profit on the capital which set all this labor in motion. It is plain, however, that I could not take one chair home with me at night and attempt to settle my bills with it, for the moment I undertook to divide the chair among my creditors, that very moment it would lose its value; so instead of taking the chair, which I cannot divide, I take its equivalent in money, which I can divide, but my wages all the time are fixed by the quantity of my own products. If instead of five chairs I were able to make ten, and the rate of compensation remained the same, I would obtain for my wages two chairs, or $8 per day; but instead of there being four chairs, or $16, available for the payment of the other labor, there would be eight chairs at $32; and thus the larger my wages, the larger my product, and the greater the prosperity in the chair-making industry.

Now, applying that principle to every other department of trade, we can see that the man who works on a tunnel cannot take part of the tunnel home with him for his wages, the man who paves the street cannot take part of the highway with him, but each one takes the money equivalent to that part of the product which is the result of his daily toil, and the laborer is the man who has the most vital interest in the character of the money which is paid to him. .

Nothing is more common than the mistake that money and property are identical. They are not. A redundancy of money does not prove any prosperity. There may be a very large amount of circulating medium and very great poverty. The issue of paper money simply is no more an increase of wealth than the issue by an individual of his promissory note would show an increase of his property. As a matter of fact, an increase in the coinage is no proof of an increase in property, but may be a strong proof of a decrease in wealth. . . . The volume of money plays but a small part even in the ordinary transactions of life. It is not the volume of money, but the activity of money, that counts. . . . Money never can circulate freely and actively unless there be absolute confidence in its value. If a man doubt whether the money in his pocket will be as valuable to-morrow as it is to-day, he will decline to exchange his commodity against it; and this Populistic agi

tation threatening the integrity of money has been the cause of the hard times through which this country is passing and from which it will not escape until the heel of popular condemnation is placed upon the Populistic agitation which undermines the foundation of our credit. . . .

In order that you should understand just how a change in the standard of value enables men to cheat their creditors, you have to consider the function which money plays in measuring debts. If I had paid $10 for ten yards of cloth to be delivered to me next week, and in the interim the government should pass a law declaring that hereafter eighteen inches shall constitute a yard, and that all existing contracts shall be settled in that system of measure, I would be cheated of one half the cloth for which I had paid. If, on the other hand, I owed a cloth merchant for ten yards of cloth which he had delivered to me, and which was payable next week, and in the meantime the government would change the standard of value and cut down the unit of coinage one half, then I would settle the debt with $5 and the cloth merchant would be cheated..

Underlying the whole scheme of civilization is the confidence men have in each other: confidence in their integrity, confidence in their honesty, confidence in their future. If we went to a silver coinage to-morrow, if we even debased our standard of value, men say that you would still have the same property you have to-day, you would still have the same soil, you would still have the same continent. And it is true. But so did the Indians have the same rivers that roll past your cities and turn the wheels of commerce as they pass. So were the mountains piled full of mineral treasures four hundred years ago. The same atmosphere enwrapt this continent, the same soil covered the fields, the same sun shone in heaven, and yet there was none but the savage pursuing the pathway of war through the trackless forests, and the rivers bore no single living thing except the Indian in his canoe, pursuing a pathway of destruction. There was no industrial coöperation, because the Indian was a savage and did not understand the principle by which men aid each other, by taking from the bosom of the earth the wealth which makes life bearable and develops the intelligence which makes civilization. Anything

that attacks that basis of human confidence is a crime against civilization and a blow against the foundations of social order.

We believe that the very essence of civilization is mutual interest, mutual forbearance, mutual coöperation. We believe the world has passed the time when men's hands are at each other's throats. We believe to-day that men stand shoulder to shoulder, working together for a common purpose, beneficial to all, and we believe that this attempt to assail wages, which means an attempt to attack the prosperity of all, will be resisted, not by a class, but by the whole nation. The dweller in the tenement house, stooping over his bench, who never sees a field of waving corn, who never inhales the perfume of grasses and of flowers, is yet made the participator in all the bounties of Providence, in the fructifying influence of the atmosphere, in the ripening rays of the sun, when the product of the soil is made cheaper to him every day by the abundance of the harvest. It is from his share in this bounty that the Populists want to exclude the American working man. To him we say, in the name of humanity, in the name of progress, you shall neither press a crown of thorns upon the brow of labor nor place a scourge upon his back. You shall not rob him of any one advantage which he has gained by long years of study, of progress in the skill of his craft, and by the careful organization of the members who work with him at the same bench. You shall not obscure the golden prospect of a further improvement in his condition by a further appreciation of the cost of living as by a further cheapening of the dollar which is paid to him.

There can be no distress, there can be no hard times, when labor is well paid. The man who raises his hand against the progress of the working man raises his hand against prosperity. He seeks to restrict the volume of production. He seeks to degrade the condition of the man who is steadily improving himself, and in his own improvement is accomplishing the improvement of all mankind. But this attempt will fail. I do not regret this campaign. I am glad this issue has arisen. The time has come when the people of this country will show their capacity for self-government. They will prove that the men who have led the world in the pathway of progress will be

the jealous guardians of liberty and honor. They are not to be seduced by appeals to their cupidity or moved by threats of injury. They will forever jealously guard and trim the lamp of enlightenment, of progress. They will ever relentlessly press and crush under their heels the flaming torch of Populistic discontent, Populistic agitation, and Populistic destruction. When this tide of anarchy shall have receded, this tide of Populistic agitation, this assault upon common honesty and upon industry shall have abated forever, the foundations of this republic will remain undisturbed. The government will still shelter a people indissolubly wedded to liberty and order, jealously forbidding any distinction of burden or of privilege, conserving property, maintaining morality, resting forever upon the broad basis of American patriotism and American intelligence.

JOHN PETER ALTGELD

ON MUNICIPAL AND GOVERNMENTAL

OWNERSHIP

John Peter Altgeld, an American politician and reformer, was born in Germany in 1845. Brought to this country as a child, he served in the Union army, later he studied law, and was judge of the Superior Court of Chicago from 1886 to 1891. He was Governor of Illinois from 1893 to 1897. As Governor the pardon which he extended to certain convicted anarchists gave rise to much comment. He was an advocate of free-silver and of socialism. He accomplished much in the field of prison reform. His death occurred in 1902. The following speech was delivered in Philadelphia on Labor Day, September 5, 1897.

ASIDE from the money question, the most serious problem that confronts the people of America to-day is that of rescuing their cities, their states and the Federal Government, including the federal judiciary, from absolute control of corporate monopoly. How to restore the voice of the citizen in the government of his country; and how to put an end to those proceedings in some of the higher courts which are farce and mockery on one side, and a criminal usurpation and oppression on the other.

Corporations that were to be servants and begged the privilege of supplying cities with conveniences, or of serving the country at large, have become masters.

We have had thirty years of colorless politics in which both of the political parties were simply conveniences for organized greed. There was nothing to arouse the deep, slumbering patriotism of the masses and a race of politicians came to the front, most of whom had no convictions and many of whom straddled every proposition and then waited to be seduced. They were men who made every promise to the laborer,