children of Chicago that never heard of Jesus Christ except from the profanity of the streets,-worse conditions in New York, and like conditions in all large cities. The glory of an independent home; twenty millions of children in this Christian land with no chance to inherit from their parents even a grave plat, and but scant chance of ever owning an acre by their own toil. The laws regulating Tools were likewise violated by the Southern kingdom, and these violations invariably brought disaster. The following gives a faint picture of their effect on the political life of the people and upon their public interests in general. Nehemiah, who was to the Jews what Agis and Cleomena were to the Greeks, and the Gracchi were to the Romans, a prophet come in time to delay but not to divert national disintegration. In the fifth chapter of the book which bears his name he gives us a picture of the effect of interest which, for realism, is excelled nowhere in economic literature: "And there was a great cry of the people and of their wives against their brethren, the Jews. For there were that said, We We have mortgaged our land, vineyards have our lands and our vineyards."-Ne- This would seem to be a picture of evils of land monopoly; but as if to emphasize the economic fact that all economic history has writ large, that Rent would be Samson shorn of his locks but for the coöperation of its twin brother, Interest, he gives the complete diagnosis of the national disorder in one sentence: them, Ye exact usury, every man of his "I rebuked the nobles, and said unto brother."-Neh., 5:7. It had now been nearly a hundred years since the return of a large part of the Jewish people from Babylon. The mass of them came back poor. A few who had made money in Babylon had opened pawnshops and real-estate-mortgage offices, charging one per cent. per month, as appears from verse eleven of the chapter quoted. The collection of rents referred to in the same verse was only an incident of the loan business resulting from the unpleasant necessity of foreclosing mortgages on such land as could not pay twelve per cent. besides supporting the farmers and providing for the king's tribute. During this reign of Interest, by means of "Eastern money" generously loaned for the "development of the West," not a stone had been relaid in the walls of Jerusalem or any other Jewish city, and the people were in "great affliction and reproach." (Nehemiah, 1:3.) Private comfort for the masses was as rare as public enterprise among the rulers. The too poor to build houses; and beset on common people lived in shacks and tents, all sides by enemies, without city-wall protection, permanent houses would have been destroyed as fast as built. (Neh., 7:4.) Ezra and Zerubabel, as their first task on the return of the Jews nearly one hundred years before, had rebuilt the temple and reestablished the priesthood. If religious rites could ever bring popular prosperity without economic justice, good times should have been enjoyed by the Israelites when they first returned to their ancient heritage. But then, as now, the pawn-shop paralyzed the pulpit. The marvelous prosperity which followed this period of debt and degradation. when Nehemiah abolished usury and compelled the restoration of both interest and rent that had been collected during this reign of robbery, mentioned in a former article of this series, reveals more fully the blackness of this century of economic night. In spite of all efforts of statesmen like Nehemiah to reëstablish permanently the economic system of Moses, and of prophets like Malachi to make religion and social justice synonymous, the trend of this people continued steadily toward the fulfilment of the prophecy of Ezekiel: "There is a conspiracy of her prophets like a roaring lion, ravening the prey; they have devoured souls; they have taken the treasure and precious things; her priests have violated my law. "Her princes in the midst of her are like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, and to destroy souls to get dishonest gain. And her prophets have daubed them with untempered mortar (modern vernacular "whitewash"), seeing vanity and divining lies unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord God, when the Lord hath not spoken. "The people (ruling class) of the land have used oppression and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and the needy: yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully. And I sought for a man among them who should make up the hedge and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none. "Therefore have I poured out my indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath: their own way I have recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord God."-Ezek., 22:25-31, condensed. The evils of land monopoly cursed the kingdom of Israel as well as that of Judah, and the violation of the law of land tenure, especially in the matter of rent, is assigned by Amos as the cause of its downfall: "Forasmuch, therefore, as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat; ye have built houses of hewn stone and ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink the wine of them. "Therefore wailing shall be in all the streets, and they shall say in all highways, alas! alas!"-Amos, 5:11-16. The most specific charge against the Northern kingdom, however, was that of tampering with the currency and making a dear shekel, thus using the market for robbery: "Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land be gone, that we may sell corn? And to fail, saying, when will the new moon the Sabbath that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small and the shekel great and falsifying the balance by deceit. That we may buy the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of shoes. "Shall not the land tremble for this, and it shall be cast out and drowned as by the flood of Egypt."-Amos, 8:4-8. It will be noted that these "Captains of Industry" whose genius reduced the price of a man to a pair of shoes, were a pious folk so far as the observance of the Sabbath and feast-days was concerned, but on the market "business was business"; but Israel found, as we may yet find, that Sabbath observance is not religion, nor Fourth-of-July festivities patriotism of the kind that saves. In connection with this degeneracy of Israel, were the debauching of the youth and the suppression of all the enthusiasm of the young for political purity, and the forbidding of religious agitation against public wrong, as already noted in connection with the same evils in Judah: "And I raised of your sons prophets, and of your young men for Nazarites, but ye gave the Nazarites wine to drink; and commanded the prophets, saying, Prophesy not."-Amos, 2:11-12. The college that will not allow the truth on social problems to be taught to its students, and the ecclesiastical muzzle designed especially for ardent young ministers, are not wholly modern institutions. As to the effect of these violations of economic law on the social life, "race suicide" so much deplored by strenuous statesmen in recent times, was not omitted from this ancient catalogue of calamities having their root in economic law, as appears from the following: "They have deeply corrupted themselves as in the days of Gibeah:* Therefore He will remember their iniquities; He will visit their sins. "As for Ephraim (used by metonymy for the northern kingdom), their glory shall fly away like a bird, from the birth, from the womb, and from the conception. Give them, O Lord: What will Thou give them? give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts. Ephraim is smitten in their root and dried up; they shall bear no fruit. My God shall cast them away because they did not hearken unto Him: and they shall be wanderers among the nations."-Hosea, 9:9-17. Not only in matters of land and money did Israel fatally sin, but there was a disregard of general commercial relations sufficient for national disintegration: "For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they sold the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; they pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of the meek; and they lay themselves down upon clothes laid to pledge."-Amos, 2:6-8, condensed. Other national sins, not strictly violations of economic law, are often referred to as causes of national disaster, but they will invariably be found on close examination to be conditions growing out of economic wrong; such, for instance, is intemperance: *Referring to the economic and social evils resulting in the first civil war mentioned in the begin ing of this article.—(Judges, 19:1-30.) "Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountains of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, Bring, let us drink."-Amos, 4:1. This passage tends to sustain the contention of the economic reformer that it attempt to suppress intemperance while is useless to waste social energy in the economic oppression creates conditions that make it impossible, that the chief cause of the drink evil lies deeper than the drink, and that the saloon will go only when the economic causes that make it inevitable shall go. From the foregoing it should clearly appear that the downfall of the Jewish Democracy, the division of the Jewish Monarchy, the captivity of the kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians, and the utter dispersion of the ten tribes composing it into an oblivion so deep that all attempts of history to fathom it have failed, the captivity of the two tribes composing the kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians, their subsequent oppression by various nations, and their final obliteration by the Romans, together with innumerable minor disasters, are all chargeable to violation of the fundamental law of this people relating to Land and Tools. The Jewish people, however, are not the only example which the Jewish literature furnishes of nations that fell because of the violation of economic law. Ezekiel says to Jerusalem: sister, Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, "Behold, this was the iniquity of thy and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters (suburbs); neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and the needy."-Ezek., 16:49. Much has been said of the social abom inations of Sodom, but seldom have they been referred to the extremes of wealth and poverty growing out of the violations of economic law, notwithstanding the plain language quoted above. Jeremiah says of Babylon: |