increase if we hope to perpetuate our free institutions. If it does, a moneyed aristocracy will soon control the destinies of our nation, and that liberty which we now so highly prize will be lost to us forever. The demagogue who would buy the vote of his poor and needy neighbor is far more corrupt and vile than his victim and will only wait his chance to sell the liberties of his country for a higher price. As a rule, he who buys a vote will sell his own.

It is greatly to Gov. Hovey's credit that he has had the candor and courage to include his own party in his arraignment of political bribers. He is unsound, we think, in declaring that the bribe-giver is "far more corrupt and vile” than the bribe-taker. However, no good purpose is served by recognizing two degrees of self-abasement in a dishonorable dicker. The legislation suggested by his Excellency is practical and to the point. He reminds the General Assembly that the Indiana constitution has been disregarded in not providing for a registration of voters; he recommends smaller election precincts, polling places isolated from political runners, the disenfranchisement of voters who bribe or are bribed for the first offense, and imprisonment for the second offense, as well as the disenfranchisement of those who exact contributions from candidates, and he favors a law making false challenges of legal voters at the polls punishable by fine and imprisonment.

We have reached the bottom of the list-this dismal and alarming succession of executive warnings. Bribery without precedent in our history is pilloried in all modes and considered from all sides. It is not the purpose of the writer to draw a political moral or to examine what he considers the causes for this epidemic of political vice, but simply to place in compact form the various treatments proposed by the governors. Taken as a body, the six republican and the six democratic governors have not spoken the wisest word in a confessedly serious emergency. They are strong in the academic denunciation of political crime, but many of them lack grip in formulating legislation. Political debauchery cannot be cured, it is true, by statutes without the legislation of just minds and the assertion of that popular sentiment which is the genius of our American civilization. Still, the States have a duty in the premises, and the country now looks to the Legislatures to begin the work of reform.

MASON A. GREEN.

ARTICLE II.-ECONOMICS OF THE STRIKE.

THE man who burned his barn to destroy the rats that ate his corn has been much laughed at for his folly. Yet he has many imitators even among those who laugh loudest. For this barn-burning is no imaginary fable; it is an every day fact which is of late becoming only too common. Again and again we see this suicidal method of cure applied to the ills of society, and it is growing in favor with those whom it injures most. Men destroy the sources of their own livelihood and doom themselves to poverty or starvation in the vain attempt to injure others who are filching a few handfuls from the store. Hungry mobs, inspired by envy and revenge, set fire to car-loads of corn and other food and in a few hours destroy that which would satisfy their hunger for many days. Restless workers demand higher wages, and if their demands are not promptly' met, by wanton acts they empty the treasuries from which their wages come as though wages could be increased by such means. Idlers ask for work, and then, as a means of securing it, block the very industries that would furnish them remunerative employment. And so in many ways wealth is destroyed or production is hindered in the endeavor to punish or to cripple those who are supposed to take more than their share. The result is always the same. The loss sustained in curing the evil is vastly greater than the evil itself. The blow aimed at a real or supposed thief rebounds with double force upon the striker. The rats scamper off in safety to new stores of corn, while he who kindled the flames mourns the loss of both store-house and corn, and perhaps dies of starvation.

In the recent developments of social agitation the strike has become a very popular means of adjusting difficulties. Workmen become dissatisfied with their wages or with the hours of labor or they feel that in some way or other the treatment they receive at the hands of their employers is unjust, and immediately they strike. Or employers have some

grievance against their workmen, and a lock-out ensues. In their essential nature the strike and the lockout are identical, the lockout being only a strike on the part of employers. In either of its forms a strike implies the stoppage of valuable production, and a consequent loss of material wealth. Although there may be no destructive violence, yet he who hinders a day's productive labor, impoverishes the community just as much as he who destroys the wealth that has already been produced in a day.' Whoever strikes for higher wages, by his own act paralyzes the hand that would pay the wages.

Within the past five or ten years strikes have become almost an every-day occurrence in our land. We can scarcely take up a daily newspaper without seeing an account of some such disturbance in the industrial world. In fact the strike is. considered by many as a necessary method of settling the differences between employers and workmen. As the oldfashioned doctors were accustomed to bleed every patient, thus reducing his already exhausted vital powers, as the first step toward his restoration; so the modern social agitator would cure the ills of poverty by first impoverishing society. Strikes are a great waste of material wealth, to say nothing of their moral results. As they are too often conducted, they imply the absolute destruction of wealth; and when conducted in the best possible manner they necessitate a great loss to the community. It usually happens that the loss falls most heavily in the end upon those who take part in the strike.

Perhaps we should not say that strikes are always indefensible or that they are wholly unnecessary. They are, like war, an extreme measure, and may be forced upon those who recognize their wastefulness. Those who are most directly concerned in a strike may not be really responsible for its occurrence or for its results, and we ought not too hastily to lay the blame on their shoulders; but whenever a strike is carried beyond the most peaceful measures, whatever its provocation overt violence is always chargeable to the immediate perpetrators. In the case of a peaceful and lawfully conducted strike, if such there be, we may be obliged to unravel some intricate meshes of cause before we can say with any degree of justice where the blame rests. But whoever is responsible

for them, the fact remains beyond the possibility of dispute that strikes are a great waste; and any adjustment of the relations of labor and capital which shall put an end to the necessity or possibility of strikes will be an immense boon to our nation. It will save millions of dollars annually, and will be an important factor in the relief of poverty.

In the U. S. Census report for 1880 we find the following suggestive figures regarding the strikes and lockouts of the previous year. The total amount of wages lost during the year was $3,711,097. The aggregate number of days lost by idleness was 1,989,872. The number of men idle was 64,779. The proportion of strikes to lockouts was-strikes 88%, lockouts 12%.

It will be observed that no account is made of any losses excepting those necessarily involved in every strike, viz: the loss of wages and of productive labor. Many people forget this latter item, and think only of the wages, but the loss of labor is always greater than the amount of wages, since a day's work must not only equal in value the wages paid, but must bring at least a slight profit besides. Hence the direct loss of wealth caused by the strikes of 1879 was something over seven millions of dollars, to which doubtless there should be added a large sum for property destroyed and productive labor indirectly hampered. And when we have gathered them all the figures are much smaller than for any subsequent year.

And

Official reports estimate the loss of wages in the St. Louis railroad strike of 1886 to have been one million dollars. that was but one of many strikes during the same year, though it was probably greater than any of the others. Here too we must reckon the loss in productive labor, which would add more than another million, making more than two million dollars direct loss in a single strike.

Still greater were the losses in the great railway strike of 1877. To say that one hundred thousand men were idle for many days, and to compute the amount of wages lost would but feebly indicate the cost of that movement. According to the census report, and also the report of the Senate committee, the direct loss of railway property destroyed by fire and otherwise in the city of Pittsburgh alone is estimated at from eight

to ten million dollars. Professor Ely in his book, "The Labor Movement in America," states that the total loss of property in different parts of the country was not less than one hundred million dollars. Add to this the fact that the entire railway system of the United States was disturbed, and trade interrupted, and the loss will appear very much greater. We are as a nation at the present time dependent on the railways as never before. The railroad is a necessity to make possible our enormous exchanges of products. The farms of the west are useless without easy access to the markets of the east; and the factories of the east must close their doors if they are cut off from communication with the rest of the country. If even for a few days our chief lines of railway should stop their traffic, there would be intense suffering in many parts of the country. Any extended railroad blockade would be felt to the remotest village on the continent. Not tradesmen only, but farmers and laborers of every kind would feel the effect of the depression. Every city from the Atlantic to the Pacific felt the shock of that great strike; and we can imagine, though we cannot compute, the loss of trade arising from want of communication, and the loss of perishable freight which must be added to all figures that are given regarding the strike. There was in that strike a wanton destruction of property surpassing anything that has occurred in recent strikes. Thousands of bushels of corn and other provisions were burned with the railroad property by men who were clamoring for food. The original purpose of the strike seems to have been lost sight of by many in the insane desire for destruction and revenge.

The engineers' strike on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad in March, 1888, is still fresh in the minds of all. It was remarkable chiefly for the persistence with which the men held together, and the attempts that were made to force the other railroads of the country into a participation in the strike. The following estimates have been published regarding the cost of that strike: