tended reduction of expenditures has been effected are, when properly considered, gross extravagances. It has reduced the army and cut down the pay of its officers; it has refused to make appropriations for the payment of judgments against the United States— thus making no real reduction in expenditures, for these judgments must ultimately be paid; it has refused to make appropriations for the payment of the expenses of our Federal courts, thus in very many districts throughout the country reducing us to the necessity of adjourning courts from time to time, because no means have been furnished to pay juries or defray the ordinary court expenses; it has refused to make appropriations to finish uncompleted public buildings, thus in the long run increasing the expenditures rather than diminishing them; it has cut down the service in the Department of the Interior, and other departments, to such an extent that business in the Patent-Office and in the Pension Bureau is greatly in arrears; it has refused to make adequate appropriation for the revenue-cutter service; it has refused to make adequate appropriations for the repair and protection of navy-yards, stations, armories, and arsenals; it has refused to make adequate appropriations for lighthouses, beacons, and fog-stations. These were not wise and economical reductions of public expenditures; they were wasteful and demagogical extravagances. In the mean time the volume of Southern claims for losses during the war has multiplied, and the demands made by the South for appropriations for the improvement of their rivers, and for other purposes, are becoming more and more vehement.

Their platform calls for a free ballot, and General Hancock asserts that "neither fraud nor force must be allowed to subvert the rights of the people"; that "the bayonet is not a fit instrument for collecting the votes of freemen"; and that "it is only by a full vote, free ballot, and fair count that the people can rule in fact, as required by the theory of our Government." This is certainly sound doctrine, but he should apply it to his own party-the party of which he is to-day the head and representative. There is no free ballot in the South, from which he confidently expects 138 electoral votes.

In 1872 the Republican vote of Alabama was 90,272; in 1878 it was nothing. In 1872 the Republican vote of Arkansas was 41,373; in 1878 it was 115. In 1872 the Republican vote of Mississippi was 82,175; in 1878 it was 1,168. These enormous reductions of the Republican vote can not be attributed to the conversion of Republicans through the agency of Mr. Tilden's Literary Bureau, or by le

gitimate methods. That vote was reduced by terrorism, by violence, by fraud. The Democratic majority in the State of Alabama, in the election recently held there, is returned at 92,000; but this, all concede, is larger than the entire Democratic vote of the State. Surely, in the language of General Hancock, "it is only by a full vote, free ballot, and fair count that the people can rule in fact." But here are instances where upon one side there is no vote; where upon one side the ballot is fettered; where upon one side the ballot is not counted at all. Ordinarily the bayonet is not a fit instrument for collecting the votes of freemen, but the constitutional amendments guarantee this free vote, and provide that Congress shall enforce the provisions of those articles by appropriate legislation. If the ballot can be gathered in no other way than by the bayonet, I know of no better use to which the bayonet can be devoted. And, if the ballot-box is surrounded by men organized and armed to prevent the casting of the ballot, the bayonet will be employed for a very lofty purpose if used to prick those armed men into a proper appreciation of the fact that the national guarantee of the free ballot must be respected and must be obeyed.

So far as the industrial interests of the country are concerned, the Democratic platform of 1880 voices the long-known and wellunderstood ideas of the party. It hates protection, it has always opposed it, and in its present platform it speaks unqualifiedly for a tariff for revenue only. That General Hancock is in full accord with this doctrine of the party is evident from his letter of acceptance, for he says, "The principles enumerated by the Convention are those I have cherished in the past, and shall endeavor to maintain in the future." The Democratic Convention enumerated its principles, and under the fourth enumeration is found the doctrine of a tariff for revenue only. General Hancock declares that this principle he has "cherished in the past," and further avers that he will "endeavor to maintain it in the future."

The position of General Garfield upon this question is outspoken, clear, and unmistakable. From 1866 down to the present time he has been a steady and intelligent friend of protection to American industries. He has exhibited this friendship to this great interest not merely by his speeches, but by his votes. He joined with other Republican members of the Committee of Ways and Means in a minority report opposing Mr. Wood's tariff bill, and his votes during the last session of Congress have always been found on that committee in harmony with his position.

General Hancock declares in his letter of acceptance that the constitutional amendments are inviolable, but he will hardly undertake to declare that he would veto any measure which a Democratic majority might pass for the enlargement of the Supreme Court, or that he would veto any measure which the same party might pass repealing the laws now on the statute-book for the enforcement of those amendments. With the Supreme Court thus enlarged and those statutes repealed, the constitutional amendments would be (as every one knows) nullities. Declaring himself to be in favor of a free ballot, he must be quite well aware that his party in Congress has repeatedly sought the repeal of the election laws, by which alone can anything approximating a free ballot and a fair count be secured in our great cities in the North, through which alone can the perpetration of gross frauds in the ballot-box in the great Northern cities be prevented. The solid South does not desire the repeal of those election laws for its own purposes the shot-gun, the midnight raid, and the fraudulent count have sufficiently nullified those laws there. Their repeal is demanded, however, by the Democratic party, in order that the States of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut may be added to the solid South. And surely General Hancock will not undertake to say that, in the event of his election, should those statutes be repealed, he will veto such repealing measures. But without such veto we should have neither a free ballot nor a fair count.

In view of the history of the Democratic party, which I have thus hurriedly traced, drawing it from its platforms and its votes in Congress, it is not at all strange that it should be most anxious to be rid of it, but a people who have suffered so much from that history will not forget it. With this history behind it, with no honest effort to reverse its policy, which in the past has been so dangerous, the Democratic party, failing to furnish any additional reasons for an increase of public confidence in it or in its policy, demands that the public confidence, so long withheld, shall be restored to it.

Standing in the midst of an unrivaled prosperity, due in a great measure to an honest administration of public affairs, which the Democratic party has steadily opposed, occupying a position where all business and industrial interests are solidly thriving, the people of this country desire no change which would reverse the policy that has led us up to these magnificent results.

EMERY A. STORES.

THE SUCCESS OF THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

Nor a little impatience has been manifested by the public at the seemingly unaccountable tardiness with which the work of introducing the "carbon-loop" electric lamp into general use has hitherto progressed. It is now several months since the announcement was made through the newspapers that all the obstacles in the way of the utilization of the electric light as a convenient and economical substitute for gaslight had been removed: that a method had been invented by which electricity for light or for power could be conveyed to considerable distances economically; that the current could be subdivided almost ad infinitum; and that the electric lamp was henceforth to be as manageable for household purposes as a gas-jet. But, so far as the public can see, the project has since that time made no appreciable advance toward realization. The newspapers have reported, on the whole with a very fair degree of accuracy, the results of the experiments made with this system of lighting at Menlo Park; scientific experts have published their judgments, some of them pronouncing this system to be the desiderated practical solution of the problem of electrical lighting which has vexed the minds of physicists since the day when Sir Humphry Davy produced his famous five-inch voltaic arc. Still it must be confessed that hitherto the "weight of scientific opinion" has inclined decidedly toward declaring the system a failure, an impracticability, and based on fallacies. It will not be deemed discourteous if we remind these critics that scientific men of equal eminence pronounced ocean steam-navigation, submarine telegraphy, and duplex telegraphy, impossibilities down to the day when they were demonstrated to be facts. Under the circumstances, it was very natural that the unscientific public should begin to ask whether they had not been imposed upon by the inventor himself, or hoaxed by unscrupulous newspaper reporters.

Now, the fact is, that this system of electrical lighting was from the first all that it was originally claimed to be, namely, a practical solution of the problem of adapting the electric light to domestic uses and of making it an economical substitute for gaslight. The delays which have occurred to defer its general introduction are chargeable, not to any defects since discovered in the original theory of the system or in its practical working, but to the enormous mass of details which have to be mastered before the system can go into operation on a large scale, and on a commercial basis as a rival of the existing system of lighting by gas.

With the lamp and generator which at the time of the first announcement it was proposed to use, the electric light could have been made available for all illuminating purposes as gas is now; the expense would have been considerably less with the electric light; the lamp would have been quite as manageable as a gasburner. But, fortunately, the unavoidable delay interposed by administrative and economic considerations afforded opportunity for further research and experiment, and the result has been to introduce many essential modifications at both ends of the system—both in the generator and in the lamp; at the same time sundry important changes, all in the direction of economy and simplification, have been made at almost every point in the system, as well as in the details of manufacturing the apparatus.

As for the lamp, it has been completely transformed. The external form of the two types of lamp is identical; the principle of illumination-incandescence of a solid body in vacuo-is also the same; but, in the earlier lamp, light was produced by the incandescence of a platinum wire wound on a spool of zircon; in the perfected lamp the source of light is incandescent carbon. Another essential difference between the two is found in the form given to the incandescent body: in the platinum lamp it was coiled compactly on a small spool; in the carbon lamp it is a loop some five inches in total length. This incandescent loop is found in practice to afford a better light for domestic purposes than an incandescent mass of compact form the shadows it casts are not so sharply defined, their edges being softened.

This loop of carbon is now prepared from the fiber of a cultivated species of bamboo from Japan. A thread of this material, after undergoing a certain chemical process, is bent into the required shape, and then reduced to carbon. The resulting carbon loop is of a remarkably homogeneous structure, and possessed of a high degree