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leyan University, $287,000; Boston University, $260,000; Hamline University, $250,000; Woman's College of Baltimore, $244,000; University of Southern California, $240,000; University of Denver, $205,000. The fund for the benefit of the superannuated ministers, which, according to Dr. Mills's report, amounts to $604,000, will be greatly increased when all the returns have been collated; indeed, it is quite likely that a special effort will be made to increase this fund to $5,000,000. Although the Methodist Episcopal Church has contributed over $20,000,000 during the last four years on the basis of the Twentieth-Century Thank-Offering Movement, it has also increased its contributions to its various benevolent enterprises and maintained its financial standing in every respect. It was one of the conditions of the Twentieth-Century Movement that the contributions to this fund should be over and above the contributions to all the general causes of the denomination.

A Congregational Encyclical

The National Council of the Congregational Churches of the United States is not a legislative assembly, but simply a voluntary organization composed of representatives from local churches. It holds a triennial meeting, collects and publishes statistics, and performs other services that require united action. The Moderator of the Council has no authority over the churches. He is nevertheless in some respects for the time being the most eminent of Congregationalists, because he is peculiarly" the servant of all." As no other man, he can speak as the representative of the churches of his order. The present Moderator, Dr. Amory H. Bradford, pastor of the First Congregational Church of Montclair, N. J., is especially fitted for his position by his deep-set belief in Congregational principles. He is temperamentally, as well as officially, a representative of Congregationalism. He has just sent out his annual letter to the churches. Coming from one who has double reason for sturdily upholding the independence of the local church, this letter is significant for the stress it lays upon the need of co-operation and unity. Even in matters which are of interest chiefly to Congregationalists, this letter

gives emphatic place to recommendations of increased consolidation: specifically, plans of developing fellowship among the churches, of unifying the administration of the missionary societies, and of centralizing, at least in State associations, the system for supplying churches with pastors and the undertaking to pension aged or invalided ministers. In matters of wider import Dr. Bradford's suggestions are of the same import. Looking to the far-off unification of Christendom, he sees it being brought nearer by means of federation. This method of organization he commends because it insures liberty, exalts the essentials in religion, is simple in operation, and it centers attention upon social righteousness. In keeping with this plan for Christian unity is his urgent exhortation to the churches to give heed to the task of bringing about a healthful social order. In doing this he bids them exalt the faith in human brotherhood. "The greatest contribution which the Church can make toward the solution of the social problem is to exhibit a society in which the rich and strong actually do seek to serve the weak and not to please themselves, and in which the poor love those for whom they labor with the very love which was in Christ." "prophecies of spiritual renewal" in the fact that science is bringing nearer “unseen realities," that men are feeling the closeness of human relationships more than ever, and that there is "a growing passion for reality" which, though occasionally leading to temporary defections from the Church, "far more frequently leads to a hitherto unknown appreciation of its spiritual mission." This suggests the type of the coming revival, which will be a more vivid realization of the fatherhood of God on which the brotherhood of men depends. To promote the realization of God, he suggests special meditation and meetings during the coming Lenten season. From the man who more than any one else in America has the right to represent those churches which have insisted, and still insist, upon the independence of the local church and upon the sufficiency of simple forms of worship, these recommendations towards unity and an observance of the church year indicate in a peculiarly striking way the fact that church bodies are becoming less than ever

content with one-sided conceptions of religious life.

The

Trust

Problem

Natural Laws

There is one objection made to any anti-trust legislation which, if sound, would call for the repeal of all existing statutes on that subject and a cessation of all attempts at legislative control, regulation, or influence. It is expressed by the sentence, "Business should be left to the operation of natural laws." We suppose the proposition is specious or it would not be used. But it is to us a matter for surprise that it deceives any one.

No doubt there is always a danger of unwise interference with natural laws; of such an attempt to regulate as will be injurious, not beneficial, to the community; of a control that may become despotic and so both unjust and disastrous. No doubt great wisdom and great care should be exercised in regulating trade and commerce; no doubt individual liberty should be maintained as far as it can be made consistent with the public welfare; no doubt the more we can make the private conscience, enforced by public opinion, efficacious, and the less we have to resort to governmental authority, the better. All this may be and is true. But the notion that remedy for industrial ills can be found by a do-nothing policy, in the faith that natural law will bring about universal justice and will promote the common welfare, appears to us to ignore the self-evident facts of modern industrial life.

must not. You must not interfere with my interference." And this is exactly what is meant by the plea that natural law must be left to take its course without legislative interference, when that plea is put forth by the advocates of trusts, monopolies, and combines.

When natural law ruled in this continent, the North American Indians blazed pathways through the forests, and when any one of them wished to travel, he put his goods upon his back, or upon his wife's back, and took what path he pleased, when he pleased, and traveled at what rate he pleased. When civilization took possession of the continent, one of the things it did was to create by law an artificial person called a railroad corporation; to this artificial person it gave the right to take the real estate of A and B and C, through the whole alphabet many times. repeated, whether A and B and C wished to sell or not, and to pay them, not what price they asked, but whatever price a disinterested tribunal put upon the land. And so, by a most direct and positive interference with natural law, a public highway was constructed by which individuals and goods could be more conveniently carried than in packs upon the back of the traveler along a blazed pathway through the forest. Society created this artificial person, and conferred upon this person this artificial power, because it rightly believed that thus the public interests would be promoted and the public welfare advanced. Now that it finds this power unjustly used, not for the equal service of all, but for enriching one and impoverishing another, and it proposes to require this artificial person to use this A man on a higher level builds a dam artificial power for the benefit of the pubacross the stream which irrigates his lic and not for its injury, what sense is neighbor's grounds, and diverts the water there in crying out against the requireto his own uses. His neighbor complains ment on the ground that government of the water famine which destroys the should leave transportation to the operafertility of his land. The dam-builder tion of natural law. It is not left to the replies, "Law must not interfere. You operation of natural law. It is carried must leave natural law to take its course." on by artificial organizations created by The reply is not far to seek. The dam law and equipped with artificial power by builder does not leave natural law to take law. And it is eminently right that soits course. By building the dam he has ciety, which has created and empowered himself interfered with the course of the corporations to serve the community, natural law. What he really means, should require them to render the service whether he is conscious of it or not, is for which they were created. Otherwise this: "I must have a right to interfere the corporation becomes the iron despot with natural law, and you, my neighbor, of the Frankenstein who has created it.

There are stored up in the hills of Pennsylvania great masses of coal. Under the operation of natural law any man might go to these hills, put in his pick, and dig out what coal he needed for his fuel, as the North American Indian cut down in the forest whatever wood he needed for his fuel. But civilization cannot go on under the operation of natural law. So, by a complicated artificial system, we have given the ownership of these lands to individuals; we have given the ownership of the top of the soil to one set of individuals, and ownership of the underground mines to another set of individuals. Their right to the soil depends wholly upon the artificial arrangements which society has made. Society determines what they may own, how far down they may own, for how long a time they may own, under what conditions they may own. In England the owner may control the land for an indefinite period after his death. In America he can control it for only two lives. In France he must divide it in a certain fixed proportion among his children. This individual proprietary right in land is wholly an artificial right, created by statute, controlled and regulated by statute. And it has been so created and regulated because society thinks this is the best method for the promotion of the general interests of society. And now, when the owners of these coal lands combine and charge extortionate prices for the fuel which they did not create, and their right to control which is wholly an artificial right created by society, to aver that society's power to regulate and control has been exhausted, and that it cannot go on and compel the owners whose right in the coal it has created to use these rights in subordination to the public right to fuel, is to affirm that society may create rights which it is powerless to regulate after it has created them, that it may interfere with natural laws just far enough to give to a dozen operators a monopoly in a fuel necessary to human well-being, if not to human life, but may not interfere when interference becomes necessary to prevent individual greed from inflicting untold disaster on the general public. As we are writing this article the daily press is reporting the Congressional investigation into the cause of the extortionate prices charged for coal, which

have produced untold suffering and in one or two cases, as reported, death. From one account of this investigation we quote the following sentence:

There was considerable feeling manifested between the dealers who were members of the local association and those who were not. One who would not join the association declared emphatically that the Reading company was holding up its supply of coal, and furnishing transportation facilities to the independent operators for the purpose of allowing them to charge exorbitant prices for their product, and then divide the swag with the Reading.

We do not affirm that this is true; but we do affirm that the people have a right to ascertain whether it is true or not; and, if it is true, they have a right promptly to put an end to such a despotic use by a corporation of powers which have been conferred upon it by the people.

Civilization is not the product of natural laws operating without human intervention. It is the product of natural laws employed by man for man's benefit. Natural law does not make a locomotive or a dynamo. Man, understanding natural law, and using it for his purposes, makes the locomotive and the dynamo, and by means of them causes steam and electricity to do what he wishes them to do. He possesses power to use natural forces to accomplish predetermined ends. He possesses the same power to use intellectual and moral forces to predetermined ends. By this capacity he has built the locomotive, the dynamo, the stationary engine. By this capacity he has built up the State, the Church, the school, the various industrial organizations. This capacity distinguishes him from the beasts. To forego this capacity and leave natural law to work out its results unmodified by human volition would be to go back to barbarism, nay, to the pre-human conditions of the field and the forest. To stop in the use of this intelligence when it has gone far enough to serve the few who are well and strong, and not far enough to serve the many, would be simply to perpetuate in a new form that aristocracy against which democracy in government, education, and religion is a revolt. In attempting to make natural law serve, not the favored few, but all the people, democracy will make mistakes; it will attempt unsuccessful experiments; it will meet with failures;

and it will be obstructed by some who think that nothing can be but what has been, and by others who, having the larger share of the world's wealth and power, object to any further distribution of either. But we greatly mistake the temper of the American people if this movement so to use natural laws, so to administer natural forces-both physical and moral-as to serve the welfare of the entire people, can be permanently either halted or diverted by the unspecious plea that natural law is not to be directed to wise and profitable ends by human intelligence and human wills.

Southern Education

The meeting held in Carnegie Hall, in this city, on Friday evening of last week, in behalf of the General and the Southern Education Boards, was attended by a very influential and deeply interested audience; for the work of these two Boards is being rapidly recognized in all parts of the country as being not only educational in the technical sense, but as having the most fruitful relations to the public life of the United States. Dr. Adler used a very happy phrase when he described the work of the two Boards as "unofficial statesmanship." Speeches were made by President Dabney, of the University of Tennessee, who made a careful and extremely lucid statement of the school situation in the South; by President Alderman, of Tulane University; by Dr. C. D. McIver, President of the North Carolina State Normal and Industrial School; by Mr. William H. Baldwin, Jr., and by Mr. Morris K. Jesup. The three Southern men among the speakers are among the foremost educational leaders of the South; and it is not invidious to rank them among the foremost statesmen of the South to-day. The phrase "educational statesmen," which has been applied to Governor Aycock, of North Carolina, and to Governor Montague, of Virginia, indicates the place which the educational question has come to have in many parts of the South, and is suggestive of that broader conception of public life to which events in this country are fast educating men of all sections. So important in its fundamental bearings upon the public life of the coun

try is the educational movement in the South that Mr. Michael Sadler, an Englishman who speaks with authority on educational matters, was justified in saying, a few months ago, "It is a work which is not merely national, but international, in character."

The General Education Board, which has its central office in this city, is devoting itself to the rural schools of the South, acting as an agency for the beneficence of private individuals, selecting schools which need aid, co-operating with local generosity, and making a thorough survey of the rural school system throughout all parts of the South. The Southern Board, on the other hand, is carrying on a vigorous educational propaganda, striving everywhere to create throughout the South a general interest in education, and to persuade people to acquiesce in a heavier taxation to build up educational systems. The campaign has been thoroughly planned, for both Boards are under the management of men who are not only enthusiastic in their devotion to the cause they have at heart, but eminently practical, and who know at first hand the field in which they are working. Under the direction of the General Board three State conferences have already been held in North Carolina, Louisiana, and Georgia; similar conferences have been arranged for in Florida, Alabama, and Virginia. In these conferences the most progressive men in the different States are brought together, the work and purpose of the Board explained, and the problems connected with educational work, such as taxation, consolidation of school districts, the beautifying of school-houses, negro education, and all matters relating to rural schools, presented by men who have thorough command of the subject. A model school for negroes has been established near Athens, and summer schools for negro teachers at Hampton and Tuskegee. The Board has co-operated with three summer schools for white teachers, and has given aid in different amounts to normal schools in various parts of the South. Never, perhaps, in the history of the country has so large a movement been so thoroughly organized, so well directed, and accomplished so much in so brief a period. A vast amount of information relating to educational conditions in all

parts of the South has been collected; and the Board is in a position to do its work with increasing intelligence and efficiency.

The work is a National one, although its field is in the Southern States. The generosity and sacrifice of the South for education, taking into account the limited resources of the Southern people during the last twenty years, are just beginning to be understood at the North, and wherever understood are evoking a response which is a practical recognition of what is due to a people who have put forth heroic efforts to rebuild their social structure, and who are struggling with problems of appalling magnitude. Those who know the history of the South since the war are filled with admiration for the quiet courage, the undaunted energy, and the heroic patience with which that section has been working out its industrial and social reorganization. In no other movement has the enthusiasm, what may be called the gallantry, of the Southern character been more strikingly indicated than in the educational movement. A story of that movement is already a record of individual self-denial and heroic self-sacrifice; if it could be told in terms of personal experience, it would awaken the admiration of the whole Nation. Among the men who are leading the South to-day in this new era of its development, there are none better deserving the confidence and admiration of the Nation than men like President Alderman, President Dabney, and Dr. McIver. The million dollars given by Mr. Rockefeller for the work of the General Education Board makes it possible for that Board to spend a hundred thousand dollars each year for the next decade; but, as Mr. Baldwin declared at the meeting, this "is but a drop in the bucket. The trustees of this fund believe that every dollar expended in education in the South is a good investment, and they are going to ask the people of this whole country to make such an investment. We have provided a business organization composed of men every one of whose names is a household word—men whom you can trust-who are to manage this money in the best possible way, and it is to this board that we are going to ask the public to intrust funds for this great purpose."

A Significant Novel

Those who keep in touch with the life not of a section, but of the country as whole, and are sensitive to the stirring of the spirit over the length and breadt of the continent, have felt for severa years past that we are approaching anothe and more comprehensive expression o American life in books. One of the results of the journalistic treatment o literature, now so prevalent, is the attemp to take account of stock every week and to measure accurately the rise and fall o the tide of creative power from year to year. In the nature of things this is impossible; but the fact that it is impos sible does not deter a great many people from pronouncing final judgments or literary conditions and prospects. Wher the tide recedes, these critics are sure that the artistic impulse in America has spent itself, or that the country has ceased to produce the material of which art is made. They are confident that commercialism, or the practical spirit, or the decay of the love of the beautiful, or absorption in material activities, has drained the springs of inspiration, and that nothing can be hoped from America in the future except a civilization which is content to work with its hands and leave other civilizations to work with the soul.

Nothing could be more short-sighted or lacking in the historical spirit than these predictions. Again and again in literary history the rise and the fall of the tide of creative power have left their marks; again and again, when the vital force which blossoms in every art has receded and left the earth bare and bleak, it has come back with a rush and sweep unknown before, while the elegists were chanting its funeral dirges. No one can feel deeply the tremendous forces which are at work in the life of this country to-day without being confident that, sooner or later, those forces will find their expression in literature. Such a tide of energy as that which has been steadily mounting since the Civil War cannot find utterance for itself in material activities. Sooner or later, it reaches the higher levels of the soul, and intensity of action is translated by men of genius into intensity of aspiration.

At the very time when the press

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