to be still further increased, as new problems are constantly arising; and in this connection it has been suggested to me that some roads on which the car departments are operated entirely separate from what is known as the mechanical department are perhaps showing better results than are those roads where the two departments are operated by one superintendent. It would seem that the increased problems to which I have alluded are proving too complicated for the proper grasp of their details by any one official.

In conclusion, it would seem that public sentiment is rapidly becoming crystallized with regard to proper remedies for the prevention of railway accident, and it may be that within a measurable period of time congress will be approached with a view to the creation of a board of experts to investigate and report on the causes of accidents, some

thing after the plan in vogue in Great Britain. Whether or not this would be a desirable thing is not for me to say, but if it is to be avoided it can only be by associations similar to yours adopting standards which shall be followed, and using their utmost efforts to ascertain the causes of and remedies for defects in equipment. And on the other associations, charged with the duty of devising methods of operation, will also fall the great measure of responsibility for improving the methods and appliances which will render train movement

more secure.

I thank you for your kindness in inviting me here, and for the opportunity you have given me and the commission's force of inspectors to become better acquainted with you and exchange ideas which cannot fail to be of great benefit to the advancement of the work in which we are engaged.

We hold that no writer can afford to stand alone, if he himself tries to stand by sound positive views of life. Then, we can interest the readers, only in so far as we give them the views of other men, pro and con, on the important problems of the day, carefully weighing what others say and endeavoring to formulate logical conclusions, or at least suggesting what is more in accordance with general results. The Fairhope Courier of May 15th has a letter from over the sea, from Holland, of which we cannot help copying a few thoughts, as follows: "A great philosopher has said: 'Beware of every conclusion in social matters which is not simple.' That cannot be applied to the simple rule of giving to every man his own-neither more nor less. Protect his right to live on God's earth by giving him the right to work, to apply his labor on the material universe in procuring for himself and for those who depend upon him the needs

of life. The application of this principle leads to freedom for all, general welfare, universal peace, simplicity of government, putting men and women in places most fit for them, best development of the best faculties of men, in heart and mind and spirit, the reaching of the highest happiness for men which can be reached by them in accordance with their individual character. This condemns aristocratic government, be it of birth or money. This condemns state socialism as well as paternal government. This opens the way for real, true democracy with its eternal blessings to mankind."

Those beautiful thoughts refer to the inevitable effects that would come from the mere application "of the law of equal rights in all governmental functions," no more, no less. There is not a single calamity, trouble or sin of any gravity or permanence, in national or individual life, that cannot be traced to the dis

carding of that law in our collective existence, the very kind we choose to live, for our own convenience, as long as we don't happen to run away from our fellow men, from all social intercourse, from all markets, roads, communities, from all stores, shops, schools, churches, theatres, libraries, amusements-from all knowledge and art.

From the same Fairhope Courier, as an extract from a sermon by Herbert S. Bigelow, and taken from a larger extract in the Chicago Public not long ago, we copy as follows: "Theater-going was one of the vices which very naturally fell under the ban of the Puritan conscience. One of the shortest cuts to hell was supposed to be through the pit of the playhouse. But all this is passing away. Life is not a penal institution. A man may be reverent without being mournful. The highest rectitude does not consist in mortifying the flesh by arbitrary and artificial rules. The son of man came eating and drinking. No conduct is wrong, or unholy or irreligious which does not destroy one's own powers or invade the sanctity of another life. No joy is blameworthy which is not wrung from the sorrow or shame of another. Vice is high treason against the law of human brotherhood. Sanity in religion is a good thing. Men should not be asked to shun as wicked what is not sin."

As an endorsement of the above conceptions, we can add what a prominent clergyman said as reported by the New York Tribune some day in November, 1903. It is as follows: "The church has almost been destroyed by its own manufactured sins while neglecting to deal with the real ones."

Perhaps one of the saddest developments of modern life is to see how much is yet made out of petty or manufactured sins by large groups of estimable people all over the earth. We could be and should be patient with such people if they stood, not only against the petty and manufactured sins, but against the formidable and perpetual sins or abominations that poison the whole fabric of civilization and practically convert the life of most men

and all nations into a constant earthquake, interspersed with volcanic eruptions, tornadoes and physical or mental convulsions. Why expend so much holy wrath against the sins of others in the mere incidents of our disturbed human life, and why have so little wrath when not the greatest placidity in regard to the enormous blunders we legalize, the mean tricks we place in our own laws so that to actually veto the beneficent action of most divine laws? Instead of letting ourselves develop rightly under the influence of divine enactments, we prefer to force ourselves into wrong forms of physical and spiritual growth under the influence of unrighteous, unholy legislation, of our political, civil and industrial deformities and wrongs.

We still give to government the right to suppress the bottom rights of man as an elementary worker, as a useful social unit, and we also give to government the right to cancel the collective rights of all men. We then refuse to grasp and actualize the primary steps or processes indispensable to any healthy, symmetrical human development. We then talk of sinful men as something which justifies all social deformities, forgetting that perhaps men remain sinful because our most important men and teachers fail yet to teach men how to make and stand by good laws, how to sensibly discard and suppress all wrong laws. Instead of having the healthy freedom that should protect the equal, unselfish rights of all men, we yet have the wrong freedom that invites and protects the arbitrary, selfish rights of men, or rather the unhealthy tendencies which it is our duty to destroy and suppress, not only as mere individuals, but also as members of a social group. We should then discourage all predatory instincts, and should do it through brotherhood principles in the laws of our social organism, as it is done by all laws in the divine natural order. Unfortunately we fail there, in forms hidden perhaps, but most fatal on that account. The hidden, organized, indirect wrongs are far worse than the open ones. A reaction against the latter is

much easier than against the former, against the indirect social evils, clothed in bright colors.

A great deal should no doubt be forgiven to men up to the age of forty, and even up to death, as long as they have been forced, by a merciless progress, to live harsh, pinched, restless lives, with less than the minimum sanitary needs required for some healthy physical and spiritual growth, and without that industrial independence which makes men the slaves of others or of their unnatural conditions, unable to think with their own brains or assert their own thoughts; but what about those to whom none of such a vitiated media can apply? Shall they be excused for having stood by the perpetuity of the kingdom of wrong, when they could have just as well established the truth and thus normalized the lives of all, themselves included? Shall a God of righteousness condone any such behavior in the life

beyond? Are the two lives so dreadfully disconnected from each other? Is Christianity a passport into heaven, no matter how we may have seen fit to lay aside our principal duties to God and humanity while on earth, the very duties we choice fellows could perform, while the rest could not, because we did not allow them to develop properly?

We are told somewhere that "The Son of man shall reward every man according to his works." Equity then shall be the supreme force in life eternal? Why not make equity the supreme force on earth? All conscious life is bound to be a mass of turmoils and negations, without equity in the general relations of any given group of individualities rising above the mere mechanical plane of vegetable or animal growth. Why should not men catch that self-evident conception, ingrained, as it were, in the realm of conscious existence?

To me in whom is developed the sixth sense, true intuition, comes many strange experiences in the passing friendships of earth. One needs to be on guard, lest the souls recognized in occasional glances be mistaken for the reality of bodily presence, for therein lies the initiatory to ofttimes poignant experiences and disappointments. It is of one such I tell in this brief sketch, or rather outline, for the filling in must be done by each one who comprehends according to his or her individual light.

In melancholy mood one day, I found one to whom I felt most strangely drawn. As our eyes met in momentary glance, I saw a child-spirit of sweet innocence, look out of the soul-windows of a woman's not ungraceful form; one that betokened culture and refinement inborn. From this ripened an acquaintance, fruiting in a friendship that should have endured forever, had not——

had not the soul within been strangely dominated by the over-soul of material life, which for this portion of its journey, held in bondage the tenderness within.

It is difficult to describe that which I would convey to the reader's understanding. You have seen a child, merry with its playmates, suddenly as though weary, draw aside and sit down in silence. You have noted the strange "old fashioned" look in its eyes, the thinking wrinkles on its forehead; the altogether languid poise of a tired, "grown-up"-and have thought "what an old-fashioned little creature that child is." It is the old soul in the young body that is manifesting itselfthe soul that has made many pilgrim ages, and thus asserts its presence despite this life-a soul of youth that encompasses it. And this was inversely of whom I write. At Blessed or trammeled

so with the one least so I saw it.

as I am by this self-developed sixth sense, that has puzzled and mislead many a time, and will oft yet, but with which I would not part for all the treasures under world.

As an ancient one traveling through life's desert, clasping the hand of a little child fresh from the flower gardens of an oasis, experiences the joys of that winsome, tender heart, that in unspoken language thrills from the delicate into his wrinkled paw, so this child-soul spoke to me; and mentally kneeling at the shrine, I did homage as the shepherds unto the new born one-the Master. Yet when I told her of this adorableness I saw in her, she laughed, because she could not comprehend. How could she? For to her had not been given to understand the occult mysteries of life. A long time we journeyed side by side, free to part where we would, parting, and anon our paths voluntarily converging again and again, I say voluntarily, yet looking back, I recognize the magnet that ever drew me to her side-the all-delighting, ever sweet, transforming vision of the gentle child-soul within, called forth by my presence, reaching out to me her graceful arms, beckoning me back when far away, yearning to me in the stillness of midnight, or through the glamour of noonday-always this lovely child-soul; this entrancing more-than-vision, I

came to know as Geraldine. As such she held me close in gentle arms; as such she prattled enchantingly of days to come.

Why cannot such happiness endure forever? At least forever shall I remember you, dear Geraldine, for you-you were far away, when with taunting, cutting words the "not you" spoke and goaded me beyond mortal endurance. And I too, forgot. Forgot that from this same earthly tabernacle you had spoken words that raptured me; that from this same earthly tabernacle had sparkled your dear eyes, twin sapphires set in the auerole frame of sunshine hair, that halved with its own glory your lovely face. I forgot all this, and stood stooping also to the counterfeit presentment called "matter-of-fact reality." I, too, retorted in kind-you with crueler words that stabbed you to the heart, and left their scar upon the shocked and startled soul of my Geraldine. And so it ended.

The prevailing opinion regarding the opposition to high wages for labor as it is now and again urged by employers is usually attributed to purely selfish motives, or rather to something worse than selfishness.

It is attributed, I regret to observe, to an unwillingness of the employer to see the laborer receive reasonable compensation for his work. The employer, according to his critic, is mean, narrow

and grasping, and he will grind labor with merciless cruelty. There are such employers, but these are the exception, not the rule.

It is, however, quite true that employers, like employes, are generally selfish. They would be unlike the rest of the human family if they were not. Employers, like employes, no one can dispute, are sometimes meanly and viciously selfish. Here again they are

not unlike the rest of humanity. The selfishness of both sometimes reaches a point where it is criminal. Justice, however, demands that we should properly discriminate, rendering unto each what is their due of praise or blame and placing them in the class to which they properly belong.

When such an examination is made it will be found that the selfishness of the employer, which at times, opposes excessively high wages, is, in a way, a wise selfishness.

A wise, sagacious business man, it should be borne in mind, does not object to good or even high wages, for no one better than he knows that steady work at good pay for all classes of labor is the base rock of prosperity. In no other way is it possible to make so equitable a distribution of the earnings on the working capital of the country.

In opposing the very highest wages for common labor it is because the thoughtful, far-seeing, right-minded employer not only believes that moderate wages are better for the employer himself, but that moderate wages are best for the community, and best for the workmen.

Nearly all wide-awake, far-seeing, progressive business men believe that where the highest wages are paid for common labor that common labor does not seek to make its earnings large, but rather that it seeks to use the higher wage rate to reduce the days of labor per week performed to the minimum.

In other words, labor often contends for the highest scale of wages in order that the laborer can earn enough in the minimum hours of labor to afford him bare sustenance, together with those health and character destroying luxuries to which common labor is at times, unfortunately, addicted.

To present this matter in the concrete, let me observe that at the present mining scale prevailing in the bituminous coal fields the miner can earn in an eight-hour day, let us say, $5, and if he works six days in the week he can earn $30 per week. If, however, he can obtain a mining scale which will enable him to earn $10 a day, will he strive to

work six days, and so earn $60 per week, or will he, as many employers contend, work only three days per week, and earn only $30? I present, I admit, only a hypothetical case.

I know it would be difficult-in fact, impossible-to determine how far this contention of the employer is true. It would also be difficult, even if in fact altogether true, to convince labor leaders that it is true, or get them to admit that it is true. It would be difficult to convince the public, uninformed as to such questions, that it is true, and yet I am certain it is, in a measure at least, true beyond all question.

As evidence that it is true, at any rate so far as common labor is concerned, I need only refer to the fact that many of the miners do not save any more money out of their earnings when the basis of wages is abnormally high than they save when the basis is normal. And this is not because the cost of living is so much higher, nor is it, I am sorry to say, because the miner, as a rule, is making ampler provisions for his family. Would it were so. There does not, I regret to say, exist among toilers the spirit of thrift, the zeal to acquire and lay by for the proverbial rainy day, the hope of securing a competence-ambitions for wife and for children, and consequently no ambitions for self-which should exist and which are so necessary if high wages are to benefit the laborer.

I do not pretend to say that this is true of all miners; I am, in fact, convinced that many of them are frugal and considerate home-makers, but it is true of enough of them to embarrass the operation of many of the mines in the United States, preventing them from producing that maximum of output which is essential if that output is to be produced at the minimum cost. Whatever that output costs above what it should cost, is waste, and waste is destruction, and so hurts the community.

It is true enough, as most men in the coal industry know, to cause shut-downs and to bring about strikes, say of a day or two, or a week, at a time, when orders on the books of mining companies are sufficient to keep the men employed