gates on Sunday until they had legal warrant for doing so. And the valiant Chief of Police has not been dismissed. His retention in office was signified by the Mayor pleasantly replying to his request for instructions with the bidding to mind his own business. Visitors to the World's Fair may go the more securely in that they know the city is in charge of an officer who represents the best elements of Chicago life.

THE LADIES OF HULL HOUSE.

There are many other signs of the growth of civic religion. Of these, not the least promising is the work carried on at Hull House. This is a woman's university settlement, which has been planted right in the midst of the darkest district of the city. It is the centre of many-sided social amelioration. Its Ward Improvement Committee especially is doing splendid service in educating the local municipal conscience. My friend from East London, to whom I have before alluded, tells me that he has visited all the principal university settlements in England and the United States, but nowhere has he seen such excellent work as is done by the ladies at Hull House. To compare this outpost of ciyic reform with the dream of Tennyson's "Princess" is to learn afresh how much more poetry may be found in real life than in romance. The Lady Ida of this academy combines the broad and healthy culture and the brilliant charm of the modern American woman with the unobtrusive devotion of a mediæval nun. Among the civic saviors of Chicago I should judge that few will rank higher than Miss Jane Addams

SOCIAL CHRISTIANITY.

The churches also seem to be waking up in earnest to the need of what Mr. Hugh Price Hughes calls "social Christianity." I spent some delightful hours in the Armour Institute, a glorified polytechnic or scientific academy, which the millionaire whose wellknown name it bears has just built in one of the poorer districts. To this noble agency, with its threefold aim of imparting “knowledge, skill and culture,” Rev. Dr. Gunsaulus, one of the leading preachers of the city, devotes no small amount of his multifarious energy. The Chicago Congregational College has taken an important step towards socializing the ministry of the future by founding a Chair of Christian Sociology, and by drilling its two hundred students in actual social work. Mr. Moody complains, indeed, that between the churches of Chicago, with their luxuriously carpeted and cushioned places of worship, and the working classes, the gulf of separation grows every day deeper and broader. The sociologizing of theology will, however, prove one of

the best means of counteracting this baneful tendency.

A WORLD CENTRE.

For there is something in the very air of Chicago life which it is an exhilaration, almost an inspiration, to breathe. It is hard precisely to hit off, but it may perhaps be described as the blending of an imperial outlook with a world-conquering energy. Possibly owing to her cosmopolitan population, Chicago possesses what may be called a sort of omni-national consciousness. Her plans and projects have no mere local or continental range. She has an eye even to the whole world. Even in her religious arrangements this wide vision is apparent. Dr. Goodwin, pastor of the First Congregational Church, in talking to me about the work which Chicago Congregationalism has to accomplish, spoke of the entire Northwest and even of remote Alaska as though they were but an annex to the Lake City. Mr. Moody, in arranging evangelistic operations during the fair, brings Dr. Pindor from Poland, Dr. Stöcker from Berlin, Dr. Monod from Paris, besides a host of noted evangelists from Great Britian. It is quite in keeping with the general æcumenical temper of the city that it is the home of the first parliament of the world's religions. In ideas, as in breadstuffs, it aspires to be the market of mankind. And behind this ambition lies a will of feverish speed and iron peremptoriness. The indomitable enterprise of Chicago has imprinted itself on the universal consciousness. The city itself is a monument of mastery over circumstance. It has reared the greatest buildings in the world on a foundation of treacherous swamp, and has risen in twenty-five years from a fiery ruin to be the second city in the hemisphere. As a venerable missionary from Zululand accompanied me from one spectacle to another of Chicago's colossal activity he repeated with deep feeling a saying of the Zulus: "O white man, nothing ever conquers you but death." One feels as though nothing short of the annexation of a new planet will furnish outlet sufficient for the exuberant energy everywhere manifest.

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Born of the most masterful decades of the nineteenth century, the child of steam, electricity, and world-wide exchange, reared in the simultaneity of world-consciousness which the daily newspaper creates, with no traditions to hamper or internal vis inertice to overcome, Chicago stands out as the very embodiment of the world-conquering spirit of the age. If she only succeeds in subduing the vices of her youthful blood, and in rounding out the finer capacities of her intellect, her destiny may yet prove to be not less imperial than is her present temper.

THE FINANCIAL SITUATION.

N the North American Review, Mr Edward Atkin

lation only such money as the people will accept without distrust. In substance, he says: It is the quality of the money and not the quantity that is of the greatest importance. The quantity of money now in circulation would not suffice for a single week's transactions if money were required in their purchase and sale. The work of trade is done mainly on credit and credit depends not only upon the quality of the man to whom it is extended, but also upon the quality of the money which is to be paid and which is to be received. Therefore, when a doubt exists about the quality of the money, trade is checked, for credit cannot be given even to those who are entitled to it if the money itself is doubtful. What affects trade now, Mr. Atkinson explains, is that the quality of the money that is lawful in the United States is doubted.

THE QUALITY OF OUR MONEY DOUBTED. "This doubt of the quality of the money has been caused by the attempt to put a dollar made of silver into circulation under an act of legal tender, which dollar is not worth as much after it is melted as it purports to be worth in the coin. Bad money which is a legal tender drives good money out of circulation. Bad legal tender money is now driving good money made of gold out of circulation. Trade is checked. Men are beginning to fail. Banks are subject to ruin. Distrust prevails everywhere.

"The only definition of good money is that it consists of coin which is worth as much after it is melted into bullion as it purported to be worth in the coin. Gold dollars are good money because they are worth as much in bullion as they are in coin. Silver dollars are bad money because they are not. They serve the purpose of good money only so long as the government redeems them in gold or its equivalent. How long can the government continue to do so? These are facts. Let any one contest them who can.

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The present administration is making use of all the lawful power that exists to put a stop to this distrust-to maintain the credit of the country and to prevent a panic. It must be supported by banks, bankers and people alike, else the disaster will come. That disaster will be due to the temporary success of the advocates of the free coinage of silver dollars which are not worth as much after they are melted as they purport to be worth in the coin. There is hardly a man in this country who cannot to-day name important undertakings which have been and will be stopped until this cause of distrust is removed. This distrust stops trade; it stops enterprise; it promotes bankruptcy. The stupid or malignant enemies of the credit of the country must be held responsible. They are the advocates of the free coinage of silver

"These men are not bimetallists. The bimetallists scout them. They are either ignorant persons who do not know what bimetallism is, or else they are special advocates of the so-called silver interests, who are ready to defraud the working people of this 'country for their own personal profit. It is time to stop being tolerant on this question.

"The proposal to coin silver dollars without limit and to force people to take them by an act of legal tender is an intolerable fraud. The purposes of its advocates can only be justified by commending their sincerity at the expense of their intelligence."

Due to the Sherman Silver Law.

Mr. E. O. Leech, writing also in the North American Review, charges our present financial troubles to the Sherman silver law and holds that unless this law is removed, it is inevitable that our currency must reach a silver basis. And a silver basis means, he adds, "in the first instant a violent and hasty inflation of our currency by withdrawal of gold coins and gold in circulation" and then, after the first shock, when people have adapted themselves to existing conditions. it means "that the paying power of our money in foreign exchanges will be depreciated to the commercial value of our silver dollar, whatever that may be." Mr. Leech maintains that stability in the rights of exchange is the essence of commercial transactions, especially commercial transactions based on credit, and further that it would be impossible to maintain certainty in the value of our currency if it is placed on a silver basis, for the reason that all international exchanges are measured by gold.

Withdrawal of Credit the Cause.

One of the strongest financial articles of the month is that by Mr. Matthew Marshall in the Engineering Magazine. In Mr. Marshall's opinion the present stringency is not due to any lack of circulating medium, as it is held by free silver advocates. This is demonstrated, he holds, by the fact that "during the last four months $15,000,000 of additional Treasury notes have been issued for purchases of silver under the Sherman act, and have gone into active circulation, while the gold that has been exported to Europe has been drawn mainly from the Treasury, and not from the people's pockets nor from the banks." Neither does it proceed, he says, from a too free coinage of silver, else why should there be an even greater stringency in countries where there is no Sherman act?

applications which previously they would have favorably entertained. Just as the public has passed from a state of mind in which it was ready to pay without hesitation the highest prices for fancy stocks, regardless of their intrinsic value, to one in which it will not buy them at any price whatever, so it has passed from a readiness to lend to anybody and everybody, on any kind of security offered, to one in which it will scarcely lend at all. Secretary Foster's silly bond negotiations last winter aroused fears in the public mind which have been intensified by the mysterious and vacillating policy of his Democratic successor; public confidence has been shaken; and, in their ignorance of the precise danger to which they were exposed, the great money-lenders have followed the course dictated by prudence, and in order to diminish their own liabilities have contracted their accommodations to borrowers. This has set in motion a process of liquidation, in the course of which, as in every struggle for existence, the weaker participants have gone under."

That the stringency is due to the timidity of moneylenders is shown, Mr. Marshall asserts, by the reduction of the volume of bank loans as well as of those of individuals. During the four months, FebruaryMay, 1893, he states that the banks of New York alone reduced their loans to borrowers $49,008,600.

ENCOURAGING FEATURES.

Mr. Marshall finds some encouragement in the present financial situation. It will serve, he thinks, to clear away wrecks of the various firms and corporations which have been forced into insolvency, and will enable many of them soon to readjust their debts and to assume the management of their own affairs.. "This cheerful co-operation of debtors and creditors in readjusting the burden of debts to meet the necessities of circumstances is a characteristic of modern civilized commerce, and especially of the commerce of this country. The debtor is no longer, as he used to be, the slave of his creditors; he cannot now even be imprisoned for failing to pay his debts, as he could both in Europe and in this country until not many years ago; he is viewed as being, in a sense, the partner of his creditors, and therefore entitled to divide with them the losses incurred through his want of skill or want of luck. Besides, it is seen that, as a live dog is better than a dead lion, so a customer in active business, with even moderate means, is of more benefit to trade than an idler whose hands are fettered by obligations which he cannot discharge and who is a dead weight when he might be an active force."

The Present Administration Responsible. Mr. George Gunton, in the Social Economist, holds the present administration responsible for the widespread business disaster throughout the country. He declares that its coming into power, pledged to a radical change of our industrial policy, has destroyed confidence in all unrealized enterprises.

dency, with House and Senate at his back, was a silent proclamation that capital was in danger, that the government would be used to the advantage of foreign producers and to the disadvantage of home producers, that protection and encouragement to prospective home industries would be withdrawn, and American productive values reduced to the level of European. The effect of this among bankers and business men was like a fire alarm. It made every one lose confidence in his own safety by mistrusting the safety of his neighbor, and by destroying credit actually produced insolvency. Strong banks began to restrict their loans and to insist upon the taking up of all notes, thus suddenly cramping business men beyond their power to meet immediate obligations and forcing concerns to make assignments whose assets were many times their liabilities. There is no more economic reason for assignments and bankruptcies to-day than there was a year ago, when the nation was at the height of prosperity. Nothing of an industrial character has occurred to produce the change. The industries of the country were in a wholesome, progressive and confidence-inspiring condition. No symptoms of abnormal business inflation existed. To be sure, new industries were developing, but only in accordance with wholesome industrial progress. Their products found ready demand in our home market, as is shown by the fact that in no great lines of industry is there any glut of commodities. The only disturbance that has occurred is the destruction of credit by fear of the consequences of the new policy upon growing and prospective industries; in other words, business credit, which is an indispensable factor in progressive industry, has been fatally injured, and doubt, fear, consternation, assignments, bankruptcies, have taken its place."

HOW A FREE-TRADE PROGRAM MIGHT WORK. No such result followed the presidential election of 1884, says Mr. Gunton, for the reason that Mr. Cleveland was then powerless to change the policy of the country, having the majority of Congress against him, and for the further reason that it was not until December, 1887, that he announced his free-trade intentions. It is true," Mr. Gunton continues, "he could not have been elected had not a majority of the people been made to believe in the policy he represents; but those who were converted to his side were not those that his election frightened. The accessions to the ranks of his followers were mainly composed of discontented farmers and laborers, misled sistent attacks upon the integrity of Am ness men, whose success, they were was due to unjust exactions upo small farmers, through privile those whom his election has informed business men of is invested in product which they know proposed radical

ver question, especially to the Sherman act. This is evidently the attitude of Mr. Cleveland himself; but it is easy to see that it partakes more of the character of evasion than of explanation. The Sherman act was unquestionably unsound legislation. There is no economic defense for using gold to buy silver to store away in government vaults. The law should be repealed at the earliest opportunity, and a rational currency law passed, by which silver, as well as gold, can be made to do full service as money. But although the Sherman act contained an element of unsoundness, it was utterly incapable of creating the present industrial disturbance. To be sure, it added something to the doubt and uncertainty created by the threatened change in the national policy, but alone it could hardly have produced a ripple.

"In short, it is really the administration's free-trade policy, and not the unwisdom of the Sherman law, that is the cause of our present lamentable condition. If Mr. Cleveland would give the country an unqualified assurance that our tariff legislation should remain unchanged during his administration, industrial confidence would be restored in less than a week, and the silver question could be dealt with without menace to the country or truckling compromise with currency inflationists. He could call an extra session of Congress with the absolute certainty of being sustained in pursuing any honest monetary policy by the rational elements of both parties against the wild elements of his own. All signs point to the conclusion, however, that Mr. Cleveland and his immediate advisers are either strangely oblivious or utterly indifferent to this view of the situation. He seems to have become so infatuated with the idea of putting our industries on a free-trade basis that he looks with unconcern on the calamities necessarily consequent upon the process.”

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IN the Journal of Political Economy, Mr. J. P. Dunn, of Indianapolis, defends Senator John Sherman against certain insinuations made by General Francis A. Walker in an article which appeared in the March number of the Journal. Referring to the revision of the coinage laws of the United States in 1873, General Walker said that in the course of this the dollar of our fathers was dropped" and that 66 this constitutes the grievance of the silver people." General Walker did not intimate that fraud was committed, but declared that some committeeman, or some few committeemen, ran the pen through the silver dollar and the thing was done." In his statement Mr. Dunn thinks the writer has cast a slur upon Senator Sherman, he having been at the head of the managers of that conference committee. Mr. Dunn says in conclusion: "I challenge any person to cite a published contemporary statement in the governmental records that this bill, No. 2934, which was passed, dropped the silver dollar. I challenge the citation of any intimation to that effect by any person connected with that bill' or otherwise. Ichallenge the production of any explanation of the dropping of the dollar that cannot be triumphantly refuted by the statements of Mr. Sherman."

SILVER AS MONEY IN THE UNITED STATES. N the Annals of the American Academy for July, Economics, New York, discusses the "Use of Silver as Money in the United States." The paper is principally historical in character, giving in detail, with ample explanatory tables and charts, an account of the silver coinage of the United States from the year 1783, when "Robert Morris presented to the United States in Congress assembled' a specimen American coin."

THE ACT OF 1873.

The part of Professor Woodford's paper which refers to the celebrated Act of 1873, the purpose of which, it is claimed by the bimetallists, was to demonetize silver, will be read with much interest at this time. He says: "How far coming events cast their shadows before is èver a difficult matter to determine, but that the changes of the years from 1871 to 1876 could have been anticipated by Mr. Knox in preparing his report in 1869 hardly seems probable. It is certain that the average Congressman in 1873 would not have found it possible to make the most vague approximation to the rate which was necessary to secure bimetallism throughout the decade that followed. That the victor in the Franco-Prussian war would be able to compel the payment of a gigantic war indemnity of $1,000,000,000 and would make use of the opportunity to change the currency of Germany from silver to gold, as a means of aiding industrial development; that between 1871 and 1874 nearly every country in Europe would close its mint to the coinage of silver and keep it closed; and that the demand for silver in the countries of the East, India and China, would greatly decline; that the production of silver would double, treble and quadruple even between 1868 and 1878; that an almost unprecedented industrial depression would follow the panic of 1873; that these, or any such fortuitous concatenation of events could have been foreseen, and the fall in the value of silver, as measured in gold, been predicted with any accuracy, is highly improbable. In any case the very best policy, the one which most completely protected the interests of the whole community was, perhaps, the one adopted in the Act of 1873.

"The fall in silver, coming as it did so shortly after the failure of the Greenback party in 1874, gave rise to bitter feelings against those who secured the enactment of the Mint law of 1873. Extremists even went so far as to say that silver had been demonetized by clandestine legislation. Nor has this belief disappeared with the progress of time; it is still current, though quite unwarranted, as shown by the history of the bill in its passage from drafting to final enactment. It was practically before Congress and before the country for about four years.

"The act of 1873 was supplementary to the act of 1853 and conceived with the same intent. The circulation of postal currency had driven silver coins out of circulation during the civil war and the years subsequent thereto. The proposition was made in 1869 to restore silver to its position as a subsidiary coin,

the supply froin Nevada and Colorado, it was be lieved, making this feasible. Any excess in the silver product for export was to be in the form of a ‘tradedollar.' An American silver coin had never been the chief component of American currency, and there was at that time no apparent reason for attempting to introduce it. For a generation silver had been used as the metal of our subsidiary coins. It remained, then, to bring the dollar into harmony with the fractional coins or to retire it from the circulation. The latter alternative was chosen, although the former had been recommended. Provision was made at the same time for the manufacture of coins of a convenient form, with quality and quantity of metal marked upon each, which could be used in trade with countries having a silver currency."

THE EFFECT OF THE LAW.

Speaking of the bimetallic controversy, Professor Woodford says: The important effect of this law (1873) and of the provision of the revised statutes (1874), which deprived the silver dollar of legal tender quality, was that they prevented a use of silver which, under laws previously in force, would inevitably have followed the fall in the value of silver (1876) and the failure of the Greenback movement. Whether or not this was a desirable result is a much disputed question. The belief that it was not has led to the persistent effort of the last fifteen years to extend the use of silver. It is with the passage of the act of January 14, 1875, providing for the resumption of specie-that is, gold-payments on the outstanding obligations of the government, that the real bimetallic controversy in this country begins. It has been carried on alike by those personally interested, as they believe, in maintaining the stability of our measure of value and standard of payments and by those who are anxious for the general welfare and believe that industrial growth and prosperity, as well as political justice, demand a composite unit of value.

"Thus far this movement for bimetallism has resulted in three apparently quite fruitless attempts to secure international agreement regarding the coinage of gold and silver, and in the two acts requiring the United States government to purchase silver as the basis of paper currency.

"The act of July 14, 1890, known as the Sherman act, directs the Secretary of the Treasury to purchase four and one-half million (4,500,000) ounces of silver per month, or such part thereof as may be offered for sale at prices below $1.29 per ounce, and to issue Treasury notes in payment. These notes are a legal tender at their face value in payment of all debts, public and private, except when otherwise expressly stipulated in the contract. They are redeemable in either gold or silver coin at the option of the secretary. The government is thus made a regular purchaser of silver, which it uses as the basis of a paper currency that increases from $40,000,000 to $60,000,000 a year, according as the price of silver rises or falls. Thus far the administration, Democratic as well as Republican, has been able to redeem the Treasury notes in gold."

THE MONETARY SITUATION IN GERMANY.

PROF

ROFESSOR WALTHER LOTZ, of the University of Munich, explains in the July number of the Annals of the American Academy the “Monetary Situation in Germany," because, as he says: "American bimetallists and some of their German friends have recently severely criticised the attitude observed in the late Brussels Conference by the German delegates toward bimetallism." His purpose is "to convince impartial readers that the interests of Germany made it impossible on that occasion, and will forbid in the future the encouragement of bimetallism in any way.

GERMANY'S PRESENT MONETARY SYSTEM.

"No one," he says, "can fairly expect that Germany's monetary policy should be guided by other than German interests. Now, notwithstanding the noisy agitation in agricultural districts of Germany in favor of bimetallism, as long as the vital interest of the greatest part of Germany's industry and commerce, the interest of our public credit and the interests of our foreign policy are not to be totally neglected, there is no hope that Germany will participate in any international measure to secure bimetallism."

The professor then gives a brief statement of Germany's actual monetary situation, from which it will be seen that about 62 per cent. of Germany's entire currency is gold coin and bullon; 24 per cent. silver coin; 2 per cent. nickel and bronze coins, and 12 per cent. State and bank notes. After explaining the difference between the two kinds of paper currency, he states that a large part of the 2,350,000,000 marks of gold do not form a part of the visible circulation, but are hoarded, either as part of the great war treasure of one hundred and twenty millions, or in the banks to cover part of the bank-note circulation.

Gold is, however, not the only legal tender; the silver thalers must also be accepted in any payment without limit, but their number cannot be increased by new coinage.

ORIGIN OF THE GERMAN SYSTEM.

In the second part of his paper, Professor Lotz explains the origin of the present German monetary system. The change was a result of the FrancoPrussian war. Before 1870 the monetary system varied with every petty state, and the currency consisted chiefly of paper. After the war, the formation of the Empire permitted the adoption of one system for all Germany, and the payment by France of five milliards of francs enabled the gold basis to be established.

The government, however, did not begin to withdraw the existing silver currency from circulation until 1873. Since then it has all been withdrawn, except the thalers to the value of 440,000,000 marks. An opportunity was offered to the governinent about 1873 by merchants from Hamburg "to find a way to effect the sale of all the silver with a minimum loss. The government did not, however, take advantage of a favorable occasion which was never to return."