A Minneapolis professor has discovered that the earth is flat.-News Item.

PERHAPS THIS IS THE REASON.

five dollars, was offered a princely salary by one of the metropolitan journals if he would devote his genius to drawing cartoons for the paper. He replied that he would draw cartoons favorable to the views of the publisher if he could select his subjects and present them as he desired, but that he would not draw cartoons that he felt would convey false and misleading impressions to the minds of the people, or that would represent in pleasing garb things that he believed to be inimical to the national welfare and the cause of justice. Though he knew not where he would get his next week's board, this man refused to prostitute his God-given intellect for the liberal salary that was offered. Both these men are typical of scores of our artists, poets, novelists and journalists who are already awakened and are moving forward in the interests of liberty, justice and the fundamental principles of democracy.

Sixty years ago the slave-power had completely dominated our government, and to many it seemed impregnably in

swayed the popular mind and moulded public opinion. To-day we are in a condition not unlike that of a half a century ago, only the benefits enjoyed by privileged classes come from different sources. For the past quarter of a century publicservice companies, great corporations and trusts and other privileged interests have been gradually gaining more and more power in government precisely as the slave oligarchy for a quarter of a century prior to 1860 steadily advanced in political power; and with this increase in power abuses that have been rendered possible through the indifference, intellectual stagnation and recreancy to the high demands of democracy on the part of the people have grown with amazing rapidity.

Since the money-controlled machines have become dominant factors in municipal, state and national life, the public

PUBLIC "WHAT A SUCKER I MUST BE!'

service companies and privileged interests have been able to reap hundreds of millions of dollars by extortion and indirection, while corruption-that moral leprosy that undermines individual character and destroys national life has rapidly spread throughout all the ramifications of political and business life.

So oppressive have grown the extortions of the new feudalism of capital, and so flagrant the corruption that has marked the ascendency of machine government over the old-time government "of the people, by the people and for the people," that the millions of America are being compelled to think and think most seriously. Into the consciousness of almost all the bread-winners the grim facts are in one way or another being slowly pressed home. Even our young artist has recently received one of these personal object-lessons, for, after giving his reply to our question which we have quoted above, as to his views on public questions, he added: "I have received a notice in this morning's mail from the New York Life Insurance Company that the premium on my policy will be due in a few days. I have some ideas along that line

I can tell you, but I do not think you would want to print them." Now, to Mr. Handy the frightful revelation of moral turpitude on the part of the officials of the great New York life insurance companies who have so long denounced reformers as demagogues and who have posed as "the safe, the sane and the ultra-respectable" guardians of moral integrity and national honor, has come home with the force of something that has a very direct and personal interest to him. It is safe to say he has thought on this question as he has never thought before, and having begun to think he will see that insurance corruption has been made possible by political corruption and that in a self-governing state every citizen is morally accountable for his duty to the public weal. He will see that indifference on the part of a citizen, and above all on the part of one who has it in his power to mould public sentiment, is a moral wrong, and he will more and more come to understand that the nation calls for men of conviction; that in a battle between reaction and freedom, between civic righteousness and corruption, between privi

leged interests and the interests of all every true man must make a brave stand for the cause of the nation and the happiness and prosperity of the people, and when these truths come clearly home to him, he will, we confidently believe, be found shoulder to shoulder with all those who are fighting Humanity's battle, for the artist like the poet is naturally an idealist, a man of imagination, of fine feelings and possessed of an innate love of justice.

In all Mr. Handy's cartoons a little bear is seen somewhere in the picture. This might almost be said to be his trademark. In this issue we give a fine portrait of the artist and his little bear, which is, indeed, one of the most thoroughly

artistic photographs that has come to our office in many months. We also reproduce some of Mr. Handy's best pictures drawn during the recent unpleasantness between Russia and Japan, as well as some of the best examples of his political and general caricatures. His work is not so finished as some of our older artists', but the sketches show the presence of the quick intellect and the keen imagination which is of vital importance for the successful artist. Application and practice will improve the technique, and in a few years Mr. Handy's work should rank with the most finished drawings of his older fellow-craftsmen. B. O. FLOWER.

Boston, Mass.

"With a mature generation there is never much to be done, neither in things material nor spiritual,

neither in matters of taste nor of character. Be ye wise and begin in the schools."-Goethe.

FRO

ROM time to time as civilization toilsomely advances along the highway of wisdom there arise certain prophets of progress who formulate into a practical and intelligible message great truths that become the real marching orders for civilization in certain fields of activity. Take, for example, the educational world. Who can measure the farreaching influence for good exerted by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and his illustrious pupil, Friedrich Fröbel, those apostles of the new education who insisted on a natural system of instruction-one training the sense of observation so as to bring out the fullest capacity of the childdren in such a way as to pleasantly engage the imagination while the intellect was being drilled, developed and enriched with knowledge, so that the child in the

school should grow unconsciously morally, mentally and physically, precisely as his life naturally unfolds in beauty in a well-ordered, love-illuminated home of culture?

These great educational revolutionists whose sane and practical theories have not only influenced the educational methods of all civilized lands, but whose views were so fundamentally sound that we find the measure of true educational advance the world over is in proportion to the degree in which their theories have become a living, animating influence in educational matters, were ignored and scorned by the slothful, superficial and reactionary educators of their day. Yet because their message impearled a vital, fundamental truth for which an expanding and developing civilization was waiting, it took root and spread through all lands where liberty fosters human unfoldment. Pestalozzi lighted a torch and

held it aloft in the mountains of freedom's European cradle. The light-inspired Fröbel, stimulating him to go farther even than his master, while both these original thinkers awakened the spirit of free inquiry and fostered original thinking and research which is the hope of civilization.

Among those who came under the influence of Fröbel was Louisa Frankenburgh. This remarkable woman, after serving several years as an assistant to the great German father of the kindergarten, removed to Columbus, Ohio, where she founded the first kindergarten established in the New World. Among her pupils was little Wilson, the son of John L. Gill. The child came under the remarkable influence of the German preceptress to such a degree that the charm of the early school-days and the spirit she imparted became a lifelong and precious heritage. Later, when his common-school education was over, he went to college, graduating from Yale in 1874. In addition to the regular curriculum Mr. Gill took an extensive course in social and political economy under President Woolsey, General Francis Walker and Professor William G. Sumner. After finishing his education he engaged in some large business enterprises in which he was eminently successful; but all the time his mind brooded over the subject of popular education, which, as a farseeing patriot gifted with a statesman's vision, he discerned to be the supreme problem that confronted the world's latest and most important advance step in government-democracy. All the time a voice seemed to be calling him to the highest service in which a citizen of a free state can engage,-that of exalting and rendering efficient in the highest degree the noblest functions of a free state, to the end that individual development, prosperity and happiness may render permanent and ever sympathetic to progress free institutions. The lessons that were impressed on the mind of the child by the old co-laborer of Fröbel

had left their impress, and it was as though the spirit of the great master haunted the gifted young scholar, urging him to take up the work of enlightened education and carry it forward.

The aim and desire uppermost in the brain of Fröbel had been to a great extent defeated by the utilitarian spirit of our age which seized upon part of his thought and so developed it as to make it overshadow the master's plan to make educational development embrace the stimulation and education of the imagination and the training of self-government in the young, while at the same time so unobtrusively but effectively emphasizing moral ideals as to build up high, fine characters, making the school act in this way as a powerful supplement to a home of culture and refinement and making it supply in a large degree the deficiency of such home influences where they were wanting in a child's life.

It was not, however, the influence of Fröbel and his ideals that alone influenced Mr. Gill. Indeed, it is doubtful whether they were even a major factor. He was a true American, instinct with the moral idealism of the fathers of the republic, and a natural educator. He therefore could not fail to see the defects of all past educational methods in properly developing the character of the young and the striking failure of education in the United States to impress the child with the civic duty devolving on all persons who have the right of franchise. He knew how insistent the greatest of the fathers had been on the importance of education; how Jefferson held that popular education was absolutely essential to the success of a republican government; how he had labored to perfect a magnificent system of free schools, from the lowest grade to the university for the young of Virginia. But he also saw that while our public-school system was so magnificent in many respects as to entitle it to be regarded as a chief glory in the crown of our national life, it had failed to develop the civic spirit or to make the young the