and has merely disturbed one of nature's processes.

Though the animals would seem to be destroying the grass by eating it, they are really adding new life to it, giving it, as one might well say, a chance

to exercise its functions.

The Law Among Fruits.

Perhaps the most ingenious device for the protection of the tree and the securing of the propagation of its race, if we may look at it from a certain human viewpoint, is the tendency of unripe fruit to produce rather painful disturbances in human beings and also in animals that eat it. Few people stop to consider what the meaning of this is for the tree or the plant. We are apt to look at it entirely from our point of view and to consider it a decided inconvenience. Most fruits are annuals. In the ordinary course of nature, when fruit begins to ripen it is so long since men and animals have had a chance to eat this kind of fruit before-that is, for nearly a year—that just as soon as the young fruit appears they are tempted to take it. At this time the seeds

are not ripe and would not germinate. The purpose of fruits, so far as the tree is concerned, is to induce animals and men to scatter the seeds by carrying off the fruit. This purpose would be entirely defeated if the seeds were taken from the tree while yet unripe. There is in most growing fruits, then, in their unripe stage, a poison present. Why it is there would be hard to say, but that it is there we know by the disturbance it causes men and animals. A boy who eats green apples and gets trouble "in

his midst" is duly warned not to do it again, and is likely to heed the warning.

When Man Interferes.

In the meantime, the tree or plant has protected its children from interference until they have reached the age when they can get on in the world for themselves. Sometimes, when a physician sees. the rather serious disturbance that such an indulgence in unripe fruit occasions, he may be inclined to think that the punishment is greater than the offense really called for. We all know, however, that it is always an extremely dangerous thing to interfere with a mother in her care for her young, whether the young be animal or human, and so it is not surprising to find that the plant-mother unsparingly resents this interference with the care of her progeny. A cat has been known to rout a bear when her fears led her to believe that the big animal was about to attack her young. A mother hen, though the hen is sometimes considered a type of cowardliness, and we speak of chicken-heartedness, will not hesitate to attack even a snake; though before the duties of motherhood. fell on it, it would fly thoroughly frightened at the first indication of the presence of a snake. Nothing is too great. for mother love, and instances of it occur in the plant as well as in the animals, if we only study these mothers' heroic lives.

While, then, the struggle for life seems, when looked at superficially, to be the most important factor in any process of evolution that there may be in the world, bringing about the elimination. of the unfit, what we find on detailed study is that, for the defence of the

weak, nature has given a whole series of protective instinct by which the young mothers, during the offspringbearing period, are enabled to offset adverse conditions and avert many dangers. Without this, the course of things in the world would have been very different. The weak would literally have gone to the wall and been destroyed, and we would have had only a world of conquerors around us. What we know, on the contrary, is that, whenever the conqueror in his selfishness has absorbed more than his share of the good things of life, nature has found means to eliminate him, leaving in his stead many of the smaller, weaker ones to carry on their existence in peace and to propagate their race. The huge dinosaurs, the immense sloths, the mammoths, the enormous cave bear, have all disappeared in the course of time, leaving smaller animals with inborn impulses of Mutual Aid, that enable them to survive and to continue their race quite undisturbed.

Darwin's Great Regret.

Darwin once regretted in one of his letters that he had ever called his book the "Origin of Species," because it has nothing to do with origins, and wished that, instead of following the advice of friends he had taken counsel of himself

and called his book by its secondary title, "The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life." This second title is, however, seriously defective, because it fails to recognize many other factors at work, besides the struggle for life, in preserving races-not the least important of which is Mutual Aid. Darwin supposed that, somehow, a great many species come into existence out

of the fertility of nature and the tendency to vary. This is the supposition at the basis of any argument of his. Some of these races are preserved, because nature eliminates those that are the less fitted to survive. Natural selection is not a positively active process, but entirely negative; whatever choice is exercised is for elimination. Now, besides bringing many species into existence, nature gifted some of them with a tendency to care for each other that has helped them to maintain themselves. This Mutual Aid is a factor that, in the preservation of races, needs to be emphasized.

Mutual Aid in Uplift.

Men gifted with certain qualities that enable them to get the better of their fellows have sometimes justified their success at the expense of others, insisting that this was the biological principle which was at the basis of all evolution, or tendency to development. It is only on a very superficial view of nature, however, that this is true. On the contrary we find that, so far as the lessons of nature teach us, the conquering beings have always been a hindrance to anything like progress. In man, as among animals, Mutual Aid has been a strong factor for uplift. The guilds during the Middle Ages, the democratic spirit that they introduced into the world, the great principle of Christian charity, the law: "Thou shalt love thy brother as thy self"-all these have been great factors. The great principles of charity and fraternity occur everywhere among living beings, even among the plants. No being is SO low as to be without it. Evidently the

Creator who planned this universe (for one would as soon think of finding a watch and saying that it happened by accident, or a printed edition of Homer published by chance) must hold that principle very dear, for He has put it as the basic principle of life into all His living creatures. This is a phase of our modern evolutionary theories that is seldom mentioned by our popular scientists, though it eminently deserves to be.

I know nothing more interesting in modern biology than this study of helpfulness for others as displayed through

out all living nature. When a man dies, the race, stripping away the trappings

that have concealed the real man from us, judges him entirely by what he has done for others. Before death, the power that his selfish success has given to him may conceal, at least for the moment, the true inwardness of his accomplishments in life. With the disillusionment of the end of life this disappears, and it is the man who has helped others

whom we look up to as the type of what is best in the race. This seems a contradiction of the natural order of things in the light of much of the teaching of present-day popular biology, but it is the most natural thing in the world when we look a little below the surface and find the great principle of fraternalism and mutual helpfulness exhibited in the qualities, and often among the most precious qualities, of living creatures.

What we need just now is a deeper study of Mutual Aid in order to counter

act the evil influences on social life of

the exaggerated significance of the struggle for life. What we need, besides, is the lesson not to jump at conclusions, but to wait until we know a subject definitely before hastening to think that we know all about it. "It is not so much the ignorance of mankind that make men ridiculous," said Josh Billings, "but the knowing so many things that ain't so."

THE

HE CONTENTION of the orthodox, or Marxian, Socialists, all over the world, is in the main that, with the growth and development of the capitalist system of industry, the struggle of the masses grows more and more intense; the battle for a bare existence, grows more and more difficult; that the army of the unemployed grows ever larger; that the trust destroys the small individual producer; that the "once powerful middle class" will entirely disappear, and that, shortly, we shall find society divided into two classes-the vast proletariat on the one hand, despoiled of all its wealth, with nothing but its labor power, and, on the other hand, a few mighty capitalists owning all the means of production and exchange. And when this time comes, says Marx, the proletariat will arise and proceed to "expropriate the expropriators.'

Socialism Most Unscientific.

The contention of the Socialists that the owners of the wealth of the nation are growing fewer and fewer is not true of this nation or of any other. The blue books of every industrial nation clearly prove that Socialism, instead of being scientific, is extremely unscientific. In fact, that the Socialist propaganda is largely a mass of misrepresentation and exaggeration can clearly be proved, and a few illustrations of this fact follow.

The United States Census is the most eloquent refutation of this so-called doc

Truth About Child Labor.

For years the Socialists have been telling us that the census of 1900 found 1, 750,000 "little children" employed in the mills and mines of this country, and they have drawn a terrible picture of this great army of "little children" being enslaved for the "sole purpose of producing profits for the capitalist class." The volume on "Occupations," United States Census for 1900, disclosed the fact that there were, in round numbers, 24,000 children under 16 years of age working in the mines, and 168,583 employed in the mills and factories. It is true that the census reports that 1,750,000 children under 16, were found employed at gainful occupations, but, 1,068,000 of these children were found employed on the farms. Furthermore, we find that, in 1880, there were actually more children employed in the factories than twenty years later, and, during the last ten years, child labor has decreased, while the gain

in factory workers was over a million, so that, relatively, the decrease in child. labor has been larger than appears.

Secondly, it is shown that more than 54 per cent. of all our child labor had reached the age of 14 or over, and that, in manufacturing, mining and chemical industries, 78 per cent. were 14 years of age or over. These facts don't agree with the calamity-howling statements of the average Socialist leader, and these are facts which your Socialist propagandist never tells.

How Socialism Reasons.

For years the Socialists have circulated pamphlets, books and papers, and have made speeches, claiming that, under this system, the wage-workers received only 17 to 20 per cent. of the wealth they produce. They arrive at this astonishing statement by the simple method of ignoring the cost of materials, cost of taxes, machinery and plant, the labor of superintendence, cost of selling goods, depreciation, etc. In effect, the Socialist leaders tell us that the factory hands produce the raw cotton, the hides, the iron ore, the coal to drive the machinery, etc.

The latest census report, (that of 1905, for the manufacturing industry) shows that, in the 533,769 plants investigated, there was a capital investment of $13, 872,035.371; the salaried officials numbered 566,175, and they received in salaries $609,200,251; the wage hands numbered 6,152,443 and they received in wages $3,041,389,372, a total wage fund of $3,623,529,623; so that each worker received $539.30 in 1905. The miscellaneous expenses were $1,651,603,535, or 10 per cent. of the total gross value; the cost for materials was $9,497,619,851,

or a fraction over 56 per cent. of the cost to produce the finished products. Here we find two items of expense amounting to more than eleven billions of dollars, or 66 per cent. of the cost, that the average Socialist statistician coolly ignores. To sum up: we find that the total expense of the manufacturing industry in 1905 was almost 88 per cent. of the total gross value, factory price, leaving about 12 per cent. profit. This 12 per cent. profit includes the labor of several thousand owners of small plants who receive no salary, or wage, but depend on the profits for the reward of their labor.

The Distribution of Wealth.

A statement as to the distribution of wealth has been going the rounds of the Socialist press for ten years past, and every week some Socialist repeats it. This statement is: "In 1850, the total wealth of the nation was $8,000,000,000. The producers owned 621⁄2 per cent. of it; the non-producers owned 371⁄2 per cent. In 1910 the total wealth of the nation was $110,000,000,000, the producers' share being only ten per cent., while the non-producers own 90 per cent." This ridiculous statement is honestly believed by thousands of Socialists, as well as by many reformers.

In the first place, there are no authorities, no census reports, upon which to base such a wild statement. Secondly, we know how much farm wealth the six million farmers own, and this alone proves how far from the truth is the Socialist assertion as to wealth distribution. The statistics of the Agricultural Department show that, in farm values. alone, the farmers own more than 25 per cent. of the total wealth of the nation. How much more they have in railroad