The Ballingtons. By Frances Squire. Cloth. Pp. 445. Price, $1.50. Boston: Little, Brown & Company.

THIS is a powerful but gloomy story of unhappy married life. The author has written a novel that may be called a cross-section of present-day life dealing with unfortunate domestic relations and the infinite tragedy that such relations imply to those who are responsive to life's higher, finer and subtler

moods and calls.

young

A young girl, her heart filled with the beautiful ideals of youth and with a deep reverence and love for the beauty of the universe and for the Power that made that universe, marries a man who is not only an agnostic himself but who determines to mould his wife after a pattern of his own choosing. The problems which confront her in her struggles to retain her individuality and self-respect in the midst of an environment which is fatal to all normal development of mind or soul, and at the same time to be true to what she conceives to be her duty as a wife, constitutes the groundwork for the story, which, however, also deals with the joys and sorrows of many other persons whose lives become more or less entangled with those of Ferdinand Ballington and his wife.

As a literary production the story deserves high praise. It is realistic in the best sense of that much-abused term, and the depressing effect of the story is at times counteracted by an underlying vein of humor which permeates much of the dialogue. The book is undoubtedly a true picture of conditions that unfortunately prevail in many American homes to-day; yet it is a book that we cannot find it in our heart to recommend, as it does not solve the problem and the general effect upon the reader's mind is decidedly depressing.

AMY C. RICH.

A Maker of History. By E. Phillips Oppenheim. Illustrated. Cloth. Pp. 305.

AIN

Price, $1.50. Boston: Little, Brown & Company.

WE HAVE to-day few more prolific novelists than Mr. Oppenheim, and few, indeed, who possess more marked talent in certain directions than does he. A Prince of Sinners promised much for the future of the young author, and its promise the writer feels would have been realized had Mr. Oppenheim been content to give the public one novel a year instead of the four that have appeared from his pen within a little more than a twelvemonth.

Like all his previous works, A Maker of History will hold the reader's breathless interest from start to finish. Here we find the same crisp, epigrammatic style which was so marked a feature, though in a far greater degree, of A Prince of Sinners, and the ingenuity of plot which characterized Mysterious Mr. Sabin. Like the latter novel, A Maker of History deals with secret political intrigues in which Germany plays a far from creditable part. Mr. Oppenheim has utilized a wellknown international incident of the late war between Russia and Japan in a very ingenious and original manner as the basis of the plot of the story.

A young Englishman accidentally becomes the possessor of a page from a sercet treaty between Germany and Russia—a treaty which might involve France in serious difficulty were she kept in ignorance of it, which is the intention of the Czar and the Kaiser. The fact of

the existence of this sheet of paper becomes known, however, to the secret police of France, and the struggles of the secret service of Germany and France to obtain possession of the paper lead to some very exciting and melodramatic adventures for the young Englishman and his sister and friends who become

this contribution is more interesting than was the

this issue we present the second division of Professor KERLIN'S able presentation of the master-currents of thought of the nineteenth century. If possible

and dealing in a luminous manner with such brilliant and opinion-influencing minds as GOETHE, CARLYLE, BROWNING and GEORGE ELIOT. These

two papers constitute one of the most valuable contributions of the year for serious-minded students of intellectual and ethical advance.

Trafficking in Trusts; or, Philanthropy from the Insurance View-Point: We desire to call the special attention of all our readers to the paper by Mr. HARRY A. BULLOCK on "Trafficking in Trusts" in this issue of THE ARENA. The author is one of the most thoughtful and fearless journalists of New York City, a man who is intimately acquainted with the workings of Wall street and insurance financiers, and his paper can be relied on as accurate. It is, we think, the best popular presentation of the insurance situation as it stands to-day that has been written.

The Federal Regulation of Railroad Rates: This month we publish the third of Professor PARSONS' notable series of papers on the railways. This paper deals with the regulation of rates. It will be followed by two extremely valuable papers, one dealing with the railways of Switzerland and the other with the railways of Germany. Professor PARSONS, in order to thoroughly equip himself for the preparation of his two great works now on the press dealing with the railroad question, has not only traveled all over the United States obtaining facts and data from authoritative sources, but he also spent many months in the Old World, among other things making a careful personal study of the government-owned railways of Switzerland and Germany, and these papers will embody the result of his personal investigations. In this connection we wish to state that all readers of THE ARENA should possess copies of the two new works by Professor PARSONS, which will probably be published before this issue of the magazine. One is being brought out by Dr. C. F. TAYLOR of Philadelphia and is entitled The Railways, the Trusts and the People. It is a monumental volume and will be indispensable to all serious students of present-day political questions in the United States. The other volume, The Heart of the Railroad Question, is being brought out by the well-known Boston firm of LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY and will, we believe, be the strongest presentation of the subject of railroad discriminations that has appeared.

The Single-Tax: We invite the special attention of our readers to the strong, clear and concise presentation of the land-reform philosophy as interpreted by HENRY GEORGE, which is presented in this issue of THE ARENA by Mr. JOHN Z. WHITE, one of the ablest and most popular representatives of the Single-Tax in America.

College Coöperative Stores in America: There are few more important questions before the people than that of voluntary cooperation. The steady and uninterrupted strides which have marked this movement in Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe, and the number of promising if sporadic experiments which have been successful in America, indicate the early advent of a general cooperative movement, especially as union or cooperation is the keynote of the age and the union of all for all is the only just form of cooperation which can be established. Few of our readers, we imagine, have any conception of

the extent to which the coöperative principle has been in practical operation during recent years in the colleges of this country. They will therefore read with deep interest the very thoughtful presentation of this subject by Mr. IRA CROSS of the University of Wisconsin.

America in the Philippines: Our conversation this month will, we think, prove of special interest to our readers, dealing as it does in a clear, direct and convincing manner with conditions in the Philippines as witnessed by one of our foremost American women in public life. Especially would we call the attention of our readers to Mrs. GOUGAR's views on contract-labor, relating as they do to the great conflict which is now being waged between justice and injustice, between democracy and reaction, between moral integrity and materialistic commercialism.

The Coming Exodus: This paper by ARTHUR S. PHELPS will be read with interest by our readers. The author graduated from Yale and holds the degrees of B.A. and B.D. from that institution. We do not regard the coming exodus as a step backward, but as distinctly a step forward-a step toward a saner and, under present social and economic conditions, toward an environing condition that shall make for a higher and more normal development than is possible in the crowded centers of presentday life.

The Color-Line in New Jersey: There is nothing more needed to-day than the tearing away of hypocritical pretense from officials in various departments of public service. If laws are on the statute-books, they should be enforced rigorously, fairly and impartially. Nothing is more demoralizing in its influence or better calculated to destroy respect for law in the minds of the people than the maintenance on the statute-books of laws and the systematic evasion of their execution by the officials. In this issue of THE ARENA Mr. LINTON SATTERTHWAIT, one of the cleanest and strongest lawyers of New Jersey, exposes in a trenchant manner a typical case of this systematic refusal on the part of officials to uphold the statutes they are sworn to enforce.

Incurable: Our story this month is more than an interesting and human sketch. It carries with it a great and needed lesson. No more vicious philosophy can be promulgated than that which holds that it is the duty of pure, high-minded women to marry degraded or debauched men in order to save them. Such unions most frequently result in inharmony, misery and the moral degradation of the wife, while the offspring of such marriages are not unfrequently moral degenerates. Mr. CARMAN is an old contributor to THE ARENA, having written for it many years ago a short time after we had founded this review, and our old readers will welcome him back to our pages.

The Railways of Colorado: Hon. J. Warner Mills' discussion of the railways of Colorado does not appear in this issue because the manuscript arrived too late to be used this month. It will appear in the May ARENA, and will richly repay the waiting on the reader's part.

VOL. 35

I.

THE OLIGARCHY OF THE
RICH THE GRAVEST MENACE

ON

TO THE REPUBLIC.

NE QUESTION transcends all other issues calling for the immediate action of our people, because on it depends the fate of free institutions. For more than a quarter of a century a power has been at work in our civic and business life as sinister as it is destructive to democratic government; a power not altogether new, it is true, in political and commercial affairs, but now for the first time perfectly organized and so developed as to act as a formidable, sentient being whose growth has been as rapid as its evil influence has been far-reaching and pronounced. This baleful influence has now entrenched itself so firmly in city, state and national government and has become so arrogant and aggressive a force in the business world that it defies laws when it cannot prevent their enact ment. Its high priests hold that it is immaterial to them what the courts desire to know. It has bulwarked itself behind untold millions of wealth largely acquired by indirection and criminal methods. It has surrounded itself by a bodyguard of

must be destroyed or the Republic of the future will mask a despotism of privileged wealth as absolute in power as was the oligarchy that long ruled the so-called Republic of Venice, or as was Augustus Cæsar after he became the supreme power in the imperial republic of Rome.

At the outset let the line be clearly drawn between honest and dishonest wealth; between the money that has been earned by just labor or with out injuring others, and the money that has been acquired by criminal methods-by methods as multitudinous as they are infamous and that have frequently embraced a crime that should rank with high treason

the corruption of the people's representatives. No danger confronts the Republic to-day comparable to the evil influence of the oligarchy of the criminal rich who are corrupting government, demoralizing business, obliterating the sense of moral proportion in church,