This mill makes 350 barrels of cement a day at a cost of $2.20 per barrel, operation and materials and first cost of mill being charged against the first 220,000 barrels. The cost by shipping would have been $9.00 per barrel. picture. We have seen the fruits of patriotic nationality. Let us see the logical and legitimate fruits of laissez-faire. If President Roosevelt's stand is well taken, that in river-control the government is justifiable in legislating in river and harbor bills at one end of the river, it is also justifiable in legislating for water-storage reservoirs at the other. So should the contention receive support that if the national Reclamation Acts are justified in creating new farms, fields, homes and gardens from the arid and desolate plain; that the government should also legislate against the conspiracy of gold-dredging land-destroyers in California and elsewhere which is turning some of the garden-spots of the world into desolate and irredeemable wilderness. On account of the fabulous profits yielded by gold-dredging, now the most lucrative industry in the world, the orange-groves and prune-orchards of the most fertile valleys of California are some of them already irremediably ruined, or doomed to the destruction which has no resurrection. For the sake of a quick and brilliant profit, extracting once for all from a soil twice blessed, the yellow fruit below the ground, these gold-ships have destroyed and are destroying once for all that wealth of fertility which has yielded such wealth of yellow fruit above. It has been sad enough to watch the denudation of our American forests, but the tree will grow again if the soil is left. But to destroy an orange-orchard as a mere preliminary to the making of the soil beneath it an everlasting desolation, to wipe a fertile valley off the face of the world forever, this is a double crime, a crime against the nation and against the future. In all the wide world there is hardly a duplication of the beauty and fertility of some of the tributaries of the Great Sacramento Valley. From $25,000,000 to $40,000,000, I am credibly informed, have been invested within twelve or fifteen months in California's fertilest areas, which have been condemned to what the valley of the Feather river is to-day at Ovoville, where I have seen square miles behind forty gold-ships, of piles and stretches of washed and whitened boulders looking for all the world like heaps of whitened skulls. And if the contention of the contemporaries of those who believe in the divine right of kings or the divine right of "barons," that a man's business is his own business, and that a man can do what he likes with his property, without reference to the society of which he is a part, has been forever annihilated in a free country; so must the claim be valid, once denied by those who once owned irresponsibly their wives, their children and their slaves, that there are properties which the muniments of title do not give them power ruthlessly and everlastingly to destroy-they escaping punishment, leaving for posterity the "weeping and gnashing of teeth." FRANK VROOMAN Berkeley, California. THE INITIATIVE A DEMOCRATIC SAFEGUARD AGAINST CLASS-GOVERNMENT. BY ELTWEED POMEROY, A.M., IN N THE May issue of The American Journal of Sociology* appears an attack on the popular initiative by W. H. Brown, secretary of the Civic Federation of Chicago. The discussion though long, occupying more than one-fourth of the entire magazine, is singularly lacking in wisdom and real grasp of the facts of life, and shows scant sympathy with the common people or true democracy. It is purely critical and destructive in character and attempts to tear down while proposing nothing constructive. It would stop advance or experiments in advance, proposes no remedies for the known evils, which, indeed, it glosses over. In fact, the whole article bears the ear-marks but of that section of the professional class that holds seats in highly-endowed universities. Usually the members of the anæmic, bookish class in any community know the authorities on any subject, are accurate in their citations from these authorities, and though often biased and usually weak in their judgments, show that they intend to be fair. Mr. Brown has the faults of his class but not its virtues. He is not familiar with his authorities, is not accurate in his statements of fact, and he is not fair. He quotes Deploige, who is not an advocate but a critic of DirectLegislation, and the Webbs and Lilian Tomm, who are English Fabian oppo efeller," wrote: "I have read a great deal that you have written and would be much pleased to have the article from you, but we are suffering from such a congestion of material," etc., etc. He could give thirty-seven pages to an attack, but not five, or even one page, to an answer. The real reason is probably found in the heading, where it says, "Founded by John D. Rockefeller." nents of Direct-Legislation, as if they were advocates making damaging admissions. He shows his ignorance of the whole movement on the first page, where he says: "The scheme of the initiative includes (1) direct-legislation (the proposal of laws by petition and the adoption of them by majority vote); (2) the 'veto of the people (the submission by petition of laws passed by legislative bodies to the voters for sanction or rejection); (3) the recall or imperative mandate." It would be difficult to imagine a more inaccurate summary. The recall is not a part of the initiative or of the referendum, or of Direct-Legislation. The recall is a democratic method kindred to Direct-Legislation in its underlying principle, and most of the advocates of Direct-Legislation believe in it, but it is not a part of Direct-Legislation. The National Direct-Legislation Convention, held at St. Louis in 1896, by resolution permitted Direct-Legislation and Referendum Leagues to attach the recall and proportional representation to their objects, but expressly stated that neither of these was a part of Direct-Legislation. Direct-Legislation consists of the direct proposal and vote on laws in small communities, as for example, in the New England town-meetings and the Swiss Landsgemeinde. In larger communities Direct-Legislation is attained through (1) the initiative or proposal by petition of a law by a reasonable minority, which law, if not passed by the legislature, must go to a vote of the people; and (2) the referendum, which is the vote by the people on a law after either an initiative petition or a reference by the legislature or a petition from the people. There are one or two other forms of the referendum, but it usually means the vote on a law passed by the legislature after a petition from the people. popular initiative is founded upon the general theory that representative government is a failure. It implies also that constitutional government is a failure." I do not know of a single advocate of the initiative who says that constitutional government is a failure. I know very few advocates who would say that representative government is a failure comall of us would admit that it is a failure pared with past governments; though compared with the hopes entertained for it a century ago or with its actual crude workings at that time, before privileged and class interests became preponderating influences in government, or compared with the ideal of what a representative system might be if buttressed and improved by Direct-Legislation. Later he makes the astounding statement that "in every city in the country it has either been abandoned or has become the source or cause of the very worst features of political corruption.' No examples does he give in proof of this, while I can cite Brookline, Massachusetts, with over twenty thousand population, which spends more money yearly than the State of New Hampshire and has to-day its town-meeting as it had nearly three centuries ago. I could cite many another New England town, as well as the fact that the towns of Massachusetts are many of them larger than cities in other states, because they are loath to give up the acknowledged benefits of the town-meeting. Further than this, I could cite a number of Swiss cities. If Mr. Brown refers to Direct-Legislation, by the initiative and referendum, I can cite Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, and other American cities, and Zürich, Geneva, Berne and other Swiss cities. If he means to oppose the initiative and referendum by saying that the town-meeting is not suited to large communities, he is using a disgraceful quibble. On this I at once agree with him and say that the town-meeting is not suited to large cities, Mr. Brown's first criticism is that "the but that the initiative and referendum are the improved machinery for applying to are xcites the principles underbring the town-meeting. Aber gooting from Captain Cadman's admiracie tract, he says that “an abiding fat in the bonesty and intelligence of a Tapety of the voters, which includes SOLITY DOĆ ODŻy to comprehend the most eimponated questions, but also to draft avs conceming them, is the foundation stone of the whole scheme"; and he then goes on to oppose it. I would continue to cite errors of judgment and misstatements of fact extendmy through many pages, but these, being TOLL are subcient. The man is antidemocratic in sentiment-a thoroughgoing reactionary with face set toward correlative of that, that the legislature may not prevent the enactment of needed legislation by refusing to initiate them, I believe in the initiative. The two go together. These will not supersede leg- i islatures but purify and ennoble them, raising their members to the old and noble title still retained in some of our cities, of Councillors to the People. In this sense I, and I believe all other advocates of Direct-Legislation, have an abiding faith in the intelligence and honesty of the people and in their ability to know their own business and to pass on the laws and rules for that business. Mr. Brown believes in government; we believe in self-government. He desires either a king or an hereditary or elective aristocracy; we desire, as the Swiss constitution puts it, “a republic either representative or democratic," though I would prefer to say a republic both representative and democratic. He is of the past and of the Old World; we are heralds of the future and of the New World. He is anti-American; we American. ELTWEED POMEROY. East Orange, N. J. J. CAMPBELL CORY: CARTOONIST. BY B O. FLOWER. "EXT to our magnificent system of patie-schools the press is the greatest popular educator in the land. loceed the daily paper educates vast mitmes from foreign shores who have Deme had the splendid opportunities pa ty or fee-school system. In rredsmadre of this fact one has only to Die the sombers of foreign workmen ʼn var gert ates during the noon-hour I the work boars Wherever conparated it will be noticed that a number of these are found perusing the papers, mming from the pictures to laboriously decipher the reading matter. First the large print lures them on and stimulates interest, until they spend all the noonhour not devoted to their meal in becoming acquainted with the news of the day and the large-typed editorials. But it is the pictures which almost invariably first challenge their interested scrutiny,the pictures illustrating news items, the cartoons and the funny drawings. Children and the frivolous and superficial will frequently turn first to the humorous drawings, but we have frequently noted that the earnest workmen from foreign |