marine in time of war cannot be overestimated. A large fleet of wooden ships would be an absolute necessity for carrying troops, provisions and coal, and for scout-ships, etc.

It was an exhibition of weakness in our sending sixteen battleships around the world, accompanied by, and depending upon for coal and supplies, fortynine colliers and supply vessels floating foreign flags and costing $944,000, which would have deserted them and left them helpless at the first smell of hostile powder.

The United States is the only nation which has not a large merchant marine at its disposal for naval purposes. The war of '61-'65 demonstrated the value of wooden ships as fighting vessels. Grant passed the powerful batteries at Vicksburg with wooden ships with but slight loss. Admiral Porter's flag-ship, one of the most effective crafts in our navy, was a wooden ship. The SpanishAmerican War also demonstrated the value of wooden ships, especially when equipped with heavy guns.

We invite destruction when we pursue a policy which leaves us without a merchant marine, when we could render ourselves impregnable by wise and patriotic legislation.

Thomas Jefferson, when Secretary of State, epitomized the whole question when he declared that "as a branch of industry it is valuable, but as a resource of defense, essential."

Private interests are protected by tariff enactment; let us invoke the same principle and apply it to the interests and welfare of our common country.

We carry less than seven per cent. of our trade in American vessels, ninetytwo per cent. going in foreign ships. In some of the greatest ports in the world the American flag has not been seen in years.

We pay $500 a day to foreign countries to carry our goods for us, and as much more to foreign shipyards for labor and material which should go to our own workmen.

Two magnificent steamers, the Kroonland and the Finland, built at the Cramp Ship Yards, both of them ships flying the American flag, have lowered the flag of this country and hoisted the flag of Belgium.

We are opposed to paying a direct ship subsidy; a competition that has to be bolstered up by the national pocketbook cannot be wise.

Give us a preference tax, one large enough to build a mighty merchant marine; and though our ships may cost more to construct, and though our crews are better paid and fed, the tax would insure a profitable return in operating the ships.

The Republican National Platform of 1896 favored the re-adoption of the early American policy of discriminating duties and President McKinley warmly favored the adoption of such a measure in his letter accepting the nomination for President; Section 22 of the Dingley bill being intended as a partial fulfilment of that pledge.

When the Dingley Act went into effect, collectors of customs began the collection of the discriminating duty; but certain powerful interests which were seriously affected thereby succeeded in making the executive branch of the government believe that Congress had contemplated no change in respect to discriminating duties in the alteration made in Section 22.

In the last special sessions of Congress, Senator Elkins offered an amendment to the tariff bill providing that on all goods imported in American ships a reduction be allowed, but this amendment, through the influence of Senator Aldrich, was defeated. Powerful interests in Congress are constantly bringing the ship subsidy to the front. We must get rid of that idea. There is no warrant for subsidies in the Constitution of the United States, and subsidies would not build up our merchant marine.

As a nation we demand protection for our industries and for revenue, while the

most important industry of the country and one which would produce the greatest revenue is allowed to perish.

We want no subsidies. We want a wise, statesmanlike policy of govern

ment that shall restore the old order and place within the reach of government in the possible event of war a mighty merchant marine to supplement our iron-clads.

Our great master and teacher, Emerson, has said that truth is too simple for us-that we do not like those who unmask our illusions. One might search the pages of history long, and perhaps in vain, for a more conspicuous example of the accuracy of the above observations, when applied to certain types of men, than the subject of this sketch. No man ever enunciated greater or simpler truths, and none was ever more persistently misunderstood or more cordially disliked in consequence of such teaching.

The many friends and followers of Henry George have now mourned his loss for nearly twelve years. On October 29th, 1897, he was cut off in the midst of important unfinished work. Had he lived until the second day of September of the present year, he wouid have completed the three score and ten years of classical allotment to man. It is not unfitting, therefore, that at this time we should consider briefly, in retrospect, the career and teaching of this most remarkable man.

At the outset it may as well be stated that Mr. George was the first man to fasten the eyes of the world, in a manner that has ever since commanded attention, upon the fact that there is in economics a production of wealth due to the co-operative forces of society, which can be distinguished from the product of individuals; that this social product rightfully belongs to the whole of society, and not to individuals; that at

present it passes into the hands of individuals through their holding of various monopoly privileges, conspicuous among which are private ownership of land and franchises; and that in order to secure this product for society it is obviously necessary to socialize the ownership of these monopoly privileges. He also criticized more adequately than any previous writer had done the then current wages-fund theory, thereby clearing up the real relationship existing between labor and capital, as well as the definition of capital itself. These steps being taken, the way was opened for serious and effective refutation of the arguments based upon the Malthusian theory of population as long applied to Political Economy. He thus brought harmony out of discord, and made gigantic strides towards bringing the science of Political Economy within the realm of natural law. Finally, he saw that if Political Economy was to be a science worthy of the name it must become an applied science-in short, he insisted upon doing something to abolish economic injustice. This necessity. would seem rather obvious from the name of the science itself; yet most economists have not only contented themselves with being pure scientists, but have taken pride in so being.

It should also be stated that in the opinion of many competent judges, Henry George was the greatest economist of his own or any other time. In this belief the writer fully shares. After

many years of careful searching to find out what standard writers and teachers of Political Economy have to say upon important questions raised by Mr. George, and other great writers, which are and always must be vital until they are finally settled justly, he has come to the conclusion that their words are as sounding brass and the tinkling cymbal, when compared with the sublime. truth as laid down by this great master of those that know.

I have said that Mr. George was the greatest economist the world has ever seen. He was more than this: he was one of the greatest ethical philosophers and sociologists as well. Possibly to many minds it may be in one or the other of these latter fields that he will appear to shine most brightly; yet it was primarily as an economist that he always wrote and thought, and as an economist he would wish to be known to posterity it is as such, in fact, that he is known. Space will not permit extended discussion of the great principles which he enunciated and made clear. Examples, even, for the most part, must be omitted. The proof that Mr. George was, in truth, all that his admirers and followers believe he was, must be left to the judgment of those who are willing to give time and careful attention to his works. He never wrote a dull paragraph, and such study will be richly rewarded, both in the immediate pleasure to be derived therefrom, and in the conscious moral and intellectual quickening that will usually follow as a direct consequence.

One of the marks of intellectual genius is that the genius, as it were, plows out the grooves into which the best thought of his successors naturally and inevitably flows. Those who come under his influence, according to their temperament and their special interests, are either swept along by his power and lifted to higher planes of knowledge, or they become violent in their opposition to the genius. They admit, grudgingly, whatever they can by no possible quib

ble deny; but they attempt to criticize, with a violence in direct proportion to their ignorance, that about which they know nothing, except that it does not agree with what they have previously been taught. Whether they belong to one class or the other, they have this in common. They all wear the chains of the genius.

To the first class these chains are as the subtle, invisible bonds of sympathy and understanding. It is as if they felt at all times the gentle pressure of the Master's hand, from which there is neither possibility nor desire of escape. These are the disciples. The truth makes them free, and their chains are their moorings.

Upon the second class these chains hang heavily. Escape from them they cannot, without altogether forsaking their reason; but like wild beasts, they persist in gnawing at them, snapping and snarling, meantime, at him who has fastened them there. However much one may desire to be lenient in judgment, he is frequently forced to the conclusion that these chains gall because they condemn.

Up to this standard and quality of genius Henry George fully measures. If there could be any doubt of this-if the love and veneration his disciples bear him did not fully attest it-it would at least be corroborated in the pretended criticism offered by those who doubtless would have ignored him if they could. Frequently this criticism consists of little but abuse-hardly more than the mere calling of names or base insinuations. Professor Francis A. Walker, for instance, the best recognized and perhaps the shrewdest of American economists, while admitting all the ground-work upon which Mr. George's contentions are based, follows these admissions with a fifteen-page philippic, on the level of a partizan stump speech in seriousness and dignity. He offers no real criticism at any important point, but because Mr. George has proposed to do something to abolish the wrongs

which Professor Walker himself admits exist, he disposes of the whole question as follows:

"So much for Mr. George's practical proposals. I will not insult my readers by discussing a project so steeped in infamy."*

The Duke of Argyle speaks of the "unutterable meanness" and the "gigantic villainy" of Mr. George's proposal to socialize the ownership of land.** Mr. W. H. Mallock declares Mr. George's practical program to be "monstrous.'

It is possible that underneath Professor Walker's bitterness there may have been a touch of personal pique in addition to the usual professional disingenuousness. It is well known that some years before Professor Walker published his work on Political Economy, he had, through Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, engaged in a controversy with Mr. George, concerning the latter's interpretation of certain portions of the Census Reports, the preparation of which Professor Walker himself had superintended. The net result of this literary battle was to prove, step by step, that Professor Walker was a blunderer, if not a garbler. This contention of Mr. George's was finally substantiated by an official statement from the Census Bureau. Comemnting upon this controversy, the New York Sun later said:

"It is amusing because, while there is no lack of suavity and decorum on the part of Mr. George, his opponent squirms and sputters, as one flagrant blnnder after another is brought forward and the spike of logic driven home through his egregious fallacies."

In the few instances where real criticism is attempted it is quite as likely as not to be directed at some non-essential point, or to decry something Mr. George never wrote or maintained. Professor Gregory, for example, in criticising Mr. George's denial of the

justice of property in land, points out the fallacy of discriminating between land and other gifts of nature. This would be a serious fallacy if anyone were guilty of it; but Mr. George never made any such distinction. On the contrary, he always, either specifically or by implication, included all gifts of nature in the term land. President Hadley opposes Mr. George's well-known theory that wages are not advanced by capital, but that capital is always produced by labor in advance of the payment of wages. Obvious as this is, when once stated, President Hadley denies it because in a certain supposed case the expenditure of labor did not result in a return equal to the wages paid-in short, the labor was misdirected; but did Mr. George ever deny that labor might be misdirected or wasted?

The above are only samples, yet they serve to show how weak, even to childishness, are the criticisms offered by recognized economists against Mr. George' work. It would be easy to multiply instances similar to these, and although for twenty-five years the economists and publicists like moths have been flitting about the light which he shed abroad, unable either to ignore or to extinguish it, I have never found anything more convincing than these examples in refutation of any of the more important of Mr. George's argu

ments.

It is a curious fact that of the greatest names connected with the emerging and struggling science of Political Economy, so few have been teachers of the science in educational institutons. Allowance should be made for the comparatively short period during which the subject has been included in college curriculums; yet, considering the number who have professed to know something about it, the amount contributed by these to the world's stock of knowledge does seem to be surprisingly small. Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, John Ruskin, Karl

Some one will ask if Adam Smith was not a professor? True, he was, but not a professor of Political Economy. He was a professor of Philosophy, and in noticing this our attention is called to the fact that with the possible exception of Ricardo, all the above great teachers have had strong leanings toward Philosophy. The list might be extended. The professors of Political Economy have done excellent clerical work; they have rendered available a vast amount of valuable material; but their analysis of their own material should not be relied upon too implictly.

One professor, or teacher, of Political Economy, owing to his great ability and integrity, his tragic death and his peculiar relation to the present subject, deserves special notice. Arnold Toynbee, of the Departmnt of Political Economy at Oxford, in 1884, felt himself called upon to refute the arguments advanced by Mr. George in Progress and Poverty. This he undertook to do in two popular lectures delivered in the West End of London. The result was in part what might have been expected. He had attempted the impossible, but realized it only when it was too late. The mental strain of the attempt, aggravated by the chagrin he felt at his failure, over-taxed his highly sensitive nervous system, and brain fever followed, resulting in the young professor's death, at the age of about thirty years. The world mourned his loss, for he gave promise of great things. Young as he was, he had already accomplished great things. His high intellectual at

motives that prompted him in this, as in all his other work, were beyond question; and but for this unfortunate break in the forward march of his life, who can say what we might not have hoped from him?

The writer regrets that he never knew Mr. George personally. As he understands him, however, loyalty to truth, a lovable personality, a keen logical and prophetic insight, a hungering and thirsting after, and a never-ending struggle to attain economic and social justice, perhaps summarize fairly the prominent characteristics of the man and his work. In this brief appreciation the great economic principles for which he stood, and the utter failure of his critics to overthrow his reasoning, have necessarily obscured the man. This is as he would have it, for he believed that things, not names, were important. In his active propaganda for the popularizing of his teaching, extending over the last twenty years of his life, he always endeavored as far as possible to obscure himself in the movement. He rejoiced when the one man stage was passed, and his activity was merely the work by which he showed his faith. What that faith was is best expressed in the conclusion to Progress and Poverty, his first great work: