..The'ry is jes' like a train on the rail Thet, weather or no, puts her thru without fail, While Fac's the old stage that gets sloughed in the ruts, An' so, not intendin' no pers'nal reflections, They don't-don't not allus, thet is—make connections. THE Cincinnati Platform is better than we had hoped. When the elevation of Gen. Hawley to the chairmanship of the committee was announced, the hard-money men announced their triumph; but when the actual work of the committee was presented, their gains were found to be like Addison Alexander's religion he had "none to brag of." That standing threat of financial destruction, the Resumption Act, was not endorsed, as had been expected; and no denunciations were hurled at those who deny that our financial existence, as a people, depends upon the possession of masses of yellow and white metal. Of course the speedy resumption of specie payments was held up as an ideal not to be lost sight of. We are all agreed on that; we are all ready for specie payments when the United States Treasury has the wherewith, and are quite prepared to support any sane pro posal for the accumulation of specie. But some of us are not prepared to vote for resumption on the basis of the figures given in that exciting work of fiction, Mr. Bristow's Report to Congress on the Gold Balance. Nor are we ready to support an act for wholesale funding of the national currency, with the certainty that the banks will be obliged to cancel their circulation still more rapidly. No currency is not better than a bad currency; and the way to a better is not the wholesale destruction of what we have. And many of us do not see why the improvement of our currency by its being made convertible should be postponed until the national acquisition of coin makes a real or a seeming resumption of specie payments possible. We say "a seeming resumption;" for to restore our money to the status it held before the war would be no better. We had in circulation little else than vast volumes of paper, whose value fell to nothing as soon as any real demand for its conversion into coin was made by the public. With none of these convictions does the Cincinnati Platform interfere. Equally judicious and equally cautious is the Protection plank. It shows that, after all, the rank and file of the Republican party are of the mind that our industrial independence, as a nation, is desirable and possible; and that, while there is no wish to state this conviction in terms likely to give offence to a dissenting minority, there is just as little readiness to give up, or to cloak the conviction of the majority. THE investigation season seems nearly over. The charges in regard to mismanagement in the Navy Department have been so far substantiated as to make clear that some of Secretary Robeson's personal friends traded very freely in the prestige conferred by his friendship, and levied black-mail on Navy contractors. We do not see that complicity in this conduct has been proved against the Secretary; but by the instinctive application of the rule, noscitur a sociis, he has suffered in popular esteem. On the other hand, the charges made against Speaker Kerr have broken down utterly, and their author, Mr. Hardy, has been consigned to the hearty contempt of all honest men by the unanimous vote of the House, declaring them without foundation. There may have been more "dramatic" passages during the history of the present Congress, but there have been none that did that body more credit that when they rose as one man to declare their confidence in the integrity of their absent Speaker, whom serious illness had prevented from conducting his defence. It is especially pleasant to know that it was a Republican member of the Investigating Committee who did the most to explode this wicked fiction. THE necrology of the month records losses chiefly to the republic of letters. Bonn University has lost its great Professor Lassen, whose Indische Alterthumskunde is perhaps the crowning glory of German scholarship. It was written in his study, for he was never out of Germany in his life; but is so thorough and conscientious that scholars who have spent half a life-time in India continually appeal appeal to it as settling all sorts of doubtful questions about the very provinces with whose history they are most conversant. By the death of Henry Kingsley, literature loses a wholesome and vigorous writer of fiction. There was always something over strained and unreal in his books, which deprived them of the highest rank as literature. After reading them one felt as if awakening from a dream to the world of realities. And they are not elevated by the lofty moral and social aims of his big brother's books. But they are wholesome, English and manly, and we wish he had lived to write many more like them. George Sand (Madame Dudevant) was one of the last of her generation in French literature, though there are still left Victor Hugo and a few besides. She was one of the highest specimens of a character in which the absence of moral principle was but poorly supplied by sentiment, and her early life was a long struggle with both the righteous laws and the barren conventionalities. of society. Her writings are among the most splendid specimens of French style; for she was endowed with the artist's instinct for form and beauty of expression. But, on the whole, France and the world would have been the better if she had never lived, although she was, in point of literary power, the greatest woman that the land of Sevigne and de Stael has produced. President Stearns, of Amherst, has left behind him the record of a useful and faithful life, much of it spent in a position of great responsibility. Another educator, who has just died, if less widely known, will be more vividly recollected in Philadelphia. Dr. Samuel Wylie Crawford was a school-master of the old school, who flogged like Busby or Bowyers, and believed that the ferule was the sacred reed in which Promethean fire came down to earth. His scholars, forgetting their breechings, and remembering his thoroughness as a teacher, revere his memory. He was, we believe, a native of South Carolina, and was educated by the relative whose namesake he was. His son, Major-General Crawford, shed the first blood in defence of the Union, being wounded at the defence of Fort Sumter, of whose garrison he was the surgeon. He died June 12, at the residence of his younger son, Rev. Dr. J. Agnew Crawford, of Chambersburg, where he had resided for several years past. THE ADVANTAGES OF THE CO-OPERATIVE FEATURE OF THE BUILDING ASSOCIATION, COMPARED WITH OTHER PLANS OF SAVING. RANKLIN has said to all who labor: "If any one tells you FRA that the workman can become rich otherwise than by Labor and Saving, do not listen to him—he is a poisoner." Become rich! Not in the sense of the suddenly-acquired millions of the present day; but rich in the sense of the modest competence of one hundred years ago. Rich in the accumulated value of hours of overwork. Rich in the power to repose in age on the surplus energies of a well-ordered life. and that is all they ask of him. The life of the perfect worker seems fully rounded when he gives satisfaction to all who employ his skill, knowledge or strength. To the view of all outside of the worker himself there seems to be nothing left out; he supplies and satisfies all the demands made upon him by those who employ him, But this is not all there is a duty owed by the worker to himself; and workmen of all kinds and classes have long ago discovered that their lives are not fully rounded nor their work complete from their point of view, unless they can in some way retain and keep for themselves some share of the gain resulting from their work as a reserve for future use. They have long ago discovered that the words of the sage and philosopher were fitly spoken; and that it is not only necessary to labor, but that it is requisite to save, in order to make the life of even the humblest laborer a success. The disturbing and fretful history of the struggles between Labor and Capital—a long and troubled story of stupidity and ignorance, of crime, selfishness and error-shows forth one phase of the efforts of workmen to wrest from the wealth he has so largly aided to accumulate, a portion to hold on to and call his own. This is the history of the antagonism between capital and labor. There is another phase of the struggle-a quieter, calmer history, showing better results wherein it will be seen that labor and capital have gone hand in hand, measuring out to each other the equitable share of each in the joint work, and reaping alike of its gains; a history from which workmen have learned that organized labor is of little lasting benefit without organized and systematic saving. The history of the various steps by which this movement reached its present degree of perfection and efficiency is one of great interest and practical value, and has within a very recent period excited the attention of earnest and thinking men in all parts of our country and England; and what is popularly known as the "Building Association," as it exists in the city of Philadelphia, has received the careful study of many practical minds; and justly so, for Philadelphia contains within her borders evidences of a system of persistent and enlightened savings, reduced to a science and carried out to practical results more fully and completely than in any other city in the world. I propose to explain, in an intelligible form, the system of popular banking carried out through the organization and work of the Cooperative Savings and Loan Association. This may best be done by comparing the co-operative plan with other well known and popular systems having for their object the accumulation and increase of money for economic or business purposes. In nearly all the numerous forms of business and monetary corporations created for profit, there are at least two and sometimes three classes of members. Each of these classes stand in different degrees of responsibility toward the particular enterprise, and share differently in the results flowing from it. There As between these several classes the result is not mutual. is always a preferred class with respect to the proportion of profits returned one reason for this being that they are made to stand as surety and guarantor to the remaining classes to the extent of the capital invested. Another reason is that they take upon themselves, in addition to all risks of loss, the burden and expense of executing the business or trust imposed upon them by the charter and laws under which they exist. For these reasons this preferred class claim, and legally and morally possess, the right to make all laws and rules for their own government, not inconsistent with their organic law; and this without consulting in the least the wishes or the wisdom of the other classes. Among monetary corporations, for example, the bank of issue, discount and deposit, is composed of a preferred class of stockholders governed and regulated by the laws especially enacted for their creation and management. This preferred class assume the chief burden of responsibilities and risks, and reward themselves by dividing equitably the resulting profits of the business. |