else are representation, trial by jury, ballot-box, common schools, habeas corpus, constitutions, and ‘checking and balancing of greedy knaveries.' When contracts and vows are treated as idle things; when oaths from frequency or levity in administering become idle jests; when vices are licensed by statute, and revenue is coined from crime; and when in the shameless facility for divorce the statute of heaven intended for the purity of home and lying at the foundation of all society,' is trodden under foot, a people may well study the history of dead nations, that Tekel, Tekel, be not written over the doors and on the walls of their capitols, seats of learning, and sanctuaries.

It has been fashionable to boast of the wealth of this nation. Here are sixty million people, and sixty thousand million dollars represent their aggregate wealth. Who are the owners?

This was the schedule in 1890. By this time, three years later, it may be that forty thousand people. own two-thirds of the national wealth.

We would not be misunderstood. There should neither be prejudice nor hostility against wealth in any form. Righteously obtained and used, it is a blessing. This is the inflexible condition. Governments, railroads, steamship lines, inventions and wealth are all to be construed as favorable to the interests of mankind when equitably used. They are curses to the people when they are transmuted

*Hon. J. L. M. Curry.

し

66

into engines of oppression. Money is not an opprobrious term. Money-borrower" and " moneylender" are not humiliating epithets.

"The laborer is worthy of his hire." This is good doctrine. All the agents employed in production are entitled to their full pro rata of reward according to their effective capacity. These agents are the common laborer, skill and talent in all their diversified phases and wide application, responsibility and honor attached to positions of trust and importance, and capital. The classification is general and will serve to convey the thought intended. We have no metric system by which to determine with exactness the distributive share of any production due to the agents employed in its creation. Equity will have little trouble in approximating the just portion to each. Fairness will solve the problem on just principles. Unreasonable labor is just as hurtful to justice as unreasonable capital. When one acts the Nero and the other the Caligula, then both are tyrants.

In 1860 there were few millionaires in these United States. In thirty years from this period less than forty thousand people own nearly twothirds of the national wealth. The statement is amazing. What is to prevent this forty thousand, with their vantage ground, from securing in the next thirty years, full ownership of the remaining one-third of the wealth? It may be announced to the world: America is the wealthiest nation on the earth-she is so to-day. Fifty thousand people own the aggregate property of the great Republic. And

then in 1920, this announcement may be made: The American Republic is the greatest pauperized nation on the face of the globe. We hope it will not be so. There is certainly something wrong to make this millionaire condition possible. There is injustice somewhere.

What part the National Government has contributed to this condition; what part capital itself has done; what is due to speculation; what is due to inventions-the great labor-saving machinery, and the inability of labor to adjust itself to these new conditions-all these furnish vast material for inquiry. This one thing is certain, the gains of capital are enormous.

In the South, capital in trade, when successfully managed, has been by far the most remunerative. investment. A return to normal methods may avert untold calamities.

CHAPTER XI.

TOWNS THEIR INFLUENCE.

A TOWN means more than a square mile of terri

tory. We use the term in a general sense, whether its inhabitants number 1,500 or 15,000. The community of such a place will have in view an object, more or less clearly defined. The essential idea is occupation. Other considerations, such as convenience to schools and churches, and various privileges and facilities, may govern individuals; but the main thing for the majority is the work of such a place that can secure to them a living. Without employment the breadwinners are a burden to themselves, and something worse in numerous instances to the community.

The principal industry of the Southern people is agriculture. To this chief employment, the business of the majority of towns in the South is directly related. Towns where railroad shops are located, or where manufacturing interests and the lumber business furnish employment, are few. Probably ninety-five per cent. of all Southern communities gathered in towns depend for their support and existence upon the busy workers in distant cotton, cane, and rice fields. If this industry is depressed, the town suffers. The industries of these towns are

expressed with sufficient exactness by the terms, "trade and transportation, professional and personal service, mechanics and laborers." There is work for all of the four classes in every town. There is no danger that the three first named will overcrowd their vocations long. The fourth class is equal in number to all the other classes in many communities, and in some places double and treble the three classes. The complexion of our population accounts for this fact. The suburbs of Southern towns and villages are alive with colored people. No observant person can fail to note the fact that the supply of laborers, so styled, in these communities, is greater than the demand. The town is the reservoir into which the stream of this class from the adjacent country flows.

Every town is ambitious of its business prosperity, its schools and its churches, and an important evidence of its growth is the increase of its population. It is human nature so to boast. No one doubts that Southern towns generally have a large surplus population. The truth about this matter can hurt no one. A larger laboring population in any place than the work there requires is not a sign of health, but of disease. The outside world and reflecting men may construe the parade about population as a satire on this unfortunate status and the burdens it imposes on the municipal government. Five hundred people, less or more, in a town, without money, work or bread, are not convincing proofs of a prosperous condition. "Nudity and rags," says Horace Mann, "are only human idleness or ignorance