has been found before in Crete, but the cist type is quite new, and forms an important link between the civ- ilization of Crete and that of the Cy- clades, where cist graves abound. The island of Mochlos, where Mr. Seager has been digging this present year, is even smaller than Pseira (Fig. 4), and is separated from the mainland by so narrow a channel that it is most probable that in Minoan times it formed the end of a peninsula. On the slope of the island that faces the shore another town was located and uncovered, but the importance of this town is but little com- pared with the splendid series of cham- ber tombs discovered on the west face of the island. Here the steep face of the cliff is broken by a ledge wide enough for an easy pathway. The tombs which opened from this ledge (Fig. 5) were built against the face of the cliff. In some tombs as many as thirty skulls were found, some of which were literally cov- ered with gold ornaments — diadems, bracelets, pins, chains with pendants, strips and plates of gold, constituting one of the most important gold finds, if not the most important, from prehistoric AZgean sites, since the days of Schlie- mann (Fig. 6). The greater part of these ornaments are made, like the gold ornaments from Mycene, of thin plates of beaten gold; some of them are deco- rated with human eyes done in repoussé work, and may have served, as Dr. Evans in a recent letter to the London Times suggests, as a covering for the THE INDEPENDENT eves of the dead. The gold chains show a skill of workmanship hitherto unsus- pected in so early a period of A®gean civilization. Hardly less lovely than these gold or- naments are the stone vases found in the Mochlos tombs (Fig. 7). Some of them are as small as a thimble, and almost as thin as eggshells, while others stand two feet high. Before Mr. Seager had ex- cavated at Mochlos stone vases had been found only occasionally and in small quantities, and it had been supposed that the stone cutter’s art reached the acme of its development in the late Minoan II period (c. 1800 B. C.), but now we must call the early Minoan III period the age of some vases par excellence. No- where, except in Egypt, so far as I am aware, have stone vases of similar beauty and workmanship been found, so that this series of vases will be a strong argu- ment for trade relations and perhaps for racial connections between Crete and _ Egypt in this remote epoch. The most remarkable of all the ob- jects found on the little island of Moch- los is the gold signet ring shown in Fig. 8. It closely resembles the signet rings found by Schliemann at Mycene, but it is the first of its kind to be found on Cretan soil. It represents a goddess seated beside the sacred tree in a boat with a bow in the shape of a,horse’s head. On the shore is a shrine toward which the goddess seems to be beckon- ing. It is just such objects as this which have enabled scholars to reconstitute in a fairly satisfactory way the religion of prehistoric Crete, just as, in general, it is the meager material described—vases of clay and stone, gold ornaments, fres- cos and the architectural forms of houses and tombs, which constitute for the ‘arch- eologist what written documents consti- tute for the historian. From such mate- rial scholars have already done much toward determining the chronology, the religion and art of prehistoric Crete. It is to be hoped that further excavations may, in the near future, settle the much vexed problem of who these Cretans were. The excavations of Mr. Seager at Pseira and Mochlos have beén a step in this direction. Bryn Mawr, Pa.
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The Coming Lincoln Centennial BY EDWIN D. MEAD AutTHor oF “THE PRINCIPLES OF THE FounpEas,” “ORGANIZE THE. WorLD,” “THE INFLUENCE or Emerson,” Etc. HE approaching centennial of the birth of Lincoln has prompted many suggestions as to the worthi- est permanent memorial. There will be many meetings, there will be much elo- quence; but what shall be done, or what foundations laid, that shall abide and affect the future? The old Kentucky farm where Lincoln was born is to have proper honor and improvement. The Lincoln Memorial University, in the Cumberland Mountains, doing its noble work, under the presidency of General Howard, for the struggling young peo- ple of that Lincoln region, is to have its endowment raised. A memorial road from Washington to Gettysburg has been proposed, to be constructed, if not this year, then by and by. These are all fit- ting and admirable. But the country must for no moment forget the central fact and purpose of Lincoln’s life, nor fail to make that the central considera- tion and commandment of this memorial time. Lincoln lived and died to emanci- pate and elevate an enslaved and down- trodden race; and he himself would ap- prove or sanction the great celebration which we are preparing only so far as it is to be an occasion for renewed dedica- tion to that unfinished work. Tho, on the 12th of February, we speak with the tongues of men and of angels, if we do not from this commemoration take in- creased devotion to that cause for which he gave the last full measure of devotion, we shall become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. By eloquent coincidence, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, the great teacher of the doctrine of evolution, were born on the same day, February 12th, 1809. We celebrate the centenaries to- gether. The coincidence may usefully impress the lesson that the emancipation of the colored race in America is to be a long process of evolution. It was not something done once for all. Lincoln and his great associates began it. It is for us to carry it on. ‘Twenty years ago, when General Arm- strong was first struck down and lay helpless on his bed at the Parker House, in Boston, worn by anxiety as to how the year’s expenses of the Hampton Institute were to be met, there was held at the Old South Meeting House the most impres- sive and important meeting ever held within its walls since it was saved from destruction. Some of us went to the meeting direct from Armstrong’s bed- side. Had the old meeting house been saved just for that evening, said Mrs. Hemenway, who hdd done most to save it, as she came away, she would have felt amply repaid for her part in the saving. As‘a result of the meeting, $20,000 was immediately raised in Boston, and Arm- strong’s mind was at rest. Dr. Hale pre- sided at the meeting, and his stirring word was followed by many stirring words. The touching tribute to Arm- strong and Hampton by Booker Wash- ington was one of the most noteworthy early revelations of his eloquence and power. But the most memorable word there spoken was that of Phillips Brooks, enforcing precisely this truth, that an en- slaved race is not freed simply by strik- ing off its chains, but only when its mind is liberated and endowed, and it is up- lifted to the full stature of citizenship and manhood. Lincoln had greatly be- gun the emancipation of the race. Arm- strong, in his pioneering work of educa- tion, was greatly continuing Lincoln’s work. It was for us to sustain and pro- mote the higher advance of that emanci- pation. Has the country been faithful to Lin- coln’s memory and task? Has the evolu- tion of emancipation been pushed with proper persistence and earnestness? Are we ceasing our discrimination against men because they are black? It is not a question put by North to South. It is a question put to Springfield, Ill., the old home of Lincoln himself, as directly as to men in Maryland busy with their piti- ful disfranchising chicanery. South and 145
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146 North alike, had we been faithful to Lin- coln’s memory for these forty years, would be informed today by a spirit which would refuse hearing and tolera- tion for talk like that of a United States Senator but yesterday, opposing the pro- posal for general compulsory education in his State on the ground that this would include the education of the negro, and the education of the negro would menace white supremacy. He is not a humorist and did not ‘see the irony of this tribute to the negro’s native capacity. Cowardly, indeed, is the arrogance of privilege toward lowliness, and mean- spirited, indeed, the man or the race that avoids a fair field and contest with a rival not kept maimed; but baser still is the amphitheater that can relish or will long endure the spectacle. To the still linger- ing cry of “Black,men down!” this salu- tary commemoration rings back the “All men up!” whose echoes after the forty years. were growing faint in too many American hearts. Had they not grown faint in many, the recent word of Justice Harlan, so like Lincoln’s own, upon the Berea College decision—confirming the Kentucky law that, however they themselves desire it, and even in private institutions, a black boy and a white boy may not study to- gether the rule of three or the law of gravitation, the Golden Rule or the Emancipation Proclamation—would have aroused a vastly profounder and louder response : ! “If the views of the highest court of Ken- tucky be sound, that Commonwealth may, with- out infringing on the Constitution of the United States, forbid the association in the same private school of pupils of the Anglo- Saxon and Latin races respectively, or pupils of the Christian and Jewish faiths respectively. Have we become so inoculated with prejudice of race that an American Government, pro- fessedly based on the principles of freedom, and charged with the protection of all citizens alike, can make distinction between such citi- zens in the matter of their voluntary meeting for innocent purposes, simply because of their respective races? If the court be right, then a State may make it a crime for white and colored persons to frequent the same market places at the same time, or appear in an assem- blage of citizens convened to consider questions of a public or political nature in which all citizens, without regard to race, are equally interested; and other _ illustrations would show the mischievous, not to say cruel, character of the statute in question, and how inconsistent such legislation is with the great THE INDEPENDENT of the equality of citizens before the aw. . Never before in human history has a race advanced so rapidly in education and general civilization as the race which the act of Abraham Lincoln admitted to American citizenship has advanced in these forty years. Seldom or never /has there been seen such magnificent endeav- or and expenditure as by the American people in that period for the uplifting of undeveloped and downtrodden men. But it accuses us that along with this we have tolerated up to this commemorative year such gross injustices and hindrances as still persist. It would be well if there could be laid in Washington, at least in purpose, in this Lincoln centennial year, the founda- tion of a Lincoln Institute, to be devoted to those studies and activities which shall most broadly and efficiently promote the knowledge, maintain the rights and in- spire the duty and devotion of the col- ored race. It might be allied with How- ard University or it might be independ- ent. It should be endowed by the most generous gifts of American wealth and public spirit. It should enlist in its serv- ice the best scholarship and the best statesmanship of both races, and its man- agement should be in the hands equally of men of the North and the South, who stand alike for those fundamental prin- ciples of justice, humanity and progress for which Lincoln stood and stands, It should represent no sectional sentiment ; it should be a temple of national duty and national law, and upon the temple’s front should be inscribed those great pro- visions of the Constitution which embody the results of Lincoln’s life and work: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within be : praes the equal protection of the aws. “The right of citizens of the United: States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Such was the reduction to law of Lin- coln’s gospel and Lincoln’s life. That law and gospel have just found forcible
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THE COMING LINCOLN CENTENNIAL and stirring iteration from -Mr. Taft, who comes to Lincoln’s place in this Lin- coln centennial year. Every public utter- ance of Mr. Taft’s since his election has shown a firmness and a wisdom which inspire high hope and confidence. But he has spoken no word more wise or wholesome or imperative than that re- cently addrest bv him to the North Caro- lina Society in New York, and received by it so warmly in the earnest spirit which prompted it, declaring that in every part of the republic the provisions of the great amendments, defining and decreeing equal justice to every citizen, must henceforth be respected, and that only in such sincere observance, what- ever social differences may fersist, can there be peace and prosperity among our people. In the same spirit is his later word, stigmatizing the gross injustice and unmanliness of the present move- ment in Maryland against the clear con- stitutional rights of the colored voter in that State, as in every State in the Union. This is the teaching, this the spirit, to which every American, North and South, should give new emphasis and new vital- itv in this sacred commemorative time. The South, the new and living South, knows well that Mr. Taft’s words are the words of a friend. The North knows well that it has too long been indifferent on this momentous matter. Mr. Taft has sounded the needed keynote. We can none of us afford to trifle longer with the fun- damental law of the land and with funda- mental justice. Almost coincident with the word of Mr. Taft comes the thought- ful word of Hannis Taylor, himself a North Carolina man like the men whom Mr. Taft addrest, concurring with Mr. Taft at least in this, that the future poli- cies of every section of the country must be in full recognition of the national Con- stitution. This is the granite cornerstone, and it is for the whole nation highly to resolve in this Lincoln time that all ef- forts to shake that cornerstone shall cease. All else must abide their trials; the law, which pronounces its solemn de- crees as to political and civil rights, does not dictate our social behavior. But we 147 should also, North and South, highly re- solve to approach these social issues in the spirit calculated to ease, and not to prolong, the trials. Each State may say if it pleases—altho it would be poor pleasure—that no man in its borders shai vote if he is not forty years old, if he is not worth a thousand dollars, and if he cannot read Greek and Latin; but it must say it in good faith to every man, and it must faithfully enforce the rights of every one who meets the conditions. We are all legally free, we mighty Cauca- sians, to get what pleasure any of us can in believing that no black man, however well endowed and trained, can ever equal the poorest of us; but Hampton and Tus- kegee and Atlantaand Fisk haveanswered the question whether an educated black man is more useful than an ignorant one. That case cannot be reopened; and we have but to see that every class in the republic is helped to the best training the class is capable of, with no waste of anxiety or rhetoric over their relative capacities. We are legally free, in Boston and New York and New Orleans, to be courteous to whom we please, and to act like men and brothers to whom we please. But we are not morally free to forget that one high principle with gentlemen, if not indeed the highest, is Noblesse oblige; and we may well struggle to maintain and justify our traditional pride in advising foreigners, Asiatic and other, that the most prevalent and. fashionable American religion is the Christian reli- gion, with its well known definition of “the greatest among you.” That definition Abraham Lincoln never forgot. His life was its illustration. He saw that there is no place where men so easily forget it as in dealing with men of another race. He was called upon to make his memorable and mighty protest with reference to a single race. In our time the problem becomes vastly more complex and pressing. But however complex, there is but one way of solving it—the simple, Christian, fraternal way. It is well for us that the Lincoln centen- nia! comes to say this to us persuasively and commandingly. Boston, Mass.
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Literature Stories of the Darkness THERE was the darkness of the Mid- dle Ages and there is the darkness of our own age. We know more, we have achieved more, but somehow the dark- ness remains. The things we know do not affect it, the things we accomplish do not dispel it. And we still love it for the same reason—because our deeds are evil. Most. of the fiction written is founded upon them, the evil deeds, be- cause the novelists know that they must lay the scene of their drama in the dark, where we can see it, feel it, believe it, recognize it for our own. But now and then a man brings a torch in, flares it into our faces, and calls it a book. Usual- ly it is not a well-written book, but the author shows us with awful distinctness what is in the darkness about us. And they are the writers rather than the mas- ters of the finest expression in fiction who awaken conscience and bring about reforms. It is in some such spirit as this that Dr. Dawson has written out his ‘ad- vocacy of Church anarchy in his recent novel.. He obviously favors the disso- lution of the Church as we know it. He charges her with all the crimes she has been guilty of in history, and with cow- ardice and formalism in the present. And if the doctor were the most ad- vanced socialist, instead of being a min- ister with a reputation as a revivalist, he could not argue with more indignation and conviction against the present re- ligious order as_ represented by the churches. Considered as a story, the book is a neat little doe-eyed failure, but it abounds in startling visions and situa- tions relating to life and eternity that are likely to leave a lasting impression. Marie Corelli has also caught the moral fever for showing what lies in the dark, and, in her latest novel,’ she drama- tizes the effects of the curse of drink upon the middle and lower classes in New New York: 1A Soxprer or Fortune. By W. J. Dawson. York: Fleming H. Revell & Co. $1.50. 2Hoty Orpers. By Marie Corelli. Frederick A. Stokes Co. $1.50. 148 England. The treatment of the theme is artificial and strained, as if she had at- tempted to reduce real life into an egre- gious melodrama for persons of limited intelligence. But the facts she presents are incontestable—that is, all are except the sequel. In this the drunken, de- cadent young poet takes the beautiful scarlet lady (whom one gets to think of simply as another, differently shaped bottle of the same evil that is in the or- dinary intoxicant) up in a balloon with him. They both get drunk and both commit suicide several thousand feet in the air. Miss Corelli has always found it easy to get off of the earth when she writes fiction—not that she has an ethe- rial imagination, but she is like the man Sir Gilbert Parker tells of, who was al- ways “deviling the stars.” To devil the stars is one of her peculiarities as a nov- elist. Another is to be always in a quar- rel about her books. There is a preface to this volume addrest to her American readers in which she claims that we have misunderstood her because we take the London newspaper man’s representation. She forgets that her books circulate free- ly in this country and that we have al- ways been able to understagd the worst English fiction without the aid of Lon- don reporters. A novel signed by Giovanni Cena, translated by Olivia Agresti Rossetti, and with a preface by Mrs. Humphry Ward, should be a story of some signifi- cance.” And so it is. It is the auto- biography of a compositor in Turin named Stanga. The author claims to have found it written on the back of a bundle of proofs. And it bears the marks of reality rather than of fiction. There is a breathless incoherence about the narrative toward the last, after the writer has determined to cast himself be- fore the king’s motor car with the man- uscript on his body. Thus he hopes to attract attention to the wretchedness of his class—the artisan class in Italy. It ®TuHe Forewarners. By York: Doubleday, Page & Co. Giovanni Cena. New $1.50.
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LITERATURE is a chronicle of misery and hardships unspeakable, and could not be more poignant if the scenes were laid in sad- dest Russia and Stanga had been an anarchist. That is the difference—he is not an anarchist, there is no resistance in him. He belongs to the martyr spirits who desire to offer life as a sac- rifice upon the altar. And whether the story is true or fiction, it at least gives an idea of existence among the artisans of Italy which we have not had before. René Bazin’s story of the wood-cutters in France‘ has more literary merit, but is less significant. Gilbert Cloquet is merely the artist’s model for hunger and misery made dim in the shadows of the great trees. We do not quite realize that it is a picture of modern life in rural France and that it is the eternal protest there against the life-usury practised by the rich or the powerful upon the poor and helpless. It is too well: written. The author has idealized his poor man, lifted him into the realm of art, and made his grievance a part of literature rather than of life. Beatrice Sands in her late novel* of- fers some shocking revelations concern- ing what happens in the infants’ refuges in New York. She declares that all the incidents recorded are absolutely true, and there is a statement signed by Bishop Potter at the beginning of the volume certifying to his confidence in the truthfulness and trustworthiness of the author. The women employed to care for these infants, she claims, have nearly always failed at something else because of a lack of character, courtesy, or self- control. The cruelties they inflict by way of discipline upon their young charges are almost beyond belief. Dick- ens never described a more frightful state of affairs in “Oliver Twist.” The result, she points out, is that the insti- tution children make the criminal class for the next generation. In one State the record of 1898 showed that 94 per cent. of its criminals had been children trained in its orphans’ homes and infants’ refuges. _ ‘THe Cominc Harvest. By René Bazin. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. $1.50. °WeEPERS IN Praytime. By Beatrice Sands. York: John Lane Co. $1.5¢. New Eastern Wisdom Tuis Wisdom of the East Series,* in handy little volumes, is a good thing. It is always a good thing to help along the mutual comprehension of diverse races, and that is what the editors say they intend. The better you know a man or a race the better you like him, and to understand something of the mental and social attitudes of other races, their aspi- rations and their religious emotions, al- ways makes for this good end. There- fore our thanks to the editors, who bring a little closer the dream of a war-less world. Naturally the series has ups and downs, the selections and the men chosen to write introductions to them are not equally good, more’s the pity, for some are excellent. There is “The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke’Gemni: the Oldest Books in the World,” written about 3550 and 3998 B. C., respectively, and a most interesting commentary upon the high grade of civilization, the social wisdom and the sense of justice in ancient Egypt. “The Duties of the Heart,” by Bachye, a Jewish rabbi of Spain, and “The Wisdom of Israel,” being extracts from the Baby- lonian Talmud and Midrash Rabboth, are amplifications and illustrations of Jewish teaching of an impressive sort. There is a volume of selections from the Koran, with an introduction outlining the prin- ciples of Moslem faith, but the volumes on Sa’di and Abu’l-Ala are far more in- teresting. Sa’di’s “Scroll of Wisdom” is a collection of moral essays illuminating the Persian sentiments of the period, bu much more pithy is the “Rose Garden ot Sa’di,” which holds many such keen penetrations thru the husk to the kernel as when he cries to the derwishes of his day: “Thou hast no need to wear the cowl of pelt; Be thou true Derwish in a Tartar pelt.” Sa’di was born at the close of the twelfth century, but two centuries earlier, and forty years before the birth of the famous Omar Khayyam, there was born the Syrian philosopher and—what shall we call him?—agnostic, Abu’l-Ala. Hen- *Tue Wispom oF tHE East_Sertes. Edited by L. Cranmer-Byng and Dr. S. A. Kapadia. New York: E. P. Dutton Co. 40 cents net per volume.
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150 ry Baerlein has turned his quatrains into English with a singular success that inev- itably challenges comparison with the work of Fitzgerald, and by no means always suffers. He has given us, too, a most suggestive analysis of the poet’s attitude toward the inscrutable problems of life. Here are some of the quatrains: Lo! there are many ways and many traps And many guides, and which of them is lord? For verily Mahomet has the sword, And he may have the truth—perhaps! perhaps! Now this religion happens to prevail Until by that one it is overthrown— Because men dare not live with men alone, But always with another fairy-tale. There is profound wisdom in that re- flection on religion’s part in society. How strikingly the dreary sorrow of life is caught in the lines: My faith it is that all the wanton pack Of living shall be—hush, poor heart !—with- drawn, As even to the camel comes a dawn Without a burden for his wounded back. And finally the burden of making heaven or hell is thrust. back on the indi- vidual when he cries: “There is no God save Allah!”—that is true, Nor is there any prophet save in mind Of man who wanders through the dark to fin The Paradise that is in me or you. There is a volume giving the classical book of instruction for Japanese women, that manual of utter self-abnegation that not only works such strange results in the mothers and wives of Nippon, but finds its fruitage, too, in the willing sacri- fice of the whole people to the Mikado’s call. As for China, no study of the em- pire can be worth while that does not be- gin and end in a careful familiarity with the spirit of Confucius and the immeas- urable influence of his social philosophy. Unfortunately, the volume called “The Conduct of Life” is too condensed for the best service. Less directly influential, but loftier, it may be, in significance are the teachings of the ancient mystic, Lao Tse, and in their idealistic philosophy, in their broad charity and their moral in- tensity they place themselves beside the finest thought of Greece. The volume has an excellent introduction. To put into handy form the words of these two men, conservors of the most stable em- THE INDEPENDENT pire the world knows today, is « work for which the editors of the series are to be thanked. It is a pity that more people of the West cannot familiarize themselves with these representative teachings of the Orient until the pettiness of racial antip- athies fall away in the cOnsciousness of the unity of human aspiration. . & Roman Life and Manners Under the Early Empire. By Ludwig Friedlander. Au- thorized Translation of the Seventh En- larged and Revised Edition of the Sitten- geschichte Roms by Leonard A. Magnus. Pp. xxviii; 1-428. New York: E. P. Dut- ton & Co. $1.50. The appearance of the seventh edition of this book is proof that it has earned its reputation. The parallel chronologi- cal tables of fifteen pages are extremely useful. The first column gives events, the second notices of contemporary lit- erature and authors. Rome was loved as the “city of the soul,” and men thought that heaven could show nothing fairer. Abundant water had been intro- duced, even private houses having it. The city was, however, terribly crowded, and people were constantly crushed to death, sometimes in masses; but no Roman wished to turn away from it. But the Rome of the Emperors was far from being the Rome of the Republic. Not only had the Orontes already begun to “flow into the Tiber,” but all Asia had precipitated itself upon Rome. It was also not alone Asiatics who corrupted. Germans, Dacians, Egyptians and others contributed to swell the tide. Martial, who is perhaps soured, speaks of the crowd of newcomers in terms which we can hardly use. The houses were so bad, even in the pictured rooms of the great palaces, that if a crackling was heard a panic occurred. “Even in the latter days of the Republic collapses as well as fires were the daily fare of Rome.” Tiberius after one of these fires made the damage partially good by a gift of $5,000,000. Heavy rains caused almost equal damage. For days whole districts were knee deep in water. Some- times only the higher stories emerged. Plague and famine ensued. The freed- men, many of whom were Greeks, be- came by their gains richer than the em- peror himself. One of them, Narcissus,
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LITERATURE amassed $20,000,000, and was literally as rich as Croesus. Such men were hated and loathed by the aristocracy, but they were nearly all-controling. They mar- ried even daughters of imperial families when the pride of ancient lineage was at its hight. Cleander, a physician, brought to Rome as a slave and a porter, sold in open market, entered the palace and rose to be a chamberlain. Money was the be all and the end all. Chastity was rare in both sexes. Not only Vespasian, but the good Marcus Aurelius was not free from taint. One of the baser emperors, Elagabalos, used to lock up his friends when they were drunk, and send among them wild beasts who had their teeth drawn—a capital joke—but many died of fright. One peculiarity of the Roman was the constant search for a family without children, in hopes that the seeker might get adopted into a rich family, which has suggested that Romans were nearly, if not altogether, incapable of a heartfelt friendship. It is possible that the middle class, of which we hear less, redeemed somewhat the nation, if Rome could be called a nation. There was comparative safety all over realm, even if corruption stalked in broad daylight. The style of the book is choppy, not in good impressive paragraphs. Twenty periods to a page is not uncommon. The author has a monopoly of the phrase “Little Asia.” & State and Local Taxation. First National Conference, Columbus, Ohio, Nov. 12 to 15, 1908. New York: The Macmillan Co. $4.00. In November, 1907, the First National Conference of the National Tax Associa- tion was held at Columbus, Ohio. It was attended by men _ intimate with the workings of the tax sys- tems of this country and Canada. Thirty-three States were represented and three Canadian provinces. Thirty- one universities sent delegates. Forty- eight paper were presented to the con- ference, covering from practical and theoretical standpoints nearly every phase and mode of taxation. Free discussion followed most of these papers. The unanimously adopted resolutions of the conference impeach’ in greater or less degree, we understand, the tax laws of 151 every State of the Union. The full ver- batim report of this conference makes a considerable volume, and it is probably the most important book on the subject that has ever been published in America. It is fairly the American practical text- book on taxation. The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Fs- ecially in its Relations to Israel. Five peor delivered at Harvard University. By Robert William Rogers. 12mo, pp. xiv, 235. New York: Eaton & Mains. $2.00. Professor Rogers, of Drew Theologi- cal Seminary, is a competent scholar, and his present work is trustworthy and val- uable. To be sure, it is not a work of original research, but rather a useful compilation, and could hardly have been written without the advantage of Pro- fessor Jastrow’s larger work on the same subject and almost identical title, which is now passing thru a German enlarged translation. Sixteen of the twenty-one plates are of tablets, which will make the unlearned gasp, and we would have pre- ferred to see the bas-reliefs and other de- signs which would illustrate the myths. To the uninitiated one tablet looks much like another. An introductory lecture gives-the history of excavations and dis- coveries; and there follow chapters on the pantheon, the cosmologies, the charms and omens, and the myths and epics. We are particularly pleased that Professor Rogers has no patience with Winckler’s extraordinary notion of the Babylonian theory of the universe, by which there is a pattern in heaven of all lands and his- tory of earth, carried by his followers to fantastic limits in Israelite history. At the same time our author has no fear of seeing the origin of the Genesis Creation and Deluge stories in Babylonia. He fully accepts the knowledge of the name of Yahwe in Babylonia from a period of 2000 to 1400 B. C., as argued by Sayce, Pinches, Hommel and Clay, and so pre- vious to the time of Moses; but this does not discount the immeasurably superior Hebrew thought of monotheism; but we wish that in transliterating the Baby- lonian theophorous name, Yaum-ilu, “Yahwe is God,” he had not spelt it with the German J. We heartily commend this volume to those who do not care to give study to the fuller work of Jastrow, particularly in the German edition,
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152 Literary Notes ...-Dr. Lyman Abbott is happy in the title he has chosen for his sketch of ideal woman- hood. The Home Builder pictures her in the several stages of her life from daughter to grandmother, but in the home and its inter- ests her heart abides faithfully. (Boston : Houghton, Mifflin Co. $0.75). .... The last volume received of the series “The Bible for Home and School” is the Epistles to the Hebrews, by Prof. Edgar J. Goodspeed, of the University of Chicago (Thé Macmillan Co.), 50 cents. It has a careful in- troduction, and the full Revised text with sat- isfactory brief notes at the bottom of each page. It is to be commended for the purpose de- signed. .... Those who are accustomed to think of Karl Marx as an arid economist, useful as a weapon or a target but quite unreadable and unhuman, will have to change their view when the biography by John Spargo is published, for it gives special attention to his poetry and quotes from his love letters. Mr. Spargo is one of the most popular of the Socialist writ- ers in this country and well qualified to pro- duce an enlivening and illuminating biography. .... The Rev. R. J. Campbell, leader of the “New Theology” movement in Great Britain, each Thursday morning preaches to large and interesting congregations, including many who attend no other religious services. There is consequently a freedom and informality about the discourses published under the title, “Thursday Mornings in the City Temple.” (New York: The Macmillan Company). which one does not often meet. Religious questions recently under debate are discussed freely. The book is modern, both in method and doc- trine, and is superior to the author’s “New Theology Sermons,” since they are less dis- tinctly theological. ....Dhe Sunday School Times celebrates its fiftieth anniversary with fifty photographs of its editors, publishers and contributors. While John S. Hart, LL. D., Henry Clay Trumbull, D. D., and John D. Wattles are given their de- served primacy as those who gave this journal its distinction, most of the photographs are of the later or present collaborators. We recall that thru editorial transfers the relation be- tween The Sunday School Times and Tue INDEPENDENT has been close and _ cordial. Apart from its special purpose as an admirable teacher of the International Lessons, we have valued it for its interest, somewhat larger in Dr. Trumbull’s time, in Biblical archeology. ....In these days when our city dailies are so generally syndicated and neutralized the weeklies are coming to be of more importance as the organs of personal leadership. Mr. Bryan’s Commoner has become a power in the land and now Senator La Follette has started a weekly of similar character, published at Madison. The first number of La Follette’s contains as its special feature an article by Lincoln Steffens on “The Mind of the State” THE INDEPENDENT and the list of contributors includes William Allen White, Jane Addams, Edward A. Ross, Charles Zueblin, John R. Commons and others prominent in The New Politics. We give the new weekly a hearty welcome, for we are con- fident that it will in the main be found fight- ing on the same side as THE INDEPENDENT and its influence will be felt for good beyond the boundaries of Wisconsin. sz ‘Pebbles He—Do you approve of dancing? She—no. “Why not?” “Why, it’s mere hugging set to music.” “Well, what is there about that you don’t like?” “The music.”—Princeton Tiger. In Darkest Africa he stands Upon a mountain peak— A wondrous view his eye commands, As fine as man could seek. A mighty forest stretches far As his keen sight can reach. Would you know now what his thoughts are? Hark! Pregnant is his speech: “Bully !” —New York Sun. A ‘LARGE touring automobile containing a man and his wife met a load of hay in a very narrow road. The woman declared that the farmer must back out, but her husband con- tended that she was unreasonable. “But you can’t back the automobile so far,” she said, “and I don’t intend to move for any- body. Besides, he should have seen us.” | The husband pointed out that this was im- possible, owing to an abrupt turn in the road. “T don’t care,” she insisted. “I won’t move if I have to stay here all night.” Her husband was starting to argue the mat- ter, when the farmer who had been sitting quietly on the hay interrupted: “Never mind, sir!” he exclaimed with a sigh, “I’ll try to back out. I’ve got one just like her at home.”—The Ingleside. STRANGE, INDEED. Tue other day an ingenuous looking person called with the message to the housewife that her husband had sent him for his dress suit, which was to be pressed and redone by the tailor. : “Dear me,” said the housewife; “he said nothing to me about it. Did he look quite well ?” “Yes, mum; he wuz in good health and spirits.” “And he seemed quite as if he knew what he was about ?” “He did that, mum.” “And did he look as if he were quite content with things about him?” “He was all that, mum.” “Well,” said the lady, “it seems strange that he should only think of that dress suit now. because it’s ten years since he’s dead and buried, and I’ve often wondered how he’s been getting on.”—Chicago News.
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The Fwependent Entered at New York Post Office as Second Class Matter Publisher, Clarence W. Bowen 130 Fulton Street - - - New York A WEEKLY MAGAZINE. FOUNDED IN 1848. One Year, $2.00. Single Copies, 10 Cents. Single copies over six months old 25 cents. Postage to any foreign country in the Universal Postal Union, $1.7F a year extra; to Canada, $1.00 extra. Subscrip- tions will be received for other periodicals, and club- bing rates will be granted as low as offered by any responsible agency. Order for the change of an address should be re- ceived two weeks before change is to take effect. The old as well as the new address should be given. For the convenience of our subscribers we will send on receipt of publisher's price any book reviewed or advertised in our columns. Volumes of The Independent are completed at the end of December and June, and a full index is furnished free on application. Neat binders holding in book form thirteen current issues will be furnished for 45 cents. If the numbers comprising any semi-annual volume are returned to us prepaid in good condition with $1.50 we will bind the volume in handsome and substantial half buckram and deliver it free anywhere in the United States. We are always glad to receive articles for examina- tion, but writers desiring the return of their manu- scripts, if not accepted, should send a stamped and ad- dressed envelope. We cannot, however, even so, hold ourselves responsible for their return. Authors should preserve a copy. Advertising rates will be furnished on application. President Lowell THERE were two elections pending last fall to replace Harvard men, and in cer- tain circles East and West more talk was heard about the successor of Presi- dent Eliot than of President Roosevelt. In all such discussion the name of Pro- fessor Lowell was usually the first to be mentioned, and was always recognized, even by those who favored some other, as “the logical candidate.” Of no other of the men mentioned could it be claimed that he possest in so great a degree the peculiar attributes which the country has come to look upon as essential to a Har- vard president. The corporation had no more difficulty in recognizing his fitness for the position than the lamas of Tibet in picking out among the new born babies of the land the one marked as the reincarnation of Buddha. Almost any man would look small in Mr. Eliot’s place. Mr. Lowell will not. In THE INDEPENDENT of November sth President Jordan, of Stanford, argued the impossibility of any man’s filling the position of president of an American university. He would have to be many different kinds of a man. Professor Lowell is many different kinds of a man. He has demonstrated his ability as an administrator, a scholar and a teacher. By descent, birthplace, training and char- acter he is pre-eminently qualified for the position. He is a Bostonian, a descend- ant of the Lawrences and Lowells, and graduate of Harvard College in the class of ’77 and later of the Law School. His brother, Percival Lowell, is well known as an astronomical agriculturist, hav- ing been for many years engaged in de- veloping the irrigation system of Mars. The chief objection we have heard urged against Professor Lowell was that he is too perfectly fitted for the positior., that he will not revolutionize Harvard as President Eliot did forty years ago. But Harvard is not in need of a revolution as it was then. It has in the last year been very radically transformed, as was point- ed out in our Harvard number of two weeks ago. It must now be developed along the new lines in which it has just entered, and in these Professor Lowell has shown a special interest. As a busi- ness man and financier he will be able to make the new School of Business Ad- ministration thoro and practical. From his experience as a trustee of the Mas- sachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the committee which nego- tiated the mist merger, he will know how to spend the McKay millions in building up a graduate technological school in Harvard. As a trustee of the Lowell In- stitute he has extended the opportunities of true university work to the people of Boston, and this is also a line along which Harvard has needed to be devel- oped. He is favorably disposed toward the new international movement in edu- cation. His best student one year was a young Chinese from Tientsin, who pre- sented a thesis in admirable English on the police system of England in the nine- teenth century. On account of his inti- mate knowledge of English life he may be assumed to be interested in the experi- ment about to be tried at Harvard of building collegiate residence halls, some- what on the Oxford system. Professor Lowell Has been foremost in the recent reform in methods of instruc- tion in Harvard. He believes in large lecture classes, because of the stimulat- ing influence of numbers, but he believes also in dividing up the students into
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154 smaller groups. every week for written quizzes and personal teaching under competent instructors. His course in Government I is one of the most popular in the university, elected by about 400 students, mostly Freshmen, yet it is thor- oly organized and drilled, on methods similar to the preceptorial system. We may assume that his inauguration will mark the end at Harvard of the Jaissez faire lectures and of unrestricted election of studies. But the forecasting of an administra- tion is a profitless employment. We have intended merely to indicate the reasons why we are pleased with the action of the corporation and overseers and why we are confident of the prosperity and progress of Harvard under its new leader. as Social Conditions in Pittsburg THE issue of Charities and the Com- mons for January 2d contains a notable series of articles on social conditions in Pittsburg. These articles are the result of an invasion of the Smoky City more than a year ago by a trained force of so- cial workers in the employ of the Chari- ties Publication Committee, funds for the enterprise having been advanced by the Russell Sage Foundation. The working people, their habits, their health, their homes, their wages, the accidents that be- fall them, have all been studied with in- telligence and care, and the first instal- ment of the reports is now given to the world. No summary can do justice to these papers. They should be read in their entirety by every thoughtful citizen. The ethnic divisions of Pittsburg’s pop- ulation are graphically illustrated in a couple of charts. Only 33 per cent. of the people are native whites of native parentage, 39 per cent. being natives of foreign parentage and 27 per cent. for- eign. The composition of the industrial towns in the neighborhood is much the same. In the industrial population prop- er, the foreign element overwhelmingly predominates. With the collapse of the trade unions the English-speaking work- ers have been supplanted, in large meas- ure by Slavs, Slovaks, Poles and Croa- tians. In the Carnegie Steel Company’s labor force are 10.421 workers from THE INDEPENDENT Austria-Hungary, 2,577 from Russia, 2,010 from the British Isles, 287 from Sweden, 58 from Bulgaria, 52 from France, 26 from European Turkey, and 24 from Rumania. The mid-European peoples work for low wages, they are on the whole docile and obedient, and’ they have been eagerly sought by the mill owners of Pittsburg. They are used to hard conditions and mean fare. Generally they keep to their former standard of living, at least for a term of years after arriving in America. As a result there is much overcrowding, wretched sanitation and widespread dis- ease. One physician estimates that “as high as 50 per cent. of all young foreign- ers who come to Pittsburg contract typhoid fever within two years of their coming.” Another physician says that “in four years no less than 100 Croatians in the neighborhood of Smallman street had come down with the fever, and that most of them died.” Instances of crowd- ing are told that are almost incredible. “Among the Russians of Tustine street,” writes Mr. Peter Roberts, “I found thir- ty-three persons living in one house in six rooms and an attic.” He also “re- peatedly found cases where beds were be- ing worked double shift— night and day.” Their food is generally meager in the extreme. “Give them rye bread, a herring and beer,” said a foreman, “and they are all right.” Wages are from $1.35 to $1.65 a day for the unskilled and from $1.75 to $2.25 for the semi-skilled. Yet a common laborer, unmarried, will save from $10 to $15 a month and a semi-skilled worker from $20 to $25. Thousands of dollars are sent back to Europe, either to pay passage or to help families left behind. Between 70,000 and 80,000 workers are employed in the steel industry in Al- legheny County. The work is hazardous and the number of accidents is appalling. Nowhere in America is human life so cheaply held as in Pittsburg. We be- lieve that no adequate figures of the killed and maimed in Pittsburg industries have even been compiled, tho from time to time estimates sufficiently ghastly are put forth. Yet the maiming of bodies and the taking of life go on incessantly day by day. “Flinn is fifty-two years old,” writes Mr. John Andrews Fitch. “The
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EDITORIAL men who went to work with him as voung men are nearly all dead, and today he is one of the oldest men in his mill.” Yet there is generally found a pathetic jauntiness among the workers in their at- titude toward accidents. Familiarity with death, often in its most horrible forms, robs it of its terrors. “An old steel worker,” writes Miss Crystal Eastman, “whom I questioned about his injuries, answered, ‘I never got hurt any to speak of.’ After persistent inquiry, however, he recalled that he had once fractured his skull, that a few years-later he had lost half of a finger, and that only three years ago he was laid up for nine weeks with a crusht foot, Troubles like these are the common lot; they are not treasured up and remembered against fate.” Miss Eastman has a valuable paper on the reaction upon the home life of the daily casualties. She has gone to the homes of those whose bread-winners have veen killed or permanently disabled to learn what has followed. It is a tragic story of pitiful shifts of every imaginable sort to keep the wolf from the door. Not the least of the tragedy is the fact that often so hard is the struggle for bread, so all-absorbing are the strife and care to get food and shelter for the living that there is small thought for the dead. There is often no room for grief, for the spirit is too numbed with ot ering to feel the pain of loss. : There will be two further collections of these papers. A high standard has been set, but we have no doubt it will be kept to in the remainder. The papers so far publisht cannot be too widely known. z The Coming Religious Census THE statement from the Roman cor- respondent of The Freeman’s Journal, that the Archbishop of St. Louis is about to report to the Pope that he has collect- ed the statistics of the Roman Catholic Church for the Bureau of the Census, and finds that there are about 15,000,000 members of that Church, reminds us that the full report will doubtless be forth- coming at no distant date. In some respects the report on relig- ious bodies is probably one of the most difficult to prepare of all the censuses taken in the course of each decade by the bureau. Readers of THE INDEPENDENT will remember that the last report was prepared by Dr. Henry K. Carroll, one of the associate editors of THe INDE- PENDENT, and not a few of the various perplexities attending the collection and arrangement of the data then became manifest. The present staff have had certain advantages, but no facilities of office arrangements can quite make up for the incongruous conditions in many of the denominations. Take that hetero- geneous collection of Baptists—Primi- tive, United, Separate, Free Will, Orig- inal Free Will, and that relic of medieval theology, the Old Two-seed-in-the-spirit Predestinarian Baptists ; or the uncialized Methodists—M. E., M. E. South, A. M. E., A. M. E. Z., C. M. E., Zion Union Apostolic, Evangelist Missionary, etc. ; or the representatives of the great Ori- ental churches—Greek, Armenian, Rus- sian, Syrian, etc. It will be interesting to know just what have survived the developments of the past fifteen years, since the last report was publisht; what new denominations have appeared, what divisions have been healed. Many questions will arise. What is the-ratio of church membership to the total population? Has it kept pace with the nation’s growth? Where is the cen- ter of gravity of church power? Are there any possibilities suggested by the facts for more complete co-operation be- tween denominations, especially in over- churched and under-churched communi- ties? How about the supply of ministers and what about the salaries paid? These are but some of the many questions which arise in the minds of those interested in the outward manifestations of church life as well as in its inner quality, and from which it is hoped that this report may throw some light. Special interest will doubtless attach to the presentation of the activities of the churches, to which, we understand, spe- cial attention has been given. The for- eign missionary work of the various de- nominations has been pretty fully set forth, but while there have been several attempts to collate home missionary fig- ures, and the educational, philanthropic and other departments of work, they have not met with much success. With
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£66 the staff at the disposal of the bureau, it should be possible to accomplish this, at least so far as the peculiar conditions in the different denominations will permit. Where there is such a variety of methods, absolute uniformity of presentation is scarcely possible, yet it may be that one result of the report will be to facilitate the adoption of at least comparable meth- ods. Already another division of the Census Bureau has worked almost a rev- olution in the methods of municipal ac- counting, and if the division in charge of this report can secure some sort of co- ordination in the presentation of church facts and figures, it will have rendered a great service. The great service, however, which such a report can render is in relation to the co-operation of the denominations al- ready referred to as one of the insistent questions. To what degree is organic union of denominations possible? Where and to what degree is co-operation pos- sible? The experiences of the past years have shown that historical development, doctrinal statement, ecclesiastical organi- zation are facts deep rooted in the lives of most religious bodies. Approach to each other must be along the lines of least resistance. What are those lines? The plan of this report includes a fuller statement of the history, doctrine and pol- ity of the different denominations than has as yet been attempted in any one publication. It should furnish the ma- terial for careful study and result in im- proved methods. a Patronage and Bargaining THE doctrine which in his inaugural address Governor Hughes defines as to the double constitutional duty of the Governor of New York we have had oc- casion more than once to defend as ap- plied to the President of the United States. Governor Hughes says: “The executive power is vested in the Gov- ernor, but he is also an important part of the lawmaking power of the State. This is thru his power of veto . The Governor is also to recommend to the Legislature such ‘matters as he shall judge expedient.’ It is not his constitutional function to attempt by use of patronage or by bargaining with respect to bills to secure the passage of meaSures he ap- proves. It is his prerogative to recommend and to state the reasons for his recommenda- THE INDEPENDENT tion; and, in common with all representative officers, it is his privilege to justify his position to the people to whom he is accountable. The more closely he confines himself to his province and discharges his responsibility. within the limits assigned to him the less confusion will there be in the working of our system and the more potent will be the sway of intelligent public opinion over those charged in their va- rious offices with the duties of representation.’ The purpose of the Governor is to in- sist that it is no part of his duty to try to secure legislation by patronage and bargaining ; and to explain why, instead of employing these political methods, which have been in almost uniform use, he has appealed directly to the people. This appeal to the people at large, he says, it is his privilege to make, “in com- mon with all representative officers.” Equally, as we have had occasion to say, the President of the United States com- bines legislative and executive functions. He has the right of veto, and he has the right to make recommendations to Con- gress. Beyond that, he has all the right which any citizen has, and even more, from his high office, to urge by speech or letter any policy which he regards it as important that Congress should ac- cept. He is not to be blamed for any- thing except as relates to the validity and courtesy of his arguments. Governor Hughes was severely criti- cised by the professional politicians be- cause he went to the people, and in speech after speech attacked the gam- blers and their defenders in the Legisla- ture. They thought that was dictation— was outside the rules of the political game. It would have been all right, they thought, if he had made bargains and used patronage for his purpose. They might have made something out of that sort of compromise. He did the un- heard of thing of offering rewards to no friends and punishing no foes. He told the Legislature what he thought it ought to do, and when it refused he denounced them to the people. He kept to the front nothing but the bare ethical question, the question the politicians wished to keep hidden ; and the people heard him gladly and followed him. He has set an exam- ple of a high theory of Gubernatorial responsibility and right which we trust will not be forgotten. The theory is, No bargaining, but appeal to the people if the Legislature fails of its duty.
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EDITORIAL Edgar Allan Poe TuEsDAY of this week is the one hun- dredth anniversary of the birth of they poet who has the name of being the most gifted and most. unhappy of American men of letters. It is impossible to treat of him solely as a literary man, as we would treat of Washington Irving or Henry W. Longfellow, for his personal character has been the subject of no lit- tle debate, growing out of the kindly de- site of those who will forgive any fault in a genius to cover up and conceal his demerits. Poe’s literary product is not large. His fame rests on half a dozen poems, and chiefly on two that have supreme ex- cellence for declamation, but make no ap- peal to the soul. In all there are but thirty-one of them gathered in his col- lected “Works,” only fifty pages, and eleven more added as “Written in Youth.” Any one who reads “The Raven” or “The Bells,” and adds to them “Lenore” and “Ulalume” has read _ all that is worth while of his poetical re- mains—the rest are commonplace. And one should read also his short tales once, for they set the current for their sort. Some of them will be remembered, un- less one is surfeited with detective sto- ries. But Poe’s two poems, “The Raven” and “The Bells,” have had and deserve immense favor. To be sure, they are as purely mechanical, tho of a far higher mechanism, as Southey’s “How the Water Came Down at Lodore,” for they have no heart, and are mere tours de force in the mosaic of words. Poe tells in one essay how he wrote his “Raven,” and it has generally been declared that the essay was another illustration of his imaginative inveracity, but we see no reason why it should not be substantial- ly true. He constructed the poem about the word Lenore. much as a modern high building is constructed about the well of an elevator. Then he planned his re- frain, altered a bit for each verse, and his alliterations and other vocal touches making all a sinking scale of deepening sadness over lost love. The whole is done with exquisite art, with repetitious variety of expression, and with a musical art unsurpast and unequaled, unless it be in “The Bells.” But it is the veneer and 157 not the substance order of poetry. It is addrest wholly to the ear, brushing against, but never entering within, the deeper emotions. Supreme artist of words as he might have been, and twice was, and one of our earliest teachers of literary criticism, his failure came from his moral lack, which made him in so great a degree a literary faker and failure. In the long and bit- ter quarrel over his character we stand, mostly, with Mr. Griswold. That belief we have inherited from the writers of THE INDEPENDENT, who were his intimate associates while he was living in New York, from Charles F. Briggs, Thomas THE POE MEDALLION. Designed by Edith W. Burroughs, and issued this weck by the Grolier Club of New York. The origi- nal is seven inches in diameter, and was cast by the cire perdu process. The medal is based upon a num- ber of contemporary daguerreotypes. Dunn English, and Horace Greeley. When Mr. Greeley was askt for an auto- graph of Poe he offered to give it for the amount of the note to which the poet’s name was signed. Mr. Briggs joined with Poe in starting The Broad- way Journal; but had to leave him, and shortly after the publisher suspended its issue because Poe went on a debauch and could not provide copy. Drink was his demon, and notwithstanding denials he died from exposure while drunk. It is a false piety for the dead which con- dones and apologizes and excuses and denies the historic facts. Because Poe lacked the ethical sense, his biographical apologists have put him into the com-
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158 pany of the Greek gods, innocently law- less in appetite and love. But the Greek gods are all dead, Leda’s Jove and the lions of Bacchus, and Hermes with his lies. Let those that hanker after their liberty bid Poe soar like Ganymede to find place as cupbearer in the vanisht Elysium. We admire his craftsmanship twice displayed, but on the evidence of two poems of a hundred lines each we decline to lift him to the summit of our Parnassus. Dryden would not have gained his rank if he had written only “Alexander’s Feast” and “Saint Cecilia.” ed The Courting Parlor RECENTLY a minister in St. Louis opened a Sunday afternoon reception room in his church for the young people of his congregation. He claimed that, since many of them did not belong to that social class which can afford drawing- rooms and the leisure for parties and balls where unmarried men and women are thrown together constantly, he thus provided for them the right environment for making and pursuing acquaintance under less questionable conditions than the parks and other public resorts offer. A universal guffaw went up from the world, and especially from the newspa- pers. The Rev. Mr. So-and-So’s “court- ing parlor” was facetiously advertised in the Sunday editions. This doubtless fore- stalled the success of his experiment. For when young people of this class, who have not had their sensibilities blunted by too many matinees and novels, come to the “courting stage” in life, they arrive there privately, and they resent the fact being proclaimed as a social problem; and so they are not likely to be found brazenly in a place that hangs a “court- ing parlor” sign to the public. Never- theless, this minister with a too naive frankness was attempting to solve a far more important problem than the feeding and clothing of the poor. Now, men and women who have ex- traordinary advantages, and therefore ex- traordinary social gifts, do better in soci- ety than they do in matrimony. They are bred to the parlor, the theater, the club rather than to the more reserved depart- ments of the home. And one reason why we have so many divorces in this country THE INDEPENDENT is because too many matinee women and restaurant-fed men get into it. Mean- while, little or no provision is made in the present social order for the men and wo- men most worthy to enter and to main- tain the marital relation. They are awk- ward people, what is known as “sticks” if by chance one of them actually wades into real society. The women do not know how to dress or to be “fascinating,” and the men do not know what to “say.” They are people who have been circum- scribed more by a simple, stupid, old- fashioned training in morals than by their limited means. Their courtship is ludi- crously obvious and awkward, because they do not know how to “make love.” The one thing they know better than any other class of men and women in this world is how to take each other for better or for worse in marriage and to stick to the bargain. It will not be nearly so difficult to in- duce a “society woman” to devote much of her time and means to the improve- ment of social conditions for factory girls as it would to induce her to take some notice of her perfectly respectable and financially comfortable neighbors on the back street, because, mark you, the chasm is so wide between her and the factory girl she wins a halo without danger of social embarrassment. The factory girl must take her as a philanthropist, and it’s a grand feeling to be an adored philan- thropist. But the nice quiet woman on the back street who is not in need of philanthropy will not receive her upon this insolent basis. Yet, of the two, she needs quite as much. The loneliest peo- ple in every community, town or city, are the men and women who are in good cir- cumstances, but who have no social affili- ations. The church no longer affords them. A prominent woman-worker in a fashionable city church recently remarked that she despised to make “church calls” because such “persons” were so apt to “presume” afterward. Thus it happens also that there is a very large class of re- spectable girls, as far removed as possi- ble from factory or shop girls, who live at home according to the old rules of re- ligion and domesticity, prim, stiff, white- muslin-spirited creatures, many of whom are really never born at all into the joy of life. Certainly, they have no social
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EDITORIAL life. They never meet men of their own class, honest, close-fisted, hard-working fellows who have not the money or the mind for cheap amusements. To be sure, such people are not “at- tractive,” but they are durable, and their social helplessness is therefore a matter that should be taken into consideration and provided for. Their worth is to be measured in cubits of character, not in lines and curves of fashion. And they are in exactly the opposite predicament of other people who are unfortunate socially. For we know that one horrid peculiarity of the desperately poor is their social in- timacy; they gang together because of mutual feebleness. The sacredness of personality, the decencies and delicacies of life, are some of the things they must learn before the social economist may hope to break the low herd instinct in them. They know each other too quick- ly, marry without reflection, and live without enough sensibility. This is why they show the same disregard for mar- riage that is to be observed in the desper- ately rich. One class has been imbruted by poverty, the other by wealth. One seeks self-gratification because they have acquired the habit from starving so often ; the other, because they have acquired the same habit from a system of indulgence. They are really the same kind of people, exercising the same traits under different conditions. One class represents the sedi- ment of society ; the other represents the scum—and neither is fit to propagate its . kind. Meanwhile, the chief objection to the class for whom the preacher provided a “courting parlor” is that they are not eligible socially. They make good fathers and devoted mothers. They are honor- able and by far the proudest, most ex- clusive people in this country; but the men would never understand the esoteric life of a club, or the art of tossing off a toast, or making an after-dinner speech, or leading a cotillion. And the women just cannot look stylish, or learn how to play bridge, or preside gracefully at a female convention, or gloss life with little flattering social lies. They are born with too many elbows to their spirits, just as their counterpart males are born with a stiffness in those joints whose genuflec- tions express courtesy and gallantry. 159 About the only thing either of them is fit for is to marry and bring up healthy, intelligent children according to two or three of the Ten Commandments. But this fitness alone makes them the most valuable people in the land. And we are in favor of their being brought together. We believe that the results in home life will amply repay ev- ery effort of the social economists in this direction, and that it is one of the pro- foundest, most important problems of our times. For, if enough of these people can be persuaded into the “courting par- lor” and from there married to one an- other, many of our disgraces and deprav- ities as a nation will pass, as health is maintained in the human body by the leu- cocyte in the blood which devours the germs of disease. Js Now that the House of Representatives has as- serted its dignity by lay- ing the President’s messages on the table and refusing to reply to them, the field has been open to individual Senators ; and Senators Tillman and Foraker have plied the pitchfork and wielded the club, with no special injury to Mr. Roosevelt. Senator Tillman’s defense shows that he has actually broken no law, but he did all that President Roosevelt charged him with—he sought to secure legislation by which he would enrich himself in the purchase of railroad lands at bottom prices as soon as they could be put on the market. He has to admit that his denial was “disingenuous,” but he de- clares that he did not really lie. It is not the question of his lying, but of his eager- ness to buy lands which would not be in the market until he had secured legisla- tion, and allowing his confidential agent to promise for him that he would crowd the matter in Congress until he got the bill past. He has had the reputation of an honest man, but in this case he has damaged it badly. We recall how Vice- President Schuyler Colfax was caught in a denial of his part in the Credit Mobilier corruption, and it clouded the last of his life; while Senator Henry Wilson frank- ly owned that he had accepted shares from his friend, Oakes Ames, and every one believed he was honest and innocent. It will be strange if Senator Tillman The President at Bay
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160 quite outlives this exposure. As to Sen- ator Foraker’s speeches, we hope he may succeed in proving that the negro sol- diers, or most of them, were innocent. As to the use of the Secret Service, he appears to be inspired more by illwill to- ward the President than zeal for pure administration. Whether there have been some errors or even abuses is not the question, but how detective work can best be provided for, and that is something for expert knowledge to settle, and not journalistic omniscience. Meanwhile the President stands quietly at bay and listens to the baying. s&s Should we, in our Sixtieth Anniversary Number, have spoken of the three first editors of THe INDE- PENDENT, or of the first three? We said “the three first,” and some hasty critics have found fault and repeated the old argument that there can be but one first. But we could not have spoken of the first three editors, for there was no second three. They did not come in triplets after the first triumvirate. But it is all nonsense and contrary to the usage of all languages to say that there can be but one first or one last. The word first is no more always an ordinal numeral than is the word Jast, but the inexpert gram- maticasters do not know it. The word primus can be plural in Latin—“in primis pugnantes,” _says Sallust; “juvenum primi,” says Virgil. Similarly in Greek we meet protoi, plural, meaning first, a thousand times. In the Bible we have “first tables,” “first horns,” “first fruits,” “first inhabitants,” “first and last acts,” “first ways,” “first principles,” etc. As far back as 1851, when the State of Mas- sachusetts printed Goold Brown’s “Gram- mar of English Grammars,” that distin- guished author discust this question, call- ing attention to the fact that a painter’s “first pictures” will not bring the price of his “last pictures,” and a series of Eng- lish scholars ever since have hammered the heads of the small critics, but with no success, for the latter do not read the arguments. To say “the first two” or “the first three” is praper if the objects come in pairs or triplets; but if we are speaking simply of order of precedence it is better to say the two or three first. “The Three First” THE INDEPENDENT To say “the first three” is absurd when there happen. to be only four or five in all. x Senne Mr. James B. Reynolds has proving rendered a conspicuous Washington service to the country, in his investigations of the city of Washing- ton, D. C., and his recommendations to the President as to how conditions there can be improved. These the President has indorsed and sent to Congress for action. Briefly, Mr. Reynolds recom- mends the substitution of a single head or Governor of the District of Columbia in the place of the present three commis- sioners, the establishment of district or municipal departments appointed by the Governor instead of the existing bureaus, and the creation of a new department known as that of Housing or Labor. De- spite the growth of the Galveston or Des- Moines plan of city government by a board of business men, we incline to be- lieve a single executive head for the Dis- trict of Columbia would, as the President says, “increase efficiency, determine re- sponsibility and eliminate delays,” and the municipal departments headed by sin- gle commissioners would yield the same advantage. The creation of the new Housing Department, however, would be the most important reform of all, for at present bad houses, bad sanitation and unwholesome methods of living and working are all too prevalent in Wash- ington, while pawnshops, loan and indus- trial insurance companies, and employ- ment bureaus and other agencies engaged in exploiting the poor have altogether too free a hand, and should be brought under the direct control of a competent depart- ment. Washington should be the model American city, and, as it has already planned out a far reaching scheme for its future material and architectural de- velopment, so it should similarly adopt measures looking to its present and future political and social well-being. s&s Here is a_ curious paragraph from a private letter from the South, written to George Foster Pea- body shortly before the conviction of the Tennessee night-riders : Let me call your attention to the fact that - The Night-Riders
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EDITORIAL this “Night Rider” business is essentially a hopeful development. _It is the first fruits of the mob spirit reaching higher with its lawless hand. I have no doubt but that the two prominent lawyers in Tennessee who have just suffered horribly at the hands of a mob, have many a time shrugged their shoulders nonchalantly over the lynching of negroes. When the mob spirit be- gins, as it is beginning, to hoist the enginer with his own petar the dominating forces of public opinion are going to see what some of us have been pointing out all the time, that the mob that lynched the negro for the unnamable crime is father to the mob that lynched him for other crimes and grandfather to the mob that now lynches him for no crime, and great- grandfather to the mob that lynches the white man and burns his property. That is, things will get worse before they get better. & 7 a Bence ee Needed Pn of the Anti- mperialist League of Boston, has issued a little pamphlet which he calls “Apologia Pro Sua Vita,” an apology for its existence. We read it with some amusement until we came to this passage, which begins a classifica- tion of the opponents of the League: “The first class, the altruists, are, of course, sincere. They believe that roads and bridges, sewers and docks, schools and missions, are vital benefits which make the demand for inde- pendence superfluous and vain. Why liberty when you have bread and circuses?” THE INDEPENDENT has all along been an opponent of the Anti-Imperialist League, and always on the altruist basis, and we declare this characterization an insulting travesty. There are no such altruists as are described. THe INDEPENDENT has always askt for the speediest giving to the Philippines as much independence as Arizona has, and later, under the same judicious conditions which we require here, as much independent self-govern- ment as we have lately, after years of preparation, given to Oklahoma. Mr. Winslow closes his description of this al- truist class by saying that “no foreign civilization was ever successfully im- posed upon a people,” a ridiculous con- tradiction of all history. It has been done over and over again. Greece did it; Rome did it; England has done it; and the latest example is that of Japan, which is being followed by China. That is the business of civilization, to impose itself on peoples. 161 Several weeks ago a crime was perpetrated in one of the suburbs of Constanti- nople, which, at the time, aroused a great deal of racial antagonism. Regarding it, the Sheikh-ul-Islam, the religious head of Islam, has lately issued the following re- markable declaration, which we translate from a Turkish paper Not Infidels “I confess that our people cannot yet be called civilized, and that our officials are not yet able to perform well their duties. This lawless- ness is explained by some as an effervescence of religious feeling, in which they find an ex- tenuating circumstance. In fact, however, this crime and its results show the ignorance of our people. There is no verse in the Koran which calls Christians infidels. The Koran gives this name to fire-worshippers, but toward the Christians, whom the Koran calls Naza- renes, it commands that Mohammedans should act as friends. “For the application of the term ‘infidel’ to Christians, the Government has given occasion for political reasons. In times when war was to be proclaimed against certain Christian gov- ernments, such ideas were made use of. The Koran, however, had commanded the cherish- ing of friendly relations with the Christians, whom it calls Nazarenes, and therefore the people were to refrain from making war against them. “Thus the Mohammedans many times, in- stead of defending their religion, have in ig- norance undertaken what was directly contrary to it. Unfortunately, the conduct of the Chris- tians also has not been different from that of the Mohammedans, and they have met Moham- medan bigotry with bigotry on their own part.” & To one fact ‘in rela- tion to the discovery by two French priests in a cave in the Corréze of por- tions of the cranium and skeleton of a primeval man we would call attention, or at least we would raise a question. These remains belong to the end of the Tertiary period, when man first appear- ed, so far as we know, on the earth, and when his structure, while definitely hu- man, was of a very low order. The body had apparently been buried. That implies some respect for the body of the dead. Why so? Further, there was found near the body part of the hind leg of an animal of the ox family, altho oth- erwise this portion of the cave was free from animal remains. Why was it put there? Was it as food for the dead? Primitive Religion
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162 THE INDEPENDENT Even so in early Egyptian, Babylonian and Hittite art the leg of an animal is often associated with other food for the dead in funeral ceremonies. If this seems most probable, then must not these very earliest savages, whom we liken to the beasts they hunted, have had a re- ligion, and belief in a future life? That seems surely to follow. & Doubtless the great majority of the peo- ple who have read the reports of the trial of J. Thornton Hains for the murder of Annis believe he deserves the full pen- alty of the law. The jury acquitted him on the ground that it was not conclusive- ly proved that he had aided his brother before the deed ; at least, they say so, and that the “unwritten law” did not influ- ence their decision, altho the counsel made the most of it. It looks since this and the Thaw trial much as if we had come to the position in which no one can be convicted who kills a man that has wronged or seduced his wife or his friend’s wife. In criminal affairs the de- fense has got the better of the prosecu- tion, what with “unwritten law” and emo- tional insanity, another name for anger or jealousy. Thus private vengeance is protected by courts and juries and law becomes a farce. Thus prohibition spreads. New Ten- nessee will become all dry, following Georgia, and South Carolina proposes to follow. But the most curious and tell- ing recognition comes not even from the liquor dealers’ associations, which are in affright, but from the cigar and cigaret makers, who complain that the closing of the saloons is followed by the reduction in the use of tobacco, and they propose to join the liquor dealers in opposing fur- ther prohibitory legislation. Possibly greater economy in tobacco expenditures might not be a loss to the country. Pos- sibly corn and potatoes may prove quite as useful a crop as tobacco. & France, by the common consent of its people, returns to the guillotine. For years not a murderer had been executed, but now messieurs the murderers are in a panic, for four of them have been de- capitated, and a hundred more are await- ing trial. Does the death penalty deter from crime? France now, after long experience of imprisonment, thinks so, for since the guillotine was put in stor- age horrible murders have greatly multi- plied. They think that reformation is no: the principal object in punishment, but protection of the community. In this country it is the courts and juries that save murderers from the noose or the electric chair. & No current American writer has been more loved than Edmund Clarence Sted- man, the first anniversary of whose death was celebrated in this city last week by local men of letters. Particularly have we enjoyed the tribute from William Winter, a friend from his youth, who marked his passionate faith in the poetic art, his stedfast adherence to “the state- ly, lovely, ancient traditions of English poetry,” and the undaunted and uncon- querable spirit with which he met ad- versity as well as prosperity, ever devoted to the ministration of beauty. & What, a charity trust? But why not? The late Louis A. Heinsheimer left by his will a million dollars to the six chief Jewish charities of this city on condition that they either consolidate or federate for the systematic collection of funds; and they will do it. Thus modern methods invade benevolence as well as business, and no law will intervene to prevent com- petition. Mr. Heinsheimer was a distin- guisht New York banker of the firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. * There is one objection to raising the President’s salary to $100,000 which has not received consideration. It would in- crease the degree of prevarication in the common remark that certain lawyers, insurance officials and vaudeville artists “get twice the salary of the President.” a The progress of civilization appears in the announcement that the Ameer of Af- ghanistan has introduced into his king- dom post cards with an elaborate border of flowers. es eet oe ee ee ee ee |
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INSURANCE More About the Washington Life FuRTHER details regarding the Wash- ington Life and its reinsurance with the Pittsburg Life Insurance and Trust Company, to which we called attention in our issue of January 7th, show that the transaction was undertaken only after careful consultation with Miles M. Daw- son and other eminent counsel, who agreed perfectly as to its absolute legal- ity. The sensational accounts publisht regarding this company and its re- cent reinsurance of its business pri- marily arose because of a_ thought- less disregard of proper publicity. The approval of the New York In- surance Department was not obtained in the matter of reinsurance, for the reason that under the insurance laws such ap- proval is not required. The law also con- tains a plain provision authorizing rein- surance in companies not admitted to do business in New York. As an evidence of good faith and good intention, how- ever, the Pittsburg Life and Trust Com- pany arrived at an understanding with the Attorney-General of New York State, whereby the solvency of the com- pany having been establisht to his satis- faction and the safety of policyholders having been assured, the company would apply for admission to do business in New York, but pending this the securities transferred to the Pittsburg concern were to be returned to New York, and the physical custody of them is now with the Washington Life, as was agreed. The New York Department examiners are now in the process of examining the securities and in checking the same. ed Unnecessarily Restrictive GIVING an account of his stewardship during the year 1908, President Kings- lev, of the New York Life Insurance Company, points out to the members of that corporation a net loss of, approxi- mately, 6,000 in their numbers, due to the restrictive provisions of existing laws governing the operations of life insur- ance companies in this State. [For ex- ample, the company issued during 1908 new insurance under 63,000 policies, but it lost, thru various causes, existing in- surance under 69,000 policies. In the face of this certain deficiency by the end of the year, some time prior to that date the management were compelled to “slow down the busy wheels or risk committing a misdemeanor.” There is something radically and in- herently wrong with laws governing life insurance which prevent them making good, and more, the natural waste and loss which must occur during’ the year. A company not one-fourth the size of the New York Life, but domiciled in another State, issued $309,000,000 of new busi- ness during 1908, while the New York Life, fearing to run too close to the statu- tory limit of $150,000,000 allowed it, fin- ished with less than $140,000,000. The results recorded would seem to in- dicate that to some extent section 96 of the insurance laws is injuriously inter- fering with the economics of the business, and that the arbitrary restriction of the amount of new business a company may write is an injury to the interests of com- pany membership. That the matter should receive the careful and thoughtful consideration of Governor Hughes and the Legislature is too plain for argument. No business can permanently prosper that shows a net loss in volume every year. & Henry Morr, actuary of the Provi- dent Savings Life Assurance Society of New York since 1901, resigned that posi- tion the first of this year to become asso- ciate actuary of the Home Life Insurance Company. He will, however, remain on the directorate of the Provident Savings, meanwhile, acting in an advisory capac- ity in the actuarial department. In his new position Mr. Moir will take on the detail work formerly done by William A. Marshall, who is both vice-president and actuary. Herbert N. Sheppard will con- tinue as assistant actuary. Henry Moir is regarded as one of the leading actuaries in the country. He is vice- president of the Actuarial Society of America, a fellow in the Faculty of Actu- aries of Scotland and the Institute of Actuaries of Scotland. He was born in Scotland in 1871 and came to this coun- try in 1901 to associate with the Provi- dent Savings. 163
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FINANCIAL John W. Castles Tue selection of John W. Castles as president of the Union Trust Company in place of the late Edward. King is re- garded among bankers as_ eminently wise. Mr. Castles came from New Orleans several years ago to become the head of the Guaranty Trust Com- pany, and under his administration the institution has shown a remarkable degree of expansion and success. Be- fore coming to New York he had estab- JOHN W. CASTLES, President Union Trust Company of New York. lished for himself a wide reputation thru- out the South as a banker of great abil- ity coupled with conservatism. Mr. Cas- tles was one of the New York bankers to foresee trouble prior to last year’s panic, and for months preceding the event had been husbanding the resources of his institution with a view to meeting just such a tax as was imposed on the whole financial structure. The result was that the company, of which Mr. Castles was president, when the storm broke, was in a position to extend very substantial aid to other institutions during the try- ing period which followed. Mr. Castles also took a prominent part in the confer- ences between financiers, and was in the lead in the movement to relieve certain other trust companies from distress.’ Mr. Castles is the third president of the Union Trust Company, the other two havirg been Isaac H. Frothingham and Edward King. The capital of the company is $1,000,000 ; the surplus, including all. un- divided profits, over $8,250,000, and the total resources over $65,400,000. . The Union Trust was chartered in 1864, and for twenty-five years has carried a large reserve, altho the law requiring such re- serve was only past a few years ago. & First National Bank Francis L. Hine, for ten years vice- president of the First National Bank, was last week elected president. Mr. Hine was born fifty years ago at New Milford, Conn., and began his career in this city as a clerk of the Nashawannuck Manufacturing Company, and afterward became its president. In 1891 he organ- ized the Astor Place Bank and become its vice-president, but retired in 1896 to become cashier of the First National. Mr. Hine is a director of many compa- nies, including the Rock Island Com- pany, Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, St. Louis & San Francisco, Chicago & Eastern Illinois, American Cotton Oil, Brooklyn Trust, Fidelity Fire Insurance Company, Home Life Insurance Com- pany, National Biscuit, United Bank Note, United States Rubber, and William Cramp & Sons’ Ship and Engine Build- ing companies. He is also vice-president of the Review of the Reviews Company and a director of the Union Theological Seminary. The capital of the First: Na- tional is $10,000,000, its surplus over $17,000,000, and its deposits over $134,- 500,000. xj .... Frank A. Vanderlip, vice-president. was last week elected president of the National City Bank in place of James Stillman, retired. The capital of the Na- tional City is $25,000,000, its surplus over $25,500,000, and its average deposits al- most $190,000,000. An article about this bank, with a picture of Mr. Vanderlip. appeared in our issue of Decem- ber 24th.