concerned, but a nation of bowed shoulders, soulless lives and lifeless souls broken in bearing the burdens. The laws are a means to an end-the building up and betterment of the nation-and the end is good, but the means entail privation and suffering and enforce an evasion more disastrous to the future of the nation than child-labor or permissable ignorance could ever be; for neither, in the very instincts of humanity, could have the far reach of race-suicide.

There is a better way to accomplish the end-more than the end at present sought-but it is a way so absurd and preposterous as to bring a smile to one's lips while he proposes it and a laugh to him who listens. It was something the same, years ago, when pensions were first suggested, in the broad view which America takes of the subject, as an expression of the nation's gratitude to her old soldiers; but we all believe in pensions now at least that the practice is good, though the principle may be badvery bad. It must be that we believe, for our pension-roll is materially larger than the entire German army appropriation. We condemn the heavy taxes imposed to support that vast standing army, but who complains that we expend much more upon our pensioners, though only out of gratitude? For we know that not a dollar of the billions going out of the treasury ever yields such good returns. The country could double its pension-roll, to-day, to its own betterment; the practice is so good-though the principle may be bad.

Taxes, in the last analysis, come all and always from the poor; but on the way to the Treasury they go mostly through the coffers of the rich. They would go that far anyway and if taxes were not they would simply stop there. The rich would be so much the richer and the beneficiaries of Treasury disbursements so much the poorer. For taxes, in the final and labelled lumps, come very largely from the rich, directly depriving the pockets of the rich of vastly

greater sums than the pockets of all the middle and the poor combined. Now, there is no better way given among men to keep money in circulation than to fetch it out of the pockets of the rich where it loves to lie and rot, and drop it into the pockets of the poor, whence it must hie away on the wings of the first morning following. Taxes bring it out of one, pensions drop it into the other.

Money in circulation makes for prosperity, for the mission of money is its purchasing power and it can only perform that mission while circulating. No more than with blood can the circulation be beneficial to the whole unless it reaches the remotest digits of the body politic. Pensions are our greatest circulation instigator. The larger the pension-roll the greater the finite circulation and the finite prosperity which makes for the infinite of the nation. The practice is good even if the principle is bad-the principle of supporting a man for life and his sisters and his cousins and his aunts after him, because he lost a toe more or less while under pay from the government.

Last winter the Congress, especially the Senate, tried to put in action a little act which provided that governmentclerks, when they reached a certain age, should be retired. They really ought to be. Dr. Osler goes even further. But the bill fell flat because it made no pension provision for the long-time servants when they were retired. The next session will try it again with better results, because there will be added a pension provision. We believe in pensions.

At West Point and Annapolis lads are educated by the government that it may benefit by their intelligence in time of war, and when they reach the age-limit they are retired under pay for life if they have been good soldiers and sailors. Our public-school system carries the same theory toward all education at Government expense, but why should it stop short of summum bonum? Why should it not expand to its reasonable limit the theory of the greatest good to all, in the

perfecting of every little citizen to be of the highest value to the nation in perpetual peace?

It is a notion so absurd and preposterous that even the pen that writes it almost smiles, and yet why not? Why should not every child on being born and registered receive a salary as a servant of the nation, gradually increasing as his necessities increase, until his education is complete? No occupant of a desk in the executive offices is more essentially giving his time and energy for the best good of the nation than the child who faithfully prepares himself for good citizenship. Then at the age of retirement, in cases of necessity, the pension could begin again as a reward for having been a good citizen-upon ground as valid, surely, as the continued pay of the retired officer.

Where would be race-suicide, childlabor or call for compulsory education? Where would be the bent backs and anxious faces of the economizing, abnegating, drudging multitude, sacrificing all the joys of life, to-day, in an agony to put their children on their feet and prevent being a burden in old age, or throwing away the reality of life to escape the responsibility? The childless family is envied, now, and the life-insurance incubus a necessity. The baker's dozen would be at a premium then, the horror of early marriage on a small salary and anxiety for the future would disappear while the nation received its own with

usury.

Would the taxes be doubled to accomplish it? Suppose they were quadru

pled; what of it? The infinite mass of poor who suffer most pay no taxes and would feel the change only in a slight increase in expenses far more than counterbalanced by the simple commercial value of their children. The children would assume an importance and their education be a remunerative ambition. The individual taxes of the middle-class are very small and the money relief alone would far outweigh the increase. The gigantic pyramids of gold rising in mighty and mightier monuments to the Pharaos of Finance would yield the beautiful bricks wherewith to build the tower-ofstrength about the nation, reversing racesuicide, obliterating child-labor, relieving any further thought of compulsory education; while no better way could be devised for reducing the alarming congestion in the treasure-vaults of wealth and thrilling with the ichor of prosperity the remote and languishing corpuscles.

Is it really so absurdly preposterous, after all? I have talked with many among the richest men in the country and found but one who did not say that he would gladly lend his influence and pay his portion to have such a system in operation. Several heartily indorsed the statement of one: "If my taxes were four times what they are I should save money in being relieved of obnoxious obligations for philanthropic donations of which I do not approve but constantly meet because they are efforts, however unsatisfactory, to come illegitimately toward this same end."

Washington, D. C.

WILLARD FRENCH.

THE

Des

HERE is a considerable body of men who have come to political leadership in the Middle West whose general aim and purpose may be defined collectively as that of a new espousal of the rights of man. Among them Governor Cummins of Iowa is a significant and commanding figure. All men now recognize more or less clearly that even here in America the common man has only in a measure come to his own, that the hand of a power that he has had no part in shaping is over him, and that it may be as heavy as the mailed hand of medieval king or czar; but Governor Cummins is one of those who have seen this most surely and have most heartily made the cause of the masses their own. Governor Cummins came to Des Moines in 1878, and soon built up a law practice that brought him in a very substantial income, an income nearly three times as large as that which he now enjoys as the governor of the state. It was sixteen years later, in 1894, when his name came up for nomination for senator from Iowa. In the Republican caucus he received more votes than any one else except John H. Gear, to whom the support of the party was finally given and whom, as an old man likely to retire soon, it was understood that Mr. Cummins was to succeed. In the McKinley campaign of 1896 he was one of the national committeemen, and in 1899 he was a candidate for the senate before the state legislature.

It was at this time that there began that alignment of forces against him that has continued until this day. The railroads did not want him in the senate. They were then a big factor in Iowa politics,

in some respects a bigger factor than they are at present, and their influence defeated him. He is not and was not a man to be the instrument of any power unjustly exercised, not a man to be the hireling of the money-changers in the temple, not a man to run at the bidding of the slave-drivers. They could not use him, and whom the railroads could not use then the people should not have. That was the beginning in a more open way of the attack upon privilege as the great menace of our national life to which his whole political career has been a devotion.

In 1901, as a result of the fight made upon him, he was advanced by his friends as a candidate for governor, and was nominated in the Republican convention on the first ballot. Party conventions are closer to the people and are not so easily manipulated, perhaps, as legislatures; and that convention was the largest political convention ever held in Iowa, numbering sixteen hundred and forty-one, a body ten times as large and unwieldy as the legislature. He was elected, and within thirty days after entering upon the office was compelled to meet squarely the issue raised in our present industrial development between the interests of the people and those of the great corporations. Both houses of the legislature had passed the Molsberry bill, and he was called upon to sign or veto it. The important provision of this bill was one removing the debt limit of corporations. It was proposed more particularly in the interest of the prospective merging of the Great Northern and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroads, according to the intention of

James J. Hill. J. W. Blythe, the general counsel for the Burlington, director of political affairs for the corporations in Iowa, had engineered the bill through both houses and now hoped to secure the signature of the governor for it.

As a consequence of the slackening of control over corporations which this bill contemplated, its passage would have invited the trusts and other like bodies to organize and incorporate themselves under the laws of Iowa as Iowa institutions. The possibility of assuming obligations far in excess of capitalization which the bill offered would have opened the way to the fraudulent manipulation of securities of which we have had so much evidence elsewhere of late. Incidentally Iowa might have seemed to derive benefit in some respects from the location of large business interests within her borders, but it would have been at the expense of the general good. That at least must have been the feeling of a man looking at the question from the standpoint of a belief that the great corporations demanded by our present economic conditions must be the objects of constant and watchful supervision if they are not to become the irresponsible masters of our collective and individual lives and fortunes.

In making decision in this particular case Governor Cummins was confronted with that situation that more than any other tries the courage of men. Friends with whom his relations had been long and closely personal were interested in

the success of the measure.

He was im

portuned by them to sign it. They gathered about him, one and many. Eastern attorneys of the railroads came to the aid of the local political dictator. They urged and protested and explained. The pressure was tremendous. Not to

sign the bill was to disregard long and pleasant associations, to alienate men whose good will was dear to him. It was in a measure to cut loose from the organized forces that controlled political destinies, to cast himself upon the un

certain chances of popular approval. The break with the machine was altogether a less thing than the severing of personal relations established in the course of his long law practice. It was this that might have given him pause and might for many a man of honest intentions have been a sufficient reason for signing the bill. Governor Cummins was made of sterner stuff. The convictions that had been deepened in him by his own experience of the domination of the railroads made only one course possible, if he was to retain his own selfrespect. He did not sign the bill, both because he believed it to be unconstitutional and because he believed it to be vicious. He had fought the fight out with the attorneys, answering plea after plea and argument after argument with a fine readiness born of a profound knowledge of the law, a clear mind, and established convictions; and in returning the bill to the legislature he sent a letter that is one of the notable documents bearing upon the subject of corporation control. He said in part:

"The bill proposes to take off, for the first time, every limitation, and confer upon a class of railway companies a privilege which, within the limit of my investigation, has no parallel in modern legislation. . . . I can not bring myself to believe that this species of special legislation is consistent with the public welfare or necessary for the legitimate development of railway property: on the firm belief that corporcontrary, it is my debtedness needs regulation rather than ate power to issue stocks and incur inexpansion."

There is in Governor Cummins little of the spirit of compromise when that means yielding to corrupt or vicious influences in politics. The issue between him and the great corporate interests that threaten to make the American experiment in democratic government a mockery has been definitely raised, and he faces it and will face it squarely and

unflinchingly. There is no longer any possibility of accommodation between him and the forces of wealth organized for the purpose of controlling legislation in their interest. He is a Republican unfaltering in his devotion to the principle of protection, but he is fighting the tariff as it now stands, believing it to be the bulwark of the new tyranny of the age of capital. Manufactured articles that need protection he would protect, but he would levy no tariff by which the manufacturer is enabled to rob the people. In his view, laws made for the control and direction of our industrial and commercial life can not be laws framed in the spirit of our democratic institutions when those who place them on the statute-books are the creatures of a small body of men banded together to conserve and advance their own interests against the interests of the people. He is an advocate of reciprocity, not as a blind partisan following the banner of a great leader, but as a man of clear vision willing to urge upon his party an unpopular course when conditions demand that fine courage of true leadership.

Governor Cummins is a man of warm human feelings and sympathies, approachable, courteous, loyal, a clear intellect and a clean life. A man of fine tastes and wide intelligence, he might easily have lost himself in an elegant exclusiveness, but he has kept his heart open to the needs of men. He is now offering himself as a candidate for a third term as governor, and the indications are that he will win easily. The people, at least, are enthusiastic in their faith in him. Should the Republican convention fail to nominate him, it will be because he has not wooed the good will of the party dictators in the state as he should. The railroads in particular will remember that in Iowa they are paying taxes on an estimated valuation fortyfour million dollars higher than it would have been but that he as a member of the Executive Council was instrumental in raising the assessment. This higher val

uation brings in to the treasury of the state yearly some forty thousand dollars more in taxes and into the treasuries of the various counties a sum of nearly six hundred thousand dollars. That is not a thing that can be used against him before the people, evidently, but it will have its effect in the convention. The man who is keeping his eye on the struggle from the gallery may not hear a word of it, but it will be a thing to be taken account of none the less.

At the time of this writing there appears to have been an effort to discredit Governor Cummins on the part of the railroad interests unfriendly to him in the circulation of a letter addressed to him by Senator Elkins of West Virginia. The letter disputed some of the statements in a recent speech of Governor Cummins relative to the treatment accorded him when he appeared before the Interstate Commerce Committee of the Senate as a witness.. Senator Elkins is the chairman of this committee, and it is safe to say that his known friendliness to the railroads has not disappeared in the light of the discussion that this letter has evoked. The original charges made by Governor Cummins that the cross-examination to which Senator Elkins subjected him was antagonistic and unfair, as that of a friend of the railroads might be expected to be, remains practically unassailed.

It is Governor Cummins' first passion to bring government back to the people. This year he has been pushing forward before the legislature two measures having that particularly in view. One of these was an anti-pass law and the other is a general primary law under the provisions of which latter nominations for office would be made by the voters of the party rather than by a few men gathered together in a caucus. Progress toward the enactment of these measures has been made, but the fight is not yet won. Under his unfaltering leadership it will be won in good time. These are the issues upon which he goes before the people in the present campaign, and,