efficient mills are left in the field. Competition in prices between them ensues, and if the competitors are evenly matched, that is, if their cost of production is about the same, they soon realize that such competition is ruinous to all concerned, and a combination takes place.

In the meantime, while this process has been in progress, the consuming public has been benefited by the falling price, due to the crowding out of the inefficient and small producers. When combination finally takes place, the price is almost invariably raised, but it is established on a reasonably stable basis. Frequently, during the struggle before combination, prices were at times abnormally low and usually made so at the cost of the laborer, whose wages was the only thing left to cut. The rise of the monopoly price and accompanying stability usually benefits the laborer.

The process here sketched is almost invariably the history of the capitalistic monopolies. But there is a natural limit to the sway of the power of monopolies. The strongest combinations of capital are subject to competition. The moment a manufacturing corporation attempts to fix an abnormally high price, that high price tempts competitors into the field and thus the avarice of the members destroys the monopoly itself. Thus in considering the pros and cons of the question we must recognize that monopoly is, as a rule, beneficial to the public, in that it produces goods in the most economical way, and sells them at prices which return a large profit to the makers, perhaps, but which nevertheless puts them in the hands of the consumers at a lower cost than if they were made by a large number of independent producers. The economical justification of monopoly, in comparison with smaller competitive establishments, is the production of a large quantity of goods with a given amount of capital and laborproving that production is cheaper on a large scale than on a small one.

It is true, nevertheless, that monopoly has features which are less admirable. It puts large power into the hands of a few industrial leaders, and it would be surprising if this power were not often abused. These abuses, it is however manifest, can be prevented by proper legislation. But experience and sound theories alike seem to indicate that, in the case of capitalistic monopolies, the constant possibility of competition, if the price of goods is unduly raised by combination, or if unjust conditions are imposed, goes far towards securing the public against unfair treatment. From this point of view, with the power of legislation in the hands of the people, we think the public has little to dread from the growth of the capitalistic monopoly. It is oth

erwise with the natural monopolies, above mentioned, which we believe should either be put under the most rigid public control, or public ownership should be insisted on and rigorously enforced. We have no space left to speak of the corruption of public officials, and the prominent part the pernicious evil plays in bringing about a misunderstanding of the subject of capitalistic monopoly. That we may take up in SELF CULTURE on some future occasion.

Will you please tell me in SELF CULTURE when and why the late President (Cleveland) came to be called the "Man of Destiny; also inform me of the origin of the phrase. What, also, is the meaning of the term "Grass Widow?'' The phrase, "Man of Destiny," was applied to Napoleon Bonaparte, who believed himself a chosen instrument of destiny, and thought that all his actions were guided by fate. On Grover Cleveland the term was also bestowed, at a public banquet in Buffalo in the spring of 1883, in allusion to the rapid rise of Mr. Cleveland in the political world and to the high position, it was believed, he would one day attain.

"Grass Widow" is a corrupt use of the phrase "grace widow"- that is, a widow by grace or courtesy, not in fact. In this country, the phrase means either a divorced wife or one separated from her husband.

I have somewhere read that it was an Englishman who, during the Revolutionary War, very materially aided our government financially in a crisis of the struggle. Can you inform me who he was, and give me some facts in his career?

You refer, no doubt, to Robert Morris (17341806), the financier of the Revolution, a sketch of whose life you will find in the Encyclopædia Britannica (Vol. XVI., page 846). Morris was born in Liverpool, England, and came to this country with his father at the age of thirteen and entered a Philadelphia counting-house, in which he afterwards became a partner. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He founded the Bank of North America and was for some years government superintendent of finance. Throughout the war he heartily aided the government in its financial difficulties and pledged his personal credit, at one time, to the extent of one and a half million dollars, to defray the cost of supplies for the army. In 1781, indeed, the campaign of that year could not have been carried on without Morris's aid. In his later years he was unsuc

cessful in land speculations and lost his immense fortune, and was actually permitted to be imprisoned for debt.

[CORRESPONDENCE.]

THE NEGRO AS A SLAVE AND AS A FREEMAN

Under the above heading, in the June number of SELF CULTURE, Mr. Joseph M. Rogers has written well and impartially. His points are all well taken and well sustained, except two, and it is on these two I wish to say a few words. First, that the wealth of the South is greater now than before the war; and second, that free labor is cheaper than slave labor. So far as statistics show the status of wealth, he may be correct; but statistics fail properly to contrast the two periods. We will take one item to illustrate all. To supply with tin-dippers now as many people as lived in the Southern States in the thirties, I would say, at a rough guess, that it would require a million dollar factory. The people of the thirties used gourds, not tin-dippers, raised them and prepared them at odd times. Gourds are just as truly wealth as tin-dippers, but there was no gourd factory to appear in statistics as so much wealth. At another random guess, I would say that the same people now use one million dollars worth of tin-dippers per year, reckoned in the statistics among the manufactured products. The gourd factory cost nothing and the gourds cost nothing. Now the dipper-drinkers have to pay one million per year for the luxury of using them, while the gourd-drinkers paid nothing, that is, the dipper-drinkers pay one million per year for the empty honor of being esteemed two millions richer than the gourddrinkers. In the thirties and even in the fifties, nearly all ploughs, plough-stocks, hoes, wagons, and all farming implements, except chains, were made at home by local workmen. So were all thread, ropes, domestic linens, tickings, leathers, shoes, boots, shoe-material, furniture, carpets, jeans, quilts, counterpanes, etc., wholly or or in part made at home, and are in the category with the tin-dippers. We have some luxuries now that we had not then, but we need much more money now than we did then, and are harder pushed financially. So we cannot look to statistics to tell us whether we are better off now.

In the fifties a man who owned two or three hundred acres with slaves enough to cultivate half of the land, could support his family and get rich without working himself, and buy more land or negroes every year. Now with the same land he cannot live and pay schooling for his children by the use of free labor. Then a man

could hire a negro for $200.00 per year, board and clothe him, and make a little; now he does well if he pays $100.00 and board without clothes and come out even. This statement can be verified by nearly every planter in the South who has tried farming on both sides of the war with slaves and with free labor. Then all merchants, traders, and professional men were aspiring to become planters; now all is reversed. I think the antebellum southern planters were the happiest, most luxurious, liberal, hospitable, and least aristocratic of all well-to-do or rich people that ever lived. Among them were found few of the suffering poor, and the really destitute were well cared for. Wages were high and the wageearner was more respected than among any other rich people in America ; but those who did menial work, such as blacking shoes, cooking, table-waiting, etc., were little respected. In fact, there were scarcely any of this class, save white hirelings doing regular farm work. Those who ate with their employer's family, if wellreared, moved in good society.

E. H. RANDLE, A. M.

Byhalia, Miss., June 22.

[Rejoinder by the writer of the article.] In reply to Mr. Randle's kind note of criticism on my article, let me say that space forbids arraying figures and opinions of experts in behalf of my original contention. I could easily show that what I stated is true by quoting testimony exclusively from south of Mason and Dixon's line, as well as from census statistics. The point I called attention to at the same time must not be forgotten, that a social as well as an economic revolution has taken place since slavery was swept away, and that on the surface it is hard to judge. My opinion was expressed after careful study of the subject and without prejudice. I wish, however, to call attention to the tin-dipper question. If the South spends $1,000,000 a year to-day for tin-dippers, whereas it used gourds thirty years ago, it must be because the South has progressed in wealth and taste. It is just as easy to raise gourds now as it was thirty years ago. In youth I used them myself, and if memory serves me correctly, liked them very well until they became too badly soaked. If the Southern people wanted gourds to-day they could get them for nothing instead of paying $1,000,000 a year for tin-dippers just as they can smoke pipes instead of cigars if they wish. The fact that they find it more desirable to drink out of tin cups and are willing to pay for them, shows more wealth and more culture which, though a small instance, is exactly the point I endeavored to set forth.

JOSEPH M. ROGERS.

Kindly tell me, through your Inquiries Answered department, if there is a History of American Literature published equal to Taine's "History of English Literature."

The only history of American literature of which we know anything, that can be said to be as ambitious as Taine's "English Literature," is that projected by Prof. Moses Coit Tyler, of Cornell University. Unfortunately, it does not, as yet, come further down than the peace after the War of the Revolution. The four volumes he has so far published embrace the history of the native literature during the Colonial period (1607-1765) and that covered by the American Revolution (1763–1783). The cost of the four volumes is $11.00, and their publisher is G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.

The other works, and those that deal with modern authors, are brief manuals, generally for school purposes, perhaps the best of which is Prof. F. L. Pattee's recent epitome. This no doubt you can procure through your local bookseller.

Another tolerably good text-book is that by Julian Hawthorne and L. Lemmon, published by D. C. Heath & Co., Boston. The critical estimate of the Poets, by E. C. Stedman "Poets of America" (price $2.25), published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York, is an excellent bit of literary work, uniform with the same writer's "The Victorian Poets" and his "American Anthology."

Consult also the various issues in the series of American Men of Letters, of which sixteen volumes have already appeared under the editorship of Charles Dudley Warner Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers. (Price $1.25 per volume.)

I enclose my subscription to SELF CULTURE, presuming that a renewal is an adequate endorsement of the magazine. Were I inclined to criticise, I should take exception to writers in your pages who seem to me at times to make too much of the defects of our modern political and social institutions. There is a marked tendency to find fault with modern historical methods, regardless of the fact that results are superior to theories, and forgetting that it is impolitic as well as inexpedient to quarrel with

success.

Mistakes of this kind are occasionally to be noted in the otherwise admirable articles of Mr. Joseph M. Rogers. How can one know that the methods adopted for restoring the integrity of the

We thank you for the implied good words you give to our work in SELF CULTURE. We agree with you that in these times writers are apt to be somewhat pessimistic and carping; but you will admit that this mood is an essential and often a highly valuable adjunct in the publicist, and without it we should go on in a too-easy jog-trot, leaving things pretty much to drift, and be content with the gains and attainments of the past. Is it not well to overhaul things at times, if it were only to upset our complacencies and stop the flow of laudation and brag? Our modern political and social institutions are not in all cases heaven-born, and what is defective in them it is advantageous to have pointed out. It is chiefly by fault-finding that our errors are corrected. It is true, that, in all departments, we have at times a little more of the destructive than of the constructive critic, yet this is an imperfect world and we gain little by complacent contentment. Our new historical methods are, admittedly, an improvement upon the old- they are, as a rule suggestive, and they have made history a vastly more important and interesting study. Mr. Goldwin Smith was, we think, well within the truth in speaking as he did of our finances during the Lincoln régime; they were shockingly bad; nor, obviously, have we got them right yet. The legislature is ever tinkering with them, and this, presumedly, is excused by a consciousness that they need improving. It is the function of the legislative body to reconstruct, that of the critic, if not to cast down, then to point out defects. Thus is progress made and the millennium, in some measure we trust, advanced.

Both Mr. Goldwin Smith and Mr. Rogers, our correspondent will admit, write with competent knowledge of our political affairs, while each is a dispassionate as well as an instructive writer. While they honor us with contributions from their pens, may we not trust their judgment in criticising, since they write with the manifest design of amending rather than with that of finding fault?

ED. S. C.

NEW INFORMATION NOTES

The exports of copper from the United States for the first five months of the year has been as follows: 1894, 32,739 long tons; 1895, 25,615; 1896, 48,521; 1897, 49,509. The total deliveries in Europe for the first five months of 1897 amounted to 89, 164 tons.

A small bar or rod of iron, flat at the end, if reddened in the fire and applied for two or three minutes to the head of a rusty screw, will, as soon as it heats the screw, render its withdrawal easy by the screwdriver.

An era of unusual railroad construction seems about to open in Oklahoma and Indian Territories. Twelve lines with a mileage of over 1,700 have been projected, some have been surveyed and others are now under construction.

John Gjers, of the Ayresome Iron Works, Middlesbrough, England, who has patented several inventions relating to the manufacture of iron and steel, has now another device. The object of the new process is to cheapen the cost and improve the quality of steel or homogeneous iron. Mr. Gjers proposed that the pig iron shall be melted upon the bed of a furnace lined with ilmenite or some other rich oxide of iron, but the operation of steel-making itself will be carried out in an ordinary open-hearth furnace.

The merchant marine of the United States on June 30, 1896, comprised 22,908 vessels of 4,703,880 gross tons - a decrease of 330 vessels, but an increase of 68,000 tons over the previous year. Wooden sailing vessels numbered 16,244, of 2,310,819 gross tons. Iron and steel steamers numbered 880, of 1,004,113 gross tons. Vessels documented at the Atlantic and Gulf ports numbered 16,786, of 2,667,313 gross tons; at Pacific coast ports, 1,560, of 437,972 tons; on the great lakes, 2,333, of 1,324,068 tons; and on the Western rivers, 1,229 vessels, of 274,527 tons. Vessels registered for the foreign trade numbered 1,257, of 844,954 tons, of which 244 are steamers. Vessels built and documented during the year number 723, of 227,096 gross tons, or more than double the construction of the previous year. On the great lakes 117 vessels, of 108,782 tons, were built.

The total population, according to the census taken December, 1895, of the German empire, including Alsace and Lorraine, reaches 52,244,503, against 49,428,470 in 1890, and 41,058,792 in 1871. That is to say, the population has increased 27 per cent. since the re-establishment of the empire twenty-five years ago. The kingdom of Saxony in this period has increased 49% per cent.; Prussia, 29 per cent.; Hesse, 21 per cent.; Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, 24 per cent. Remarkable increases are to be noted in the populations of the two free towns and their dependencies. Hamburg, which, in 1871, had a population of 338,974, has now 681,632, and Bremen has risen from 122,402 to 196,278.

By enactment of Congress, the topographic as well as the geological maps and atlases of the United States Geological Survey may now be purchased by the public. They are now sold at a merely nominal price. In quantities, they may be purchased for two cents each. Lists of

the maps may be had on application to the director of the survey.

A rich gold find is reported at Rat Portage, Ont. The find was made in a new shaft of the Dominion Gold Mining Co., at a depth of ten feet The quartz is rich almost beyond description. Nuggets, leaf, and wire gold have been found in this shaft. Pieces of quartz broken by the blast are said to have been found hanging together by strings of gold. The specimens have been sent to England, where the company's headquarters are located. The news has created great excitement in the gold fields, and prospectors are leaving the other districts and are flocking into Rat Portage.

The scheme of covering the Sahara with forest is pronounced by M. P. Privat-Deschenel utterly impracticable, the arid plateaus being hopeless deserts. On a limited scale, however, the valleys-most of which are favored with a small amount of water-may be successfully planted with tamarisk, acacia, eucalyptus, and poplar, the last-named tree having unexpectedly proven the most suitable. In the forest shelter, vegetables and fruit trees may be grown.

The iron industry in the eastern part of Cuba overshadows all other interests. Two American companies in that vicinity employ 1,400 men, and ship to Pennsylvania mills nearly 50,000 tons of ore per month. The ore is very rich. From 1828 to 1840 Cuba also shipped to this country over $3,000,000 worth of copper ore, but this branch of trade has lapsed considerably American capital was busy in the development of numerous new deposits of manganese ore when the revolution broke out.

At a recent lecture on Diamonds, delivered at the Royal Institution in London, Professor Wm. Crookes said that, thanks to Professor Moissan, the French chemist, diamonds could now be manufactured in the laboratory-minutely microscopic, it was true, but with crystalline form and appearance, color, hardness, and action on light the same as the natural gem. The first necessity was to select pure iron and to pack it in a carbon crucible with pure charcoal from sugar. Half a pound of this iron was put into the body of the electric furnace, and a powerful arc, absorbing about 100 horse power, formed close above it between carbon poles. The iron rapidly melted and saturated itself with carbon.

After a few minutes' heating to a temperature above 4,000°C., the current was stopped and the dazzling, fiery crucible plunged in cold water until it cooled below a red heat. Iron increased in volume at the moment of passing from the liquid to the solid state; hence the expansion of inner liquid on solidifying produced an enormous pressure, under stress of which the dissolved carbon separated out in a transparent, dense, crystalline form-in fact, as diamond. To obtain the diamond from the metallic ingot required a long and tedious process of treatment with various strong reagents, and the specimens thus obtained were only microscopic.

The largest artificial diamond yet made was less than one millimètre across. Many circumstances pointed to the conclusion that the diamond of

the chemist and the diamond of the mine were strangely akin in origin, and the diamond genesis must have taken place at great depths under high pressure. How the great diamond pipes came into existence was not difficult to understand. After they were pierced they were filled from below, and the diamonds, formed at some epoch too remote to imagine, were thrown out with a mud volcano, together with all kinds of débris eroded from adjacent rocks. According to another theory, the diamond was a direct gift from Heaven, conveyed to earth in meteoric showers, and the so-called volcanic pipes simply holes bored in the earth by the impact of

monstrous meteors.

Of the twenty-three coins authorized by the Government of the United States for use as money since 1792, eleven have been found to be undesirable, and their coinage has been discontinued. Two of the eleven, says an exchange, were gold pieces, four were silver, and five were nickle, bronze, and copper. The coinage of onedollar gold pieces was authorized by Congress March 3, 1849, and discontinued in September, 1890, the total amount coined being $19,499,337. Of three-dollar gold pieces there were $1,619,376 coined under the act of February 21, 1853, the coinage being stopped in 1890. Trade dollars of silver were authorized in February, 1873 their coinage was limited to export demand by joint resolution July 22, 1876, and the production was prohibited by act of March 3, 1887; the total amount coined was $35,965,924. The silver twenty-cent piece was ordered in 1875, and stopped May 2, 1878, after $271,000 had been turned out by the mints. One of the oldest of American coins is the silver half-dime, which dates from 1792. Up to February 12, 1873, when its coinage was discontinued, $4,880,219.40 of these half-dimes were produced. The three-cent piece of silver was authorized in March, 1851, and discontinued in 1873, the total coinage amounting to $1,282,087.21.

The old copper cent began its career in 1792, and ended it by legislative prohibition in February, 1857. Twice its weight was reduced, the first time from 264 to 208 grains, and the second time to 168 grains. The total amount coined was only $1,562,887.44, so far as the Mint records show. The three-cent nickle piece dated from 1865 to 1890, the total production being $941,349.48. In 1864 a two-cent bronze coin was authorized, but it was discontinued in February, 1873, after a coinage of $912,020. Of the small nickle cents which were substituted for the large coppers in 1857, only $2,007,720 were minted up to the time of their discontinuance, in April, 1864. There were $39,926.11 copper half-cents coined from 1792 to 1857, inclusive. These coins at first weighed 132 grains, then 104 grains, and finally 84 grains.

The inventor who turns his genius to producing the little things which ease the burdens and care of the housewife not only performs a valuable service for which he should be sincerely thanked, but he often strikes the path that is paved with hard dollars. A Brooklyn man, says "The Inventive Age," has produced and patented a flat-iron that should find its way into the laundry department of the household, as it not only possesses the usual features of this useful implement, but has an attachment that saves

labor. This consists principally of a hollow handle supported above the iron by hollow uprights, and a tube leading from the handle downwardly and outwardly in front of the iron. This tube has a nozzle, through which water is forced after coming from the handle of the iron, which is used as a reservoir. The use of the tube and nozzle for sprinkling clothes does away with the use of the basin or bowl, in which the hand must be dipped whenever the sprinkling process must be gone through; and this, with the facility with which this new apparatus seems capable of doing its work, should give it a welcome in the homes of those who have done or do their own washing.

One of the first specimens of the new Chassagne process of photography in natural colors to reach this country has come to Assistant Secretary Adee at the State Department from United States Consul Frank Mason at Frankfort. It is a large photograph of a beautiful American woman taken in Paris. The reproduction of the delicate flesh tints, as well as the more pronounced and brilliant colors of the dress and accessories, including a great vase of flowers, is remarkably true to nature. In his letter transmitting the picture, Consul Mason says that the process marks a distinct epoch in reproductive art.

An explorer recently found in Egypt a bronze bowl and a series of iron tools of forms quite unlike any known in Egypt, and they are thought to belong to an Assyrian armorer about 670 B. C. These tools, comprising three saws made for pulling, not pushing, one rasp, one file, several chisels and ferrules, a scoop-edged drill, two centre bits, and others, are of the greatest value in the history of tools, as showing several forms of an earlier date than was thought possible. They are probably of Assyrian origin.

Within a comparatively short period four new metals have been discovered, Gallium, Scandium, Norwegium, and Uralium, the first three being named after the countries France, Scandinavia, and Norway. Hence there are about seventy elements at present known to the scientific world. Gallium, the earliest discovered of the four above named, has perhaps the most curious and interesting history of any of them. The existence of a metal possessing the properties of Gallium was definitely predicted by M. Mendeljeff, a Russian chemist, in 1871, and previously also by Mr. Newlands. This prediction was based on a study of the relations of the atomic numbers of the known elements, and their ratios of combination with one another. In the seriation which these numbers form certain terms are here and there wanting, and one was missed, having properties between Aluminum and Indium. Mendeljeff minutely described what these properties should be, giving the sp. gravity as 5.9. Several years afterwards Boisbaudran discovered the metal itself in connection with zonic blende from the Pyrenees, and ascertained its sp. gravity to be 5.935. Uraliumis is the latest discovery among the metals, and A. Guyard is the discoverer. It is nearly as white as silver, is very malleable, is almost as soft as lead, and is much more ductile than platinum, with which it is closely related in many respects. Its specific gravity is 20.25; and its combining weight is 187.25.