THE DAWN OF CONFIDENCE.

(Louisville Times.)

THE following notice has been received: "Business is good. Tell everybody so, and it will be better."

There is in all the axioms of the world of commerce and of industry no truth more certain than this. After a period of distrut follows pretty generally one of liquidation and readjustmen; then a dragging time of uncertainty, when prophets of evil are likely to have their innings until the day arrives when shrew observers begin to notice that the dire things that were going happen did not come to pass. If harvests are bad, or if failurs have been many and extensive, or if, anywhere in the world, there has been grieving waste in war, then will this waiting period be prolonged; but through it all savings will grow, as well because of the enforced economy as because stagnant industries are releasing capital and permitting loans to be paid off. Then one hears less of "bad times," though no one is talking of "good times;" then buying, which had been from hand to mouth, and reluctant a that, begins to expand to the point where surplus stocks can no longer satisfy it and the producer must needs increase his prodution. And so, very gradually and tentatively at first, with more employment comes a halt to pessimism; the effects of that incrosed employ-are shortly discernible in a greater buying power,and what was stagnant gives signs of activity and dilatation.

It has been often remarked that the most changeable element in the life of business is redit-the disposition of one man to trust another, not only by eason of his reliance on that other man's good faith, but by reason of his confidence in the outlook. After a time calamity, real & in a measure imaginary, everybody is suspicious of everybody else; let that calamity be overlooked, and everybody trusts everybody.

There is no mere theory of astract economics. Confidence begets confidence and as our text eaches, business will be better when people at large are willing to admit that it is good. To that stage we seem at length to have rrived. The beneficial effects of the "course of sprouts" to wh.h business has been sub

jected are plain to be seen; there have been savings and economies, involuntary, perhaps, but real; and soon the question will arise how and where to invest this surplus. That it exists the banking position sufficiently evidences; so does the prosperity of agriculture, our national sheet-anchor; so does the issue of new securities. And it exists in Europe, Germany, perhaps excepted, as on this side. In spite of the severe crisis which was brought about by the British coal strike, paralyzing industry, forcing the sale of the invested funds of the unions, bringing, besides, starvation to the homes of hundreds of thousands, ever England is hopeful.

Why, then, may we not be of good cheer in these United States? Why may we not be brought to believe in "a good time coming?" The belief is not everything; but without the belief there can be no move in that direction. What is that warning we hear? Presidential year? That is a cock that will not fight-a bogey, so to speak. A legend without foundation. The history of prices in Presidential years disproves it People have a habit of discounting the good and the evil; and, when on a large scale they make up their minds about what is going to happen, it has a way of happening because they help to bring it about. And, as to no single declared candidate, is the "calamity howler" abroad in the land; no, not even as to "Turible Teddy." We have had him before and we know that his bark is worse than his bite; there are even some who aver that, though he make faces at Big Business, h will eat out of its hand.

Preachers have license to repeat their texts and we can do no better than remark once again: "Business .s good. Tell everybody so and it will be better."

THERE has been recently published by The Macmillian Company one of the most complete historical surveys of the woman's rights movement that is today one of the vital problems both in the Occi dent and the Orient. This is the first book in the English language that gives the history of that movement in all the countries of the world, and is a translation by Dr. Carl Conrad Eckhardt, Instructor in History in the University of Colorado, of a German work written by Dr. Kaethe Schirmacher under the title of "Die moderne Frauenbewegung." The authoress is an ardent advocate of woman's rights, and although the views expressed may not meet with the agreement or approval of the reader, he will not fail to admit the earnestness and scholarly thoroughness of the presentation of the subject. The translator has done his work well, for it is a tritism to say that, as the genius of one language differs from that of another, it is seldom that a translated work rivets the attention and appeals to the interest like an original effort. We have found this translation an exception to the rule. The woman's rights movement covers a wide field, and the suffrage agitation is but a small part thereof. The main demands are the same everywhere. They are the right to have equal educational opportunities as those enjoyed by men; freedom to choose life occupations and the receiving of equal pay for work of the same order; full civil ability for married women; the repeal of regulations in criminal law discriminating against women; and finally a recognition of "the incompleteness, harshness and onesidedness of every circle of man's activity from which woman is excluded."

This book is a notable contribution to the study of the always interesting question of the just and happy relationship of the sexes, and it contains most valuable data on the subject. The status of woman is fully set forth under four main divisions, viz.: In Germanic and Romance countries, in the Slavic and Balkan States, and in the Orient and Far East.

A very interesting and valuable work has lately appeared from the Harvard University Press in "The History of the British Post Office," by Dr. J. C. Hemmeon. It is the seventh volume in the series of Harvard Economic Studies, published under the direction of the Department of Economics and from the income of the Will

iam H. Baldwin, Jr., 1885, Fund. The book deals with the postal establishment in England prior to 1635, before the post office was established, and traces the evolution of that institution from that date to the present day. All phases of the wonderful system of postal, telegraph, telephone and ocean intercommunication as affecting the relations of the British Post Office to its own and other peoples are ably presented. The high degree of efficiency admittedly attained in postal administration in Great Britain and the methods that are studied by other nations seeking the betterment of their postal systems make this work of great value not only to the student but to the practical man interested in such problems.

A translation of Maurice Maeterlinck's remarkable essay on Death, by Alexander Teixeira De Mattos, has been published by Dodd, Mead & Company. The subject is treated in a broad, scientific and reverential spirit, and the reader will be alertly interested in noting the novel points of view regarding death that are placed before him. The author discusses the problems of the hereafter and of an infinite existence, seeking to show that, as Pascal said, "The narrow limits of our being conceal infinity from our view," and that Shakespeare voiced true philosophy in his well-known lines:

"There are more things in

Heaven and Earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in

Your philosophy."

The essay is worthy of careful study and pondering.

A few years since it seemed as if the essay form of literary writing had lost its hold upon the reading public, but recently there has been a kind of renaissance. Dr. Frank Crane has produced a number of books containing short, pointed, suggestive thoughts and opinions on the great problems of human life and of man's relations to his fellowman, to his Creator and to the hereafter. The author's "Human Confessions" was a presentation of many striking and novel viewpoints. In "God and Democracy" he shows how "the idea of Democracy is altering the idea of God," that is of all ideas the most inspiring and uplifting. When proper conceptions of the Deity shall have taken possession of mankind, the author believes that the present age will be "cured of its money madness, profligacy, insane competition and indifference toward the higher values of life," and that there will be

healthful coöperation in business and religious and social relations. The work holds the reader's attention by the terse, vivacious and heartening style in which it is penned. The postlude, "The Hall of the Dead Gods," is particularly strong.

A useful service has been performed by Edwin J. Clapp in writing a book entitled "The Port of Hamburg," recently issued by the Yale University Press. That port has given an objectlesson to the world in regard to harbor and transportation equipment and facilities. Mr. Clapp has, as he tells us in the preface, written "with the conviction that the much-needed modernization of our ocean and Great Lakes terminals must be along the lines followed in Hamburg, and that river transportation in America, if it is ever to be resuscitated, must be modeled on that of the great German streams, the Elbe and the Rhine." The work is presented as a suggestive study for a future programme of improved ocean and inland waterway transportation in the United States. The thoroughness of treatment, data, and comparative statistics, maps and illustrations, will be of vital interest to those who are called upon to deal with this important problem.

There is always a fascination in works that endeavor to lift the veil of the great mysteries of life, death and the great beyond. From the poor, untutored Indian of Pope's familiar lines to the most highly cultivated intellectual human beings there is the same intense desire to fathom the problems of mundane existence and of immortality. A notable contribution to this class of literature has been published by Funk & Wagnalls Company, from the pen of William Hanna Thomson, a practising doctor of more than half a century's experience. In a scientific, thoughtful and humble spirit he discusses human destiny, the problems of mind and matter in their present relations and in the possibilities of an existence beyond the grave, where opportunities without end will be ours "for the development of human excellence in the service of Our Heavenly Father."

No phenomenon in the recent political evolution of the American nation is so startling as the growth of socialism. It has been estimated that there are now over 800,000 socialists in the United States, and it is a fact that can not be gainsaid that the shadow of socialism casts itself across the pathway of our political progress and has to be reckoned with. The failure in administrative effort recently witnessed in Milwaukee, where so much was pre