The Masses 1.1 (1911-01)

JANUARY, 1911 No. 1 PRICE, 5 CENTS THE MASSES A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE INTERESTS OF THE WORKING PEOPLE SPECIAL FEATURES The American Co-operative Movement WILLIAM J. GHENT Must It Be So? LEO TOLSTOY Unite In Buying As In Selling EUGENE WOOD The Tendencies of German Socialism PAUL LOUIS The Increased Cost of Living GUSTAVUS MEYERS THE MASSES PUBLISHING COMPANY 112 EAST 19TH STREET, NEW YORK Copyright, 1910 Application for entry as second-class matter at the post office at New York City pending [pgbrk]

Vol. I THE MASSES January, 1911 SPECIAL OFFER Do you believe in Socialism? Do you believe Socialism is practical? Do you want to help us convince the people that Socialism is a practical, economic movement? If you do, then help us teach the people practical co-operation. You can do it by working as an agent for us. We send you by express 100 copies of The Masses, and a number of subscription blanks. You secure for us 100 subscriptions at our special rate of 10 cents for three months. You act as our agent for these people during these three months and try to secure as many renewals as possible at the expiration of their subscription. We will present you with a premium worth $6.00, consisting of 5 copies "War—What For," by George R. Kirkpatrick. Price, $1.20 per copy. If you secure a smaller number of subscriptions we will make you a corresponding present of books. NOTE FROM PIET VLAG TO THE CO-OPERATORS COMRADES AND CO-OPERATORS: Here is your magazine. It is human. It is attractive. It is inexpensive. The MASSES PUBLISHING COMPANY was organized at our instigation; it has no capital to speak of; it is dependent upon your support— and that is sufficient. Co-operation has to be studied. We must have a means of reaching all the people interested in co-operation. Then we will eventually centralize to such an extent that the middleman will be eliminated. This highly centralized and closely organized co-operative movement can only be created by steady, insistent agitation and education. If you want the magazine to live, help it now. The offer as quoted above makes it possible for every one of you to do something. If only one-tenth of the co-operators get busy and do a few things, the magazine will live. But don't forget, you must get busy. - [pgbrk]

THE MASSES A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE INTERESTS OF THE WORKING PEOPLE EDITED BY THOMAS SELTZER CONTENTS Editorial by Thomas Seltzer__________ Page 1 Must It Be So? by Leo Tolstoy, Illustrated by William W. Nutting________________ " 2 The Fur Coat, by Ludwig Fulda, Illustrated by H. Berlin___________________________ " 3 The Masses, A Drawing by Cesare__________ " 5 Who Can Blame? by Herbert Everett_____ " 5 The Increased Cost of Living, by Gustavus Myers " 6 The American Co-operative Movement, by W. J. Ghent, Drawing by A. Popini " 6 Evolution, Cartoon by Art The Little Sinner, by E. N. Chirikov Illustrated by Frank Van Sloun__________Page 7 Why Socialists Should Join Co-operatives, by P. Vlag_____________________________ " Labor Delegate, Cartoon by Art Young____ " Unite in Buying as in Selling, by Eugene Wood_______________________ " Impressions of Our Artists, by Grace Potter__ " The Tendencies of German Socialism, by Paul Louis___________________________ " Young__________Page 13 THE MASSES PUBLISHING COMPANY, 112 EAST 19TH STREET, NEW YORK EUGENE WOOD, Pres. HAYDEN CARRUTH, Vice-Pres. ANDRE TRIDON, Sec'y SUBSCRIPTION RATES : YEARLY, $0.50. HALF YEARLY, $0.25. SINGLE COPY, FIVE CENTS

EDITORIAL A NEW Socialist magazine requires no apology for its appearance. The hollow pretense of fulfilling a much-felt want with which every capitalist periodical enters the field is in the case of Socialist publications a genuine reality. The Socialist movement is a growing movement and naturally creates a growing literature. As the sphere of its activity extends and its means of propaganda increase and diverge, it automatically evolves new organs of expression. The Masses is an outgrowth of the co-operative side of Socialist activity. Its publishers believe strongly in co-operation and will teach it and preach it vigorously through the columns of this magazine. A co-operative movement already exists. Infant though it is, it has quite outgrown the experimental stage and proved its vitality. The significance of a powerful co-operative organization for the Socialist movement in this country cannot be questioned. The history of co-operation in European countries has demonstrated its value, and there is no reason why a great co-operative cannot be built up here, too, in as short a time as it was built up in Germany. It can become a mighty weapon in the hands of the American party. It can help vastly to accelerate Socialist propaganda. Where other Socialist appeals fail to obtain a hearing, the appeal to the revolt against high prices and the increased cost of living will be heard. The Masses will watch closely the development of the American co-operative organization, and will keep its readers informed of its work and progress. But while the co-operative feature constitutes its distinctive feature—distinctive merely because other Socialist publications have so far almost entirely neglected this field—its aim is a broad one. It will be a general ILLUSTRATED magazine of art, literature, politics and science. We use the word illustrated in the best meaning of the term. The Masses will print cartoons and illustrations of the text by the best artists of the country, on a quality of paper that will really reproduce them. This is a luxury which the Socialist press hitherto has been unable to afford, but it is a necessary luxury. Poor illustrations poorly reproduced are worse than worthless. They merely cause an unpleasant irritation in the optic nerves, which by sympathetic action is communicated to the entire nervous system. The first issue contains two cartoons by Arthur Young. The reader needs no introduction to Arthur Young. He knows him by his works on Life and Puck. He knows his works by the clearness and originality of his themes, and the skill of his execution. Young belongs to the class of artists—there are many such nowadays—who stifle in the air of the capitalist editorial office. He wants his artistic lungs to expand, and he will take bracing constitutionals once a month in the Masses. The cartoons in this issue are the first of a series. The series will be continued in the succeeding numbers. Charles Winter drew the temporary cover design for us. He will make a more elaborate one for the next month. The metropolitan magazines cannot spare Winter for very long. He must be notified far in advance for work that takes considerable time. This is the reason our permanent cover had to be delayed until the second issue. The illustrators of the fiction appearing in the present number are equally representative of the best art in the country. Their names are all familiar. This does not mean that the editor will not admit to the columns of the Masses new, unknown geniuses as soon as he discovers them. In fiction the Masses intends to maintain an equally high standard of excellence. It will publish the best that can be had, not only in the United States, but in the world. It will not publish a story merely because it is original, that is, because written first in the English language. A good story from a foreign tongue, we believe, is preferable to a bad American story. This is partly the program of the Masses. What do you think of it?

[pgbrk] Must It Be So? By Leo Tolstoy. Editor's Note.—This powerful sketch gives a striking picture of conditions as they actually exist in Russia. It is typical of the best style of Tolstoy's later writings, and in its grand simplicity reflects the simplicity of his philosophy and of his life. IN the middle of a field surrounded by a wail stands an iron foundry with tall smoking chimneys, rattling chains, blasting furnaces, sidings, and small scattered houses for the foremen and workmen. The men scurry about like ants in the factory and the mine shafts hard by. In dark, damp, narrow, suffocating passages three hundred feet deep below the ground, exposed to death at any instant, some dig the ore from morning till night. Others load the ore or the dirt on cars. Then bending their backs they haul the cars through the dark to the hoisting bucket, and haul them back again empty, to be filled again. That is the way they work twelve or fourteen hours a day the week round. That is the way they work in the mines. In the foundry itself some work in the sweltering heat of the smelting furnaces; others where the molten iron and the slag flow; others again in the different shops as machinists, stokers, brick-makers, carpenters, and so on. These, too, work from twelve to fourteen hours a day the week round. On Sunday the men receive their wages. They wash themselves, or else without washing themselves they get drunk in the saloons scattered all about the factory to entice them. Early Monday morning they get into harness again. Close by peasants driving tired, starved horses plow other peole's fields. The peasants rise with the sun, if they have not spent the night on the pasture near the swamp; the one place where the horses can graze. At sunrise they return home, harness the horses, and taking with them a piece of bread, they set out to plow other people's fields. Other peasants squat on the roadside near the factory, breaking stones in a temporary bark-shed. Their legs are battered, their hands horny, their whole bodies dirty, and their faces, their hair, their beards are covered with lime dust. The dust has eaten into their lungs, too. They take a great stone from the heap, put it between their feet, covered with enormous shoes and old rags, and strike the stone with a hammer until it falls into pieces. Then they take the pieces and hammer them until they fall into still smaller pieces. Next they take a large stone again and repeat tne process. That is the way they work from the gray of dawn until late at night, fifteen or sixteen hours a day, resting two hours after their noon meal. And all they take to strengthen themselves is some bread and water at breakfast, and all the rest they get are a few short bits of repose. That is the way all these people live, the men in the mine, in the iron foundry, on the farm, and on the roadside from boyhood until old age. Their wives and their mothers live the same way, working beyond their strength, and in addition "undergoing the pangs of childbirth and. the cares of motherhood. And that is the way their fathers and children live, poorly fed and poorly clad, overworking from morning until night, from youth until old age. Bells ijngle, and a carriage rolls by the iron foundry, the plowing peasants, and the stone breakers. As it bowls along it encounters ragged men and women carrying sacks on their backs, men and women who wander from place to place living by alms. The carriage is drawn by four bay horses. The poorest of the horses is worth more than the entire homestead of any one of the peasants. The peasants look at the equipage with satisfaction. There sit two girls, displaying gay parasols, ribbons, and feathered hats. Each hat costs more than the horse with which the peasant plows his field. An officer, the galloon and buttons of his uniform resplendent in the sunshine, sits in the front seat. A rotund coachman, with blue silk sleeves and a velvet jacket, perches on the box. He very nearly runs down the pilgrim women, and almost upsets in the ditch an empty cart jogging along, driven by a peasant in an ore-covered shirt. "Are you blind?" bawls the coachman, shaking his whip at the peasant who was too slow getting out of his way. The peasant, in alarm, pulls the reins with one hand and his cap off his head with the other. Three bicyclists, a woman and two men, spin noiselessly along a short distance behind the carriage, their nickel-plated wheels glittering in the sun. They laugh as they pass the pilgrim women, who cross themselves in fright. Two horseback riders gallop along the side of the road. The man rides an English stallion, the woman a palfrey. The woman's black hat and lilac veil, not to mention her horse and saddle, cost more than a stonebreaker earns in two months. And upon that up-to-date crop as much was spent as that young man walking up the path with so contended a look because he has succeeded in getting a position, receives for a week's work in an underground mine. As the young man turns out of their way he gazes admiringly at the sleek horses and sleek riders, and at the fat, strange-looking, powerful dog with a valuable collar about his neck running after the equestrians with his tongue lolling out. At a little distance behind the party a cart follows. In it is a giggling girl, gaudily dressed and her hair artificially curled. She wears a white apron. A stout, red-faced man with side whiskers and a cigarette between his teeth, sits next to her and whispers into her ear. Besides, there is a samovar in the cart, several packages wrapped in napkins, and a small ice-box. These are the servants to the party. The day is not an exceptional holiday. That is the way . (Continued on page 11) [pgbrk] THE FUR COAT A Humorous Story by one of Germany's Leading Contemporary Dramatists By LUDWIG FULDA Illustrated by H. Berlin Translated by Thomas Seltzer PROFESSOR MAX WIEGAND to Dr. Gustav Strauch Berlin, November 20, 1909. Dear Gustav:— I must tell you something that will astonish you tremendously. I have separated from my wife. Or, to be more precise, we have separated from each other. We agreed to separate peacefully. My wife went to her parents in Freiburg and will probably stay there altogether. For the present, I remain in our old home. In the spring I may look for another, smaller house, or I may not. I doubt whether it would be easy for me to find so quiet a room to work in as this, and I dread the idea of moving, especially when I think of my large library. You want to know, of course, what happened. Nothing, believe me. The world will seek all possible and impossible reasons to explain why two persons who married out of love and who for eleven years lived a so-called happy marital life, should suddenly decide, to put an end to their life in common. The world, which thinks itself so very wise, though, as a fact, its understanding is most limited, will suppose, no doubt, that something has been concealed from it. It will put this case into one of the two or three pigeonholes which it keeps ready-made for every event, because it does not understand that life with its inexhaustible manifold variety never repeats itself and that even one and the same situation can assume infinitely diverse aspects according to the character of the dramatis personae. You, dear Gustav, I need not tell all this. You will comprehend that two finely organized souls do not want to bind themselves to each other by external ties when after a thousand vain attempts they have reached the conclusion that on all large questions no understanding is possible between them. We are too opposite in our natures, my wife and I. Between her conception of life and mine there is an unbridgeable gap. In the first years of our marriage I still hoped that I could guide her, direct her, and gradually harmonize her with myself.. She seemed so flexible and pliable, took so warm an interest in my work and plans, and submitted so nicely to my teachings. It was not until after our boy's death that a change took place in her. The grief over his loss, from which neither of us will ever quite recover, matured her, and made her independent. Then a tendency to brood and ponder, from which she had been entirely free, got the upper hand, and confirmed her in her partly native, partly acquired ideas and prejudices, which my influence had thrust into the background, though it had never entirely rooted them out. More and more she wrapped herself up in a veil of mystic, ideas and sentimental, phantastic illusions. Stubbornly, doggedly, she demanded recognition for her point of view, insisting it had as much claim to consideration as mine. She bitterly repelled my scientific objections. She lost all interest in my specialty and regarded it with unexpressed but quite evi-den aversion. To her my work was the enemy's camp, shielding hostile troops. Finally there came to be scarcely a single subject in the whole wide sphere of nature, and human life on which we had the same opinion. It is true, there never was an open quarrel between us, but the more sparing we tried to be of each other, the worse became our ill humor. We felt more and more distinctly that we only walked together, but did not belong to each other. This feeling grew in us. It disquieted us, it tormented us. Finally, it pushed all other feelings into the background. If we had not loved each other so much before, if we had not continued to respect each other so much, we might perhaps have endured such a condition for several years more. But we both had too high a conception of marriage, too lively a sense of human dignity to be content with an imperfect makeshift. And so, finally, about a week ago we had it all out. It came about naturally, as over-ripe fruit falls from the tree. I can scarcely say which of us spoke first. A conviction we had both harbored for a long time liberated itself from our minds at the same instant. The fact that after so many years we could for the first time again discuss an important subject in perfect harmony, toned down and softened the harsh theme, and gave us the serene calm which we had not had for soo long, and without which it was so painful to be. Our parting yesterday was as dignified as possible. No word of reproach, no jarring. We both felt the necessity as well as the significance of our resolve. When we recalled our engagement, the long span of life we had travelled together, we could scarcely restrain an access of tenderness. And I confess never had my wife inspired me with greater respect than at that moment, when all pettiness seemed to drop away from her and the essential grandeur of her nature stood out in all its clearness. By her bearing, by what she said, and by what she left unsaid the whole scene was bared of its common, every-day aspect, and elevated to a higher plane of solemnity. Deeply moved we had difficulty in restraining tears, and shook hands on parting. And so we shall be able to look back to the end of our married life at least with unmitigated satisfaction. With her consent I put all business arrangements into the hands of a lawyer, so that there should be no correspondence between us. It would only open up old wounds, and reveal new disagreements, and paralyse our energy, which we shall need for establishing our future separate existences. We must begin life anew—she and 1. For this we must free ourselves from the past, not only externally, but also inwardly. I am breathing more easily already. The Rubicon is crossed. I think you may congratulate me. Professor .Max Wiegand to Dr. Gustav Strauch Berlin, December 12, 1909. Dear Gustav :— Thank you for your prompt reply to my last letter. It shows such fine appreciation and friendly sympathy. Excuse my delay in answering, but it was impossible for me to write to you before, and even now I still find it very difficult. You give your unqualified approval to the step I took, because you think it will be of extreme value to my well-being and further development. But you forget what it means to be separated from a person whom you have always had at your side day and night for eleven years. I myself have only gradually come to realize it in the course of the few weeks that I have lived alone. Habit is a mighty f^rce, especially with men who—like you and myself-—live in an intellectual world and require a solid foundation for it. For how can we survey the world from the height of the tower, unless the foundation of the tower is sure? Of course, these considerations are of no conse- quence when balanced against the weighty reasons that led me and my wife to separate. It goes without saying that I am still firmly convinced that our resolution was for our mutual benefit. But in this strange life there is no calculation that ever comes out exactly even. A state of transition is in its very nature disagreeable and confusing. In my case it is downright torture. From early morning until late at night I must bother about trifles to which I have not given a thought since my bachelor days— things which I do not even want to mention to you. They are so absurd and insignificant. And yet they rob me of my time, rest, and temper out of all proportion to their importance. And I don't know what arrangements I could make to rid myself of those thousand and one trivialities, which my wife shielded me from. Those servants! Now that the cat is away, they carry on as they please. You have no idea of the stupid obstacles I stumble over continually, the miserable details that have to be attended to at every step. Here is one example out of many. It has been bitterly cold these past few days. I have been looking for my fur coat nigh and low, but can't find it. With the help of the maid I turned the whole house upside down, until finally it occurred to her that in the spring my wife put my coat in storage at the furrier's. But what furrier? T can't find out. I have inquired in vain at a dozen furriers. If only I had not arranged with my wife that we should not write to each other. Then I could simply ask her. Yet it is better so. I want our separation to be free from banal commonplaces. No farce should follow upon a drama in the grand style. She may even think that I regret the step we took, that I miss her more than she misses me, that I have simply snatched at the first pretext to enter into communication with her again. Never! To-day the thermometer registers five below zero. Professor Max Wiegand to Mrs. Emma Wiegand Berlin, December 14, 1909. Dear Emma:— You will be greatly surprised to receive a letter from me contrary to our mutual agreement. Do not think I want to begin a correspondence. We terminated relations in too dignified a way and we will, not try to force open the door that separates us. I merely have a question to ask about a very slight matter, which you alone can answer. Who is the furrier to whom you gave my coat last spring? Lina cannot remember the address. Thanking you in advance for your early reply, Yours, Max. Mrs. Emma Wiegand to Professor Max Wiegand Freiburg, December 15, 1909. Dear, Max :— The furrier's name is Palaschke, and his place is in the Zimmerstrasse. I cannot understand how Lina could have forgotten it. She took the fur coat to him herself. Emma. Professor Max Wiegand to Mrs. Emma Wiegand Berlin, December 17, 1909. Dear Emma :— I must trouble you again—this will be the last time. Mr. Palaschke says he cannot let me have 3 [pgbrk] 4 THE MASSES January, 1911

"I hunted for the receipt the whole morning."

the coat unless I give him his receipt He has had several unpleasant experiences of late, and so has made it a principle never to let anything go from his shop without getting back his receipt. Where is the receipt? I hunted for it the whole morning. Lina, of course, hasn't the faintest idea where it is. When I dared to suggest in the gentlest tone in the world that she ought to know, she became impertinent. She is going to leave to-morrow. I prefer to let her have her wages until her time is up, including a Christmas gift, as I do not want to live under the same roof with such a good-for-nothing, impudent person. Well then—please be good enough to let me know where the receipt is. I caught a good cold for lack of my fur coat. \ hope you are well and found your family all right. Max. Mrs. Emma Wiegand to Professor Max Wie-gand Freiburg, December 19, 1909. Dear Max: The receipt is either in the chiffonier in the dressing room, second or third drawer from the top, or in my desk, right or left drawer. I could find it at once if I were there, Lina has great faults, still she is one of the best. I doubt whether her successor will be an improvement. And now before Christmas you won't get anv at all. You should have had patience with her a few weeks longer. But that does not concern me any more. I hope you are rid of your cold. I am quite well. Emma. Professor Max Wiegand to Mrs. Emma Wiegand Berlin, December 21, 1909. Dear Emma :— I can't find the receipt either in the chiffonier or in the desk. Maybe it fell out when you were packing, and was then carelessly removed. 1 can think of no other explanation. I will go to Mr. Palaschke again to-morrow and by all sorts of securities and guarantees try to wheedle my own coat out of him. I must keep strictly to my room to-day, because my cold has been complicated by a severe attack of nerves. I had a dreadful scene with the cook yesterday. By accident I found out she had been cheating me disgracefully ever since you left. When I mentioned it to her in a most delicate way, she turned on me and told me in the coarsest, vulgarest language that I did not know the first thing about housekeeping, that it was only for your sake, dear Emma, that she had consented to work for such low wages, and she would leave the house instantly. I replied calmly but firmly that it was her duty to stay until her month was up. Then she began to scream and gesticulate and had the superlative impudence to say that you had not been able to get along with me either, and had had to leave. I lost my temper, fell into a passion, and must have told her she was a "common woman." I do not know how I could forget myself to such an extent. I did not think such language could pass my lips. When I rang for supper two hours later I found she had already packed up all her belongings and was gone. In the kitchen I discovered a "billet-doux" teeming with orthographical mistakes, in which she threatened that in case I put the least difficulties in her way and did not give her the good reference she deserved, she would sue me for having called her a "common woman. ' Now I am without any help. The janitress shines my shoes and brings me my meals from a restaurant. The food is dreadful. As you say it is quite impossible to get anybody half-way decent before Christmas or New Year. However, I have written to a dozen employment bureaus, and will go to them myself as soon as my health permits. This has turned out to be quite a long letter, dear Emma. When a man's heart is full, his pen runs away with him. I have a suspicion, too, that that infamous cook of a woman has gotten away with my gold cuff buttons—an heirloom from my uncle Frederick. Or, maybe, you know where they are. In that case I should be very thankful to you for information. Goodby, dear Emma. I hope you are getting along better than I am. Yours, Max. Mrs. Emma Wiegand to Professor Max Wiegand Freiburg, December 23, 1909. Dear Max : Y'our description of the little unpleansantness vou had with the cook struck a responsive chord in me. She often told me much worse things than she told you, but I swallowed everything, because her cooking was good. It is only the incompetents that are polite. With cooks the degree of their impudence is a fair measure of their efficiency. Now at least you can see with what sort of things I had to cope year in, year out, and you have found out for yourself that in this sphere as in others, there are problems that all the sciences cannot solve. From this distance I cannot give you any advice in the matters troubling vou. Nor do I think I am justified in doing so after our inner relations, as you so well said in your first letter, were terminated in the most dignified manner. As to the furrier's receipt and your cuff buttons, I wager I could find both in five minutes. You remember how often you would hunt for something high and low without being able to find it, and I would put my hand on it in an instant. Men can find a new truth now and then, but never an old button. Since we have started a correspondence—at your inititative—I should like to ask you for something. Before I left, I forgot to ask you for the letters you wrote me during our engagement. At my request you kept them in your iron chest. They are my property, and I should like to have them back as a souvenir of a happy time. Will you please do me the favor to return them to me? I wish you a Merry Christmas, Emma. Professor Max Wiegand to Mrs. Emma Wiegand * Berlin, December 25, 1909. My Dear Emma:— Your wish for a Merry Christmas was not full-filled. I never spent a drearier Christmas Eve in all my life. You will sympathize when I tell you I could not accept our friends' invitations. I should have felt like an intruder looking on at other people's family happiness. So I remained at-home, if in the present circumstances I can still speak of a home. I was as lonely in the house as in a desert. In spite of the most desperate efforts I could not get any help before January. Yesterday I could not even induce someone to come in for the day. The Janitress served me a cold supper in the early afternoon, because she could not bother about me later in the day. She wanted to be with her children and give them their gifts. A flickering oil lamp took the place of the Christmas tree, which you always decorated so charmingly and tastefully. None of your pretty surprises, either, forestalling all my wishes before I knew them myself. There was nothing on the Christmas table except my old fur coat. Mr. Palaschke at last sent it to me mollified by my prolonged prayers, entreaties, and appeals and perhaps also by the holiday mood. The room was as cold as a barn. The fire went out and to start it again was far beyond [pgbrk] January,|1911 THE MASSES 5 my power. So I put.on my fur coat, sat down in the light of the flickering lamp and read my engagement letters to you, which I had taken from their eleven years' resting place to send to you. Emma, dear, I cannot describe the impression the reading of those letters produced upon me. I wept like a child, not only because of the sad ending to so promising a tie, but also because of the change that has taken place in me. There is much in the letters that is immature, much that does not correspond to my present views. But what a fresh, free, warmblo ded fellow I was! How I loved you! How happy I was! How naively, completely I abandoned myself to my happiness! Yes, that was everything—the youthful faith in life, the reckless pursuit of life, the exuberant feeling, which overflowed like a vine in springtime. Until now I thought it was only you who had changed gradually. Now I see I have not remained the same either. And God knows, when I compare the Max of then with the Max of to-day, I needn't hesitate an instant to make up my mind which I prefer. In the sleepless night lying behind me I tried in every possible way to get myself back into the Max of former years, and I began to have serious doubts whether the difference in your and my opinions and even sentiments are after all so important as they seemed to us; whether above and beyond all that there was not something neutral, something human, which we both had in common, and which we shall always have in common. Search yourself, dear Emma, and see whether a similar voice does not speak in your soul, too. What happened cannot be undone. But nothing would bring me greater relief in this painful situation than a confirmation of this from you. For your departure has left a gap in my home and in my life which I shall never, never be able to fill. Your very unhappy Max. Mrs. Emma Wiegand to Professor Max Wie-gand Freiburg, December 27, 1909. Dear Max : When you asked me questions about receipts and buttons I was glad to answer them. But the questions you ask me in your last letter I must refuse to answer. Do you really believe, you old pedant, that I left your home, which was also mine, only because we disagreed in our opinions and sentiments? If you do, you are fearfully mistaken. I left you because I saw more and more clearly that you no longer loved me. In fact, I had become a burden to you. You wanted to be rid of me. I could see that in everything you said and did. If in that "dignified" scene of seperation you had found one loving word to say I might still have remained. But you always rode the high horse of a "world philosophy'' from which you have now tumbled down so pitifully because you have no servants. I, too, served you faithfully, and you never saw it. I never let the fire go out in your home. It is not my fault if you could not get your home warm again. Who knowrs whether you would have noticed the gap which my departure left if you had not happened to miss your fur coat. It was that (Continued on page 14)

THE MASSES By CESARE

When the mills of men have ground us To the fighting edge of fate. Who can blame if lying around us Is the wreckage of blind hate? WHO CAN BLAME? When for dollars we are broken Like a fagot for a fire. Who can blame if by that token We inflame in razing ire? When with being slave and chattel For a pittance we have done, Who can blame if we give battle? We are many, they are one! Herbert Everett. [pgbrk]

The Increased Cost of Living An Analysis of Some of the Factors That Cause the Mysterious Jumps in Prices By GUSTAVUS MEYERS THIS, of all times, is the time when wage-earners should support any economic movement in their behalf which promises to conserve the power of their wages. Of this there is the most imperative need. The purchasing power of money is not only constantly falling, but a gigantic conspiracy is already successfully under way t impose upon the workers a fiat currency which has not even an artificial basis of value, as capitalists reckon value in relation to money. Of the whole number of workers, few realize that the money that capitalists pay them in wages is a depreciated, swindling currency in more than one sense. A dollar to-day brings less than half in commodities of what it could purchase ten years ago. The enormous, exorbitant advances in the prices of every necessity have so reduced the buying power of a dollar, that it is equal in value to less than what half a dollar was a decade ago. In no case have wages been adequately increased to meet this increase in the cost of living. The strongest labor unions have not been able to get more than a fifteen per cent, increase in wages, and such an increase is exceptional, at that. What Is a fifteen per cent, increase compared to an increase in the cost of living which approximates more than fifty per cent, of what it was ten years ago? The worker, who has by great difficulties amassed a few hundred dollars in a savings bank as as a security for sickness or being out of work, has been robbed of more than one-half the amount of his deposit. If, let us say, he has $200 to his credit in bank for the last few years, he really has not $200 but less than $100. If he drew the $200 out of bank, he would find out that it would buy considerably less than what $100 did a few years ago. The only value of money is its buying capacity ;a dollar may still nominally be a dollar; but if its purchasing power is cut in half, it actually is only a half dollar. Thus billions of dollars are being indirectly robbed from the meager wages of the workers to pay dividends on enormous issues of watered stocks put out by every trust and other capitalist concern. But this is not all. Under a recent act passed by Congress at the bidding of the great financial interests, the national banks are allowed to turn out currency against these very watered stocks. Hotherto, the United States Government allowed currency—that is, bank bills—to be issued against deposits of United States bonds only. But the Aldrich-Vreeland bill, passed recently, contained this "little joker," "or any other securities." The result has been that immense quantities of watered stocks have been deposited with the United States Treasury, and many millions of currency have been issued against them. It is announced that $500,000,000 more will be issued against these watered stocks. All of this currency is wild-cat currency, having nothing but a fiat value, which means no basis value, even as capitalist standards go. This is the spurious stuff that is now being paid out to the workers, while the banknotes or Treasury notes representing gold, silver, or United States bonds are being carefully gathered in by the great financial interests. A smash-up is sure to come. The dice are loaded against the working class, and pending the time when the whole capitalist regime will be overthrown, the workers should realize that thev must give their support to co-operative movements. Only by this means, with the present odds so fearfully against them, can they hope to conserve something of the buying power of their scant wages, now being largely paid in wild-cat currency. If, instead of depositing their money in banks where it is cut in half and used against them, the workers should become partners in cooperative concerns, they would have the benefit of their wages, which they do not have now. The American Co-operative Movement How Co-operation Can be Made Successful in the United States By W. J. GHENT Drawing by Alex. Popini PERHAPS the first question that comes to the student of co-operation is this: "Why has the co-operative movement in the United States so far generally failed?" I myself have asked this question many times. Many replies, none of them wholly satisfactory, have been given. So I have asked it again—this time of Piet Vlag. This is his reply: "Because the main spirit of the movement has almost invariably been to obtain at once one dollar's worth of goods for seventy-five cents, instead of uniting the. working class against exploitation. The aim has been too narrow, the impatience too great. TJie earlier co-operators did not see the necessity of building up their own wholesale co-operatives. Eeven now we do not expect the assistance of the earlier co-operators until we have developed to a point where they will see that it is to their immediate economic advantage to be connected with us. With the Socialist co-operators the matter is different. They see further ahead than the others, and are willing, in order to build up a strong central body, to make some present sacrifices and suffer some present inconveniences." Consumers' leagues and buying associations have often been urged as a substitute for cooperative stores. I asked Mr. Vlag about these, and he replied: "The consumers' leagues offer an interesting problem. It is undoubtedly true that, under certain circumstances, more immediate economic benefits are derived from them than from cooperative stores. But the co-operation store P. vlag gives accommodation in the matter of stock on hand to choose from, and of small purchases and relatively frequent deliveries, that cannot be given by the consumers' leagues. The main fault of the buying association, however, is its defective organization. In most cases people simply put their orders together and depend upon a volunteer to distribute the provisions. The volunteer soon gets tired of his task, and the association ceases to exist. "If, however, small associations were organized on a membership basis, with, say, an investment of $10 by each member, they might be made more effective. Goods could then be bought in larger quantities and sold to the members at wholesale rates. A certain percentage could be charged for the cost of operation. The invested $10 of each member could .be used for buying stock in small quantities to insure a greater profit, and as a security for the payment of the consumer's quota of the operating expenses. For example: A woman purchases $200 worth of goods during six months paying wholesale prices. After the operating expenses have been totalled, it is found that 4 per cent, on all purchases must be charged. This woman, in order to maintain her membership, must pay $8. "In this manner a fairly well-organized movement might develop. The method is, however, against the principles of the European co-operatives. The fundamental principle of the European co-operatives is to sell at the established retail prices, deduct from the profits the cost of operation, and declare dividends according to the net profits.. 6 [pgbrk] January, 1911 THE MASSES 7 "As to whether stores or collective buying associations will be the form which the co-operative movement will assume in this country in the future, only experience can tell. For the present, it would seem that the buying association is often best fitted for the smaller cities and for relatively small groups of consumers, while the store is best adapted for larger centers and groups. Every buying association should, however, look forward to a growth of its numbers and buying power that will enable it to start a store.'' "Is it your intention to establish small grocery stores in the industrial districts throughout the Eastern States?" "Not grocery stores exclusively, for we aim at utilizing the purchasing power of the workers for their own benefit in many other commodities." "Is is not true that the grocer is underpaid, and that he has to work long hours in order to make his store profitable?" "Often, that is true, but the purpose of the cooperative movement is not merely the elimination of the grocer, but the centralization and the systematization of the purchasing power of the working class. In order to be of economic benefit to the working class, the co-operative movement must develop to a point where, through centralized buying, it will eliminate the middleman and commission merchant, as well as the small storekeeper." "Does not an enterprise of that sort require a large capital ?" "We fully realize that, but we expect to secure all the capital we need." "From the working class?" "Why not? The workers in Europe are not as well paid as the American working men; yet they have raised sufficient capital to maintain some of the largest establishments in the world. A large percentage of present business enterprise is conducted with money loaned at from six to 7 per cent, from the banks. These banks usually get the largest bulk of their investments from the savings of the working class, to whom they pay from three to four per cent. As soon as the workingman begins to realize that it is safer to invest his money in his own enterprise, than to allow the capitalist to exploit him, there will be a different story to tell. "A Wholesale Co-operative's capital is supposed to come from the sale of shares to the retail stores. Each store in our system is obliged to purchase one share at $25 for every fifty me n-bers. But the organization of the American Wholesale Co-operative preceded a general organization of retail stores, and so the capital had to be raised in other ways. At present, with but about 18 stores in operation, the capital from this source would be inadequate. Our capital has come largely from the sale of shares to individual members—people who are interested in the progress of the co-operative movement and determined to help it to the limit of their ability. futhermore, we have recently declared a $20,000 bond issue. These bonds pay 5 per cent, interest. They are secured by mortgages on our property, and are redeemable within five years. The sale of these bonds, which is now proceeding, will give us an ample working capital." "Then the outlook is altogether favorable?" "There is no other way to speak of it. Of course, hard work is necessary to build up the movement; and it is sometimes difficult to overcome pessimism so frequently found, regarding the success of an American co-operative enterprise. But all the while this pessimism is gradually declining, and new adherents are coming to us. The future looks more hopeful."

THE LITTLE SINNER By E. N. CHIRIKOV Translated from the Russian by Thomas Seltzer Illustrated by F. van Sloun KOLYA took the hottest and most active interest in all the preparations for Easter. When Dasha, the maid, with up-drawn skirts and tucked-up sleeves entered the parlor and began to wash the window panes and to sweep the dust and cobwebs from ceiling and corners, it was not long before Kolya put in an appearance and began to meddle in the work. "Dasha, Dasha," he shouted in his ringing voice. "You left a cobweb!" "Where?" "There! Look! There it is hanging, you blind chicken!" "Say, mister, you'd better go away. Don't bother me." "I'll tell mama, then." "Well, where is it? Where did I leave it?" "There, in the corner. Don't you see the spider? Take it off." Dasha in exasperation thrust the broom into the corner that Kolya pointed out to her, and walked away. "Stay here, stay here! The spider fell down," Kolya shouted joyously, noticing a little grey spider, which he wanted Dasha to put in his pill box. "Oh, what a bother!" the maid cried angrily. "The things you get into your head! What do you want such trash for?" "Dasha, how dare you? You are trash yourself. Put him in here." Having gotten the spider, Kolya ran into the dining room pressing the box firmly in his little hand. In the dining room at the table covered with an oil-cloth sat his twelve-year-old sister, Natasha, and the old nurse, Mikheyevna, who had nursed them both and was now living in their house for the sake of auld lang syne. Natasha and Mikheyevna were completely absorbed in painting eggs. "Natasha, Mikheyevna!" "Well?" "Do you want me to show you something?" "What, Kolya, dear? What will you show us?" "Here it is in my box," Kolya announced enigmatically, shaking his box. "Show it to us, show it to us." "Well, come here. Natasha, it's a trick." Kolya put the box under Natasha's very nose, and opened the lid. Natasha was frightened, Mikheyevna also, and Kolya was in ecstasy. "Oh you cowards! "I'm not a bit afraid, not a weeny bit. Give me a little stick. Mikheyevna, give me a stick, I tell you." "I have no time, Kolya, dear I must paint the eggs." "You have time enough. I'll show you a trick. There, give me one of those matches." Kolya took a match, made the spider crawl on it, and extending his hand began in a recitative: "Spider, spider, make a web Spider, spider, make a web." The spider let himself down from the match on a thin thread, and Kolya began to wind the thread around the match, and shouted with all his might: "Look, look how he's hanging in the air!" Natasha was seized with curiosity, and forgot her egg. Mikheyevna also bent over the children. Then their mother came in. "What are you doing?" "Mama, mama, look!" "Spider, spider, make a web. Spider, spider, make a web." "Ugh ! Throw it away! Kill it!" "I won't! It's a sin!" exclaimed Kolya, and quickly hid the spider in the pill box. "So far from it's being wrong to kill a spider, Kolya, dear," said Mikheyevna, "you will be forgiven forty sins for doing it!" The mother walked into the kitchen, the scene of the greatest bustle, and Kolya entered into a discussion with Mikheyevna. "If you kill a spider, God forgives vou fortv sins?" "Yes, my boy, he does." "Nonsense!" "As you please, Kolya, dear. But that's what they say. Forty sins are forgiven for killing a spider." "And how many if you kill two?" "Why, forty and forty again. How much is that? Count." "Eighty," Natasha said seriously, putting a lock of hair behind her ear. Kolya sank into reflection. He tapped his fingers on the box, and put it into his pocket. "That's nonsense," he said incredulously. "Why did you fast that time, Mikheyevna? Tell me, why?" "Why, child, I had to." "You should have gotten a whole lot of spiders, and trodden on them. Then God would have forgiven you all your sins. Forty and forty and forty more. How many sins have you?" "Oh, oh, you'd never get through counting them, my child. "You can find a lot of spiders. You should have looked for them in the kitchen and the nursery, then you could have gone to another house." Turning on his heels Kolya skipped off to the kitchen. He stopped in the hall and removed the pill box from his pocket. Then he looked at the spider, and again closed the lid. Kolya was wavering. It was a question of the life or death of the spider. Kolya felt sorry to kill it, but perhaps it was true that if you kill a spider, God forgives forty sins. Kolya wanted very much to fast during the last week of lent, like Natasha and Mikheyevna, but his mother would not let him. The day before, when Natasha had come from church, all had called her sin- [pgbrk] 8 THE MASSES January, 1911 less and holy. Mikheyevna said that Natasha was now just like an angel, and Kolya was envious. "And ? How about me?" he insistently questioned the nurse. "You are without sin, anyway. You are little still. What sins can you have committed, you little boy?" "Then I am holy, too?" Kolya demanded categorically. "What sins can you have committed?" "No, tell me, am I holy?" "Well, yes, you are holy." "And how about what happened yesterday? Do you remember?" "What, my boy?" "About the jam, do you remember?" Kolya whispered, and added, "You said it was a sin." "Of course, it's a sin. How can one do such a thing without asking permission. You must obey your mother, and you mustn't do anything on the sly. Besides you stuck your fingers into it." "Well, then I've sinned, haven't I ?" Kolya now began to search his conscience. Remembering the days just passed he discovered several n ore sins. He had called Natasha naughty—that was one sin—he had upset the ink on his father's desk—two—he had fooled his mother. She had set him on his knees, and when she left the room he had seated himself on his heels, but when she returned he had risen to his knees again. That was three, and there were many more. Kolya had already counted six sins when his mother passed by. "Still fooling witli the spider?" she remarked. "I want to kill it, mama," Kolva said thoughtfully. "That's right," the mother, who was preoccupied, dropped in passing, and walked into another room. Kolya opened the box again. The spider scurried quickly on all sides. Kolya shook it to the floor. "Forgive me in the next world. I would have set you free if--" Kolya muttered thoughtfully while he crushed the spider under his foot. Having accomplished the bloody deed, Kolya sat himself on the floor and began to examine the remains of the murdered insect. The only-thing left of it was a moist blotch and the legs. "Ah, you shameless good-for-nothing! On a dirty floor! Get up!" cried the mother, appearing unexpectedly. Kolya rose from the floor. "Just look! Made his pants dirty again!" the mother exclaimed in vexation, brushing the dust from Kolya's knees. She gave him a slap, and pushed him into the room. "Go in there, you shameless fellow." Here was a strange, sudden, and unexpected conclusion to the question of sin and to Kolya's inner conflict in regard to the murder of the spider. Kolya did not feel at all pained, but he felt so offended, so offended that he couldn't say how much. He wanted to cry, and would have done so, had not the landlord's daughter come down from the upper floor to Natasha her schoolmate. Kolya was ashamed to cry in her presence. He ran off to the nursery, and hid himself in the wardrobe. He shut the closet door behind him, and crept into the farthest corner. Here it was altogether dark, and he did not have to feel ashamed. Fie wept quietly, and then grew silent. He did not want to cry any more. He sat on his heels and listened to what was going on in the dining room. The conversation of Mikheyevna, Natasha, and the landlord's daughter, as Kolya called Natasha's friend, reached his ear. Kolya was convinced that they were speaking about the sad end of the history of the spider. And in fact: "Where is he now?" "He ran away somewhere," Kolya heard Natasha reply.

"Kolya put the box under Natasha's very nose and opened the lid."

"Yes, I slapped him," explained the mother. "I put all fresh clothes on him this morning, and now he's dirty again. Where did he run to?" Kolya held his breath, and dropped to the floor of the wardrobe. "Kolya, Kolya!" Kolya was silent. "I won't creep out," he resolved, insulted and humiliated. But his mother's fur cloak, behind which the little sinner concealed himself, was very warm, and he felt stifled and hot. In a few minutes he opened the door slightly and peeped through the crack. It was light and cheerful there and not hot. He suddenly grew tired of sitting in the wardrobe, and wanted to join Natasha and Mikheyevna and the landlord's daughter. But it was necessary to wait. He must choose an opportune moment for escaping unnoticed from the wardrobe, else the instant he was seen everybody would surely remember that his mother had slapped him; and this would make him very much ashamed, especially before the landlord's daughter. He must suffer in patience. Out of ennui Kolya began to pull hair from his mother's fur cloak. He looked through the door and listened. There was no danger—he could creep out quietly, go across me room through his mother's chamber, through his father's study and the parlor into the dining room, where they all were He stuck out one foot, but immediately withdrew it because at that instant Natasha entered the nursery. It was too late, Natasha had noticed Kolya's leg. "Come out. I'll tell mama.' The wardrobe is not meant for you to sit in. You'll soil* my new dress. Come out." "I won't." "Mikheyevna, why is Kolya soiling my new dress? He's gotten into the wardrobe, and I don't know what he's doing there." All was lost; both Mikheyevna and the land- (Continued on page 14) [pgbrk]

Why Socialists Should Join Co-operatives A Talk by the Manager of the American Co-operative on the Benefits to be Derived by Socialism from the Co-operatives By P. VLAG BECAUSE the Socialist movement in the United States is very much in need of an economic basis. Co-operatives, like labor unions, are a means of securing an economic basis for the Socialist movement. Our highest council, the International Socialist Congress, after mature deliberation, passed a resolution to that effect. What is meant by an economic basis ? It means to apply the Socialist philosophy to the present economic situation of the working class. It means that we Socialists realize that we will never reach our ultimate goal unless we do something besides teaching philosophy in an abstract form. It means that we know that we must reach the workers through their stomachs as well as through their brains. To illustrate: The European Socialist movement appeals to the industrial factory slave through industrial unionism. They never lose sight, however, of the fact that Socialism is the goal, and not a mere increase of wages. They teach the workers that their only hope to combat capitalism effectively, lies in collective, concentrated and well-organized action. Furthermore, the European move rent appeals to the wives of the workers through co-operatives. They do not preach to these women that a decrease of the cost of living secured through co-operatives will settle the economic problem. They teach them that the only remedy for the present economic problem, is Socialism, and that the co-operatives are merely used as a preliminary education for the establishing of the cooperative commonwealth. They prove to these women and their husbands the necessity of collective action. They teach them the democratic 'management and control of the means of production and distribution. They bind them together on an economic basis into a well-organized body of men and women. These men and women are much better fitted to combat the capitalist system than the type pro- duced by our present industrial system in the United States. The type which is willing to suffer all sorts of abuse and slaver with the silent hope that some time in the future he will be a small employer or business man himself. The methods of the Socialist movement in the past did not reach the type above mentioned. The workingman of this type believes that we are very good and sincere fellows, but that we are dreamers, and far off. This type of American workingman considers himself practical. He does not really approve of the present grafting system, but considers that under the system it is better to be on the inside than on the outside: therefore, Tammany Hall appeals to him. Tammany Hall never professed to understand economic determinism, but it works in conformity to it, nevertheless. No man can secure employ rent through Tammany Hall, unless Tammany Hall feels reasonably sure that uncle, nephew, aunt, cousin, wife and baby are going to vote for it—vote for it as often as possible. This goes to show that an economic basis for the Socialist Party is sorely needed in this country. Not as a vote-catching machine, as Tammany Hall uses it, but to bind the workers together with economic ties in a highly efficient and strongly centralized organization. When this is accomplished, we will get a hearing from the workers. Now as to the educational side of co-operation. What will co-operatives do for the workers from the educational point of view? The workingman of the present type, whose sole occupation consists in doing a minute specialized part of the industry in which he is engaged, necessarily has a very limited mental horizon. If this workingman is taken away from his present sphere, to democratically manage the means of production and distribution, do you not think that the mind of this workingman will broaden out? Then let us consider the effects of the cooperative movement upon our Socialist organiza-, tions ? How much of a Socialist organization have we at present in this country? Is not our present organization, to a very large extent, only a dues-paying affair? How many locals have we that really deserve the title of organization, and are not merely groups of rebellious individuals? How many branches have we, where the minority will abide by the decision of the majority, and faithfully and unrockingly carry out its decision? How many locals are there in which there is such discipline as to make the comrades carry out the orders which the officers give regarding propaganda? Until we can answer all these question satisfactorily, for the majority of our locals, do we deserve the title organisation? I think not, comrades. The next question is, what will co-operatives do to teach our people organization? This question can be best answered by the results obtained in Europe, where the co-operatives have become a power. The results obtained by the Socialists in Germany, Belgium, Holland and Denmark are the most satisfactory in those districts where cooperatives are the most highly developed. Co-operative organizations and labor unions are organizations the members of which have a stronger community of interest than merely a sharing of opinions on philosophical subjects. They are tied together in these organizations by economic conditions. If they break the rules of the organization, they are punished economically. They either lose part of their dividends, or in case of labor organizations, fines are imposed upon them. Thus the members of these economic bodies are taught organization. Recently, the organizer of New York city expressed his dissatisfaction with the New York local. He asserted that the only people within the local who really understood organization, were the Germans. This is in itself sufficient to prove my point. As Dr. Karl Liebknecht expressed it, "The Germans have in their Workingmen's Sick and Death Benefit Fund the greatest Socialist cooperative in this country." Hence their comprehension of organization. LET THE TRUTH BE KNOWN No man that believes in the essentials of freedom and justice, no man that believes the courts should be kept immaculate from petty spite and malice, no man of any faith in free speech and a free press can think he has done his duty until he has made by all means in his power his utmost protest against the conviction of Fred Warren. If the sentence in this case can be carried out it is not too much to say that at any time hereafter any man that becomes obnoxious to the power of wealth or that criticises an administration can be railroaded to jail on any trumped-up charge. It is evident then that here is a fundamental issue. We are back again facing the old question of basic human rights. If the precedent of the Warren case be established no ruler of mediaeval BY CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL times ever had a more efficient gag upon the utterances of his subjects than a national administration at Washington can use upon its critics. The country at large is not informed about the successive steps of the case and the fate that now overhangs Warren, because the press will not publish the facts about the matter. Therefore the duty of every believer in justice is to see that the facts are widely spread. In every town of the country public meetings should be called to protest against this intolerable wrong. See that your neighbors learn all about it. Give them the history of the case. Let them understand the principle involved. Show them that whereas the Supreme Court of the United States held the kidnapping of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone to be right and proper, Warren is now to be imprisoned for suggesting that the process thus upheld by the Supreme Court be used in another case. The man that will not mentally revolt against an injustice so rank as this is no American and no good citizen. See that these facts become universally known. If you are a member of a union make it your business to call the attention of all your union brothers to what is purposed in this case. Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone were the victims of an organized warfare upon unions. Warren is suffering in the union cause. Do not let the 'union haters have their way with him. Enter your protest. Keep your own conscience clear. If you let Warren go to prison without objecting you are helping the interests that are trying to pull him down.—Charles Edward Russell, in The Coming Nation. 9 [pgbrk] Unite in Buying as in Selling Advocating the Formation of a Union by the Workingmen to Prevent Their Being Exploited in the Purchase of Commodities as They Are Exploited in the Sale of Their Labor Power By EUGENE WOOD WORKERS of the world, unite!" I think you've heard that before. Or seen it somewhere. All the truer if you have. A butter-cake is all the better for being turned a couple of times on the griddle. This is an appeal to a special class. It isn't charitably inclusive. Not a bit. It's just for a certain crowd. The others can be on their way. It doesn't say: "Workers and shirkers of the world unite." It expresses what we have learned by experience, that the two can't unite, unless it is after the fashion of the lamb and the lion lying down together—with the lamb on the inside. It calls for all of us who get their living by working to associate ourselves into an alliance, to defend what we have already gained, and to conquer more. Because we are going to take more; we're going to take all, if you want to know precisely how much. Now there is a well-recogized way of uniting to sell the only thing we have to sell, our labor-power, in a bunch, collectively. We get more for it by doing that. When a union fails, you see wages go 'way, 'way down and the hours of labor stretch out like a rubber band. So we join a labor union and pay dues, and go out on strike when necessary and stay out on strike as long as necessary, suffering some little inconvenience at the time so that we and our families may have more of the comforts of life. That's what we are after: More of the comforts of life. But some of us who sell our labor-power are in crafts that aren't organized or can't be organized. I don't know what union I, as a literary man, could join. The gas-fitters? Somebody that knows, please tell me. I'm with organized labor, heart and soul, but a union can't help me. I want to unite with you. After all, it isn't the dollar more a week or the five dollars more a week that we want—that is, it isn't the extra pieces of paper in the pay-envelope that we want so much as it is what those pieces of paper will bring into the house, grub, and clothes, and shoes and all such. We sell our labor-power to an enemy of ours; we all know that. We also buy from enemies of ours; we all know that. Now suppose we unite to sell to each other, so that, instead of enemies of ours getting the profit, we get the profit, you and I and the union plumber, and the union hat-maker and so on. That increases the amount of comforts we can bring into the house just as effectively as a union does at its end of the game. If you can get $2 worth more comforts into your house for a week's work, that's just as good as if you went on strike and won the strike, and you don't run so many chances of having a policeman tap you on the cocoanut; you don't have Goff making a decision a hundred years behind the times. There's no law, legislative or judicial, that forbids you buying where you can get the most for your money. "But," somebody will say, "if we can live so much cheaper by buying from the Co-operative, won't the bosses reduce wages by just that much?" It's as broad as it's long. If you increase your wages, won't they raise the prices of what you buy? They're doing that, anythow, aren't they? Don't forget this: When you fight the bosses to make them give you more wages, you attack them where they are strongest and most used to fight. To be sure, they have been losing for the last century, nearly. It used to be that a laborer who quit one employer to work for wages with another, could be lawfully put into jail; it used to be that a man that could work and wouldn't work—was out on strike—could be branded in the forehead with a red-hot iron, so that a capital letter V stayed with him till he rotted in the grave. They've been losing ground but still they know how to fight on that side. But the weak point of the bosses is the selling. Don't forget that. Let me say that again: The weak point of capitalism is that it must sell. A boss may cut down wages, and he may stick up prices, but unless he can sell to workingmen what working-men produce, he's a gone dog. No sale, no profit. Sell or go bust. So anxious is he to make a sale that he gives the middlemen an enormous slice of his profits, the big difference between what it costs for the labor and material, and what the finished article costs the consumer over the counter. He's crazy to find an "outlet" for his wares. Let the American Wholesale Co-operative supply him with an outlet, and he'll unionize his works; he'll sell to it as cheaply as to a middle-man, if he gets his money just the same. He'll betray his competitors in a holy minute if he can make a sale. And, instead of our enemies, the shirkers and non-producers, getting the divi- dends, we get them, we workingmen who have united not only to sell our labor-power but to buy what produces our labor-power. But that's a small part of the benefit. If workingmen aren't practical business men it isn't because they haven't got the head for it, but because they haven't had the experience. But that's something they've got to have in the near future, because one of these days before long the Co-operative Commonwealth is going to arrive and bring its trunk for an extended stay with us. Workingmen will have to run this Co-operative Commonwealth, and they've got to learn how. Where is there so good a school for us to take lessons of, as the Co-operative store? To sum it all up in one word, I should end as I have begun, with the advice to our kind of people to get together in every possible way, to defend what has been gained, and to conquer more, whether in the labor union where we sell our labor-power collectively or in the co-operative where we buy collectively what our labor-power produces, not only the men-folks who work outside the home and who bring in the most they can, but the women-folks who work inside the home and who make the men's wages g as far as they can—in one word: "Workers of the world, unite!"

Why is the capitalist burning with indignation? Why is he cursing the delegate of a labor union ? Why does he always curse a labor delegate? Why? Because the labor delegate faces him and says: "The men demand their rights." He isn't used to being ordered. He wants to do all the ordering- himself. He does'nt know as Abraham Lincoln knew that "Labor is prior to capital."—But he will know it some day.—Arthur Young. 10

[pgbrk] January, 1911 THE MASSES 11 Must It Be So? (Continued from page 2) the people of this party live the whole summer round. They go on excursions almost every day. Sometimes they take tea with them, drinks, and dainty eatables, for the sake of a change from the place in which they usually eat and drink. The picknickers come from three families living in a summer resort, the family of a landholder, the owner of three thousand acres, the family of a government official drawing a salary of three thousand rubles a year, and the family of a manufacturer, the richest of all. None of the party is the least astonished or moved by the horror of the workmen's lives, by the misery surrounding them. They think it must be so, and their thoughts are engaged quite differently. "Why, that's awful!" says the lady on the palfrey, turning to look at the dog. "I cannot bear to see him that way." She stops the carriage. They speak French with one another, laugh and haul the dog into the carriage. Then they proceed on their way, raising clouds of lime dust, which completely envelop the stone breakers and passersby. The carriage, equestrians, and bicyclists speed by like beings from a different world. The workmen in the foundry, the stone breakers, and the farm hands keep on with their wearisome, monotonous tasks, which they perform, not for themselves but for others, and which will end only with their death. "What a life those people live!" they ruminate, as they follow the summer folks with their eyes. And their painful existence seems even more painful to them than before. Must it be so?

Impressions of Our Artists By GRACE POTTER CESARE OH, yes, you know Cesare, you say, as soon as his name is mentioned. He's the man who illustrates all the funny places and ridiculous people that Mc-Cardell grinds out" humor" about in the Metropolitan section of the Sunday World. Of course, you know Cesare! Hush! Maybe, you don't, after all. Look at this picture, "The Masses." It's the people down on the Eastside. An eviction over there in the corner. See that woman's face looking1 up into your eyes from the foreground. Yes--It is a woman. But, oh, what has life done to a human being to put such a look into eyes-. You have an uncomfortable feeling that some way you are to blame. You begin to think and question-. That's the real Cesare, the man who disturbs you. The man who makes your soul uneasy. The man who makes you think you have a responsibility beyond your own bread and butter. When Herbert Everett, who used to be editor of Van Norden's Magazine, and then had to be something else, because they didn't want any Socialists fooling around a perfectly good publication—well, when Mr. Everett saw Cesare's picture of "The Masses," he went off and looked out of the window a few minutes. Then he came back, he said: "I could make a poem about that." So he did. If you like to be amused only, go look at what the the Sunday World Cesare does. If you like to be disturbed, and have the weeds and things pulled out of your soul so that the flowers can grow there, better look at what our Cesare does. We expect a good many things from him in the future issues. CHARLES WINTER Charles Winter is an artist who turns out covers to order for the Cosmopolitan and Collier's to the tune of about four hundred dollars apiece. Never knew there was such a lot of money anywhere, did you? There's more about him that's like that, too. The Montrose Art Gallery has exclusive right to exhibit his stuff—oh, pardon me, Mr. Winter. Maybe painters don't call their work "stuff" as writers do. Well, anyway, his pictures are shown in that perfectly wonderful high-sounding place and no one else can't exhibit 'em at all, at all. Would you ever have thought he would have done anything for a Socialist publication? Now listen. He works like that just' enough to make money so that he can be the ideal artist most of the time. And if you look at our cover now, a mere sketch, Winter calls it, and the cover of our next issue—the finished product—yon will see that his ideal is your and my ideal—-Socialism. FRANK VAN SLOUN Frank Van Sloun, who did the poster which advertised the magazine, has a "Portrait of an Actor" now at the Corcoran Art Gallery. It was on exhibition at The Academy last year. A newspaper person who went.to Mr. Van Sloun to get a story not long ago, asked him if he made his living by magazine illustrations. "No, oh no!" said Mr. Van Sloun, swooping down long lines of gray-white on the gown of a lady in the picture he was working on. "Do you fill orders for partaits then?" asked the newspaper person. Mr. Van Sloun stopped swooping just a minute, but held his paint brush suspended in air and looked long at his picture. "I'll take an order—" he agreed with faint interest. "No, no," hastened the newspaper person. "I mean, how is it you make your living by your art?" Mr. Van Sloun showed genuine interest this time, though he began at the lines on the lady's gown again. "I don't know myself," he said, with quaint impersonal whimsicality. "I often wonder how I do it." And he looked crititcally at the paint on his palette, and began a mixing process that seemed to take up most of his attention. "Well—well--" The poor newspaper person was after "a story," and it didn't seem to be coming readily. "Do you try very hard for success?" the newspaper person trailed off at gentle Mr. Van Sloun's astonished vehemence. "No, no, oh, not at all," he said. "Success isn't worth trying for. Many artists who spend their lives trying to get it and who make lots of money by their pictures, find out that it wasn't worth while at all." Then he turns his attention again to his canvas, and with his head turned at an angle and his thumb gripping tight his palette, he becomes very absorbed in his work and forgets the newspaper person who wanders about the place, looking at the portraits and etchings that adorn the studio. And when two complete tours of inspection have been made, the newspaper person slipped out quietly. "It would be too bad," said the newspaper person, telling me of the visit, "to make a man talk about himself when he'd rather paint. So I didn't get my story." H. BERLIN Mr. Berlin is a young artist, who, born in New York, began to travel a few years ago to find the phases of nature which interested him most. Nova Scotia's rugged sea coasts, shipyards with men at work on the boats, the blue, blue sea piled to the blue, blue, sky, and flecked with dancing gold lights—he has many pictures like that. Brittainy stopped his seeking next, and he has a large collection of street scenes there with the quaint Breton people, ripe with color, wandering peasant-fashion through them all. He has etchings of Florence, too. They are dim, and Italian, and yet vivid enough to make any traveller think-instantly of folk-songs and spaghetti, art galleries and lovely, dirty, brown babies. Many of these pictures are to be shown next month at the Haas Art Gallery, Fifty-ninth street and Sixth avenue. Mr. Berlin is going to do New York street scenes this year. He did for us the picture in Fulda's story. WILLIAM WASHBURN NUTTING Mr. Nutting, who has illustrated the Tolstoy article, is an editor of one of the popular magazines, although holding a degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University, where he graduated four years ago. He very emphatically and modestly denies the accusation that he is an artist and unassumingly declares that his artistic work is just a hobby. "Oh, no, I don't earn my living at it," he said. "I couldn't. It's too much of a risk." But when the pressure becomes too great, occasionally, he draws a picture or rushes off to Europe on a cattle boat. His sketch illustrating Tolstoy's forceful article has something of the pathos and dignity of a Millet about it. It is as simple in execution as Tolstoy's own work. It seems rather a pity that Mr. Nutting should only do artistic work on the side. Doesn't it seem a shame to waste all that perfectly good talent? Can't we hope to see him some day leave the ranks of the non-combatants? He says his artistic work is only to fill in the chinks—but, "Must it be so?" ART YOUNG "Tell me the story of your life!" With an owlish solemnity equal to my own, he replied: "I was born in Illinois, studied in Paris,-" But the rest doesn't matter—at least not yet? A man must be dead at least fifty years before we can take a human interest in these dry facts of his early life. "I would rather draw political cartoons than anything else;" said Mr. Young. "I believe in the picture with a purpose. There must be a vital idea back of every drawing that is really worth while. I have no patience with these so-called artists who expect intricate technicality to make up for a lack of ideas. In fact, I don't believe in technique at all. "Real art is, in the last analysis, simply self-expression. Socialism always has been and I suppose always will be the keynote of my work. To me it is the culmination of all radicalism and the thought back of most of my drawings. I have been very fortunate in being allowed considerable freedom in this direction even when employed by capitalist papers. But you see," he concluded naively, "I made that a condition of my work." He summed up the purpose of his work in the following words—simplicity and strength. The proud possessor of an idea must present it simply and with sufficient force to make it comprehensible to the proletarian for whom Mr. Young states that all his work is done. "It is the working man, seated by his lamp in the evenings in his shirt sleeves pouring over the evening paper for whom I make my drawings." There was no affectation, no posing, nothing but the most virile and yet child-like simplicity here. Strength and simplicity are, he says the keynote of all good work. And that was the strongest impression of the interview, as it was of the studio, as it is of his work, as it seems to be of the man himself—strength and simplicity. [pgbrk] The Tendencies of German Socialism A Prominent French Author's Impartial Review of the Present State of German Socialism By PAUL LOUIS THE German Social Democracy is now more alert than ever. The daily events assign to it a role of ever growing importance. Not the slightest incident occurs in the German Empire in which it does not play a part or upon which it does not seize to display its power. Slowly, methodically, it works out its revolution with undeniable patience and prodigious ardor. Even those who pretend to scorn it and question its future chances manifest very marked signs of uneasiness, and those who reproach the German Social Democracy with the heaviness of its gait and the timidity of some of its declarations are obliged to render homage to die tenacity of its efforts and the discipline of its organization. It forms a sort of counter-state rising in opposition to the German state, and it resembles the German state in the robustness of its architecture, the complexity of its mechanism, and its development of a bureaucracy. What most strikes the impartial traveler in Germany next to the exterior solidity of the Empire, is the universal penetration of the Social Democracy. Just as every town has its regiment, its general post office, its well-kept railroad station, so it has its Socialist section, which meets on a fixed date, and periodically passes its members in review. Nowhere else has the government such elements of coercion at its disposal, nowhere else does it more loudly proclaim the principle of divine right, yet nowhere else are the elements of subversion gathered in such numbers, and nowhere else do they press forward on their course with more energy and determination. Recently the Social Democracy illustrated its activity and accentuated its energy in a whole series of events, the congresses at Copenhagen and Magdeburg, the Moabit disturbances, the successful elections piling up one upon the other, a bold and growing opposition to the imperial will. Perhaps the Social Democracy—and with it Germany—is nearing the decisive hour. At any rate it is by no means out of place to measure its expansion, to take a census of its forces, and describe its different currents and new tendencies now asserting themselves. The report presented by the German branch of the Socialist party to the International Congress at Copenhagen offers conclusive statistics, the like of which no other Socialist party in the world can show. It had 530,000 members in 1907, 587,000 in 1908, 633,000 in 1909, and 722,000 in 1910. Its receipts averaged more than $240,000 annually during the last three years. Defeated in the general election of 1908 by the liberal conservative coalition, the Social Democrats have since then registered victory after victory. Not only did they regain the seats of which they had been deprived, but they even captured seats which had never belonged to them, and which according to ordinary political probabilities they could not have hoped would be theirs so soon. The rapidity of their progress, to which eleven successive elections testify, was so unexpected that it threw all conservative elements into dismay. The reactionary factions have come to admit more and more that the hour to resort to force has struck. The German Social Democracy is backed by a powerful labor union organization, almost equal in strength to British trade unionism. It may be called upon to intensify its activity with reinforced celerity. The German labor unions profess the collectivist principles, and stand on the ground of the modern class struggle. They had 277,000 members in 1891 soon after the repeal of the famous exceptional law against the Socialists. In 1900 they increased to 689,000, in 1904 to 1,052,000, and in 1909 they had grown into a body of 1,852,000. While their number multiplied seven times in nineteen years, their receipts increased fiftyfold and their property a hundredfold. The fifty-nine federations into which the corporative body is divided collected $12,000,000 last year and has a reserve capital of $11,000,000. However, the forward march of German Socialism presents nothing surprising or inexplicable to the observer who takes account of the economic transformation of the Empire. Within a few years Germany has undergone an evolution which required almost a century in the other western countries of Europe. From rudimentary industry and small trade it quickly passed to excessive production and commerce on a formidable scale. The large manufacturing plants built in centres that until then remained secondary, the sudden development of the great sea and river ports, like Hamburg, Bremen, Ruhrort, and Duisburg, the utilization of all the mining resources and all the natural forces have brought about a concentration of men unequalled in the old world. In many respects the giant cities of contemporary Germany are more remarkable in their development than the mushroom cities of the western United States, Australia, and South America. A leisurely trip through the environs of Hamburg, where all the creations of the engineer's art are piled up, or through the environs of Cologne, reveals the causes of the expansion of the Social Democracy. The revolutionary proletariat in automatically formed in an environment such as is provided by the Germany of factory and mills. It attracts to it with an irresistible appeal the rural elements that pour into the urban agglomerations, elements which the economic movement snatches forever from the routine of conservatism. The constitution of a Social Democracy which grows bolder from day to day, absorbs more and more of the population, and makes greater and greater inroads, has something of the inexorability of fate. It moves at an even pace with the enrichment of the Krupps and Thyssens, with the great trusts, which exploit the blast furnaces of Westphalia and the factories of Ruhr, the chemical products of Saxony and the shipyards of Stettin, with the extension of the docks of the Elbe and the Weser, with the multiplication of the large banks which drain the savings of the masses and dominate trade. That is the ransom that power has to pay. A crack is methodically making its way from the bottom to the top of the imperial edifice, apparently so massive and sumptuous. German Socialism is not free from doctrinal differences and differences as to tactics, no more than is French, English, or German Socialism. Historically it is composed of two parts, two groups, which manifest tendencies if not antagonistic, at least very divergent, the Marxists and the Lassallians. The Lassallians sought to bring about a transformation of society by conquering and democratizing the state. The Marxists distrusted the state and addressed themselves rather to the strength of the wage workers themselves. When they united and agreed upon the program of Gotha, both sides condemned irritating controversies with each other, and thought they had found the cement to hold them together in their respective activities in the common war which they waged against the Empire. However great the enthusiasm that their victories at times inspire, however stern the repression of the government the opposing conceptions of forty years ago still clash. Moreover, new conceptions have appeared, which add to the vivacity of the debates. No Socialist party has achieved more thoroughgoing unity than the German party. Yet in no country do the eternal conflicts spring up with more sustained periodicity. After all, such conflicts are the law of life itself. They have never retarded the progress of power nor dimmed the light of ideas. Conflicts of this sort are not peculiar to Germany. Nevertheless, to understand and estimate them at their real value it is necessary to examine the particular conditions that obtain in Germany. Its economy, history, and religion are the elements which in this case combine more or less to explain the facts, whose importance, however, it would be a mistake to exaggerate. Industry on a large scale is not equally distributed over the entire territory of the Empire. It predominates in certain districts of the north and southeast. While factory chimneys rise on all sides in the Rhine basin of the province of Westphalia, in Saxony and Silesia, Wurtemburg, Baden and Bavaria are countries of rather small and moderate manufacturing enterprises and agricultural exploitation. The antagonism between the possessing and non-possessing classes shows itself in less marked traits around Stuttgart, Freiburg, Carlsruhe and Augsburg than in the rich valleys of the lower Rhine. Daily life naturally leaves its impress, even upon Socialist theory. In France the socialism of the Haute-Garonne and of the Pyrenees-Orientale differs somewhat from that of the industrial zone of which Lille, Roubaix, and Armentieres are the centers. The Germany of the North and the Germany of the South have undergone very distinct historical developments, both before and after the unification. The principle of divine right is grounded on the one hand upon a perfected militarism and an intolerant nagging bureaucracy, penetrated by the idea of its own: importance; and on the other hand, it has had to accommodate itself in a certain degree to constitutional and liberal ideas. The bourgeoisie of Wurtemburg collaborated with the people to introduce institutions limiting autocratic power, and this task was the easier for them since the feudalism of the South never had the pretensions nor the territorial power of the country squires of Prussia and Mecklenburg. The bourgeoisie of Brandenburg and Pomerania have as a rule been rather feeble in demanding rights for themselves, while they demanded nothing at all for the workingmen. Their acquiescence or timidity consolidated absolutism in the nineteenth century. The particularism of the South screens itself behind the parlimentary professions which the North never knew. The conflict of the classes is necessarily keener in a country in which the elementary liberties are proscribed than in a country which has a less superannuated political regime. The North is predominatingly Protestant, the great majority of the South are Catholic. Even though Protestantism is economically and socially as conservative as Catholicism, yet it is inclined to dissemble and disguise its tendencies. The middle class of Wurtenburg, Bavaria, and the Grand Duchy of Baden, in order to defend the prerogatives they had acquired—among others a certain degree of liberty of speech and of thought—have courted the proletariat, and visibly sought to obtain its support. The Prussian 12

[pgbrk] January, 1911 THE MASSES 13 Evolution Trust Store Yesterday it was the little store, competing with other little stores Today it is the consolidation of little stores, for the purpose of making a few people 'on top' enormously rich. capitalism THE PEOPLE profit profit Art Young Tomorrow the vulture of capitalism will be kicked off the top, and the store will be owend and operated by the people for the common good Arthur Young

bourgeois who did not have the same historical education and who did not come into collision with clerical ambitions had no incentive whatsoever to seek the co-operation of the people. The reformed clergy, fulfilling a function of the state, remained subordinate to the established authorities. The ecclesiastical communities did not monopolize either large portions of the land or any part of the industry and commerce. This brief analysis will perhaps explain the diversity of the currents in the German Social Democracy. The Congress of Magdeburg held in September gave its attention to the theoretical and practical contentions which arose between the North and the South, more especially between the Executive Committee of Berlin and the group of Baden deputies. The seventeen members of the Diet of Carlsruhe who voted the budget in spite of the interdiction that has always been maintained by the German Social-Democratic congresses and consecarted even by an international congress, appeared as the champions of alliances with the liberals. In fact, they had entered into a "bloc" analgous to that which existed in France from 1889 to 1905. The adversaries of socialism try to ridicule the principles that prohibit the adoption of the budget by the representatives of the working-men's parties. It is certain that such a prohibition has only a symbolic value, which value, however, is by no means a negligible quantity. The rejection of the budgets demanded by the government shows that Socialism fights the modern state face to face, and refuses it the means of subsistance in proportion as its power increases. However, this is not the place to enter into a controversy on this subject. The Baden representatives in conceding the money to the government did not merely violate a formal order. They trampled underfoot the doctrine of the class struggle in order to bring about the collaboration of the proletariat with the middle class. It was virtually equivalent to embracing in toto the revisionist principles of which Bernstein had previously given a dogmatic and documentary exposition. The Baden men were condemned. In fact, their condemnation was a foregone conclusion. But what surprised even the most uncompromising of their opponents was that the most qualified of the members of the Carlsruhe Diet, Frank, declared he would not bend before the decision of the majority of the delegates. Thus, the old quarrel between Marxian doctrin-arianism and revisionism, instead of losing its edge when a resolution was passed, as many times before, grew sharper, and turned into a schism. But there will be no schism, and the unity of the Social Democracy is safe. Prussian absolutism, the imperial autocracy, has already taken it upon itself to reconcile the left with the right. When at the conclusion of the Congress the long-standing struggle was invoked which Socialists of Prussia have carried on in order to conquer political rights, the right of equal suffrage, the southern delegates, amid general applause, declared they would be on their side. And a cry of hope went up from the work-ingmen's delegates, and a breath of revolution swept the assembly. The democratic alliances that might have worked out slow transformations, the coalitions between the workingmen and the liberals or the radicals are more precarious, more chimerical, and more ineffective in Germany even than in any other country. Even when the ire of the parties devoted to constitutional parliamentarism is roused against the imperial whims and vagaries, they still retain their distrust of the Social Democracy. The normal rule for contemporary politics is the liberal-agrarian combination; nay more, it is the grouping of all the forces of social conservation against the party which seeks to overthrow the present order of society. The radical left dreads the threats of the Social Democrats more than the fatuous blunders of the Kaiser. The very logic of events condemns revisionism and dedicates the work-ingman to majestic isolation. But this isolation engenders a revolutionary spirit. Allied with the liberals the Social Democracy would eschew all action outside the law. Left to itself and free, it no longer admits the same limitations. Recently it offered a new spectacle both to those who exalted and to those who criticized their uniformly prudent and pacific attitude. At Copenhagen it no longer rejects in express terms the general strike considered as a means to paralyze war. At Magdeburg it admitted the general strike as useful in making political demands. When one thinks of the horror which it formerly manifested of the general strike, one will perceive that there has been some change in its mentality. But before the congresses it had already organized in answer to the police interdictions large and solemn demonstrations which disturbed the official circles. On the very day after the Congress, the Moabit riots broke out, which sounded like the overture to an era of trouble. The labor unions, the great federations of workingmen, hitherto so measured in their movements and actions, now ostensibly incline to harsher tactics. And the militant organizations of the employers likewise confederated take the initiative and answer the threats of strike with the declarations of a lockout, throwing hundreds of thousands of men on the street and carrying the social struggle to a degree of exasperation it never before reached in Germany. When during the September troubles the conservative press urged the government to bring out its troops and mow down or shoot the mani-festants, the emperor, it is said, refused to concede its demands. Certain it is that no soldiers appeared on the streets of Moabit. A week before, at the Magdeburg Congress, the reading of General Bissing's secret order of the day created a general stir in Germany, because it was the first time that an official document, the authenticity of which was not denied, betrayed the fear of revolution prevailing in high places. Kaiser Wilhelm did not want to bring the army into contact with the crowd. The hour had not yet struck. And besides it is a tradition of the German government to avoid any collision between the troops and the strikers. It [pgbrk] 14 THE MASSES January, 1911 is due to this tradition that anti-miltarist sentiment in the trade unions has not assumed the same aspect in the German Empire as in the Latin countries. But will the German officers never intervene in the social struggles? No one can foretell what the morrow may bring forth. It is certain that the Social Democracy, of necessity uncompromising, despite the revisionist tendiencies that occasionall crop up, is now advancing to the number of four million voters. Many persons who do not allow themselves to be prejudiced or blinded estimate it will have one hundred and twenty seats in the next Reichstag. If we take into consideration the fact that some socialist seats represent 100,000 votes each, while some conservative seats represent no more than 5,000 votes, it will be evident what the moral effect of this invasion must be. And the question that looms up largest of all is whether the Kaiser will not be taking a terrible risk if he decides to resort to force.

The Little Sinner (Continued from page 8) lord's daughter had now found out that Kolya had esconced himself in the wardrobe. "Well, I won't come out, and that's all!" he grumbled once more, and covered himself with his mother's cloak. "Kolya, dear, what a shame, come out, my darling," said Mikheyevna. "Well, well, so that's where my beau is, in the wardrobe," said the landlord's daughter laughing, as she too entered the nursery. Kolya did not want to come out. Mikheyevna caught him by the foot, and Kolya began to kick out. Mikheyevna conquered in the end. Kolya emerged from the wardrobe red as a peony, angry and abashed. His hair stuck out like the quills of a porcupine, and his eyes flashed like a wolf's. Natasha was the fault of it all. She had discovered and betrayed him, and that's why Kolya was angrier with her than with anyone else. "Don't touch me," he shouted, when Natasha took him by the elbow to drag him from the wardrobe. "Mama has already given you one slapping today. Do you want another?" asked Natasha, straightening the new dress hanging in the wardrobe. "Oh you! Naughty—once—naughty—twice— naughty—three times—I killed the spider and I have only six sins. There you are! And I could call you naughty some more and I could call you mean!" shouted Kolya, out of breath, and ran from the nursery. "Well?" he asked, looking from the door of his father's study. "Well? And I could call Mikheyevna naughty, too, only I don't want to." Not least of the signs of the greatness of the modern Socialist movement is the fact that it appeals with equal charm and force to men and women of many diverse points of view. It is, I think, the supreme glory of this great world-movement that so many temperaments and passions, so many qualities of mind and character, are attracted to it; each finding in it something that answers its own peculiar needs. The saying attributed to Jesus, "I, if I be lifted up out of the earth, will draw all men unto myself," has been cited many times as proof of the sublime faith of Jesus. Likewise it may be said of this Socialist movement that its adherents have a sublime faith in the power of their ideal to draw and unite all men, regardless of race, color or creed.— Spargo. The Fur Coat (Continued from page 5) which made you start to write to me. It seems to me only logical that now that you have happily gotten your fur coat back again, we should terminate our correspondence. I at least have nothing more to say. Goodby—forever, Emma. Professor Wiegand to Dr. Gustav Strauch Berlin, January 8, 1909. Dear Gustav:— I have something to tell you again which will astonish you tremendously. My wife came back yesterday. And that upon my repeated and urgent entreaties. I thought I could not live with her any longer, and I found I certainly could not live without her. I just learned from her that she was very unhappy during our separation. But she would never have confessed it, because she is the stronger of us two. I don"t know how to explain the miracle, but we love each other more dearly than ever. We are having a new honeymoon. The great questions of life divided us. Is it really only the small ones that brought us together again? Would you have thought it possible that a man could find his half-dried heart in the pockets of an old fur coat? The edifice of my world philosophy is shaken to its foundation. I shall have to learn everything over again.

The chief bar to the action of imagination, and stop to all greatness in this present age of ours, is its mean and shallow love of jest; so that if there be in any good and lofty work a flaw, failing, or undipped vulnerable part, where sarcasms may stick or stay, it is caught at, and pointed at, and buzzed about, and fixed upon, and stung into, as a recent wound is by flies; and nothing is ever taken seriously or as it was meant, but always, if it may be, turned the wrong-way, and misunderstood: and while this is so, there is not, nor cannot be, any hope of achievement of high things; men dare not open their hearts to us, if we are to broil them on a thorn-fire.—Ruskin. Dr. Cook has discovered that the way of the transgessor may be paved with gold.—Pittsburg Gazette-Times. If we examine our present social order, we realize with horror how barbarous it still is. Not only do murder and war destroy cultural values without substituting others in their place, not only do the countless conflicts which take place between the different nations and political organizations act anticulturally, but so do also the conflicts between the various social classes of one nation, for they destroy quantities of free energy which are thus withdrawn from the total of real cultural values. At present mankind is in a state of development in which progress depends much less upon the leadership of a few distinguished individuals than upon the collective labor of all workers. Proof of this is that it is coming to be more and more the fact that the great scientific discoveries are made simultaneously bv a number of independent investigators—an indication that society creates in several places the individual conditions requisite for such discoveries. Thus we are living at a time when men are gradually approximating one another very closely in their natures, and when the social organization therefore demands and strives for as thorough an equalization as possible in the conditions of existence of all men.—Ostwald's Natural Philosophy. Our Benevolent Express Companies Within the short space of three years two of. the big express companies have presented their grateful stockholders with "melons" worth forty-eight million dollars. This pleasant return was upon an original investment of practically nothing. Whatever assets the companies now possess were accumulated out of surplus profits. The goose that lays their golden eggs consists simply of exclusive contracts with the railroads, by which they are licensed to overcharge the long-suffering public for carrying its parcels. These private gold mines, called express companies, employ considerable labor. Some five thousand of their drivers, transfer men, schedule men and helpers in New York and Jersey City went on strike this fall. Those holding the most responsible positions, the route drivers and transfer men, received, it appears, sixty-five to seventy-five dollars a month for a day's work that began at seven A. M. and ended as soon after six P. M. as the last load on the platforms was hauled to its destination. This arrangement of a workday with a "regular hour for starting, but none for stopping" often means, in practice, fifteen hours' labor out of the twenty-four, with Sunday and holiday work, for which no extra pay is given. For helpers, it seems, the companies thriftily prefer boys, whom they can hire at eighteen to twenty dollars a month. The men demanded an advance of five dollars a month in wages, with fifty dollars a month minimum for helpers and a workday of eleven hours. As the three-hundred-per-cent. express companies felt unable to grant the men's demands, express business in New York and Jersey City was thrown into utter confusion. For years the public had paid the companies three-hundred-per-cent. rates for carrying its parcels; but, rather than deal liberally with its employees in a pinch, the companies calmly permitted the public's parcels to lie undelivered. At one time, it is said, three hundred and fifty thousand packages, generally requiring haste and care, were piled up in the various offices waiting for the strike to end. The grand bulwark of this precious business consists in the failure of Congress to pass a parcels-post act.—Saturday Evening Post. The prospect that the consumer will shortly be able to consume something is about the rosiest outlook upon the national horizon.—St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Natural Philosophy By WILHELM OSTWALD Translated by thomas seltzer An excellent resume of modern natural philosophy as opposed to the academic philosophy. Of inestimable value to every one who desires to obtain a knowledge of the general results of science up to date with the least possible expenditure of time. The author, Professor Ostwald, is the founder of Physical Chemistry, and one of the leading scientists of the world. Price, $1.00 net Send your orders to THE MASSES PUBLISHING GO. 112 EAST 19TH STREET, NEW YORK [pgbrk] January, 1911 THEMASSES 15 ADVERTISING RATES: Full Page, $50.00; 1 Column, 3 in. wide, $20.00 ; 3 in., 1 Column, $6.50 The American Wholesale Co-operative 1406 AVENUE A, Near 74th Street, NEW YORK GROCERIES IN BULK Prices are net, no discount, Quantities must be ordered as stated. Absolute purity guaranteed. Send check with order. Stores can obtain closer prices by ordering large quantities. We can furnish with anything in the grocery line. Specify what you want, and we will quote prices. CANNED FISH. (Not less than one dozen.) Domestic Sardines in Oil..........4c, 5c and 7c per tin Canned Salmon............According to Market Price IMPORTED FISH. Soused Mackerel, i's tins........$1.60 to $1.75 per doz. Scotch Kippered Herring, i's tins........ 1.75 per doz. Scotch Tomato Herring, i's tins........ 1.75 per doz. Scotch Kippered Herring, %'s tins...... 1.00 per doz. FRENCH SARDINES. ¦/i's..................................ioc, 12c, 15c each Vz's..................................18c, 21c, 25c each NORWEGIAN SMOKED SARDINES. 8c, 8V2C, gc, lie each. CANNED FRUIT AND VEGETABLES. (Not less than one case, 2 dozen per case, sold.) Tomatoes, size No. 3........95c, $1.15 and $1.35 per doz. Corn, size No. 2............95c, $1.10 and $1.25 per doz. Peas, size No. 2............95c, $1.20 and $1.40 per doz. String Beans, size No. 2. .. .95c, $1.05 and $1.15 per doz. Succotash, size No. 2......95c, $1.10 and $1.25 per doz. PEACHES. California Lemon Cling Peaches, 21/4's, $1.75, $2.00, $2.50 per doz. New York State Bartley Pears: 2's........$1.50 per doz. 3's........2.00 per doz. Hawaian Slice Pineapple, 2's tall tins. .. .$1.75 per doz. DRIED BEANS AND PEAS. (In bag lots—One bushel, 60 lbs.; 1 bag 3 bushels.) New York State Pea Beans................$2.70 per bu. New Kidney Beans........................$3.60 per bu. California Lima Beans.....................$3.75 per bu. Yellow Split Peas.....................'----$2.50 per bu. NUTS. (Not less than 10 lbs. sold.) Walnuts...........................17c, 18c, 20c per lb. Filbert Nuts..........................I4%c, 16c per lb Brazil Nuts..........Large, n%c; Washed, 13c per lb. Almond Nuts..........................17c, 20c per lb. Shelled Almond Nuts..................35c, 46c per lb. Rice Cnot less than 25 lbs.)........5c, 6c, 7c, 8c per lb. Lentils, new (not less than 25 lbs.).........334c per lb. Lentils, in bag lots.........................3^c per lb. Nutreto (a cereal coffee)................$2.25 per case Primel (a breakfast food)...............$2.25 per case DRIED FRUITS. California Prunes, 25-lb. boxes 9V2C, 10, 11, 12 per lb. Currants, 3 doz. in case........ioc, ioMsc, 12c per pkge. Bulk Currants, 25-lb. boxes..............9%c, ioc, n%c Raisins, 3 doz. in case..........S^c, 9c, 11c per pkge. Loose California, fine quality........8V2C, J0V2C per lb. Apricots, 25-lb. boxes..............15c, 17c, 18c per lb. Peaches, 25-lb. boxes..............SV2C, 9c. ioc per lb. Dried Apples, 50-lb. boxes............12c, 14V2C per lb. WHOLE SPICES. Nutmegs ..................................30c per lb. Whole Black Pepper........................14c per lb. Whole Allspice..........................12c per lb. Whole Cloves .............................18c per lb. Bay Leaves................................12c per lb. GROUND SPICES. (Absolutely Pure—In 6-lb. boxes.) Black Pepper ..............................18c per lb. Cinnamon .................................19c per lb. Mustard ...................................18c per lb. Ginger ....................................20c per lb. Allspice ...................................18c per lb. Cloves ....................................21c per lb. TEAS. (Not less than 5 pounds sold.) Gunpowder............20c, 23c, 25c, 28c and 49c per lb. Young Hyson..............19c, 22c, 30c and 35c per lb. Japan.....................25c, 33c, 35c and 38c per lb. Ceylon....................25c, 28c, 30c and 35c per lb. Oolong .......................23c, 29c and 36c per lb. COFFEE. (Not less than 10 pounds sold.) Special Blend..............................20c per lb. Her Favorite...............................23c per lb. Our Best..................................27c per lb. CIGARS. . Liberty Torch Regalia Havana.$3.oo per 50; $6.00 per 100 Liberty Torch Special.........$1.65 per 50; $3.30 per too Vlag's Favorite ..............$2.00 per 50; $4.00 per 100 Get our quotations on Pure Italian Olive Oil in pints, quarts, half-gallons and gallon tins. Imported Neapolitan Macaroni. Providence Salad Oil. Sauerkraut, Pickles, Groats, Barley, Cereals, Scotch Herring and Dried Codfish. The prices quoted on Collars, Millinery, Shirtwaists, Umbrellas, Men's Furnishing, Men's Clothing and Overalls are Retail prices. A discount is allowed on that, which is sent monthly to your organization. Therefore state carefully what organization you belong to. Send check with order, and tell us how you want it shipped. HATS Ladies HATS Build to order by highly competent milliners to suit your individuality. Miss Glanzer who is in charge of this department is a high class designer of wide experience. Send photograph and state how much you wish to spend. We will then correspond with you before you place your order. Satisfaction guaranteed or money returned. You will save at least 50% over purchases made in ordinary millinery. Lucille Glanzer Overalls and Jumpers No- Per Doz. 31—Medium weight, union made overalls and with or without bibs; materials blue. Denim, Brown. Ducks. White or Stripe Drill; all sizes; 50c each. Wholesale.... $5.75 1—Heavy weight Blue Denim and Stripped Drill; 75c each. Wholesale.............. 8,25 1—White Drill; 75c each. Wholesale.......... 8.00 21—Heaviest weight Blue Denim; 90c each. Wholesale ............................ JI.75 1—Brown Duck, Heaviest Grade, 90c each. Wholesale ............................. 0.75 63—Cotton Jeans Pants, lined or unlined ; each ,90 65—Wool Jeans Pants, each.................. 1.75 Jumper to match all overalls same price. All goods are double stitched, have riveted buttons and are warranted not to rip. [pgbrk] 16 THE MASSES January, 1911 AMERICAN WHOLESALE CO-OPERATIVE Umbrellas Our Umbrellas have all the qualities combined which you should find in a good Umbrella. They are neat, beautiful and servicable. Satisfaction guaranteed. Money returned if not satisfied. Carefully state number, description and price when ordering. LADIES' UMBRELLAS. Quality and Description of Handles. Frames. 26-in. 28-in. 9—Paragon, 7 rib cotton gloria; turned congos ................ .62 .62 25—Paragon; 7 rib cotton gloria; turned congos and naturals.... .78 ?'78 43—Paragon; 7 rib cotton taffeta, case case and tassel, fancy horns, caps and pearl, box princess directoire...................... .95 .95 45—Paragon; 7 rib English gloria, case and tassel, box princess directoire ..................... .95 .95 12—Paragon; 7 rib cotton taffeta, tape edge, case and tassel, box princess directoire ................ .95 .95 i6e—Paragon; 7 rib dyed taffeta, Taje edge, American piece, case and tassel, box princess directoire. . 1+10 1*25 160—Paragon; 7 rib, dyed taffeta, tape edge, American Piece, case and tassel. Handles trimmed. Directoire and fancy woods...... 1.25 1.10 i29e—Paragon; 7 rib, taffeta, tape edge, silk piece dye, case and tassel, turned handles, fancy cap...... 1+2-5 1+40 38—Paragon; 7 rib, taffeta, broad tampen, broad piece dye, case and tassel. Box and directoire handles....................... 1.25 1>40 GENTLEMEN'S UMBRELLAS. 9—Paragon; 7 rib, cotton gloria; trimmed congos .............. .62 .62 25—Paragon; 7 rib, cotton gloria; trimmed congos and naturals. . +78 .78 43—Paragon 7 rib, cotton taffeta, case and tassel; gents' handles, box and fancy turned congos...... .95 .95 45—Paragon; 7 rib, English gloria, case and tassel; gents' handles, box and fancy turned congos.. .95 .95 12—Paragon; 7 rib, cotton taffeta, tape edge, case and tassel; gents' handles, box and fancy turned congos........................ .95 .95 i6e—Paragon; 7 rib, dyed taffeta, tape edge, American piece, case and and tassel, box and fancy turned congos ........................ 1.10 1.35 160—Paragon; 7 rib, dyed taffeta, tape edge, American piece, case and tassel, turned box, turned ebony, 1.25 1.10 T29e—Paragon; 7 rib, taffeta, tape edge, silk piece dyed case and tassel, fancy handles, box and ebony plain ......................... 1.35 1.40 38—Paragon; 7 rib, taffeta, broad tape, broad piece dye, case and tassel, fancy handles, box and ebony plain .......................... 1.25 1.10 SHIRTWAISTS. 500— Fine Pintucked Batiste.................. .9* 501— Fine Lawn, side effect, ruffled............ .98 502— Fancy Swiss ............................ +9S 503— Fine Trimmed, side effect................ 1+48 504— Fancy Swiss, in colors.................... 1.48 505— Hand-embroidered Batiste................. 1.98 506— Full Trimmed, fancy.................... . 1.98 507— Fine Tailor Buttoned Front.............. 1.98 508— Fine Hand-embroidered Batiste........... 2.98 509— Elaborate Fancy Waist................... 2-98 In ordering mention number, size and price Four ply Five ply The four ply collars „, n Collars on the left differ prin- Collars price cipially from the five PRICE ply collars on the right Single......15c Sin2Ie10c of the picture in price Two for 25c Per dozen . .90c Per dozen $1.10 Erling Size High 12-18 2 inch Florence No. 3 Size High 14-20 2J4 inch Why not Size High 12-20 2^ inch Ardmore Size High 12-18 2*4 inch Calvert Size High 12-17^ 2Ys inch Polinda Size High 13J4-18 2 inch Florence No. 2 Size High 14-20 2V-2 inch Ermon Size High 12-20 2Y-2 inch Consort Size High 12-18 254 inch Triumph Size High 12-17^ 2^ inch The appearance of collar is exactly shown by picture. State the size and name of collar. We also urge you to order by the dozen as the difference in price is very large. THE CO-OPERATIVE PRESS 15 SPRUCE STREET, N. Y. Where we quote the lowest retail price we mean that you could not possibly purchase the garment for less than in ANY store. We make YOU a reduction of three to five dollars, as you notice. We allow YOUR organization a percentage of the profit to be settled for monthly. All orders must be accompanied by cash. Be careful in taking measurements. If you have no measurement blank send for one. Lowest Our Retail Price Price 1. Dull Black Worsted Suit, single breasted $12.00 $15.00 2. Black Thibet Suit, single breasted. . . 11.00 14.00 3. Beautiful Gray Diagonal Heavy Wool Double Breasted Overcoat...... 12.00 16.00 4. Black Kersey Single Breasted Overcoat 13.00 16.00 5. Tan Kersey Double Breasted Overcoat 14.50 19.00 6. Dull Black Worsted Single Breasted Overcoat, Presto collar........ 13.00 16.00 [pgbrk] January, 1911 THE MASSES Vol. I AMERICAN WHOLESALE CO-OPERATIVE MEN'S AND BOY'S NECKWEAR. Each. Per Vo Doz. Each. Per Vi Doz. Four-in-Hand, all Silk, Open End Scarfs, beautiful assortment of patterns, both light and dark shades.............. 19c 90c Same style as above in more expensive silk.................... 25c $1.00 Reversible Four-in-Hand Silk Scarf, latest patterns in both light and dark shades.................................... 17c 05c Same style as above in more expensive silks.................. 25c $1.45 Four-in-Hand Mercerized Silk, Reversible Scarfs, all colors. . 12c 65c Highest Grade Open and Heavy Silk Four-in-Hands, light and dark shades ............................................ 40c $2.12 Sbield Bows, large, best quality Silk, both dark and light patterns.............................................. 20c 05c Boy's Shield. Pointed Bows................................. JOc 50c NIGHT ROBES. 956—Cambridge Low Neck Single Row Trimming.................... 50c 963—Cambridge Low Neck Double Row Trimming.................... 50c 1909—Cambridge Low Neck Collar Effect Trimming.................... 07c 5282—Cambridge Low Neck Piped Effect Trimming...................... g^c 1968—Cambridge Low Neck Single Row Trimming...................... §gc ai04—Cambridge Low Neck Plain White Trimming..................... 86c auS—Cambridge Low Neck Plain white extra large.................... 86c Sizes according to collars Nos. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. PAJAMAS. 140—White Dress Shirt, open front and back, 305—Colored Pajamas ........................ .85 wrist bands laundered. (This grade is 312—Colored Pajamas, trimmed with loops.... .05 also made 111 coat style' cuffs attached; 366—Colored Pajamas, trimmed with loops.... 1.30 coat style' no cuffs' and °Pen back only-) • ¦ *95 314—White Pajamas, trimmed with loops...... 1.30 601—White Dress Shirt, open back and front, 391—Helio, solid color, trimmed with loops.... 1.60 wnst bands laundered. (This grade is Sizes A B C D also made in coat style, cuffs attached, In ordering mention number of article, size and price and coat style, no cuffs.)................ 1.30 W4000—White Plaited Shirts made in four styles of bosom; 24 plaits; 16 plaits; 8 AirLJN b bbllKlb. plaits and cluster either in coat N. S. P.—White unlaundered Shirt, open back style, attached cuffs, or in regular style only, re-enforced front and back........ .50 without cuffs. The 16-plait style is also 400—White unlaundered Shirt, re-enforced front made coat no cuffs.................... . .05 and back, set in bosom.................. .55 W6000—Same as above (W4000).............. .05 197—White unlaundered Shirt, re-enforced front Should you be desirous of examining any of these and back, set in bosom.................. .69 numbers, you can do so. Rand School Restaurant 112 East 19th Street Tel., Gramercy 778 SERVICE A LA CARTE The artistic f and congenial surroundings is one of the many inducements which has made the gar- £ den and the ' restaurant the favorite gathering place for comrades from all , parts of the United States. Are You A Subscriber? The New York Call is the only English paper in the East devoting its columns to recording the struggles of Labor The Sunday Call is the only Sunday issue of a Socialist daily paper published in the world "Not the Biggest Sunday Paper But the Best!" For subscription rates see the editorial page of the paper The New York Call 409 Pearl Street New York City Milwaukee is now run by Workingmen Don't you want to know how workingmen govern a big city? THEN Read the Chicago Daily Socialist Where you will find the latest and most truthful news from Milwaukee Every Day Socialists Govern Milwaukee For all the news what the Socialist Administration is doing and planning in that City, READ THE Social Democratic Herald Subscription price, $1.00 per year. Published weekly. Address: 344 6th Street Milwaukee, Wis. There Are Reasons. Why certain lines goods prove lasting favorites with the consumers. The big reason lies in the demandable quality which you have learned by constant use of those lines. This is the big reason why you, Mr. and Mrs. Co-operator, should form the habit of calling for " MADE-IN-GIRARD'' PRODUCTS. They Bear Acquaintance. Most of you know several other good reasons. Then don't forget to ask for NUTRETO cereal coffee and PRIMEL cereal Breakfast Food. Agents for Eastern States : AMERICAN WHOLESALE CO-OPERATIVE The Girard Manufacturing Co., Girard, Kan. [pgbrk] Vol. I THE MASSES January, 1911 TAFT BLUNTLY SAYS, in his Report as Secretary of War, 1907, (Page 14) that the best and most desirable class of men do not join the Army . Report quoted in: WAR-WHAT FOR? By GEORGE R. KIRKPATRICK The book explains the slayer, the betrayer and the ruler of the working class. Now in the 3rd edition, 15th thousand. 352 pages, elegant gold-stamped binding, 12 chapters, 13 powerful full-page pictures (3 halftones) by John Sloan and Ryan Walker—In Third Edition 560 sold in Greater Pittsburg, Pa. ; 220 sold in one factory in Schenectady, N. Y. THE CHICAGO EVENING POST: "____It is as well calculated to impress its readers as Paine's Rights of Man . . . ." THE LOUISVILLE, KY., HERALD also ranks the book equal to Paine's Rights of Man in power to impress its readers. THE SPRINGFIELD, MASS., REPUBLICAN: ". . . . Much startling information .... Crowded with facts .... Whitmanesque epigram and impassioned appeal . . . ." EUGENE V. DEBS: ". . . . This wonderful book, the book of an epoch, an immortal achievement...." THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW: This book is a denunciation, an exposition, a revelation and a terrible indictment of war .... a wealth of data . . . ." Price, $1.20 postpaid. Three copies, $2.40 postpaid. Address: Publisher of "War—What For?" West La Fayette, Ohio, c. of. R. R. Box 206. (Descriptive circular sent to any addresses furnished) in my name! after nineteen hundred years RAND SCHOOL CORRESPONDENCE COURSES The Rand School of Social Science offers the following Correspondence Courses for students living outside of New York City: Course I. American History. Textbook, McMaster's "School History of the United States," Course II. American Government. Textbook, Ashley's "American Government." Course III. Socialism. Textbook, Spargo's "Socialism." Each course will consist of six outlines, sent to the student at intervals of one month, giving a synopsis of the subject and directions for reading. After doing the indicated reading, the student will write an essay each month according to directions given in the outline and send it to the Rand School, where it will be read and returned to the student with criticism and advice. The outlines have been prepared by practical educators who are active members of the Socialist party. The essays will be read and marked by comrades well qualified for such work. Everyone concerned in the conduct of the Correspondence Courses will bring to his task, not only technical ability, but also a fraternal interest in the students' progress. The courses now offered are of an elementary nature. Later it is expected that elementary courses in other subjects and also some more advanced courses will be established. No one is advised to undertake more than one course at a time, unless he has abundant leisure for study. It is better to take the three courses in succession and study all thoroughly than to try all at once and do all imperfectly. The fee for either course is $2.50 if paid in advance, or $3.00 if paid in monthly instalments of 50 cents each. Students who so desire may purchase textbooks from the Rand School, at the following prices: McMaster, $1.10; Ashley, $1.00; Spargo, $1.40; postpaid in all cases. Make checks and money orders payable to The Rand School of Social Science. Be sure . that your name and address are clearly written at the head of your letter and also on the envelope. Address all communications to Correspondence Department THE RAND SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE 112 East 19th Street, New York [pgbrk]