THE ARENA.

CONTENTS.

EVOLUTION: WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT.[1]

BY DR. DAVID STARR JORDAN,
President of Leland Stanford Junior University.

I. What Evolution Is.

This the age of evolution. The word is used by many men in many senses, and still oftener perhaps in no sense at all. By some it is spoken with a haunting dread as though it were another name for the downfall of religion and of social stability. Still others speak it glibly and joyously as though progress and freedom were secured by the mere use of the name. “The word evolution (Entwickelung),” says a German writer, “fills the vocal chords more perfectly than any other word.” It explains everything, and “puts the key to the universe into one’s vest pocket.”

So various has been the use of the word, so rarely is this use associated with any definite idea, that one hesitates to call himself an evolutionist. “Evolution” and “evolutionist” are almost ready to be cast into that “limbo of spoiled phraseology” which Matthew Arnold has found necessary for so many words in which other generations have delighted, and which they have soiled or spoiled by careless usage.

But as the word evolution is not yet put away, as it is the bugbear of many good

It seems to me that the word evolution is now legitimately used in four different senses. It is the name of a branch of science. It is a theory of organic existence. It is a method of investigation, and it is the basis of a system of philosophy.

The Science of Organic Evolution, or Bionomics. As a science, evolution is the study of changing beings acted upon by unchanging laws. It is a matter of common observation that organisms change from day to day, and that day by day some alteration in their environment is produced. It is a matter of scientific investigation that these changes are greater than they appear. They affect not only the individual animal or plant, but they affect all groups of living things, classes or races or species. No character is permanent, no trait of life without change. And as the living organism or group of organisms is undergoing alteration, so does change take place in the objects of the physical world about them. “Nothing endures,” says Huxley, “save the flow of energy and the rational order that pervades it.” The structures and objects change their forms and relations, and to forms and relations once abandoned they never return. But the methods of change are, so far as we can see, immutable. The laws of life, the laws of death, and the laws of matter never change. If the invisible forces which rule all visible things are themselves subject to modification and evolution, we have not detected it. Its cosmic movements are so fine as to defy human observation and computation. In the control of the universe we find no trace of “variableness nor shadow of turning.” “It is the law of heaven and earth, whose way is solid, substantial, vast, and unchanging.”

But the things we know do not endure. Only the shortness of human life allows us to speak of species or even of individuals as permanent entities. The mountain chain is no more nearly eternal than the drift of sand. It endures beyond the period of human observation. It antedates and outlasts human history. So does the species of animal or plant outlast and antedate the lifetime of one man. Its changes are slight even in the lifetime of the race. Thus the species, through the persistence of its type among its changing individuals, comes to be regarded as something which is beyond modification, unchanging so long as it exists.

“I believe,” said the rose to the lily in the parable—“I believe that our gardener is immortal. I have watched him from day to day since I bloomed, and I see no change in him. The tulip who died yesterday told me the same thing.”

As a flash of lightning in the duration of the night, so is the life of man in the duration of nature. When one looks out on a storm at night, he sees for an instant the landscape illumined by the lightning-flash. All seems at rest. The branches in the wind, the flying clouds, the falling rain are all motionless in this instantaneous view. The record on the retina takes no account of change, and to the eye the change does not exist. Brief as the lightning-flash in the storm is the life of man compared with the great time-record of life upon earth. To the untrained man who has not learned to read these records, species and types in life are enduring. Thus arose the theory of special creation and permanence of type, a theory which could not persist when the fact of change and the forces causing it came to be studied in detail.

But when man came to study the facts of individual variation and to think of their significance, the current of life no longer seemed at rest. Like the flow of a mighty river, never returning, ever sweeping steadily on, is the movement of all life. The changes in human history are only typical of the changes that take place in all living creatures. In fact, human history is only a part of one great life-current, the movement of which is everywhere governed by the same laws, depends on the same forces, and brings about like results.

The facts and generalizations of change constitute the subject-matter of evolution. And as the fact of life is a fundamental one, and in some degree modifies all phenomena which it concerns, we have as the central axis of the science in question, the study of organic evolution. In fact, while inorganic evolution, or orderly change in environment, exists, we do not know to what degree the laws and forces of organic evolution can be reduced to the same terms of expression. The theory of the essential and necessary unity of life and non-life, of mind and matter, is still a matter of philosophical speculation only. We can neither prove the truth of Monism, nor understand it; nor is the contrary hypothesis either comprehensible or credible. The fundamental unity of organic evolution and inorganic evolution is yet to be proved, while the laws which govern living matter are certainly in part peculiar to life. For this reason the evolution of astronomy, of dynamic geology, of geography, as well as the purely hypothetical evolution of chemistry, must be separated from life evolution. Cosmic evolution and organic evolution show, or seem to show, some divergence from each other. There are some elements which are not held in common, or which, at least, are not identical when measured in human terms. For the latter, the science of organic evolution, there is therefore certainly need of a distinctive term. This has been lately furnished by Professor Patrick Geddes, who has chosen the term bionomics. Bionomics (βιος, life; υομος, law or custom) is the science which treats of the changes in life-forms, and of the laws and forces on which these changes depend.

Even as thus restricted organic evolution, or bionomics, is the greatest of the sciences, including in its subject-matter, not only all natural history, not only processes like cell-division and nutrition, not only the laws of heredity, variation, natural selection, and mutual help, but all matters of human history, and the most complicated relations of civics, economics, or ethics. In this enormous science no fact can be without a meaning, and no fact or its underlying forces can be separated from the great forces whose interaction from moment to moment writes the great story of life.

And as the basis to the science of bionomics, as to all other science, must be taken the conception that nothing is due to chance or whim. Whatever occurs does so as the resultant of moving forces. Could we know and estimate these forces, we should have, so far as our estimate is accurate and our logic perfect, the gift of prophecy. Knowing the law, and knowing the facts, we should foretell the results. To be able in some degree to do this is the art of life. It is the ultimate end of science, which finds its final purpose in human conduct.

“A law,” according to Darwin, “is the ascertained sequence of events.” The necessary sequence of events it is, in fact, but man knows nothing of what is necessary, only of what has been ascertained to occur. Because human observation and logic can be only partial, no law of life can be fully stated. Because the processes of the human mind are human, with organic limitations, the study of the mind itself becomes a part of the science of bionomics. For it is itself an instrument or a combination of instruments by which we acquire such knowledge of the world outside of ourselves as may be needed in the art of living, in the degree in which we are able to practise that art.

The necessary sequence of events exists, whether we are able to comprehend it or not. The fall of a leaf follows fixed laws as surely as the motion of a planet. It falls by

We sometimes classify sciences as exact and inexact, in accordance with our ability exactly to weigh forces and results. The exact sciences deal with simple data accessible and capable of measurement. The results of their interactions can be reduced to mathematics. Because of their essential simplicity, the mathematical sciences have been carried to great comparative perfection. It is easier to weigh an invisible planet than to measure the force of heredity in a grain of corn. The sciences of life are inexact, because the human mind can never grasp all their data. Nor has the combined effort of all men, the flower of the altruism of the ages, that we call science been able to make more than a beginning in this study. But however incomplete our realization of the laws of life, we may be sure that they are never broken. Each law is the expression of the best possible way in which causes and results can be linked. It is the necessary sequence of events, therefore the best sequence, if we may imagine for a moment that the human words “good” and “bad” are applicable to world-processes. The laws of nature are not executors of human justice. Each one has its own operation, and no other. Each represents its own tendency towards cosmic order. A law in this sense cannot be “broken.” A broken law would be a discarded universe. “If God should wink at a single act of injustice,” says the Arab proverb, “the whole universe would shrivel up like a cast-off snake-skin.” If God should wink at any violated law the universe would vanish.

Not long ago, in an examination in a theological seminary, the question was asked of the candidates for the ministry, “Is it right to pray for a change of season?” The candidates thought that it was not, for the relations which produce winter and summer are fixed in the structure of the solar system and cannot be altered for man’s pleasure or man’s need. “Is it right to pray for rain?” The candidates generally thought that it was, because the conditions of rain are so unstable that a little change in one way or another would bring rain or fair weather, and that it was proper to ask for such change, as it did not concern the economy of the universe.

The third question was: “When the signal service of the United States is well established, so that weather conditions are perfectly known, will it then be right to pray for rain?” And the candidates for the ministry could not tell, for they began to see that even simple changes of weather may have the strength of the whole universe behind them. It has never yet rained when by any possibility it could do otherwise. It has never failed to rain when rain was possible. The Spanish padres in California, wise in their generation, allowed prayers for rain only in winter, when the wind was in the south. The wind is only in the south when the air is affected by a cyclonic movement, and this in the California winter means rain.

We hear good men say sometimes that the crying need of this strong and sceptical age is that it may see some law of nature definitely broken, that it may rain when rain is impossible, or that some burning bush may, unconsuming, proclaim that the force which is behind all law is also above it and can break or repeal all laws at will.

Emerson somewhere speaks of the purpose in life—“To be sound and solvent.” As his life was in all ways “sound and solvent,” perhaps such rule of conduct was his own. But one may say, That is only a rule. The man himself should be all rules and requirements of his own establishment. Let Mr. Emerson show that his life is above his principles. Let him break these rules. Let him be “unsound and insolvent” for a time. Then only will his greatness appear.

The laws of nature are the expression of the infinite soundness and solvency. They will not be broken, nor through their unsoundness and insolvency will the “heavens roll away as a scroll,” nor “the universe shrivel up as a cast-off snake-skin.”

In the growing recognition of law has been the progress of science. From the casting aside of human notions of chance and whim the “warfare of science” has had its rise. For every event carried over into the realm of law some man has given his life. As the Panama railroad is said to have cost the life of a man for every cross-tie, so has every step in the progress of science. And such men!

Many a time in the growth of humanity has it been necessary that the wisest, clearest, most humane, should die on the stake or the gibbet or the cross, that men should come to realize the power of an idea; that they should know the value of truth.

Evolution as a Theory of Organic Development, or Darwinism. In a different sense the word evolution is applied to the theory of the origin of organs and of species by divergence and development. This theory teaches that all forms of life now existing or that have existed on the earth have sprung from a common stock, which has undergone change in a multitude of ways and under varied conditions, the forces and influences producing such change being known as the “factors of organic evolution.” All characters and attributes of species and groups have developed with changing conditions of life. The homologies among animals are the result of common descent. The differences are due to various influences, chief among these being competition in the struggle for existence between individuals and between species, whereby those best adapted to their surroundings lived and reproduced their kind.

This theory is now the central axis of all biological investigation in all its branches, from ethics to histology, from anthropology to bacteriology. In the light of this theory every peculiarity of structure, every character or quality of individual or species, has a meaning and a cause. It is the work of the investigator to find this meaning as well as to record the fact. “One of the noblest lessons left to the world” by Darwin is this, Mr. Frank Cramer tells us,—“this, which to him amounted to a profound, almost religious, conviction, that every fact in nature, no matter how insignificant, every stripe of color, every tint of flowers, the length of an orchid’s nectary, unusual height in a plant, all the infinite variety of apparently insignificant things, is full of significance. For him it was an historical record, the revelation of a cause, the lurking-place of a principle.”

According to the theory of evolution every structure of to-day finds its meaning in some condition of the past. The inside of an animal tells what it really is, for it bears the record of heredity. The outside of an animal tells where its ancestors have been, for it bears record of concessions to environment. Similarity in essential structure is known as homology. By the theory of evolution homology, wherever it is found, is proof of blood-relationship.

The theory of organic evolution through natural law was first placed on a stable footing by the observations and inductions of Darwin. It has therefore been long known as Darwinism, although that term has been usually associated with the recognition of natural selection as the great motive power in organic change. Darwinism was at first regarded as

Evolution as a Method of Study. In a third sense the word evolution is applied to a method of investigation. It is the study of present conditions in the light of the past. The preliminary work of science is the descriptive part. This involves accuracy of observation and precision of statement, but makes no great demands on the powers of logical analysis and synthesis. The easy work of science is largely already done. Those who would continue investigation must study not only facts and structures, but the laws that govern them. In the words of John Fiske, “Whether plants or mountains or mollusks or subjunctive moods or tribal confederacies be the things studied, the scholars who have studied them most fruitfully were those who have studied them as phases of development. Their work has directed the current of thought.” The most difficult problems in life are susceptible of more or less perfect solution if approached by the method of evolution. They cannot be even stated as problems in any other terms. In every science worthy of the name the history of origins and the study of developing forces must take a leading part.

Evolution as a System of Cosmic Philosophy. In a fourth sense the word evolution has been applied to the philosophical conceptions to which the theory of evolution gives rise. Philosophy is not truth. When it is so it becomes science. At the best it points the way to truth. The broader the inductive basis of any system of philosophy, the greater its value as an intellectual help. The system of Herbert Spencer, the greatest exponent of the philosophy of evolution, is based wholly on the results of scientific investigation. It consists of a series of more or less broad and more or less probable deductions from the facts and laws already known. Systems like these, which rest on scientific knowledge, do not rise high above it. They can therefore be revised or rewritten as knowledge increases. They provide the means for their own correction. Systems resting on aphorisms or assumptions or definitions must disappear as knowledge increases.

Philosophy is never wholly identical with truth. The partial truth which it may contain becomes wholly error with the advance of science. The growth of exact knowledge transforms the truth in philosophy into science, leaving the absolute falsehood as the final residuum.

From this necessary fact comes the ultimate decay of all creeds or philosophic formulæ. Throughout the ages science and philosophy have been in conflict. Science is the same to all minds capable of grasping its conclusions. Philosophy changes with the point of view. It is the evanescent perspective in which the facts and phenomena of the universe are seen. This can never be the same under changing times and conditions. With the larger knowledge of to-morrow, there will be large modifications in the accepted philosophy of evolution. Each succeeding generation will give to the applications of the laws of organic life a different philosophical expression.

II. What Evolution Is Not.

In these four senses the word evolution is used with some degree of accuracy. But in the current literature of the day the word has many other meanings, some of them very far from any just basis. Some things which evolution is not we may here notice briefly.

Evolution is not a theory that “man is a developed monkey.” The question of the immediate origin of man is not the central or overshadowing question of evolution. This question offers no special difficulties in theory, although the materials for exact knowledge are in many directions incomplete. Homologies more perfect than those connecting man with the great group of monkeys could not exist. These imply the blood-relationship of the human race with the great host of apes and monkeys. As to this there can be no shadow of a doubt. And as similar homologies connect man with all members of the group of mammals, similar blood-relationship must exist. And homologies, less close but equally unmistakable, connect all backboned animals one with another; and the lowest backboned types are closely joined to worm-like forms not usually classed as vertebrates.

It is perfectly true that, with the higher or anthropoid apes, the relations with man are extremely intimate. But man is not simply “a developed ape.” Apes and men have diverged from the same primitive stock, apelike, manlike, but not exactly the one or the other. No apes or monkeys now extant could apparently have been ancestors of primitive man. None can ever “develop” into man. As man changes and diverges, race from race, so do they. The influence of effort, the influence of surroundings, the influence of the sifting process of natural selection, acts upon them as it acts upon man.

The process of evolution is not progress, but better adaptation to conditions of life. As man becomes fitted for social and civic life, so does the ape become fitted for life in the tree-tops. The movement of monkeys is towards “simianity,” not humanity. The movement of cat-life is towards felinity, that of the dog-races towards caninity. Each step in evolution upward or downward, whatever it may be, carries each species or type farther from the primitive stock. These steps are never retraced. For an ape to become a man he must go back to the simple characters of the simple common type from which both have sprung. These characters are shown in the ape-baby and in the human embryo in its corresponding stages. For ancestral traits lost in the adult are preserved in the young. This comes through the operation of the great force of race-memory, we call heredity.

Evidence of biology points to the descent of all mammals, of all vertebrates, of all animals, of all organic beings, from a common stock. Of all the races of animals, the anthropoid apes are nearest man. Their divergence from the same stock must be comparatively recent. Man is the nomadic, the apes the arboreal, branch of the same great family.

Evolution does not teach that all or any living forms are tending towards humanity. It does not teach, as in Bishop Wilberforce’s burlesque, “that every favorable variety of the turnip is tending to become man.” It is not true that evolutionists expect to find, as Dr. Seelye has affirmed, “the growth of the highest alga into a zoöphyte, a phenomenon for which sharp eyes have sought, and which is not only natural but inevitable on the Darwinian hypothesis, and whose discovery would make the fame of any observer.”

It is no wonder that a clear thinker should have rejected “the Darwinian hypothesis,” when stated in such terms as this. The line of junction in evolution is always at the bottom. It is the lowest mammals which approach the lowest reptiles. It is the lower types of plants which approach the lower types of animals. It would be the lowest alga, to use Dr. Seelye’s illustration, which would be transmutable into the lowest zoöphyte. It is the unspecialized, undifferentiated type from which branches diverge in different ways. Humanity is not the “goal of evolution,” not even that of human evolution. There will be no second “creation of man,” except from man’s own

Adaptation by divergence—for the most part by slow stages—is the movement of evolution. While occasional leaps or sudden changes occur in the process, they are by no means the rule. In most cases of “saltatory evolution,” the suddenness is in appearance only. It comes from our inability to trace the intermediate stages. When an epoch-making character is acquired, as the wings of a bird or the brain of man, the process of readjustment of other characters goes on with greatly increased rapidity. But this rapidity of evolution is along the same lines as the slower processes. Radical changes from generation to generation never occur. We do not expect to find birds arising from a “flying-fish in the air, whose scales are disporting into feathers.” A flying-fish is no more of the nature of a bird than any other fish is. A cow will never give birth to a horse, nor a horse to a cow. The slow operation of existing causes is the central fact of organic evolution, as it is of the evolution of mountains and valleys. Seasons change as the relations which produce them change. But midsummer never gives way to midwinter in an instant. Nor does the child in an instant become a man, though in some periods of growth epoch-marking causes may make development more rapid. Life is conservative. The law of heredity is the expression of its conservatism. It changes slowly, but it must constantly change, and all change is by necessity divergence.

There is in nature no single “law of progress,” nor is progress in any group a necessity regardless of conditions. That which we call progress rests simply on the survival of the better adapted, their survival being accompanied by their reproduction. Those that live repeat themselves. The “innate tendency towards progression” of the early evolutionists is a philosophic myth. Progress and degeneration are alike the resultants of the various forces at work from generation to generation on and within a race or species. The same forces which bring progress to a group under one set of conditions will bring degradation under another. In their essence the factors of evolution are no more laws of progress than the attraction of gravitation is. Cosmic order comes from gravitation. Organic order comes from the factors of evolution. Evolution is simply orderly change.

Evolution is not Spontaneous Generation. There is no necessary connection between the one theory and the other. Spontaneous generation, or birth without parentage, on the part of small or useless creatures was accepted in early times without question. As men began to observe these animals more carefully, the fact of their spontaneous generation was doubted. A great step was made when it was found that to screen meat from flies would protect it from maggots. A greater step came in our own time when it was proved that to screen infusions from air dust is to protect them from putrefaction or fermentation. Fermentation is “life without air.” It is the decomposition of sugar by minute creatures who disintegrate it in their life processes. Putrefaction and decay are also the same in nature. There is literal truth in Carlyle’s statement that there is still force in a fallen leaf, “else how could it rot?” It is the force of the minute organisms hidden in the leaf, and whose life is the leaf’s decay. The decay and death of men from contagious diseases is known to be due to life processes of minute organisms, as is the gangrene which follows unskilful surgery. The study of the “fauna and flora” within living organisms has now become a science of itself, demanding the greatest care in observation and the most complete of appliances. “Omne vivum ex vivo,” “all life from life,” was an aphorism of the naturalists of a century or two ago. It was to them a new and broad generalization. It has not yet been set aside. The classic experiments of Tyndall show that this law applies to all creatures we have yet recognized or classified. As far as science can tell, spontaneous generation is still a myth, having no basis in observation, no warrant in experiment. It remains as a pure deduction from the philosophical conception of Monism, incapable of proof, insusceptible of refutation. The argument for it is chiefly this: Life exists on a globe once lifeless. How did life begin? If not through spontaneous generation, how did it come? Must it not have been by the operation of those laws and forces which through all time change lifeless into living matter? Very likely, but we do not know. We know nothing whatever of such laws and forces, and we gain nothing by veiling our ignorance under a philosophical necessity.

Moreover, if spontaneous generation occurs as a resultant of any forces, like forces would produce it again. We have never known it to occur. Should it occur the organisms thus produced would have no bonds of blood-relationship with those already in existence. With these they should show no homology, as they could have no inheritance in common. But all known organisms have common homologies. The factors of organic evolution are essentially the same for all. The unity of life amid all its diversity seems to point to origin from a common stock. If not from one stock, the lines of division between one and another are hidden from us. The study of embryology breaks down the time-honored branch lines of vertebrates, articulates, mollusks, and radiates. The groups of animals are more numerous, more complex, and more intertangled than Cuvier and Agassiz thought. The number of primary branches of animals or plants is uncertain, their boundaries undefined.

If spontaneous generation exists, it is a factor in evolution. If it is a factor, our explanation of the meaning and nature of homology must be fundamentally changed. But it may be that it should be changed. We cannot show that spontaneous generation does not exist. All we know is that we have no means of recognizing it. If there is now spontaneous generation of protoplasm, it cannot take the form of any creature we know. An organism fresh from the mint of creation would be too small for us to see with any microscope. It would be too simple for us to trace by any instrumentality now in our possession. It could contain but a few molecules, and a molecule in a drop of water is as small as an orange beside the sun. Our race of creatures, spontaneously generated, without concessions to environment, would grow hoary with the centuries before it came to our notice. Its descendants would have belonged for ages to the unnumbered hosts of microbes before we should be aware of its creation.

Evolution is not a creed or a body of doctrine to be believed on authority. There is no saving grace in being an evolutionist. There are many who take this name and have no interest in finding out what it means or in making any application of its principles to the affairs of life. For one who cares not to master its ideas, there is no power in the word. Evolution is not a panacea or a medicine to be applied to social or personal ills. It is simply an expression of the teaching of enlightened common sense as to the order of changes in life. If its principles are mastered a knowledge of evolution is an aid in the conduct of life, as knowledge of gravitation is essential in the building of machinery.

There is nothing “occult” in the science of evolution. It is not the product of philosophic meditation or of speculative philosophy. It is based on hard facts, and with hard facts it must deal.

It seems to me that it is not true that “Evolution is a new religion, the religion of the future.” There are many definitions to religion, but evolution does not fit any of them. It is no more a religion than gravitation is. One may

But evolution is religion in the same sense that every truth of the physical universe must be religion. That which is true is the truest thing in the world, and the recognition of the infinite soundness at the heart of the universe is an inseparable part of any worthy religion.

But, whether religion or not, the truths of evolution must be their own witness. They can be neither strengthened nor controverted by any authority which may speak in the name of philosophy or of theology or of religion. “Roma locuta est; causa finita est” is not a dictum which science can regard. Her causes are never finished. No power on earth can give beforehand the answer to her questions. Her only court of appeal is the experience of man.

HAS WEALTH A LIMITATION?

BY ROBERT N. REEVES.

There is in the government of human affairs one order that is best for all. What that order is and how it is to be attained should be the great problem for all who have at heart the betterment of the human race.

Never in the history of our country were the people confronted with greater social problems than they are to-day. The strikes, boycotts, and general discontent of late years prove conclusively that there is yet much room for improvement in our social order. What mean the great outcry and muttering of the masses? What means the cry from the vast army of discontented which wells up from the very heart of the nation, unless it signifies the rumbling which is often heard before the storm? Gloss it over as we will, the fact stands out as prominent as ever, that there is something radically wrong with our present economical system.

Many remedies have been suggested, many reforms have been inaugurated with the purpose of relieving the poverty and misery which press so heavily upon a large majority of the people. Stop immigration! Prohibit invention! exclaim some. The population is increasing too fast! reply others. And so the many reforms are advocated, all of which are discussed with more or less fairness. But when it is suggested that wealth is becoming too concentrated, that limitations should be placed upon it, the cry immediately goes up that he who suggests such a remedy is an anarchist, and one whose name should be synonymous with whatever is dangerous, lawless, and subversive.

Nevertheless, the question of wealth limitation cannot be dismissed with threats, epithets, or sneers. It will not dismiss itself, and we cannot dismiss it. Every observant person must admit that the great concentration of wealth, whether it be in corporations, trusts, or individuals, has reached a point dangerous to the future prosperity of the nation.

Millions of people idle, wealth piled up for the few by the toil of the many, paupers and millionaires on every side, and the conditions growing worse and worse,—these things are enough to make even the most optimistic painfully apprehensive of the future. Our government in some respects is in no better condition than was the old Roman Empire just before its fall, as described by James Anthony Froude. If we are to believe that eminent historian, the Roman Empire was crushed by the same power of unlimited, concentrated wealth that to-day is destroying the life, the liberty, and the happiness of the many in the United States. In mediæval Italy, too, popular freedom was lost through a moneyed oligarchy and proletariat. So in every country where individual wealth has transcended the bounds of justice, the people—the toilers—have eventually been enslaved.

Ours is fast becoming a moneyed nation; and a moneyed nation is generally a weak one. Superfluity of riches, like superfluity of food, causes weakness and decay. Individual prosperity or the prosperity of a community does not mean general prosperity, or the prosperity of a nation. Thus it has been shown that, in New York and Massachusetts and those States in which the greatest wealth is concentrated, the largest proportion of paupers are to be found. In 1833, when Tocqueville visited America, he was struck by the equal distribution of wealth and the absence of capitalists. Half a century later, when James Bryce, author of “The American Commonwealth,” visited our country, the trusts, monopolies, and concentrated wealth so amazed him that he exclaimed: “I see the shadows of a new structure of society—an aristocracy of riches.”

Fifty years ago there were no great fortunes here, and in fact but few fortunes that could be called large, and in those days there was comparatively little poverty. Now we have many gigantic fortunes and a vast number ranging from $100,000 to $10,000,000. In the past, wealth being more equally distributed, there was but little class distinction, but there were a far greater number of what might be called fortunes, and a noticeable exemption from that pauperism which has become chronic of late years.

The Probate-Court records of the various States disclose the fact that millionaires are becoming more numerous, while the smaller property-owners are gradually sinking into the multitude of people possessing nothing. In a valuable article by Eltweed Pomeroy on “The Concentration of Wealth,”[2] some interesting figures and diagrams are given, proving from probate records the exact extent to which small fortunes have been crowded out or merged into enormous ones. These records are valuable because they are official. But while they prove the extent to which wealth is concentrated, they do not disclose the misery which that wealth is causing. For that, we must look to the conditions about us. And in doing so it is not necessary to be a philosopher in order to see the havoc which concentrated wealth has wrought in recent years. Every day, it has been declared, America is over four million dollars richer at night than in the morning. Who receives this wealth? Surely not those who toil; else they would not suffer so. They receive little of it. The national wealth, great as it is, slips through their fingers to be collected in the vast reservoirs of the moneyed aristocracy. They work, but it is the work of those who labor to produce, but who receive none of that which is produced.

It is this condition that causes so many to declare that the present distribution of wealth does not conform to the principles of justice. And how can it be otherwise, when all wealth passes through the hands of the producers and stops only when it reaches those who possess most? Thus wealth is becoming with us not a power for general good, but a power given to the few to control the many—a power of placing upon the masses a yoke little better than slavery itself. The rich, becoming further and further removed from the poor, are also becoming conscious of being in a measure the proprietors of the poor. The poor

In no country in the world does wealth, individual and corporate, exert such an influence as in the United States, and as a consequence, human life is becoming lamentably cheap. Capital is taking the place of men, and is valued more than men. Property is becoming sacred, human life profane. Laws are being made not for the good of humanity, but for the sake of property. One instance may be mentioned here: in the spring of 1896 a bill was before Congress to remove all criminal cases from the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States. It was argued by those in favor of the bill that much of the time of the Supreme Court was consumed listening to criminal cases (cases involving life and liberty), while high-priced corporation lawyers, whose cases involved millions of dollars, were required to wait in Washington until the criminal cases were disposed of. The bill naturally passed the Senate, but was defeated in the House.

This bill was but one of many indications that, in the eye of the law, property is becoming of more value than life or liberty.

In Benjamin Franklin’s time it was proposed to make the possession of a certain amount of property a prerequisite for voting. The amount would at the time have bought one ass. Franklin characteristically argued: If a man with an ass could vote, and did vote, but when the ass died the man could not vote, who was it, in fact, voted—the man or the ass? Franklin’s argument would hold good against many of the laws advocated to-day—laws in which the object is the stability of property rather than the freedom or happiness of man. This condition of affairs, this conflict between the right of liberty on the one hand, and the right of property on the other, has created a great political problem. Has the state a right to limit wealth? Is there a limit to the accumulations of individuals and corporations? Has the state the power to tax concentrated wealth out of existence when such wealth has become detrimental to the public peace and prosperity? In other words, has the state the power to prevent the acquisition of wealth from becoming a public curse? Government, if it stands for anything, stands for the public interests, and one of the objects of government should be the protection of its citizens from the encroachments of accumulated wealth.

Great individual wealth is an anti-social interest. It is the ascendency of individuals over the interests of the public. Individuals have, it is true, a certain amount of liberty, but it cannot be denied that society has the right to modify the liberty of the individual where such liberty is but the slavery of the public. The right to live also implies the right to use the things about us which go to make life comfortable and enjoyable, and which have not been already appropriated by others. It is evident, however, that the use of anything by one must necessarily take from the personal liberty of all others who otherwise would be able to use it. And it is perfectly plain that just in proportion as one’s wealth increases, the wealth of others must decrease. This to a certain extent is legitimate, and cannot be prevented. But when the wealth of one increases to such an extent as to deprive others of food, shelter, and even existence itself, it infringes upon the equality of personal liberty far more than could any law that placed a limit to individual wealth. When men are starving, when paupers are increasing, when to the misfortune of poverty is added the curse of industrial slavery, when the great concentration of wealth affects the life and liberty of all, is not a law just which takes from a few a portion of their wealth and indirectly restores it to the hands of the many? Does not the right to property involve and rest upon the admission of the right to live?

Cardinal Manning startled the world some years ago when he declared: “The obligation to feed the hungry springs from the natural right of every man to life and to the food necessary to the sustenance of life. So strict is this natural right that it prevails over all positive laws of property. Necessity has no law, and a starving man has a right to his neighbor’s bread.”

Strong words these for a cardinal. Sentimental philosophy it may be called, but it is the philosophy of justice. Enormous wealth has always been irreconcilable with equality. Its growth has caused the downfall of many democracies. Will it bring about the ruin of the greatest democracy in history? Are we, with the awe with which we regard the institution of property, becoming a nation of millionaires and mendicants?

Property is only absolutely safe when those who hold it are far more numerous than those who do not. When the middle class disappears from a nation and the property falls into the hands of a few over-rich men, then property is unsafe. We call such a condition an aristocracy of money, and an aristocracy of money is always the child of a degenerated or degenerating democracy. Some people, however, regard the concentration of wealth as an indication of progress. In matters political the obstacle is often taken for the cause. Monopolies, trusts, and other forms of concentrated wealth are regarded by some as the blessings of a prosperous nation. But examined in the light of history we find that concentrated wealth has always been a means of obstructing if not of destroying a nation. Our nation is not an exception. We cannot say that the destructive power of concentrated wealth is not now felt. All that is necessary is to observe the conditions about us. Whenever the people of a nation become subservient and dependent, and are oppressed and abused because they are so, whenever there is little general prosperity but a great deal of prosperity for a few, we naturally come to the conclusion that the cause of the misery and lack of general prosperity is the great concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. It is this conclusion, arrived at by what are termed the masses, that has caused the many conflicts of recent years between labor and capital. And such conflicts are natural. Man always revolts when he suspects his misery is the consequence of a social order capable of reformation. Force, of late years, has often been called upon to subdue the spirit of resentment which agitates the breasts of the poorer classes. The militia of the various States and even government troops have been called upon in order to preserve property and also maintain the supremacy of concentrated wealth.

How long this can go on before a change comes we do not know. It cannot be maintained long. Unless some law is enacted that will stop the encroaching power of wealth, things will go on until the inequality becomes so glaring, so oppressive, that the pent-up social waters, gathering force, will break through the wall of concentrated wealth and allow society once more to regain its natural level. Every statesman, every thinker, should know that we cannot expect a healthy growth with class arrayed against class. Every strike, every riot, is a retrogressive step in our nation’s history. If our American civilization is to endure and progress we must bring about a change in the distribution of wealth. If conditions are such as to be beneficial to a small number and injurious to society in general, those conditions should be changed. Unless limited, the alarming development and aggressiveness of great capitalists and powerful corporations will eventually lead to the absolute degradation of the toiling masses. Unless checked, it will continue to grow until it usurps the entire legislative and executive branches of our government, and, like a huge vampire, slowly draws the life-blood from every healthy, helpful creature. This power of wealth

This, then, is to be the battle of the future—concentrated wealth on one hand, concentrated poverty on the other. The battle should not be one of force, but one of reason and agitation until wealth shall be bound by proper constitutional limitations; a battle in which law shall triumph; for the true remedy, the remedy most conducive to equality, lies in legislation. But this legislation should be immediate. If we desire to prevent actual war between class and class, it is imperative that a legal check at once be placed upon the growing power for evil of aggregated wealth.

The limitation of wealth by law has received the approval of some of the most gifted as well as philanthropic of minds. In our own country such men as Horace Greeley, Theodore Parker, and William Ellery Channing have advocated it. Still, a ready objection of some against the limitation of wealth is that any attempt to remedy by legislation the inequality of fortune at once infringes upon the right of personal liberty. Have we no laws in existence now which infringe upon the right of personal liberty? Do not our usury laws take some rights from the individual? Does not our custom-house law, which permits the trunks of every new arrival to be searched, infringe somewhat upon the right of personal liberty? The citizen who would object to these laws would have but a very narrow conception of the true purpose of government. If we examine our laws closely we shall find many that encroach upon individual liberty for the sake of public good. Then why should any objection be made to those laws which tend to limit wealth?

Undoubtedly a tax levied upon all incomes, which would be progressively raised and graduated according to the amount of the individual or corporate wealth could be constitutionally enacted. And if a progressive income tax can be enacted, the graduated inheritance tax can also be enacted, for the principle is practically the same. Senator David B. Hill, of New York, has called the progressive tax a “modern fad.” It is so modern, however that it can be traced back to the Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians. During the palmiest days of Greece—the days of Solon and Lycurgus—a progressive tax was a stern reality.

Our own country has not been without a progressive tax. In 1797 a graded inheritance tax was levied by Congress. This law was repealed in 1802. In 1862 a similar law was passed. But after having been decided to be constitutional by the Supreme Court, it was repealed in 1872.

Other governments at the present time tax the rich. In England, besides the income tax, many other items of revenue are contributed entirely by the rich—contributed upon the principle that those who have acquired riches shall bear the burden of taxation. In the United States we seem to place the burden of taxation upon the shoulders least fitted to bear it. Every effort to tax the rich, to properly tax corporations and trusts, has met with failure. The lobbyist and corporation lawyer have defied the tax-gatherer until they have worn out the patience of the people. The time is now ripe for proper legislation. A progressive income tax and a tax upon inheritances should be made a law in every State. The power to tax, it has been said, is the power to destroy. If a scale of taxation were wisely adopted it would eventually enable us to reach without political disturbance the almost total abolition of an aristocracy of wealth and thus solve the great problem of the day. If we are to consider humanity of any importance at all, wealth must be limited. The rights of all must be considered. When this is done we may be able to have a truly prosperous nation—a nation in which prosperity will not be confined to a favored few, but given to all.

“Prosperity,” says Rousseau, “is best secured when the medium-class income prevails, when no citizen is so rich that he can buy others, and no one so poor that he might be compelled to sell himself.”

THE BATTLE OF THE MONEY METALS

I. BIMETALLISM SIMPLIFIED.

BY GEORGE H. LEPPER.

The “free-silver delusion” is not dead, nor will it die unless the McKinley administration shall give it its quietus by providing the country with a sound and popular system of bimetallism. Even the most sanguine of the Republican leaders must admit that the prospect of accomplishing this task by international agreement is not so encouraging as to make the tentative consideration of other plans, not requiring concerted action, unnecessary or useless. The purpose of this article is to present such a plan, and to contrast it with those which have already been tried, or have thus far been proposed.

That the financial policy we have pursued since 1878, the year of the Bland-Allison Act, has been absurd and ruinous hardly admits of two opinions. Secretary Carlisle, in his letter of September 16th last, gave authoritative utterance to what had long been tacitly understood. He said, “If the time shall ever come when the parity of the present silver dollars and silver certificates cannot be otherwise maintained, they will be received by the government in exchange for gold.” In other words, the vast stores of silver purchased by the United States under the laws of 1878 and 1890 are a dead asset of the Treasury, and cannot be utilized for purposes of redemption until sixteen ounces of silver shall again be equivalent to one of gold, or until they are re-sold in the open market for gold. To render this treasure available for ultimate redemptions thus becomes a prime condition of our problem.

There is a growing disposition in certain influential quarters to evade the difficulties in the way of international bimetallism by taking the government out of the banking business, and relegating the matter of currency issues more and more to the banks. Whatever may be said in behalf of this course, it is certainly not popular with the masses, who, justly or ignorantly, have come to look upon national banks as favored objects of legislation, and in league with syndicates and trusts. But, aside from this, the real core of the trouble is not removed. We but shift the burden of responsibility. The ultimate fund for redemption remains limited to the one metal as beforehand can serve the banks even less efficiently, for the more divided the responsibility the larger the proportion of gold required for reserve purposes.

International bimetallism at the contemplated ratio of 16 to 1, and bimetallism by independent action at the same ratio, although opposing issues in the late campaign, are founded upon the same errors and misconceptions. Both assume that monetization creates a commercial demand for the metals, thereby enhancing their values; that the use of gold and silver as money substances has been one of choice with us instead of necessity; and that legal-tender laws create value.

It may be going too far to say that monetization creates no demand, but whatever demand it may be supposed to create is not a commercial one. In the latter sense the word signifies both an actual purchase, or the exchange of one thing for another, and a permanent withdrawal from the market of the thing bought. The act of coinage is certainly not a purchase, for, directly or indirectly, it aims to restore to the offerer of the bullion not something else, but the precise thing received;

It is important to inquire into the grounds upon which the use of silver and gold is founded, for if we have chosen them for that purpose there is an implication that other substances might have served the same object almost, if not quite, as well. Such is not the case. Silver and gold are absolutely unique in possessing the qualities indispensable for money, and not only nature, but immemorial custom and deep-rooted prejudice combine to compel their use in the exchanges irrespective, and even despite, of legislation. Monetization, therefore, cannot, for this further reason, add to, or take away from, their respective values, because the exchangeability that monetization is supposed to give them is a natural quality and not the creature of law. But so much more is this true of gold than of silver, that the dependence of modern commerce, and, through it, modern civilization, upon it is almost absolute. If, therefore, free coinage at a ratio unfair to gold were attempted, gold would cease to be offered at the mints, but it would nevertheless continue in use in final settlements, especially in transactions of some magnitude, thus preventing its decline in value.

Suppose, then, that such a law, national or international, should go into effect to-day, would anyone be so fatuous as to part with his gold until the effect of the law could be discerned? If the governments at the same time should exercise the same good sense, they would retain their gold and disburse their silver, but such conduct would defeat the very object of the law. If, on the other hand, they should release their gold, retaining their silver, they would give fresh point to the oft-proved saying, “The fool and his money are soon parted.” A bona-fide attempt on the part of one or more powers to change the market ratio of the metals could result only in transferring government gold to private coffers, and in a general fall to the silver basis with all its attendant evils. Meanwhile the gold would continue its functions as money in new transactions, but at its market value, never by any chance reaching the public treasuries except on the same basis. The inconvenience of transacting business with a metal some thirty times as heavy, value for value, as that to which they had been accustomed would, without further reason, speedily induce the governments to a restoration of the gold standard at any cost.

As for the legal-tender quality, it cannot be denied that governments here possess a peculiar power which individuals cannot exert; but that fact does not make the exercise of that power morally right. The quality of legal tender infused into the debased dollar cannot but add temporarily to its exchangeable value in a degree gradually diminishing with the exhaustion of the accumulated credits. When, however, the last debtor in the series is reached, and there is no longer a Peter to rob for the sake of Paul, the fraudulent coin must inevitably sink to the value it had as bullion prior to the act that created it.

Upon such fallacies as these it is sought to erect the elaborate superstructure of the civilized world’s monetary system! Some of the more advanced thinkers among the self-styled bimetallists, realizing that some deference must be paid to the lessons of experience, which offers not a solitary instance of the concurrent use of the two metals under a fixed ratio, argue that, even so, the chief blessing of bimetallism—a less variable standard—will have been secured in the automatic oscillation from one circulation to the other. If this oscillatory feature is the object sought, the adoption of a ratio of 16 to 1, or thereabouts, would certainly not secure it, but one almost identical with the market ratio would be imperative. Not once in the history of our country did this alternation occur, although from 1792 to 1873 we were upon the double standard. It is true that in 1834 the circulation changed from silver to gold, but that was due not to the automatic effect of that system, but to an actual change of the legal ratio from 15 to 1 to 16 to 1. But if the legal ratio is now made to conform to the market one, what becomes of our present silver coins? Must they be called in and be replaced by the new? If so the convenience of our subsidiary coinage will be sacrificed, for a silver dollar twice its present size would be intolerable.

The obstacles in the way of international bimetallism need not be enumerated here. The proceedings at the Brussels monetary conference in 1892, though they accomplished little besides, certainly served to make these difficulties plain. The primary object is to make silver coins and gold coins continuously interchangeable in trade at a ratio approximating as closely as possible to 16 to 1, and the discussion of the means to accomplish this has apparently narrowed down to one proposition to be answered by a simple yes or no: Shall the free coinage of gold and silver at the ratio of 1 to 16 be restored? It will not do to insert any other ratio (except, perhaps, 1 to 15 or 1 to 15½), because if a ratio closely approximating the commercial one is contemplated, each nation might decide the question for itself, and an international agreement would be superfluous. All the civilized nations have their own established ratios of coinage varying from 15 to 15½ or 16 of silver to 1 of gold, and whichever of these should prevail the result could not but be a serious matter to those nations obliged to reform their coinage in accordance therewith. Neither horn of the dilemma presented by the plan of a fixed ratio is practicable; the convenient one of 16 to 1 is impossible, and the commercial one would necessitate recoinages and make the coins prohibitively cumbrous. The choice of an intermediate ratio would be a virtual relinquishment of the principle itself, for how would that ratio be arrived at if not by mere guess? There are no data to guide us, nor is there any formulated rule by which the desired ratio may be determined. Besides, the intermediate ratio would still remain open to the objections advanced against the higher ratio, both in requiring recoinage and in unduly enlarging the coins.

The inevitable result of free coinage at a fixed ratio is to expel the undervalued metal from circulation. There can be but one way to prevent this, and that is by a system of sliding scale whereby scrupulous fidelity to the state of the market from day to day may be preserved. Diurnal recoinages are of course out of the question, but the thing is nevertheless both easy and practicable.

Let us assume that gold only has hitherto been used as money, that 25.8 grains thereof have been taken to be one dollar, and that it is now desired to supplement it with the use of silver. Our proposition will necessarily take this form: If one dollar is equal to 25.8 grains of gold, it must be equal to as many grains of silver as 25.8 grains of gold will buy in the open market. Here we must remember that what is true to-day may not be true to-morrow or a year hence. So many grains of gold may to-day be worth 412½ grains of silver, to-morrow they may be worth but 400, and next day, 420. By

In order to make my plan as clear as possible, I shall run the risk of seeming elementary by following through, step by step, a typical transaction under it: Let us fancy that the reader, bearing a nugget of gold in his left hand and another of silver in his right, and desiring to convert them into money, repairs to the Philadelphia mint. He applies there to the proper clerk, who, for simplicity’s sake, we will suppose performs all the operations. The clerk weighs and assays the two pieces of metal, and finds the gold one to contain 25,800 grains of standard gold, worth precisely $1,000, which are counted out in bills. A similar operation reveals that the lump of silver weighs 35,500 grains, but the clerk is now observed to consult a table before saying, “The market equivalent of a gold dollar is to-day 710 grains, consequently your 35,500 grains are worth $50;” and he then proceeds to count out the money in bills precisely like those given in payment for the gold. Upon examining these at his leisure the reader discovers imprinted thereon a contract running as follows: “This note entitles the bearer on demand to [the denomination of the bill] dollars in gold or to the market equivalent thereof in silver.”