some others received forty cents per ton for mining coal; but all maintained that the removal or modification of the duty of seventy-five cents a ton on coal would result in lower wages and less earnings to the miners. Exactly why a duty of seventy-five cents is necessary to compensate the mine-owner for the difference between the forty cents he pays and what is paid in foreign mines, none but protectionists assume to know.

We may pay higher daily or weekly wages than any of our foreign competitors, and yet their labor, measured in the manufactured products, may be as expensive as ours. This depends upon the relative efficiency of the labor employed. But conceding that both our wages and labor-cost in products are higher, how, with our traditional revenue system, can ruin, decay, or harm come to our industries, even supposing them to be beneficially affected by taxation? Mr. Wright, Chief of the Labor Bureau, has analyzed the cost of making woolen cloth, and ascertained that the labor-cost in the dollar's worth of cloth is thirty-four cents. With the liquor and tobacco taxes retained, we must still derive a revenue of not less than $170,000,000 from customs, and from woolen fabrics the equivalent of the whole labor-cost.

Inconsiderate protectionists habitually point to 1847-60 for evidence that any substantial abatement or modification of needless taxation will result in industrial disaster, for they remember the business depression of 1857 in the low-revenue tariff period of fourteen years, from 1847 to 1860; but they forget that no part of our history of like duration is without like depression. When protection was more truthful than now, Mr. Morrill, in discussing the progress made in that period, said:

"We have made more rapid strides in cheapening manufactures, and therefore lessening the necessity for incidental protection, than ever England herself made in any equal period of time.”

A year later, March 12th, 1862, Mr. Morrill, speaking of the "prodigious increase" in the growth of our manufactures between 1850 and 1860, said: "Such facts should make every man with an American heart in his bosom glow with pride."

He was then speaking under circumstances favorable for eliciting truth-in hearing of unfriendly cannon.

In the fourteen years from 1847 to 1860, inclusive, the imports were, in proportion to population, very much less than in the fourteen years from 1867 to 1880, the very heyday of protection. In the former-named period the average annual importations of dutiable goods were $7.60 to the person, and duties paid, $1.85. In the latter period the average annual dutiable imports were $9.11 to the person, and duties paid, $3.91.

If we compare the last fourteen years, 1874 to 1887, with the period from 1847 to 1860, we find that imports of dutiable goods, which were to the person $1.85 in the earlier period, were $3.39 in the later fourteen years. These facts ought to dispose of all professed or real apprehension of a flood of imports, as well as of the rash assertion from France that the President's policy will increase imports tenfold.

Importations were least when tax restrictions and burdens were least. Under all conditions we have made, and grown in ability to make, the things useful to us. We shall continue to make them, with or without restrictions in the form of unnecessary tax burdens.

The cost of production, unfettered by taxation, and the price of commodities, have been greatly reduced in recent years by inventions and improved processes common to all manufacturing countries. Protection, while hindering both these great results, credits itself with both, as being the very means by which they have been accomplished.

The one contrivance with which protection may rightly credit itself is its method of procuring and saving congressional legislation. And this is not the least baneful result of the system.

WILLIAM R. MORRISON.

WOMAN'S MENTAL STATUS.

IN the January issue of the FORUM we find an article, “ Concerning Women," by Prof. Romanes, in opposition to woman suffrage, which he tells us is supplemental to one written by his friend, the late Mrs. Craik, which appeared in the September number. Prof. Romanes, speaking somewhat contemptuously of "our strong-minded sisters," says that they are "running their smaller and more tender heads against the wall of partition that nature has set up between the psychologies of sex."

He bases his argument for woman's inferiority to man almost entirely on what he calls the physiological differences between the sexes, and asserts, without any proof, that it is "psychologically impossible for women to rival men in intellectual toil." And yet he admits what Mrs. Craik asserts in her article, that "the average woman is superior to the average man; more estimable and lovable, nay, often more capable and reliable." If the "average" woman is often more "capable" and reliable than the average man, it follows that there cannot be the mental difference between the sexes that is claimed. In other qualities which come in to make up a complete manhood and womanhood Mrs. Craik concedes woman's superiority. She says: "In purity, single-mindedness, unselfishness, and faithfulness, the ordinary man is distinctly below the ordinary woman."

This admitted, there is no force in the offensive statement of Prof. Romanes, that "our strong-minded sisters are running their smaller and more tender heads against the wall of partition that nature has set up between the psychologies of sex." If "the average woman is superior to the average man, and often more capable and reliable," as Mrs. Craik asserts, then no logical argument for woman's inferiority to man can be based on the anatomical and psychological differences of the sexes. "Our evidence," says Prof. Romanes, "must be derived from expe

rience;" and experience shows that "the average woman is superior to the average man," whatever exceptions may be found of intellectual superiority in such men as Shakespeare, Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Demosthenes, who stand out from mankind by themselves and are not the representatives of any intellectual classes. We are not speaking of the exceptions, but of the "average men and women.

While experience confirms what Mrs. Craik teaches about the average woman being above the average man, it is claimed that "anatomy leads us to anticipate intellectual superiority on the part of the male." If so, anatomy contradicts experience and fact, and therefore proves nothing. But it is not true that anatomy teaches the "superiority of the male." Neither has it ever been proved, as is asserted, to be "an anatomical fact" that "the average brain-weight of civilized woman is about five ounces less than that of civilized man." This is the mere unsupported assertion of writers, and no evidence has ever been presented to sustain it. There is no such evidence in existence, because there is no report of the brain-weight of the most intellectual women that have lived. Authors are very careless in their statements on this subject. One eminent writer asserts that the brain of Cuvier, the great French naturalist, weighed between 59 and 60 ounces, while another, equally eminent, gives his brain-weight as 64 ounces, and yet another makes it 66 ounces. Such a difference in their statements about the weight of Cuvier's brain shows the carelessness of writers or their lack of information, and proves the futility of arguments from reported brain-weight.

We have high authority * for the statement that the brain of no eminently intellectual woman has ever been weighed, and therefore we can have no average brain-weight of women. Science is as silent as the grave about the brain-weight of such intellectual women as Hannah More, Madame de Staël, Maria

* Author of the article on "The Brain" in the "New American Cyclopædia," Vol. III., p. 625. A different statement is found in Dr. Thurman's paper, "On the Weight of the Human Brain" ("Journal of Mental Science," April, 1866), as quoted by Maudsley, in "Body and Mind," p. 53: Cuvier, naturalist, 64.5; Daniel Webster, 53.5; Chalmers, 53. Estimated brain-weight of idiocy: males, 37; females, 32.5.

Theresa, Marian Evans, Queen Elizabeth, Maria Edgeworth, Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Fry, Margaret Fuller, and others. And until we have some knowledge of the brain-weight of such eminent women, no valid argument can be based on the brainweight of women. We have now statistics only as to the brainweight of inferior women, taken largely from poor-houses and hospitals; and we are gravely told that the "average" brainweight of women is about five ounces less than the average brain-weight of men, with some of the most intellectual men of the world thrown into the scale to raise the male average. And this is called science!

There are no data from which to determine the average brainweight of women, for, as we have already said, the brain of no woman of intellectual eminence has ever been weighed, or if so, the result has not been reported. We have only the average brain-weight of women from pauper institutions, hospitals, potter's-fields, and prisons, and it is remarkable that their average brain-weight reaches as high as 45 ounces. This would be much increased if we had the maximum weight of the female brain, or the brain-weight of eminent women.

We have good authority-William Turner, M. B., F. R. S., Professor of Anatomy in the University of Edinburgh-for saying that

"No case has yet been recorded of the weight of the brain in a woman possessing intellectual eminence. But Boyd met with a woman's brain as high as 554 ounces, and many instances of upward of 50 ounces in women where there was no evidence of high mental endowment. Skae, in a female monomaniac, observed a brain which weighed 61 ounces, and of 300 females examined in the West Riding Asylum the weight of the brain in 26 cases was 50 ounces or upward. The size and weight of the brain do not, therefore, per se, give an exact method of estimating the intellectual power of the individual, and high brain-weight and great intellectual capacity are not necessarily correlated with each other."

If this is reliable, and we have no record of the brain-weight of any woman of intellectual eminence, it follows that no valid. conclusions can be drawn as to woman's intellectual ability from the "average" weight of woman's brain as at present reported. Up to the present time we have the brain-weight of women from only the lower classes of society, and none from the higher