FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 1886.

COMMENT AND CRITICISM.

THIS AND THE TWO SUCCEEDING numbers of Science will be largely given up to the reports of the meeting of the American association at Buffalo. In this number is given the address in full of the retiring president, Prof. H. A. Newton of Yale, and, with this, abstracts of several of the vicepresidents' addresses. We are also able to present our readers with a portrait of Prof. Edward S. Morse, of Salem, the incoming president. Professor Morse, was born at Portland, June 18, 1838. His career as a scientific man is one of the results of the enthusiasm aroused by the elder Agassiz, Professor Morse being one of the well-famed group of young Americans who came about Agassiz during his first years in this country. Professor Morse's investigations of the molluscoids, worms, and lower arthropoids, his marked success as a lecturer in biology, his enthusiastic study of Japan and the Japanese, which he has partially set forth in his admirable Japanese homes and their surroundings,' are the works which lead us to congratulate the association on their choice.

CAPITALISTS AND LABORERS.

THE adjustment of the relations between capitalists and laborers is the greatest problem presented for solution in the present age. It is one that has baffled the skill of the wisest men in times past. There is a bitterness and alienation between these classes that threaten the peace of society and the stability of government. There are millions of discontented people to a greater or less extent under the influence of socialists, who openly publish doctrines subversive of all good government, and contrary to religion and morality. Their leaders are bold and reckless, and avow their purpose to disturb society in order to make what they call a just division of property.

Quotations, from writers worthy of confidence, were given, in order to show that the condition of the laborer is far better in all respects than it was fifty years ago. In the increase of wages, and the

Abstract of an address before the section of economic science of the American association for the advancement of science at Buffalo, Aug. 19, by the Rev. Joseph Cummings, LL.D., of Evanston, Ill., vice president of the section

No. 185.-1886.

lessening of the hours of toil, he gains from fifty to one hundred per cent in money returns. Advantages of education, comforts, and privileges, and means of relief from sickness and pain, that formerly were unknown, are now common. This improvement in the condition of the poor gives no reason for the haughty rebukes of their employer, nor for his advise to them to be content with their condition. With all our boasted advantages of modern civilization, the condition of a large portion of the laboring classes is pitiable. Thousands have no employment, and thousands more are compelled to live on a mere pittance, and submit to conditions destructive of all manhood and nobility of spirit.

In New York city there are two hundred thousand women and girls employed in ninety-two trades. They earn from four to eight dollars per week. Hundreds of cases are reported where women work from fourteen to seventeen hours per day at from four to seven dollars per week. Loss of time, from ill health and inability to obtain work, reduces their earnings till they barely sustain life. Many persons receive twelve and a half cents a day. Many of them are wronged, and on various pretexts deprived of their pay. The rules of many factories are abusive and degrading. The home life of such laborers is pitiable, being passed in circumstances where decency and womanly respect are impossible. About nineteen thousand tenement houses accommodate about fifty persons each, and some of them three times as many. The condition of a large number of the poor is a reproach to our age.

It is a sore evil that has resulted from the effectiveness of machinery. It separates the wageworkers into a permanent class, making it more and more difficult for them to rise above it.

The improved condition of the laborer makes him more restless, gives him new views and higher wants, which he seeks to gratify. He now longs for more rational living, better food, better clothing, a better house, the education of his children, and time for self-improvement. While his circumstances have improved, he sees greater improvement in those of others. The product of the union of capital and labor is greater than formerly, and the laborer demands as his just due a larger share.

The causes of discontent among laborers are serious and wide-spread. One cause is the difference in views as to the relations between em

ployers and employed. Labor has been degraded and despised. There is still a feeling that there must be fixed classes in society, and that the majority must work hard enough to relieve the minority from labor. Once it was the privilege of the employer to command, and the duty of the laborer to acquiesce.; but this feeling of inferiority on the part of the employed is gone, and the age of civility is past. The workman has made practical the doctrine of human equality, and looks on those around him as his equals. He no longer respects any distinctions founded on birth and circumstances and not on personal worth and power. He holds truly that labor is service for an equivalent, and that the employer and employed stand as equals in an interchange of service. He does not admit that wages are paid by the employer, but regards them as the product of the joint effort of the employer and employed, of which the laborer should receive his just proportion. In fact, the employer has no more right to dictate to the laborer how he shall seek his interests, and what associations he shall form, and what trades-unions he shall establish, than the laborer has to dictate to the employer in corresponding matters. A great part of the alienation between classes, and the bitterness of the poor toward capitalists, lies in the fact that wages have been substituted for all other ties, and the laborers are regarded but as a part of 'the plant' in a great manufacturing establishment. In American society there is a marked manifestation of the degradation of labor. All labor which involves personal attention, and especially labor in household service, is still thought degrading. The term 'servant' is still used, but it should be banished from a civilized people, and become as obsolete as 'slave' and 'serf.'

There are serious errors that in some form have been advocated by leading political economists, which, under the teachings of such modern popular writers as Henry George, have caused serious evil. They are such maxims as this: that "all wealth is created by labor, and the title to all wealth ought to be vested in the laborers who have produced it." These maxims are fallacious; but they are received with great favor by the multitude, who are led to believe that the accumulation of great fortunes is a wrong to the laborers, and that such fortunes should be divided for the public good.

For the discontent of the laborers, and their disagreement with the capitalists, various remedies have been proposed, but they have proved, in practice, vain and ineffective. This may be said of strikes, lock-outs, and the doctrine of unrestricted competition. A reasonable mode for the settlement of difficulties would seem to be a con

ference between the classes or their representatives. When a settlement cannot thus be reached, it would seem the wisest course to refer the points in dispute to arbitrators chosen in the usual way. Boards of arbitration may be either temporary or permanent. There are many reasons in favor of permanent boards, which might be as effective in preventing difficulties as in their settleinent.

We are persuaded that the present difficulties that threaten the peace and order of society will never be removed till a higher standard of ethics shall prevail. They are the direct result of selfishness, encouraged by the prevalent selfish theory of morals. These are personal sins and social wrongs that civil government may not by law or force correct. It is not according to the will of God, as made known by natural or revealed religion, that a few should control vast fortunes, using them to gratify selfish personal desires, while multitudes suffer not only for want of knowledge, but of bread, and struggle through a brief existence, realizing in no proper sense the true object of life. Nothing is right that is not in accordance with the divine will; hence no man can have the right, though he has the power, to do wrong. Because a gifted man has power to accumulate property, he has no right to arrogantly say, "This is mine and I will spend it as I please." The wealth of the world is designed for the public welfare; and it is the duty of those who have it in charge to consider themselves as only agents, bound to use it so as to serve the greatest good. He who has wealth and does not intend to act thus, is false to his trust, and is the enemy of society.

In the Christian use of money will be found the great remedy for social wrongs. The right use of money will require much tact, wisdom, and skill. Multitudes on multitudes of the poor have low, selfish, sensual aims; and indiscriminate giving to them would only encourage indolence and vice. They need education and culture, and higher ideas of life. All these the right use of money now worse than wasted would secure.

AN INVENTORY OF OUR GLACIAL DRIFT.

AFTER an introduction, and a reference to recent acquisitions in the field of geography and other departments of geology, the southern limits of the great glacial formations of North America were sketched and illustrated by wall map. In addition to the already known limits in the east, new facts were given respecting the outline in Dakota and Montana, the line being found to pass

Abstract of an address before the section of geology and geography of the American association for the advancement of science at Buffalo, Aug. 19, 1886, by T. C. Chamberlin, vice president of the section.

nearly due west from the latitude of Bismarck to within forty miles of the Rocky Mountains, where it curves rapidly to the north, and skirts the mountains as far into British America as yet traced. Within the United States the limit of north-eastern drift barely touches that of demonstrative local glaciation from the Rocky Mountains. Westward of this, in the valleys of Flathead, Pend D'Oreille, and Osoyoos lakes, and Puget Sound, are deposits of drift regarded as prolongations of the more general drift of British Columbia, which, if not a continuous mantle, at least passes beyond the character of simple local mountain drift. South of this general drift are deposits of ancient glaciers in the Cascades, Sierras, Rockies, some of the intermediate ranges, and, according to some authorities, the Appalachians. The lacustrine deposits of the great basin region were correlated with the glacial deposits in time and causation.

A wealth of significance lies in the sinuosities, vertical undulations, and varying characters of the southern border. It undulates over the face of the land essentially as much as an arbitrary line from New York harbor to Puget Sound, and could be reduced to horizontality as it must have been to have marked the margin of some ancient ice-bearing body of water-only by incredible warpings and dislocations. The border of the drift presents three notable phases; one part terminating in a thickened belt, a terminal moraine; another in a thin margin; and a third in an attenuated border of scattered pebbles. The morainic border prevails in the Atlantic region, and lies on or near the limit as far west as central Ohio, beyond which it retires from it. Throughout the rest of the stretch to the Rocky Mountains the attenuated edges prevail. The latter are thought to represent, one a glacial and the other a glacio-natant action. The attenuated borders are believed to delimit an earlier ice incursion, and the morainic border a later one, which overrode the former in the coast region but fell behind it in the interior, having its extension in similar moraines in the interior.

Corroborative testimony is found in facts drawn from orographic attitudes, drainage, erosion, decomposition, ferrugination, vegetal accumulations, and lacustrine oscillations in the great basin. The interval between the two epochs is measured geologically by the cutting down of the beds of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and upper Ohio rivers so me two hundred to three hundred feet, chiefly in rock; of the upper Missouri River to greater depth; and by an elevation of the upper Mississippi of eight hundred to one thousand feet. Of the earlier drifts, two important subdivisions seem indicated by present data, and several subordinate

ones of the later. The distribution of these was outlined. A third series of drift sheets, of greater uniformity of material and regularity of deposition, occupying the great basins of the St. Lawrence valley, the Red River of the North, and limited areas of the coast region, and delimited in part by beach ridges, was sketched. The major opinion concerning the oldest series favors their glacier origin, but this opinion is not unanimous. Concerning the second, or moraine-bordered group, opinion is overwhelming that they are direct glacier products. Concerning the third series, the weight of opinion favors their subaqueous deposition, either in fringing lakes or in more general submergence. The differentiations of the characters of the three groups were further sketched. Of unstratified bowldery clays or tills, there is the richest variety, ranging through varying combinations of material, texture, and aggregation. Three genetic classes were recognized: 1o, subglacial tills; 2°, englacial or superglacial tills; 3°, subaqueous tills; and 4°, tills ridged by the thrust of the margin of the ice.

Of moraines, terminal, lateral, medial, and interlobate varieties are found. The great terminal moraines overshadow all others in interest and importance. The distribution of the chief ones were shown upon the map. The Nantucket and Cape Cod moraines were regarded, with more confidence than ever, as the equivalents of the Kettle Range of Wisconsin, and the Altamont and Gary moraines of Dakota. Outside of these chief moraines, there are occasional belts of older drift aggregated in the similitude of peripheral moraines. Examples are found in central Indiana, western Montana, and the plains of the British Possessions. Back from the two principal terminal moraines lie several similar partially determined belts, usually of less prominence and continuity.

Our most unique moraines are the interlobate, developed between the tongues into which the great ice sheet of the second epoch was divided at its margin. About a dozen of these, located in half as many states, were recognized; but only a part present full evidence of true interlobate character. Beautiful lateral moraines abound in the mountainous regions of the west, and some were developed by local glaciation supervening upon the ice retreat of the east. Our medial moraines are unimportant, and confined essentially to mountainous glaciation. Allied to the true moraines are special forms of aggregation of the subglacial debris, among which were enumerated : 1°, till tumuli; 2°, mammillary and lenticular hills; 3°, elongated parallel ridges, trending with the ice movement; 4°, drift billows; 5°, crag and