BY LUCY FURMAN

Author of “Mothering on Perilous,” etc.

During their talks in the Eastern States one winter, the head workers

of the Settlement School on Perilous met Emily Scarborough, the

distinguished essayist and college professor, and one of them said to

her casually:

“In our work in the mountains we come across numbers of good, even

aristocratic, English names, and are always wishing we might trace the

families back through their century and more in Kentucky, and their

previous residence in Virginia, to their old English homes.

“Your own name, Scarborough, is well known to us.”

A look of instant interest succeeded the polite but weary smile on Miss

Scarborough’s face. This expression of weariness was the one flaw in

the satisfying beauty of the essayist, one of those rare celebrities

the sight of whom is not a shock to admirers. “Tell me about them,” she

said.

“The only thing to tell is that all the males of the family perished

in a feud twenty-five years ago--a feud so fierce that ‘the

Scarborough-Bohun War’ is still referred to with horror. The climax

came when Guilford Scarborough and his five sons were ambushed one

day by twenty of the Bohuns, and with their backs against a rocky

cliff fought until the last fell, a dozen Bohuns paying for victory

with their lives. That cliff to-day is called Scarborough’s Doom. One

daughter of the race survives.”

But Miss Scarborough seemed not to hear the last sentences.

“Guilford Scarborough!” she exclaimed.

“It was the name of the founder of our family, a poor knight who won

renown and an earldom by saving the king’s life at Agincourt. From that

day it has been the favorite name for our sons.

“The present earl, the head of our family in England, bears it; my

great-great-grandfather--a second son of the twelfth earl--who left

England and settled an estate in Virginia the middle of the eighteenth

century, bore it.”

She spoke simply, rapidly,--evidently descent from and kinship with

earls was only one of the many fortuitous circumstances of her

brilliant life.

“This Guilford of Virginia,” she continued, “had two sons who at

the outbreak of the Revolution took opposite sides. Lionel, my

great-grandfather, remained a stanch Tory, Guilford joined the

Continentals, and when last heard of, though a mere boy, was a captain

in Washington’s army. Afterward he disappeared as completely as if the

earth had swallowed him. Surely it cannot be that--”

“Many Revolutionary officers received land-grants in Kentucky for their

services,” interrupted the school woman, “and those who entered into

the isolation of the mountains were afterward lost to the world.”

“Then your mountain family may, nay, must be descended from the

lost Guilford,” exclaimed Miss Scarborough. “You will understand my

excitement when I tell you I have always supposed myself the sole

representative of the American line. You say that one woman there also

survives?”

“Yes, Dosia Vance. Her little girl--by the way, she has your name,

Emily--is in our school.”

“Theodosia and Emily,--how the old names come down through the

centuries!” said Miss Scarborough, adding, “You must put me in

communication with this Dosia Vance at once.”

“Oh, she is unable to write,” was the reply.

Miss Scarborough’s face paled. “A Scarborough not write!” she cried

incredulously.

“What possible chance could she have, sixty miles away from a school

or a church? One remarkable thing, however, she accomplished after

her marriage. With the help of an old blue-back speller and the

family Bible, she taught herself and her husband to read. Writing was

less possible. She is a woman of great natural intelligence, and is

ambitious for her children.

“Her two eldest sons are at Berea College; we have Emily, and shall

take the younger ones. Emily shows remarkable home-training; on the day

she came to us she was a perfect lady.”

The result of this casual talk was that Miss Scarborough began an

immediate correspondence with Dosia Vance through little Emily.

Of its progress the school women knew little, for soon after their

return in the spring, vacation began, and all the children, including

Emily, went home to hoe corn.

In June, however, a letter came to the school from the essayist. She

wrote:

I send to-day by express a package which I beg you will have

delivered to Theodosia Vance. As soon as I was satisfied that

Theodosia was a descendant of the lost Guilford, I wrote my kinsman

the earl of the interesting survival. He and I are very good friends,

and several times on my trips abroad I have visited his home, the

ancient seat of our family. On one of these occasions, he had an old

leather case brought in, and showed me the most precious heirloom

of the family, six dozen worn spoons, the property of the original

Guilford of Agincourt. Taking out a dozen, the earl gave them to me.

Of course I prize them more than anything I possess. When he heard

of the finding of Theodosia, he sent me, for her, another dozen of

the precious spoons. They are in this package.

The spoons at last arrived, and were sent on to Dosia. The school women

had much curiosity as to their reception; but when they made inquiries

of Emily on her return the first of August, the child only replied,

with her usual dignity, that “Maw was proud to get them.”

In early October another letter came from the essayist. “I have a

growing desire,” she wrote, “to follow up the Scarborough spoons and

see my new-found relatives. Emily’s letters interest me a good deal.

This being a sabbatical year with me, I purpose visiting your school

and the Vance home before going abroad for the winter.”

* * * * *

Late October found Miss Scarborough journeying across the mountains

on her way from the railroad. To a woman accustomed to luxurious

motor-cars, a ride of fifty miles had not seemed formidable; but as

the heavy road-wagon crashed, thumped, and banged along its difficult

way at the rate of two miles an hour, she decided differently. Also,

as she saw women weaving and spinning in porches of lonely log-houses,

men felling timber in virgin forest, whole families gathering corn in

precipitous fields, some conception of the primitive hardships of the

life dawned upon her.

Although at forty-seven Emily Scarborough was as vigorous as she was

beautiful, before the two-days’ trip was ended, weariness possessed

her, every bone seemed dislocated, and on her arrival at the school she

had to be assisted to bed by the trained nurse.

The next morning the visitor was half awakened by a tap at the door

and by the entrance of some silent-footed person, who set down a tray.

Stillness followed; but increasingly aware that she was an object of

scrutiny, Miss Scarborough at last opened her eyes.

A small girl of twelve stood by the bed, gazing with grave, controlled

eagerness at the face on the pillow. When the eyes opened, she smiled

ever so slightly, and said quietly:

“Will you have your breakfast now, Cousin Emily?”

Miss Scarborough sat up in bed so suddenly that the masses of her

spun-silver hair fell in a cloud about her face and shoulders.

“Are you Emily?” she asked.

“Yes,” replied the child. Very gravely she extended a hand. “I am proud

to see you,” she said.

Miss Scarborough took the small hand.

“You know we are of one blood, Emily,” she said; “may I offer you the

salute of kinship?” She brushed the child’s delicate cheek with her

lips.

The little girl as calmly returned the salute, and then stepped back.

“I was glad when I heared you was coming,” she said.

“Why?”

“Well, I craved to see a ginuwine Scarborough, I have heared maw tell

such a sight about them.”

“I hope you did not expect so much that you are sadly disappointed in

me?” Although Miss Scarborough smiled, there was a tone of real anxiety

in her voice.

Emily’s gaze swept her slowly, critically, for some seconds.

“I was powerful afeared you wouldn’t be a pretty woman,” she said at

last; “but you are. I like your looks.” She sighed, as though from

relief, then made a more minute appraisement. “I like them big black

eyes,” she said; “I like that tender skin. I like that quare hair;

it favors the Scarborough spoons. I allow,” she summed up solemnly,

judicially, “that you are the pine-blank prettiest woman ever I seed.”

Miss Scarborough laughed, but her face flushed deeply with pleasure.

Then she in her turn scrutinized the slender figure in the checked

homespun dress, the small face with its lines of purity and look of

race, the well-carried head, smoothly plaited hair, and austere blue

eyes.

“I like your looks, too,” she said.

At this the child again smiled the rare smile.

“I am glad,” she said; “now you must eat before it is cold.”

Miss Scarborough reached for the negligée of pink-flowered silk that

hung beside her bed, and drew it over her delicate, embroidered gown,

Emily looking on large-eyed.

“You dress up in blossoms, don’t you?” she exclaimed, with another

joyous sigh.

“Emily,” said Miss Scarborough, “I do believe that you have the

artistic temperament. You love beauty, don’t you?”

“Ugly things they hurts me here in my breast,” replied the child,

solemnly, pressing both small hands upon her stomach.

For two days thereafter the distinguished guest remained in the school,

visiting its departments, talking graciously with its workers; but she

lingered longest in the classrooms where Emily recited, or at the table

or loom where Emily worked, and the attraction between the two was

plain to be seen.

On Friday morning the nag sent by Dosia arrived, and at noon Miss

Scarborough and Emily set out for the Vance home, formerly that of

the Scarboroughs. The last two miles the trail followed the summit of

a ridge, with glorious views on each hand of mountains in autumnal

splendor. At the highest point Emily reached around her cousin’s waist

and stopped the nag.

“I allus take a far look from here,” she said. After both had drunk

their fill of beauty, Emily pointed eastward, where against the horizon

a great blue wall was dimly visible, remarking, “Yan side of them is

where you lived at when you was little, maw says.”

Miss Scarborough looked once, then turned almost violently away,

cutting the horse with her whip.

Going down the ridge, Emily pointed out her home in the valley below.

Very lonely and remote it seemed, folded away here in the hills,

with never another habitation in sight. No wonder that here a branch

of the Scarboroughs had been swallowed up and lost. Drawing nearer,

the visitor saw a large log-house in a strip of bottom-land, with

corn-fields stretching up the mountains on all sides.

Dosia awaited them at the stile, and her greeting was full of kindness

and dignity.

“Cousin Emily Scarborough,” she said with emotion, “it gives me the

most gratefulest pleasure of my life to welcome you to my home and my

family.”

Edwin Vance, her tall husband, lifted the guest down, and she was

conducted into the principal room of the house.

Here, when there was opportunity, she looked about. It was a huge

room, with bare floor, log walls, and massive beams of hewn timber.

The furniture--all home-made--consisted of three bedsteads, a chest

of drawers, and a number of splint-bottomed chairs. On the beds were

beautiful woven coverlets, and a pitcher of rich dahlias adorned the

“fireboard.” Nothing was ugly, nothing useless; and any effect of

bleakness would have been obviated either by the great open fire, or by

the presence of Dosia, sitting with her four youngest children crowded

against her, her kind face, warm brown eyes, and auburn hair radiating

light and cheer.

After a while Edwin and the two small boys left the room, and soon the

lowing of cattle, whinnying of nags, squealing of hogs, and excited

clatter of fowls announced the joyful hour of feeding, while melodious

calls of “coo-nanny, coo-nanny, coo-sheep, coo-sheep,” echoed back from

the mountain-tops. Then Dosia went, followed by the five little girls.

Miss Scarborough heard her giving quiet orders out in the open hallway

that separated the two large rooms of the lower story. Later Emily

returned, to say with awe in her voice:

“Cousin Emily, we are aiming to eat out of the Scarborough spoons

to-night.”

“You have never used them before?” inquired Miss Scarborough.

“No, indeed. Maw she wouldn’t hardly let us look at them.” After gazing

into the fire a moment, the child spoke again. “Being as we are fixing

to use the spoons to-night, I thought maybe you might want to put on

that pretty dress that matches them so good.”

“Why, of course,” smiled Miss Scarborough. She had brought with her to

the school a simple dinner gown of soft, silvery satin, as lustrous and

shining as her own hair, and seeing Emily’s delight in it, had put it

into the “poke” on starting to Dosia’s.

“You can get over in yan corner to change,” said Emily. She came again

in a few moments, and, after pinning a splendid pink dahlia in the lace

on her cousin’s bosom, stood back with clasped hands and an ecstatic

sigh.

At last supper was ready, and the guest was taken into “t’ other house”

and seated at Dosia’s right. This room, too, was huge and bare, with a

long table in the middle. On the table was a handsome hand-woven cloth,

and, at the guest’s place, a napkin. A second napkin was spread over

an oblong object beside Dosia’s plate.

When all were seated, Dosia reverently lifted this napkin, displaying a

small leather case, the lid of which at a touch flew open, revealing a

dozen teaspoons of thin old silver. Dosia then rose in her chair.

“Beloved offsprings and husband,” she began impressively, “we are

gathered around this board to-night on a solemn occasion, not only to

celebrate the coming of our honored kinswoman, but likewise to remember

ourselves of past generations and dead-and-gone forefathers.

“You will one and all bear me witness, children, that never have I

give you a chance to forget that you was Scarboroughs on your maw’s

side, not casting no reflections on your paw’s, which is good as far

as it goes. But many’s the time I have heared my paw relate, which he

got from his paw, and so on back, that the Scarboroughs has been brave

folk and faithful folk and gentle folk for five hundred year’, and has

poured out their blood like water for the glory of Old England before

they come over and poured it out for this present land. You have heared

me tell all I know of their doings here--how your great-great-grandpaw

fit under Washington, and had this land we now stand on, two thousand

acre’ of it, granted him for his deeds; how his sons and grandsons

kept right on fighting spang down through the century, Indians, and

Mexicans, and then for the Union, dying mostly with their boots on,

and before they was good grown; how, when there wa’n’t no more wars on

the outside, they raised one here at home, for justice, and being few

again’ many, died a-fighting, down to my little brother of fourteen.

Never have I forebore to tingle your years with the braveness of our

men and the honorableness of our women, and what you was bound to live

up to.

“But little did I ever look to hear the history of them ’way-back

forefathers of ours that flourished allus-ago in Old England. On which

text Cousin Emily Scarborough is now raised up for to enlighten us. She

knows ’em from lid to lid, and has writ me some of the marvelousest

tales ever I heared, especially the antecedents of these here

Scarborough spoons, which come down from a man that saved his king that

was felled in battle five hundred year’ gone. These spoons, as you

know, has been kindly sont us at this present time by another far-away

relation in Old England. Him Cousin Emily speaks of as a’ earl, which

entitlement I don’t rightly know the meaning of, but I take it to

signify that he is a’ extry brave and God-fearing man, and one you

would not be ashamed to claim kin with.

“I will now ax Cousin Emily Scarborough to rise and relate such

glimpses of ancient history as she thinks befitting. Following which

I will pour the coffee. Then I request all and singular--you too,

Edwin, sence you may rightly be called a blood-relation--to rise in

your chairs whilst I pass around the Scarborough spoons. And then, in

solemn silence, I charge you to take, all together and simultaneous’, a

sup of coffee with them spoons, being careful not to chaw down on them

with your teeth, or so much as mumble them with your lips. Having done

which, lay them back in your saucers and don’t touch another finger to

them till Emily can gather and wash and restore them to their case. And

my onliest regret is that our two boys Guilford and Lionel hain’t here

to keep the feast, too.”

Miss Scarborough rose and related salient points in family history--the

story of Guilford of Agincourt; of Austin, the bishop burned at the

stake by Mary; of Lionel, the famous admiral of Elizabeth’s day; of

later Scarboroughs great in war or peace.

Then came the solemn moment when the case was passed, and every member

of the circle drew forth a spoon; then the still more awful instant

when, hanging breathless upon Dosia’s movements, the family took the

simultaneous sup of coffee.

Silence reigned until the spoons were collected, washed, and returned

to the case, after which the meal proceeded with subdued cheer.

As Emily Scarborough sat there, another scene rose before her--the

great old dining-room of Scarborough Castle, with its carved ceiling,

splendid plate, and elaborate service. But she rejoiced in the fact

that in log-house as in castle voices were gentle, manners kind,

spirits simple and earnest. “Ah, the old blood runs virile and pure in

whatever environment!” she said to herself with pride. But her next

breath was a sigh. Was it that she herself should have no part in

handing down such a heritage?

Bedtime came soon after all had returned to the first room, and Dosia

said:

“Now, Cousin Emily, I have got four good, warm beds in the loft,

every grain as nice as these. But they are purely for strangers and

sojourners; I couldn’t have the heart to send blood-kin that far off

from me to sleep. And I take it you feel the same, and would be better

pleased to sleep right here with me and Edwin and the children, in the

bosom of the family.”

“Certainly,” replied Miss Scarborough, repressing a smile. “Any

arrangement that suits you, Dosia.”

Edwin considerately left the room during the undressing. Miss

Scarborough and Emily had one bed, three of the little girls another,

Dosia, Edwin, and the smallest child a third, while the two little boys

occupied a pallet on the floor. There was general conversation for a

while, and it was all very sociable. Miss Scarborough felt that she was

indeed in the bosom of a family.

Days of large peace followed. With all the manifold, unceasing

activities of the household,--everything eaten and worn was produced

upon the land or manufactured in the house,--there was no stress or

strain, hurry or worry. Dosia herself had saved up what she called a

“good listening job” against Miss Scarborough’s visit, and while Emily

and the smaller girls carded, reeled, knitted, or sewed, she herself,

a picturesque figure in brown homespun and red yarn stockings, walked

back and forth across the floor in that most ancient and graceful of

all the occupations of women, spinning. At other times they ascended

to the huge “loft,” where on a great loom Dosia wove awhile on winter

clothing. Always the spirit of the home was perfect; the children hung

reverently upon their mother’s every word, and the visitor noticed that

Edwin never looked upon his wife without pride.

Dosia asked endless questions. “This great, unthinkable world of

which I have seed nothing, I crave to l’arn about it, now I may,” she

would say; and Miss Scarborough would tell tales, old and new, of the

countries she had visited, the family listening spellbound.

As the two women talked and listened there day after day, one the

typical woman of the past, with all her ancient duties and burdens,

the other the most admired and brilliant product of the new day, it

was the woman of the past whose eyes were clear and unclouded, whose

step as she spun was buoyant, whose smile was assured and calm. In

the other, with all her achievements and culture and beauty, a spring

seemed to be broken, a profound sadness at unguarded moments seemed to

brood. Only when little Emily brought knitting or sewing and sat at her

kinswoman’s feet, or when the two started off for a walk together, did

an expression of refreshment come into the beautiful, tired eyes.

* * * * *

It was not until the last afternoon of her stay that Emily Scarborough

broached the subject nearest her heart. The day was a perfect one in

early November, after a night of frost. The children were all in the

fields helping their father, Dosia had moved her wheel to the porch,

and the guest was with her there. After sitting silent for some time,

Miss Scarborough said abruptly:

“I have a boon, a great boon, to ask of you, Dosia: I want Emily.”

Dosia’s yarn snapped, and the loose end whirled about the spindle.

“You mean to visit?” she asked.

“No, I mean to keep, all the time, for my own.” Miss Scarborough’s

voice vibrated strangely. Then she said more calmly: “I will give her

all she ought to have; the best possible education, travel, culture,

opportunity to develop her artistic instincts. She shall take my full

name and inherit my possessions. The old Virginia plantation after long

years has become a valuable property, and there is more beside.”

Dosia listened silently, a line of painful thought in her forehead.

“And not these alone; better things shall be hers,” continued Miss

Scarborough. “I have long been weary of teaching; I shall stop now and

make a home for Emily. And as my adopted daughter, the best social life

of two continents will be open to her. My very first act shall be to

take her to Scarborough Castle; I have the greatest desire to show her

to our kinsman the earl before she is in any way changed. All this,

Dosia, I can do for her, and you never can.”

Dosia listened, troubled and pale.

“I desire that my children shall get l’arning and see the world,” she

said slowly. “I feel as Scarboroughs they ought to. But has payrents

ever a right to lay down their responsibilities? I allow not. I allow

that me and Edwin is the ones accountable for Emily, and her proper

guardeens. I would gladly send her to visit with you a spell; but to

stay, that is different.”

“No,” interrupted Emily Scarborough in her imperious way; “it must be

for all time. I must have her for my own.”

Dosia deliberated for a long while, then she answered quietly, but

firmly:

“Well, then, Cousin, if all the time it must be, I can only say that is

more than I can consent to--that, as her mother, I don’t feel called to

part with my child.”

Miss Scarborough’s face flushed with sudden anger and resentment.

“But with all you have!” she exclaimed. “Nine children--nine!” Her

voice trembled.

“Twelve I have,” corrected Dosia, quietly, “nine living and three

dead,”--she lifted eyes and hand to a near-by hill-shoulder, where

three small grave-houses were plainly visible,--“but not one to spare.

I love the children God has give me, and I don’t aim ever to part with

them till I have to. If things was different with us, I might feel it

my duty to give up one; but my man is the workingest in this country,

and being not far behind him myself, we prosper and have plenty, as

you see. And now the women’s school has come, our young ones can get

l’arning and still be under our admonition. No, Cousin Emily; I am

greatly beholden to you for your kindness, I thank you from the deeps

of my heart; but, as her mother, I cannot give up my child.”

Miss Scarborough had been leaning forward, body tense, face flushed,

eyes feverishly bright. At Dosia’s final words she sank back in her

chair, her face suddenly paled and aged, and her eyes sought the

mountain-sides yesterday so glowing, but to-day dimmed as by a prophecy

of death.

“It is ever the way,” she said at last slowly and bitterly. “‘From him

that hath not shall be taken even that which he thinketh he hath.’ You

women who have everything never consider those of us who have nothing.”

Dosia lifted startled eyes upon her kinswoman.

“Have nothing,” she repeated. “You!”

“Yes, I,” exclaimed Emily Scarborough. Her voice rang sharply.

“You, that the school women said was the knowingest and

most-looked-up-to woman in all the land!”

“I that have knowledge, temporary fame, and what the world calls

success, still lack the one thing necessary: I have no life for my

heart,” cried Emily Scarborough.

Dosia gazed at her kinswoman, fascinated, dumb.

“Do you think a woman can be just a mind?” demanded the essayist,

passionately, “that such husks as honors, flattery, success, can feed

one’s real life? Do you not see that I am hideously alone, without a

tie to link me to the race, and that the loneliness and isolation are

killing me?”

After this outburst, Emily Scarborough sat a long while fronting the

dimmed mountains, struggling for calmness. When she spoke again, it was

with controlled utterance:

“You know, Dosia, that I was an only child, born at the close of the

Civil War, and brought up by my father, a general of the Confederate

army. Broken in health and spirit by the war, he found his chief solace

afterward in handing down to me a portion of his ripe scholarship. On

the next plantation lived a boy, a year or two older than I, of whom

my father was fond, and whom he taught along with me. As we grew up,

the comradeship between Godfrey and me became love. My father planned

for me a college education. To this Godfrey could not look forward. Not

only were all the old families land-poor in those days, but, as eldest

son, he must stay and run the plantation and provide for a widowed

mother and his sisters and brothers. When I left home, it was with the

hope of marrying him on the completion of my course.

“I arrived at college just at the time when there came to the women

of America, especially to the little band then receiving the higher

education, the first thrilling realization of their own possibilities.

To stand alone, to achieve, to prove to the world what woman’s unaided

strength could do, seemed to many not only a worthy ambition, but a

sacred duty. One of my professors, a brilliant woman and a leader in

the new movement, hailed my gifts with joy. ‘Assuredly, Emily, if your

development is not interfered with, you will one day be a torch-bearer

of the new womanhood,’ she declared. ‘Marriage,’ she would say at

other times, ‘is for the ungifted, the uninspired. Let the drudgery of

home-making and child-bearing be performed by women incapable of higher

things.’ When I ventured to tell her of my engagement to Godfrey, she

was horrified. ‘Bury your talents, your gifts for speaking and writing,

in the mud of a Virginia plantation!’ she exclaimed; ‘never shall you

be guilty of such weakness!’”

[Illustration: Drawn by F. R. Gruger. Half-tone plate engraved by G. M.

Lewis

“‘YAN SIDE OF THEM IS WHERE YOU LIVED AT WHEN YOU WAS LITTLE, MAW

SAYS’”]

“Under influences of this kind my ideals and purposes gradually

changed. I came to believe sincerely that my duty, as she said, was

to develop and perfect my gifts, and that the pangs I should feel in

renouncing Godfrey would be small in comparison with the lifelong

regret consequent upon the burial of my talents.

“On my father’s death in my last college year, two courses lay open to

me, one, marriage to Godfrey, the other, freedom to pursue my studies

in foreign universities and fit myself for a career. And although I

cared for Godfrey, and knew the gallant, unselfish struggle he was

making and the need of me in his daily life, I chose self instead of

him, freedom instead of love, a career instead of a life. He was too

wise to reproach me; he only said, ‘Some day, Emily, the woman’s heart

in you will awake, and you will know your need of me.’

“I hurried abroad, and threw myself absorbingly into study. Six years

passed almost with the swiftness of as many months; I had the coveted

degrees, the sense of power marked success brings, and at twenty-eight

I was called home to fill an important professorship. During this time

I kept up a correspondence with Godfrey. I said to myself I had a right

to his friendship, though I stifled as weakness any regrets or longings

for him and the eagerness I felt to see him again.”

[Illustration: Drawn by F. R. Gruger. Half-tone plate engraved by R. C.

Collins

“DOSIA LISTENED SILENTLY, A LINE OF PAINFUL THOUGHT IN HER FOREHEAD”]

“The first news I received on the landing of the ship was that of

his sudden death. It came as a shock--a shock the nature of which I

did not comprehend, however, so quickly was it overlaid by the noise

and excitement of my life, the glow of instant success, the thrill

of power, the adulation of thousands of women. In such a swift and

glittering current did my life sweep on during the ensuing years that

I was thirty-five before I realized the shallowness of it, knew that I

had not a real tie in the world, saw that I was poor, empty, selfish,

and, above all, horribly alone, and that not my life alone, but my

art, was starved and barren; for how could I, who had never known the

elemental emotions of my kind, hope to touch with my pen the quick of

feeling? Here, too, in saving my life, I had lost it.

“I awoke to suffering, to hunger, to knowledge that I had sold my

birthright. In other words, I knew at last that I was a woman, with

a woman’s deep and eternal needs. Love, home, children,--ties that

grapple one to life, experiences that, whether in the white flame of

joy or the seven-times heated furnace of suffering, weld one with the

race,--these inalienable rights of woman I awoke to desire and crave.

Too late, too late! For although even then I might have ended the mere

solitude,--other men beside Godfrey have wanted me,--I knew that he

alone was my mate, and, knowing it, nothing but loyalty was possible.

You remember the Scarborough motto, ‘Keep Troth.’ I had broken it with

him living; I would keep it with him dead.

“But, oh, the loneliness, the detachment, the need of something vital

in my days, of some creature to live for and call my own! If I had had

the man of my love for even a short while, and, dying, he had left me a

child, how different all would have been! Let them say what they will,

the deepest, most fundamental craving of every woman’s heart is for

children of her own; nothing else fulfils or satisfies. Missing this,

we only half live in our youth and not at all in our age. Knowing my

great need, I have many times considered the adoption of a child; but

in every case a selfish fastidiousness has held me back.

“When I heard of Emily, a child of my own blood, and already bearing

my name, my thoughts turned at once to her; when I saw her, small

embodiment that she is of the dignity and simplicity of our race, I

knew she was the one thing necessary. Everything in her appealed. She

drew me out of myself, warmed my cold heart; her admiration was like

wine to me; my very flesh rejoiced at her touch. With her to love and

be loved by, I could now set up the long-desired home. In my busy

plans, my happy absorption, my belief that blessing was at last to

crown my days, I did not even think of your refusal!”

Again Emily Scarborough sat silent, with stricken eyes fixed upon the

waning colors of the season.

“I was wrong, presumptuous, wicked,” she broke forth bitterly, “as

usual, absorbed in self, careless of the suffering of others. The door

of hope is closed; I shall never see another child I want. Nothing

remains but a return to the desolation of a life thrown back upon and

hating itself.

“But you, Dosia, so rich in love and duties and burdens, so necessary

to many, your children about you, your husband beside you, pity a

lonely woman with starved heart and barren body!”

Flinging out her arms in a wild gesture, she dropped them on the porch

railing, and bowed her head heavily upon them.

Scarcely breathing, and with wide, wet eyes, Dosia drew slowly nearer,

and stood a moment with hands outspread above the beautiful, bowed

head. Then laying them upon it, she said tenderly:

“Emily is yours, dear cousin. You have the better right, the greater

need; I give her to you gladly.”

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

THE TRADE OF NORTHERN AFRICA

(“THE TRADE OF THE WORLD” PAPERS)

BY JAMES DAVENPORT WHELPLEY

Author of “The Commercial Strength of Great Britain,” “Germany’s

Foreign Trade,” etc.

As the Atlantic liner enters the Mediterranean through the western

straits, the port rail is generally crowded with passengers on the

lookout for Gibraltar, that symbol of British power in the control of

the high seas. Before the great rock is reached, however, there is to

be seen plainly the little Spanish coast town of Tarifa, from which in

olden days the boats of its feudal lord sallied forth to demand toll of

every passing ship. This action was only the forerunner of what happens

now in every harbor the world over; for the word _tariff_, derived

from the name of this Spanish town, has come to mean the toll demanded

of foreign goods before they may enter domestic markets.

Among all the people who pass through the Strait of Gibraltar, few take

the trouble to sweep with their glasses the horizon to the south of the

strait. It presents a long, low coast-line, appearing and disappearing

from view as its promontories or indentations are passed; but it is

well worth looking at, for the land of which this coast is the northern

boundary, Morocco, has played a big part in the game of European

politics in the last few years. In the near future it will hold the

eyes of the world by reason of its own interest, wealth, and commerce,

and it will not be long before no vessel of importance carrying freight

or passengers to or from the Mediterranean will fail to make a port of

call somewhere along its coast.

There is little of novelty for the blasé traveler between Gibraltar and

Naples on the north side of the Mediterranean, but between Tangier and

Suez, on the south, everything can be found to excite the most jaded

interest, be it of ancient or modern civilization or a remoteness which

up to the present time defies the white man to enter except at peril

of his life. Northern Africa is one of the new-old spots of the earth

now in the making of its regenerated political and economic life, and

while from one end to the other it is within easy view or even reach of

the casual passer-by, the repellent hand of nature and the native are

raised most effectively against the foreigner, except in places where

the powers of Europe have made travel possible, in many cases at a cost

of lives and money beyond the scope of easy estimate.

To-day this continent of Africa is the most striking example of

non-resident landlordism in the history of the world. It is a stretch

of territory approximately 5000 miles north and south, and the same

east and west, presenting all possible variations of climate, unlimited

in the extent and range of its natural resources, inhabited by 150

million people, a tenth of the earth’s humanity, of all colors known to

the human race, and speaking with polyglot tongue. Its civilization is

ancient and modern; its barbarism the same. The ruins of Memphis speak

eloquently of glories existing in the days when Europe and America

were the haunts of wild men; the modern cities reflect the present-day

life of the rest of the world; and yet from the jungle, distant only a

few days’ journey, naked savages still peep for their first look upon a

white man.

In all this land and among all these millions of people not one

community has yet been found equal to the task of intelligent

self-government on modern lines. Hence it is that this great domain

has passed, peacefully in most cases, under the sway of the overlords

of the world, and the flags of far-away nations float above the homes

of the people from Cape Good Hope to Cairo, south and north, and from

Sokotra to St. Louis, east and west. The apportioning of Africa has

been accomplished in the foreign offices of Europe by men who know

naught of wind-swept plains or jungle heat, but who are experts in this

great paper game, the finals of which have not been played even yet.

The state of the game is the billion dollars’ worth of foreign commerce

which to-day flows through the African ports, and the billions more

which will materialize as fast as soldiers and pioneers can conjure

into actualities with sweat and human life the treaty agreements and

understandings arrived at by the master minds in the great game.

On the west coast, under the flag of Liberia, flickers a feeble flame

in the torch of liberty, but the country it illumines presents only

the scene of a pathetic failure at self-government and the mockery of

a republic. The flame itself is kept alive only through the jealous

ministrations of the absent overlords of the adjacent lands. On the

east coast, close to the heart of the desert, lies Abyssinia, with an

independence purely nominal. Hemmed in on all sides by watchful foreign

legionaries, her king can keep his crown so long as his own people

are willing and no harm comes to foreigners or foreign interests. A

false step--and the path is narrow--and the crown itself will become

as a vassal to those in the North who rule intelligently, but with a

purpose and a power that brooks no resistance. We can eliminate these

independencies, therefore, as they exist only on sufferance, and the

fact remains that the government of Africa is accomplished at long

range by those who have a purpose of their own to serve. That purpose

is to increase the trade of the world, with the hope that their share

may be the larger.

[Illustration: From a photograph by the Detroit Publishing Co.

A MARKET-PLACE IN TANGIER]

In the past, trade has followed the flag in Africa, but now as

elsewhere, in these days of open doors, favored nation treaties, and

equal trading, the exclusive right to buy and sell lies less within

the hands of the landlord than it did of old. In the first flush of

occupation, the landlord even now takes the large percentage; but to

the degree in which he administers his estate successfully, so do

opportunities for others present themselves, and are quickly taken

advantage of. In southern Africa, and to a great extent up and down the

east and west coast, it is now a free-for-all game. The same may be

said of Egypt in the north.

[Illustration: From a photograph by the Detroit Publishing Co.

THE ENTRANCE TO THE SUEZ CANAL AT PORT SAÏD]

At present France is still gathering her harvest of trade in Algeria

and Tunis by virtue of military control. The same will be her lot in

Morocco for a few years to come; but in this latter case the period of

undisputed gain will be shorter, for the German eagle is hovering along

the Moroccan coast with eye alert for opportunity to alight upon the

land. Once at rest, his free participation in the commercial spoil is

now assured through the foresight of those who play the game in Berlin.

The French traders will then need to look well to their profits, for

in this war for trade Germany has no superior in resourcefulness or

tenacity of purpose. As soon as France completes her self-imposed task

of policing the African coast from Tunis to Agadir, the only practical

advantage which will remain to the landlords of Africa because of

their holdings will lie in the fact that a great number of foreign

purchases are due to foreign enterprises, and in the conduct of these

the purchasing power is naturally more subservient to purveyors of like

nationality.

The conquest of Africa, as shown by the political map of to-day, was

achieved in the first instance without an appeal to arms except in

the case of the Boer republic and the Italian occupation of a portion

of Tripoli. Annexations, protectorates, and spheres of influence

generally follow conquests at arms. In Africa this method has been

largely reversed. Under the plea of establishing stable and peaceful

conditions, wars, generally of the bushwhacking variety, have followed

the political map-making; but by the time the real fighting began, each

one of the overlords was accredited by the world with fighting for

his own already established rights and for the ultimate good of the

native defenders of the soil. The latter have generally been converted

into rebels or outlaws by a decree written in London, Berlin, or Paris

before they fired their first arrow or gun at the foreign invader.

Italy is almost the only country which has done open violence to this

peculiarly African method of territorial aggrandizement, and by way of

contrast her action appears brutal, inexcusable, and bungling, and,

as many diplomats aver, she is demonstrating its amateurishness by

the questionable success achieved. This is specially true in view of

the known inherent and acquired leanness of the prize, a plucked bird

despoiled of its scanty trade feathers by Egypt on the east, Algeria

on the west, and the Kongo development on the south, long before Italy

moved to acquire the prize presumably for her own exclusive profit.

[Illustration: Photograph by the Detroit Publishing Co.

A PANORAMA OF ALGIERS]

Of the total foreign trade of Africa, fully one half is conducted

through the ports of Egypt, Tripoli, Algeria, Tunis, Morocco, and the

Kongo, and in these countries will take place the greater part of the

development of the future. In south Africa development of industry

will proceed, but the pace has been set, and for one reason or another

it may be added that, contrary to the expectations of the world

thirteen years ago, it is not rapid. On the other hand, in northern and

specially northwestern Africa, the gates are not yet fully open, the

trail of the trader does not yet reach far into the hinterland, and

from what is already known of the possibilities, the next twenty-five

years will witness an exploitation of northwest Africa which will

produce astonishing results. International effort is more concentrated

than in years gone by. The unknown spots on the earth’s surface have

shrunk to within comparatively small and well-defined boundaries. The

eager trader, looking for new markets, is now early on the ground when

the way is clear. Trade development in the twentieth century is far

more rapid than ever before; the attack upon a new field is sharper,

fiercer, more international, and more overwhelming. The new field

soon becomes an old one, and quickly makes the pace natural to its

geographical, social, and economic limitations.

The part the United States has played in northern Africa is not

considerable. The first official appearance was about one hundred

years ago, when American naval vessels chastised the pirates on the

Mediterranean coast. Our last was about ten years ago, when for some

reason yet to be discovered the United States Government sent a mission

to King Menelik of Abyssinia. The less said about that mission the

better. The chief commissioner met a tragic death before Africa was

sighted, and from that moment the mission trailed off into nothingness,

its disappearance marked by a succession of inexcusable and appalling

diplomatic blunders, to say nothing of an attempted duplication of

the mission by one bureau of the same government department acting

independently of the others. The foreign offices of the overlords

of Europe were considerate, and hid their amusement at this amateur

performance under the cover of a sympathetic demonstration.

[Illustration: From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood

LEOPOLDVILLE ON STANLEY POOL (KONGO RIVER). THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT

TRADE CENTER OF THE KONGO FREE STATE]

As a nation holding a neutral position in the affairs of all continents

except the Americas, the United States has been looked to on several

occasions to furnish experts to help out young or old, but weaker,

nations struggling in the coils of inter-European jealousies. Almost

invariably Washington has made the mistake of taking the request

at its face-value. Experts have been sent, the best in their line

in the world, men full of enthusiasm for the task set before them,

but, after all, it was found that a knowledge of the big game was

even more essential than knowledge of finances or tariff, and the

experts, through no fault of their own, have shortly trailed back home

again, their only accomplishment having been, unwittingly perhaps, to

eliminate another “exceptional American opportunity”; and again the

foreign offices of Europe have condoled and regretted the necessity,

etc., and the old hands at the game have smiled among themselves at

the ease with which the “open door” had been closed without a sound of

protest from its hinges.

Of the billion dollars in foreign commerce which ebbs and flows

through African ports, about half is to be found in northern Africa,

distributed as follows:

IMPORTS EXPORTS TOTALS

Egypt $119,818,000 $103,559,000 $223,377,000

Algeria 95,184,000 76,104,000 171,288,000

Tunis 23,744,000 18,172,000 41,916,000

Tripoli 2,667,000 1,080,000 3,747,000

Morocco 11,875,000 10,011,000 21,886,000

----------- ------------ ------------

$253,288,000 $208,926,000 $462,214,000

The trade of Abyssinia, the Kongo, Liberia, and other political

divisions which might be included in what is known as northern Africa,

does not amount in its total to a sufficient sum to make any important

change in the significance of the above figures. With an area of,

say, two and a half million square miles and a population of fifty

millions, the density of population is about twenty to the mile; but

this calculation is valueless, owing to the vast areas virtually

uninhabited. The real density ranges from the 931 to the square mile in

the lower valley of the Nile to that found in the great stretches of

desert, where in the course of a week’s travel one may meet perhaps a

single caravan of Bedouins with their scanty outfits.

Up to the present time the foreign commercial intercourse of these

north Africans has been largely confined to Europe, and this state of

affairs will continue for some time to come. There are two reasons for

this: first, because of the flags of the European powers, which float

over this country and which are emblematic of the administration

control within the far-flung shadows they cast on the earth about.

Second, the Europeans are better traders than others, who would be

their competitors if they knew how to go about it. Of the quarter of

a billion dollars and more worth of merchandise the people of north

Africa buy from foreigners, the United States furnishes about one per

cent. Of the two hundred millions or more in goods sold abroad by

these same people, the United States buys considerably less than two

per cent. In this last statement is found another reason as well why

the trade of the United States is so small in northern Africa. Freight

both ways is a requisite of international trade. Commerce is not so

much a matter of gold as it is of barter. He who buys can sell, and so

long as the buyer and the seller are one and the same person, he will

dominate the situation. This is one of the stumbling-blocks in the path

of American commerce abroad. American traders go with their hands full

of goods to sell, but with ears closed to the offers of other wares

in exchange. Our home markets do not want them, hence we will not buy

them. The European will take them even if he has later to find a second

market to dispose of what he cannot use at home. It is admittedly

easier for him to do this, however, because of the geographical

location of his own base of operations.

Africa sells food-stuffs and raw materials. She wants staple

manufactured goods and novelties in exchange. The figures of her trade

show that she can buy little more than the equal of what she has to

sell; hence the advantage to the seller who can distribute with one

hand and collect with the other. It is a transaction with two profits,

so that both margins can be made smaller, and competition with the

single-handed salesman is made easier.

The more primitive these African peoples are, the more they are

dependent upon and controlled by the administrative power. The more

developed the country and easy of access, the more enlightened and

advanced the people, the wider and less restrained is their market.

To Egyptians and Algerians the people of the United States sell goods

of the kind imported to amounts reaching into seven figures, while

virtually nothing is sold in Tripoli, and only a few thousand dollars’

worth in Morocco, countries credited with at least two thirds the

population of the first named.

The entire civilized world is vitally interested in the progress made

by the European powers in their development of trade in northern

Africa, for the time is coming when the benefits to the outside trader

will not be apportioned according to nationality, control, or interest,

but will be measured by competitive power alone. To bear this in mind

is manifestly the greatest feature of modern statesmanship in the

making of commercial treaties, for it is necessary to safeguard the

future so that when the door opens by reason of pressure from within,

there shall be equal chance for all. It was an insistence upon this

principle which nearly brought war to Europe through the making of

the Moroccan agreement between France and Germany. The latter won her

point; she won it not only for herself, but for all others, including

the United States, and the importance thereof justified the seriousness

of the pourparlers which preceded the actual agreement.

It might be said with apparent justice that those who have borne the

burdens of the pioneer should have preference as their reward, but such

is not the lot of pioneers in these days of the new internationalism.

The commerce and finance of the world is assuming a solidarity that

admits of no nationality or preference, no matter what apparent claim

one or another people may have upon it by reason of pioneer work in the

earlier stages of development and organization.

Not long ago an English acquaintance of mine stopped me in the street

in London and asked me what I thought of things in Morocco. He was

a man of average intelligence and information, and in business for

himself in a small way. The German war-ship _Panther_ was then at

Agadir, and there was much talk concerning this bold move on the part

of the Kaiser.

“If I was not old,” he said, “I would go to Morocco. I was there

fifteen years ago and saw something of the country. There is nothing

between the valley of the Nile and Cape Verd that will compare with

the wealth and productiveness of Morocco, and with opportunities for

trading when Europeans are free to come and go in safety. This Agadir

business is the beginning of new days for the land of the Moors. It is

a very different country from what we know as northern Africa.”

That is the opinion of “the man in the street” in Europe, and it is

the knowledge of the few venturesome traders who have prospected

the country as widely as the Moors have permitted. They are a most

exclusive people. Four years ago the American consul at Tangier wrote

to his Government:

Despite the many centuries of life, Morocco has not been developed;

it is almost virgin territory. Its forests and mines are intact. No

railroads, no electric transportation, no telephones, no telegraph,

the interior a wilderness, where even the sultan dare not go, and

eight to ten millions of people are living in primitive style.

Morocco has a choice climate, fine scenery, great wealth of earth

and sky, vast supplies of precious metals, and the soil has never

been more than scratched by the crude wooden plows of the people--a

soil that will give them three crops a year. There are warm winds and

sunshine for 300 of the 365 days of the year; 300,000 square miles of

fertile farm and grazing land broken by majestic mountains, crossed

by rivers, and bounded by the sea on two sides. There are vast

forests and valuable shrubs, and the sea is generously supplied with

fish.

* * * * *

Foreign adventure has obtained a slight and precarious foothold

along the northern and western coasts, where there are excellent

harbors. Tangier is the best known to the north, while on the west

lie El Araish, Rabat, Casablanca, Mogador, Mazagan, and Safi; but

the influence of these places extends barely forty or fifty miles

inland. The great inland Northern trade capital Fez, and Marrakesh

to the South, are as remote from foreign influence as the customs of

the people differ from those of Europeans. Notwithstanding all this,

the foreign trade of Morocco last year was over $20,000,000, or seven

times that of Tripoli, for the possession of which two European powers

calling themselves great are now at war.

The isolation of Morocco to the day, this year, that the

French established themselves in Fez, is due absolutely to the

self-sufficiency and hostile pride of the Moors, for their country lies

in sight of Spain and is only three days from London. In the midst of

the stirring affairs of the modern world Morocco has remained in truth

a _terra incognita_. The pressure has been too great, however.

Such isolation could not last; the advance-guards of the trade army

of the world have penetrated the barriers, and with eyes glistening

with eager lust of gain have told of what lies beyond. The future is

no longer a matter of doubt. The French soldiers now bivouac in Fez,

and changes are coming to Morocco even beyond the wildest fears of the

warlike and gloomy-eyed Moors. As a rule, a strong foe makes a strong

friend. In the degree with which they have so long successfully fought

modernization, it is probable they will in time accept the inevitable

with equal strength of character, and, aided by the natural wealth of

their land, become the strongest and wealthiest of all the countries

that bound the continent of Africa on the north, not excepting even

that most limited but most fertile of all places on the earth, the

valley of the Nile.

It is in Egypt that an effective demonstration has been made of what

can be accomplished by an intelligent landlord on a great estate. Here

was a country the people of which were living on its ancient monuments

and the erratic rise and fall of a great and uncontrolled river. These

people have only just learned to laugh, and how could they have done so

before, living as they were in the shadows of countless centuries of

slave-driving by rulers who took everything from them and did nothing

in return?

“What do you think of the British rule?” I asked an Egyptian farmer.

“We pay our taxes only once now,” was the reply he made.

But in that he summed up the evils of past administrations and one of

the greatest benefits of the present. The Turkish flag flies over

Egypt, but the Khedive is an intelligent man, so he does not take his

position very seriously. “England can have Egypt any time she wants

it,” say the European diplomats at home. Those on the ground say:

“England has Egypt now. Why should she take it twice?” That is the

truth. England has Egypt. The Egyptian nationalists would like to have

it for themselves, but they will not get it as things are going now.

The noisy and talkative politicians who crowd the cafés of Cairo can

plot and scheme to their hearts’ content, but there is a force at work

apparently beyond their power of comprehension. Mistakes are sometimes

made through the stupidity of subordinates, but a quiet and commanding

impulse is behind the finances of the country, is applied to the

industrial regeneration of the people, and the army is its complaisant

ally. Millions of money have been spent to regulate the Nile, and

millions more are constantly being added to this fund to bring the land

up to the highest point of its marvelous productive power. Here it must

be watered and there drained. Thousands of tourists annually visit the

monuments and bewail the gradual disappearance of the temples of Philæ

as the crest of the Assuan dam rises higher and higher; but for every

foot it submerges the temples, it adds thousands of acres to the green

fields of Egypt, from which the granaries are filled to running over.

It is a symbol of the decline of the old and the coming of the new

régime.

Those who come from the centers of civilization elsewhere find it hard

to reconcile themselves to this new order of things, for the treasures

bequeathed by ancient to modern Egypt are like unto no others in the

world, a wonderful and enviable heritage; but they were built at the

expense of the people of long ago, and now, when Rameses II lies in the

Cairo museum, the descendants of the starved and whip-driven slaves

who built his monuments are coming into their own under the paternal

eye and assisted by the guiding hand of a new civilization. It was not

without a sign, however, that this Egyptian king yielded to the spirit

of the present, for, as the story goes, when his mummy was taken from

its tomb, the wrappings undone, and the remains placed in temporary

position in the museum, one of the horrified attendants saw him slowly

raise his arm, as if in protest, from the position it had occupied for

centuries. The curator attempted to quiet the fears of the attendant

by a scientific explanation as to change of temperature and humidity

causing a relaxation of the time-bound muscles, but to this day the

more superstitious move with cautious tread in the neighborhood of

the glass case in which rest the bones of this builder of wonderful

monuments to himself, his wives, and his patron gods. In all of Egypt

there is nothing left to tell of anything done for the people. From

one end of the land to the other monuments good, bad, or indifferent

were built to the glorification of the living when they should come to

die. “Tombs of sorts,” as a weary tourist expressed it, but tombs they

are, and as the history of Egypt unfolded itself they proved to be in

reality more the graves of the hopes and aspirations of a nation and of

the hundreds of thousands who died in the building than of the rulers

they were meant to glorify. It was not until the Romans came fresh from

the oratory of the Forum that a temple was built to the gods of all the

people; but even these are few and far between.

Far out in the desert on a still and glorious night I talked with my

Arab guide as to the stars and his knowledge of the trail through their

guidance. He was struck dumb when I told him I had traveled countless

miles in other lands by the same guiding lamps that then looked down

upon us.

“I knew you had a moon,” he said, “but I did not know it was the

same moon,” and as I looked far out into the silvery desert with its

fleeting cloud shadows, and the remoteness of all things elsewhere was

borne in upon me, I almost believed with him that it was a moon that

shone for Egypt alone, and that he was wise and I was ignorant; for

this land, its history, its people, and their problems are like unto no

others.

To stand on the edge of the ocean of sand that reaches to the westward

hundreds upon hundreds of miles and view the brilliant green meadows of

the Nile Valley at one’s feet, watered as it is by the floods generated

in the tropic torrents which fall somewhere in the heart of darkest

Africa almost beyond the ken of man, is to realize what water means

to the twelve million people of Egypt in their struggle for existence.

Without it, land is to be had for the asking; with it, the most fertile

farm in the corn belt of the Mississippi Valley is to be bought acre by

acre, for half the price.

The foreign commerce of Egypt has grown apace as the country has

come under the sane and regulating influence of the Anglo-Saxon. The

landlord has reaped, and will long continue to reap as his reward, a

golden harvest of profitable trade and investment; but he takes none

but a natural advantage to himself. The German, the American, the

French, and all the other traders of the world are free to come and

go and to compete in supplying the wants of Egypt. The growth of the

Egyptian trade of other nations has been coincident with that of the

British, and the United States trade is no exception to this rule.

In 1911 the United States imported from Egypt $21,700,000 worth of

merchandise, or about one sixth of what Egypt has to sell. In the same

year the United States sold to Egypt $2,114,000 worth of goods, or

about one and a half per cent. of what was purchased. These figures of

import and export show a gain in gross amount of nearly one hundred

per cent. over the commerce of two years preceding. The producing

and absorptive power of the Egyptian people is steadily increasing.

They have yet far to go before they reach modern standards, but since

their release from the weight of ungoverned Turkish misrule they have

shown a recuperative power almost equal to that of the wonderful soil

upon which they live. Their trade will increase from year to year,

and as it grows larger, the share of the overlord the sultan and his

sub-tenant the Englishman will decrease in proportion, and thus it is

that in these days of internationalism the welfare of one community is

the concern of all even in a most narrow and practical sense--that of

markets for the handiwork of man.

On the northwest corner of Egypt is the Gulf of Solum, an indentation

of the Mediterranean. A reinforced garrison of Egyptian troops

officered by Englishmen is quietly camping there to see that in the

excitement of the Italian-Turkish war the eastern boundary of Tripoli

shows no sign of advance beyond a certain point. West of that

boundary-line two non-resident African landlords are at war for the

possession of Tripoli without consulting the wishes of the one million

inhabitants of the land, or the millions of their fellow-Mohammedans to

the south, west, and east. Turkey was the landlord in possession, Italy

the aggressor. The bird in hand this time was loosely held, and will

probably be lost to its erstwhile captor; but the bill of damages, only

a small instalment of which has yet been paid, to be assessed against

the invader will be heavy and the subsequent retention expensive,

unsatisfactory, and unremunerative.

To the onlooker the prize does not seem to be worth the price. Setting

aside all high-flown expressions such as “control of the Mediterranean”

and the like with which the Italian politicians keep up the spirits

of the people at home and justify the conduct of the war, expressions

which mean nothing, owing to their lack of foundation in truth, the

test as to the wisdom of the conquest of Tripoli narrows down to the

value of the land itself as a colonial possession.

Tripoli contains over 400,000 square miles of territory on which live

about one million people, a population of two and a half to the mile.

Most of these people, however, live on a narrow strip along the 1100

miles of coast-line, and the rest find abiding-places in scattered

groups among the oases of the desert. As a matter of fact, the entire

population of the country lives upon 19,000 square miles, or about

one twentieth of the territory of Tripoli. Along the coast, on which

there are no very good harbors, with the possible exception of Tobruk,

is the low plain of Jefara, about forty miles wide. To the south of

this rises the Jebel range of hills, and still farther south extends

a plateau over 40,000 square miles in extent, absolutely barren,

rocky, and uninhabited. This reaches to Hammada-el-Homra. To the south

of Hammada lies the land of Fezzan, a collection of oases in a vast

region of sand-dunes and desert. To the eastward lies Tobruk, whose

people trade with Egypt. Still on toward the Sahara is Murzuk, formerly

the great caravan station between the Mediterranean and Lake Chad,

but now, since the trade of this part of the world has been diverted

from the north to the mouth of the Kongo, the northern terminal of

the great caravan route. Only three European travelers have visited

Murzuk in the last twenty years. The green banner of the prophet flies

throughout this country, and the brotherhood of the Senussiya is bound

together in anti-foreign tenets. Its headquarters are at Kufrah, in

the Libyan Desert, and it sends a mission of its own to the sultan at

Constantinople, so independent of the government of Tripoli does it

regard itself.

There are legends as to the richness and prosperity of Tripoli in the

time of the Roman occupation, but that this prosperity has been grossly

exaggerated is now well known. The sand-dunes have been creeping over

the coastal plain of Jefara until they have reared their dreaded crests

within sight of the city of Tripoli. The sultan’s nominal authority

has extended even to the Tuaregs, near Ghat, but with the advent of

Europeans in the Niger Valley and Hausa Land, the southern portion of

Tripolitania, might as well be across the Sahara Desert, so far as the

northern coast is concerned. And Tripoli is no longer the gateway to

the Sudan or to black Africa. The trade that formerly flowed north and

south now goes to Egypt on the east or to Algeria on the west, or, in

some instances, to the west coast of Africa.

For the last ten years this quiet but effectual disintegration of

commercial Tripoli has been going on until there is little left for

the new landlord even should he succeed in establishing his rule

and secure acknowledgment thereof. There are no mineral resources,

no possibilities in agriculture, and the desolation of the vast,

unfertile, rainless area daunts the most intrepid adventure. The

problems of centralized government are many and apparently impossible

of solution, certainly by the Italians, who know naught of colonial

science. To the north the city of Tripoli, with its 50,000 population,

is an inharmonious community of Jews, Berbers, Arabs, Maltese, and

Levantines, with probably fewer than two hundred genuine Italians among

them. Hundreds of miles to the south, separated by rock and desert now

seldom traveled, are the Tuaregs, where the women own all property and

take plural husbands much for the same economic and social reasons

that the Turk has several wives.

Naturally the exports of a country like Tripoli are of the most

primitive character, exporting grass, hides, fruit, and a few other

things that are found wild or are grown in limited quantities. Her

imports are food-stuffs, cotton, and woolen goods, fuel, iron, and

steel. Of the exports, half a million dollars’ worth find their way

to the United States, and in return a few thousand dollars’ worth of

cloths and other manufactures are sold. Of the total foreign commerce,

amounting to less than five million dollars, the United States

participates to only a fractional per cent., and there is little hope

of improvement in the future. English merchants do the largest part

of the trading, with France second, Italy third, and Turkey fourth,

and both exports and imports hold in about the same proportion as to

destination and origin.

It is a relief to cross the Tripolitan border into Tunis and Algeria,

the French possessions. Here everything has been done by an intelligent

landlord to develop the country and encourage the industry of the

people. With an area only half again as large as Tripoli, and even

so the larger part desert, a population seven times as great finds a

living and occupation. A foreign commerce of 225 million dollars nearly

equally divided between export and import slightly exceeds even that of

Egypt, and the exchanges of the United States, although a comparatively

small trader, amount to nearly two million dollars’ worth of goods. The

administration of Algeria and Tunis has cost France many millions of

francs, but the task has been well done. In return, however, the people

of France have benefited largely, for they supply over eighty per cent.

of the imports of these African possessions, and take about seventy

per cent. of the exports. The United States sends machinery, oils, and

tobacco, and takes the raw products of the country in exchange. Trade

is on a stable and safe basis, and the consuming power of the country

is increasing rapidly in the direction of manufactured goods and the

conveniences of civilized life.

It requires a certain form of genius and a certain temperament to be

a successful landlord, and this is even more requisite when governing

a far-distant community of foreign people. These qualities have been

demonstrated by the French in their control of northern Africa, and,

it may be added, to the surprise of the rest of the civilized world,

for in their government at home the French people have not shown equal

genius or been as successful as they have in Africa. To allow the

exercise of autocratic power is perhaps the best way to utilize the

virtues of the French temperament.

In general the African continent is in good hands, English, French,

and German alike. The natives, as a rule, get justice; their religions

and their customs are respected, and they are benefited materially,

socially, and even politically as dependencies. In the days of a

recent British agent in Egypt who believed in a larger degree of local

government than had been allowed by his predecessor, some confusion

resulted and things got rather out of hand. Proof was promptly given

in the trouble that quickly arose that this was a mistake. When Lord

Kitchener arrived on the scene he had many loose ends to pick up and

weak spots to reinforce, but he was not long in the mending. His

administration has been notably successful so far, and with all the

firmness with which he is credited he has also developed a tact not

expected even by some of his greatest admirers. He came to Egypt at a

difficult time, and to keep his Mohammedan friends neutral, which he

has done, while their coreligionists are waging what they term a “holy

war” against the Italians to the west of Solum Bay, is not easy. It is

told of him that shortly after the beginning of the Italian-Turkish

war some of the Arab chiefs of Egypt and the Sudan were keen to go to

the assistance of the Tripolitans, and signified their wish to the

British agent. Lord Kitchener replied that of course they could go if

they wanted to, but whereas they were now free from compulsory military

service in the Egyptian army, it would be impossible for him to

overlook the value as soldiers of Arabs who had served in actual modern

warfare, and that on their return he would have to draw upon them for

military service. As this freedom from service in the Egyptian army

is one of the much-prized Arab privileges and exemptions, the sheiks,

recognizing the possibilities involved, promptly gave up their idea of

participating in the war, and have remained neutral, at least so far

as not to render assistance to Tripoli openly.

In all northern Africa no invader has attempted suddenly to change the

customs of the people, and the local religions have been recognized

and their tenets respected. Italy did not seem to profit by this

example, for her troops have shown scant regard for the feelings

of the Mohammedans, and it will take many years to live down the

situation created by the violation of mosques and other injudicious and

unnecessary vandalism. Northern Africa would not be what it is to-day

if the same policy had been followed by others, and it is fortunate for

the world at large that the Italian attack has been made upon the most

worthless and most sparsely inhabited part. Less harm can be done there

than elsewhere, and with the firm hand of Egypt to the east and France

to the west and the physical limitations to the south, the evil effects

of this ill-judged attempt at conquest may be confined within present

boundaries.

The United States has entered into the field of world politics too

late in the day to secure trade by other than competitive power. The

earth is now mapped out, and few boundaries will be changed in the

future except as it may be deemed wise or advantageous to create more

or less self-governing communities. Participation in the financing of

new or new-old governments will prove of little avail, for money is now

international, and the New York firm which underwrites its allotted

portion of an international loan has its branches or even its parent

house in Europe, and cannot use its power to draw trade to America

without giving offense elsewhere. It really makes no difference in

modern times which nation furnishes the money to take up a large issue

of securities, for in the end they find their resting-place where

there is money willing to be tied up, and this is generally in France,

England, or Germany. A debtor nation like the United States, especially

one whose people can find active employment for surplus funds at more

profit than is offered by government loans, cannot be rated as an

international money-lender.

The demand for an international or equal participation in any great

money transaction comes in reality not from keen and equal competition

for the privilege of investment, but from the machinations of

international money, which desires the backing and security of a

harmonious group of powerful governments to enforce its terms and

insure the collection of the debt without friction on the day it may

become due. With this backing the underwriters are assured of their

great profits as it decreases the difficulties of unloading the

securities upon an investing public at an advanced figure. The modern

international loan carries with it no special trading rights, for all

governments must now insist upon and obtain for its citizens abroad

treatment like unto those accorded other nationalities.

To reduce the cost of production, facilitate the shipping of goods, and

meet the local needs of foreign markets, or in other words to conduct

foreign trading on an intelligent and scientific basis, is the one hope

of the people of the United States in the world expansion of their

industries and the profitable employment of labor. In the long run

no nation stands a better chance of holding its own by reason of the

self-contained character of material resources, the climatic stimulus

to work and invention, the so-called unsophisticated enthusiasm of

the people for practical accomplishment, and the mixture of racial

strength in the make-up of the community. When the home market strikes

a balance between production and consumption, and a surplus for export

can be relied upon every year, it is reasonable to assume that the

same genius will be applied to conquering the foreign market that has

been developed at home. In no place in the world is there opportunity

for greater gain for American trade than in Africa even to-day, while

the future presents no such limitations as are met with in more highly

commercially developed areas.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

VIOLENCE IN THE WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

A DISAVOWAL OF THE MILITANT POLICY

BY MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT

President of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (Great

Britain)

I write from the standpoint of those who regard the women’s movement

for political freedom as incomparably the most important political fact

of the present day; and who look upon the women’s movement, as a whole,

in its social, economical, political, industrial, and educational

developments as one of the most remarkable events which have ever taken

place in the history of the world. I do not know where one could look

for another so nearly universal in its operation, making itself felt in

every country in the world, in all civilizations, whether eastern or

western, and affecting the well-being of such masses of men and women

of all races and nations.

Men’s political movements toward freedom have nearly always been

accompanied by “confused noise and garments rolled in blood.” No great

emancipating evolution for men has taken place without violence and

bloodshed. One of our most learned historians, Lord Acton, wrote: “It

seems to be a law of political evolution that no great advance of

human freedom can be gained except after the display of some kind of

violence.” Yet notwithstanding all precedents to the contrary, but just

because men are men and women are women, the women’s movement toward

freedom did progress and progress marvelously for the first half of

the nineteenth century till about six years ago without the use of any

kind of violence. We shot no one, we exploded no bombs, we destroyed

nothing; but we have been building up and creating a new social order

in which the women of to-day occupy a wholly different and better place

from that occupied by the women of preceding ages. The universities

have been opened; girls’ schools have been made over again, and made

different; the medical and, in many countries, the legal, professions

have been opened; municipal and all other local franchises in Great

Britain and her colonies have been won; women have been made eligible

for election on all local governing bodies; the civil service has

been opened; the barbarity of medieval laws founded on the absolute

subjection of women in marriage has been modified; full parliamentary

suffrage has been won for women in New Zealand and Australia, in

Finland and Norway, in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington,

and California, and women’s suffrage amendments have been recommended

to the electorate by the representative governing bodies of six other

of the United States. All these actual victories and indications

of further victories in the near future have been won (Lord Acton

notwithstanding) without violence of any kind. The American humorist

Mark Twain, with his keen practical insight into the essence of things,

remarked this strange feature of the women’s movement. He wrote in

“More Tramps Abroad,” p. 208:

For forty years they have swept an imposingly large number of unfair

laws from the statute books of America. In this brief time these

serfs have set themselves free--essentially. Men could not have done

as much for themselves in that time without bloodshed, at least they

never have, and that is an argument that they didn’t know how.

All these great and indeed immense victories for the cause of human

freedom have been accomplished by moral force and not by physical

force. Physical force as a means of promoting women’s freedom was never

even heard of till about six years ago, and for the first two and a

half years of their activity the so-called militant suffragists did not

use physical violence toward their adversaries; they suffered violence

far more than they inflicted it.

At the outset, so long as they confined themselves merely to

sensational and eccentric means of propaganda, they could hardly be

looked upon as a physical force party; they undoubtedly did service to

our common cause by making the claims of women more widely known; there

is probably hardly a village, hardly a family in which the claims of

women to share in the representative system of the country has not been

eagerly discussed. This to a very large extent we owe to the activities

of the “militants.” But when they departed from the attitude they first

adopted, of suffering violence but using none, in my judgment they put

themselves in the wrong morally; and if judged from the point of view

of practical success have put back the cause rather than promoted it.

For twenty-six years from 1886 to 1912 women’s suffrage was never once

defeated in the House of Commons. The Conciliation Bill, which had been

carried in second reading in 1911 by a majority 316 to 143 after a

truce from militancy of nearly eighteen months, was defeated in 1912 by

a narrow majority. This was very largely due to the intense indignation

and resentment caused by the window-smashing outrages which had taken

place a few weeks earlier.

The carrying of a women’s suffrage amendment to the government Reform

Bill is the next stage either of victory or defeat which awaits us.

If militancy is renewed, defeat is almost certain. The average man is

not convinced of the value of conferring full citizenship on women by

hearing of tradesmen’s windows being broken, or of attempts to set

houses and theaters on fire. The militants often claim that a display

of physical violence is the only way to success. This, I maintain, is

a wholly mistaken reading of the facts. Our victories have been won

through convincing large masses of quiet, sensible, average men and

women that the citizenship of women would be good for women themselves

and for the State as a whole. We can point to the activities of such

women as Julia Ward Howe and Jane Addams in the United States, of

Florence Nightingale and Josephine Butler in Great Britain, and can

more and more convince our countrymen of the futility and absurdity and

the loss to the community of excluding such women, and women at large,

from the rights of citizenship. I regard the militants as misguided

enthusiasts, and believe that at this moment they are the most

dangerous obstacles in the way of the immediate success of our cause

in England. But when I compare the degree of violence they have used

with the excesses of, say, the French Revolution or the destructive

fury which swept over our own and other countries, in connection with

the Reformation, or with the awful violence which has occasionally been

associated with the Labor movement both in this country and in the

United States, we may feel that there is no cause for panic and still

less for despair. The political emancipation of women has made immense

strides toward complete realization in the English-speaking countries

on both sides of the Atlantic. Every victory scored by either of us

helps the other. The latest honors are with America. We do not grudge

them; but hope soon to vie with them.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: TOPICS OF THE TIME]

A WAY OUT OF THE CANAL BLUNDER: REPEAL THE EXEMPTION

Any one who knows how little consideration is given to the preparation

of political platforms can readily understand how both the Democratic

and the Progressive parties were “committed” to the blunder of

advocating the exemption of our coastwise shipping from the tolls to

be charged for the use of the Panama Canal. It is this sort of inside

arrangement of party policies--which usually, in the last hours of

fatigue, restlessness, and excitement, there is never time to discuss

on their merits--that has cast discredit on platforms and has justified

many a candidate in disregarding or modifying a given “plank.” The

overwhelming judgment of our people, as reflected in the press, that

nothing is so important to us as a strict observance of our plighted

faith,--just as nothing is so important to a merchant as his credit

and reputation for honorable dealing,--shows how easy it is for half a

dozen men in a hotel parlor, at the suggestion of some “good fellow,”

to lead a convention to the indorsement of a disastrous policy.

To claim that we have not broken our pledge that there shall be no

discrimination in the tolls and conditions when we thus favor our own

coastwise trade, as against that of Canada, Mexico, and Colombia,--each

with an Atlantic and a Pacific coast,--simply does not rise to the

dignity of a quibble. Already by misrepresentation of the sense of

fair-dealing which pervades American commercial life, incalculable

injury has been done to our standing abroad--an injury which cannot

be measured in money. After all our honorable diplomacy--the return

of the Boxer indemnity, the open door policy in the Far East, and the

strict observance of our promise to withdraw from Cuba, which foreign

sneerers at America said we never would observe, “and never meant to

observe”--it is shameful to have to drop to a lower plane of national

conduct.

As if our cup of humiliation were not already full, it is argued that

we are at liberty to refuse to submit the question of the breach of the

Panama Treaty to the Hague Tribunal, if Great Britain should make the

appeal. “_Nicht zwei dumme streiche für eins_” (Not two stupid

strokes for one), says Lessing’s character in “Minna von Barnhelm.”

Unless we desire to become the welsher of the nations, it is time that

the good faith of the people should find an adequate expression in

the good faith of the Government. All the money saved (to whom?) in

tolls in a hundred years by the exemption could not compensate for the

loss in money--not to reckon honor--which will result from the loss

of credit and of great commercial opportunities all over the world. A

strange way, indeed, to promote American commerce!

But there remains for us another chance--or will, if Great Britain

shall a little longer pursue her friendly and forbearing course of

waiting for our public opinion to assert itself. _The coastwise

exemption should be repealed._ And, our obligations aside, why

should we enter upon a policy of subsidizing our ships just at the

time when apparently we are giving up the policy of subsidizing

our manufactures? Are we never to get away from the inequality of

privilege, that has already corrupted the sources of government by the

“vicious circle,” creating and feeding by legislation agencies whose

natural interest it thus becomes to destroy the principle of equality?

Why subsidize ships any more than subsidize railways, or newspapers, or

authorship? But if we _must_ subsidize our ships, let it be done

outright, in bills for that purpose, and not through the violation of

the plain words of a solemn treaty.

Not only should the exemption be repealed, but, if we are to recover

the ground that has been lost, it should be done in the first week of

the December session of Congress. We feel sure that President Taft,

whose misgivings tinctured his message of assent, now that the Canal

bill has provided for a _modus operandi_, would not interpose

his veto to the sober second thought of Congress. If the repeal is

not accomplished, and if we refuse the appeal to The Hague, the great

cause of Arbitration--the substitute for war--will be set back for

unreckonable years. And it is the championship of Arbitration, together

with his far-sighted and consistent defense and extension of the Merit

System, which will give the President his highest claim to the respect

of posterity. The object of the latter is to keep politicians from

gambling with the resources of office; the object of the former is to

prevent governments from gambling with the lives of men.

Should the repeal not be promptly made, it will become the duty of the

people to organize to bring it about. We much mistake the temper of the

country if within another six months its servants do not remove this

blot in the national escutcheon.

WANTED: STRAIGHT THINKING ABOUT MILITANT SUFFRAGISTS

APROPOS OF THE RENEWAL OF VIOLENCE IN ENGLAND

One of the startling signs of the times is the recrudescence of

violence among the militant suffragists in England. The physical

attacks by women upon members of the government, including the

hurling of a hatchet at the Prime Minister’s party; the attempt to

set fire to a theater in which he was about to make an address, and

other outrages, are in themselves a sufficiently deplorable symptom

of lawless impulses, with which the government, as it was obliged,

has dealt promptly and vigorously. As we have recognized in previous

articles, this course of action has been disavowed in England by other

prominent bodies of suffragists, who deserve honor for their refusal

to be deflected from their “appeal to reason” to a policy which can

only end in disaster. In this number of ~The Century~ we give

place to an article by Mrs. Fawcett, President of the National Union of

Women’s Suffrage Societies, of Great Britain, written at our request

for a disavowal of this policy. If, besides the editorials in the New

York “Evening Post,” there has been any similar official disavowal in

America, it has escaped the attention of one careful reader of the

daily news. Already many men in this country must be asking themselves

whether it is wise to add to the electorate a body of voters who do not

see the perilous influence of tolerating such actions--the influence

not only upon women, but upon other impressionable classes having a

real or fancied grievance.

And now comes another test of the wisdom and patriotism of these

ladies. Before these lines shall be published, Mr. and Mrs. Pethick

Lawrence, two convicted lawbreakers of England, are to be honored by

a reception by the National Woman Suffrage Association in New York,

as Mrs. Pankhurst was received at Carnegie Hall after a similar

conviction. We cannot conceal our sympathy with any person willing

to suffer for opinion’s sake, but in these instances the punishment

was inflicted not for opinion, but for deliberate violation of the

elementary principles of civilized government--by the destruction

of property (usually of unoffending persons) and the creation of

public disorder. Of what use is it for conservative agencies to

address themselves to the discouragement of lynching in the South,

or in Pennsylvania, or of hired assassination in New York City, or

the lawlessness of capital or of labor, or the lawlessness of brutal

students, fashionable smugglers, bribed officials, or “fixed” juries,

when the sentiment of so large and estimable a part of the community

as the advocates of woman suffrage--teachers of the young--fail to see

their responsibility toward their followers and the public? The defense

that “no class has ever obtained its rights except by violence” is both

false and insidious, and sets an example which will rise to plague the

women themselves if they ever obtain a measure of responsible power.

Deeper even than this vicious idea is the world-old delusion--which

has its strongest exponent in politics--that the end justifies the

means. The drift toward the employment of this standard is a hard blow

to those who believe that women are to show us a more excellent way in

government.

Admitting that this policy of terrorizing one’s opponents is valuable

as advertising a movement, it seems never to have occurred to the

advocates of woman suffrage that as effective a presentation of their

cause could have been obtained without violence. Ruskin said that war

would cease in Europe if on the declaration of hostilities Englishwomen

would put on mourning. Ingenuity certainly could devise some form

of _réclame_ more worthy than the precipitation of delicately

minded young women into the program of a New York vaudeville theater.

Something must be allowed to the instinctive protest of human nature

that _everything_ shall not be thrown into the melting-pot of

agitation.

THE NEW WAY OF FINANCING A CAMPAIGN

A NOTE OF POLITICAL HEALTH AND PROGRESS

We called slaveholding and Mormon polygamy “twin relics of barbarism,”

persisting in our modern civilization, and we put an end to them long

ago. We have now made an end of those twin evils of our politics, the

spoils system and secret campaign funds. Ten years of agitation put

the merit system into our laws, the movement for publicity of campaign

contributions, actively urged on after 1904, became effective in less

than six years. The Federal act bears date of June 25, 1910. The

spoils system and the secret campaign fund have the likeness of twins.

Both are a fraud upon the people, both are illegitimate devices for

perpetuating party power, both are indefensible save by frankly and

cynically immoral arguments.

Perhaps the greater evil of the two, as a betrayal of the interests of

the people, is the acceptance by campaign committees of large gifts of

money from persons or corporations who expect, and who have usually

received, much more than the worth of their money in legislative favors

or valuable privilege. There have been many indiscreet revelations

of the theory and practical working of the system. Indignantly

protesting that the highly protected manufacturing interests had been

too niggardly in their giving, one politician gave instructions to

“fry the fat” out of them; and it is notorious that in the field of

tariff legislation the covenant between the party in power and the

corporations that gave bountifully to keep it in power was faithfully

kept. The hand that gave the fund guided the pen that wrote the

schedules. It is equally notorious that with these great sums the

suffrage was corrupted. In one of the States where directions were

given to marshal the “floaters” in “blocks of five,” a distinguished

beneficiary of that process humorously admitted the efficiency of

“soap” in achieving the victory. It was bad, wholly bad; in a republic

no political evil could be much worse.

The completeness of the reform is astonishing. The statute enacted two

years ago and amended last year commands campaign committees to keep

accurate accounts of receipts and expenditures, and sworn detailed

statement of contributions received, with contributors’ names and the

objects for which the money was spent, must be filed with the Clerk of

the House of Representatives fifteen days before the day of election

and every sixth day thereafter; thirty days after election a final

statement must be so filed. The statements are open for inspection and

publication.

This law of publicity has been complied with in this campaign with such

alacrity that two of the party committees “rushed into print” with

their statements of contributions more than a month in advance of the

date fixed by the statute. The Democratic committee gave out the names

and the figures on September 9, and on September 10 the statement of

the Progressive party was given out.

It was then that the public suddenly became aware that this

Presidential campaign is unlike any other in our recent history. The

first striking fact observed was that the total of the contributions

was pitifully meager compared with the royal profusion with which,

according to the prevailing belief, former campaign committees have

been put in funds. The Wilson and Marshall Committee acknowledged the

receipt of $175,000 up to the date of publication, and there were only

three gifts as large as ten thousand dollars; the Roosevelt and Johnson

Committee had received $55,199, and the largest contributions were

two of $15,000 each. Comparison was at once made with the Republican

campaign fund of 1904, amounting to $1,900,000 as stated in testimony

and with old-time individual contributions of $50,000 and $100,000.

The total of the Republican fund in 1896 is not accurately known, but

it was certainly much larger than in 1904.

The second point of unlikeness of this campaign to all others within

any man’s memory is the fact that the fortunes of all three candidates

are committed to the management of men who are amateurs in “big

politics.” The “Zach” Chandlers, the Mark Hannas, the Arthur Pue

Gormans, where are they? If these men have successors in our day, they

are watching and waiting, it may be; certainly they are not in the

strife, they are not at the heads of the committees, they are not the

chief men in the work.

It means that our politics, our political campaign methods, have in

good faith been changed and reformed. As a part of what in the broad

sense, not in any party sense, we may call the progressive movement,

this change is of impressive significance. The machines and the bosses

may devise ways to retain much of their old power under the conditions

of what is called “direct government” of the people in the States,

but now that their dominance is destroyed in respect to the great

quadrennial contest of the parties, it is not easy to see how they can

regain control. They carried on the war of politics with money; they

bartered, when they could, government policies for cash. We have put

an end to all that. The qualities of the candidates, the merits of the

argument, the decision of the people for or against promised measures

and policies, are now to be determining. That is as it should be, it is

the ideal way, in a government by the people. For a government by the

“interests” and the politicians the old way was ideal.

In very truth the publicity of campaign contributions is a reform of

far-reaching vitality and importance, and it is immensely gratifying

that it has been ungrudgingly accepted by those upon whom this

ordinance of great self-denial has been imposed. But the people, the

voters themselves, must understand that their emancipation brings its

duties and responsibilities. It costs a great deal of money properly to

enlighten the electorate upon the issues of a Presidential campaign,

as it is of the very essence of good government that the voter should

make his choice with understanding. Knowledge is necessary, it is to

his interest that he have it, and he should pay the cost of putting

it within his reach. The corporations and the “interests” have been

relieved of this burden of expense. Let the men of the parties assume

it, willingly, for their own benefit, for the benefit of all. Campaign

committees must spend money, yet if at the close of the campaign they

are left with heavy debts, it will not be long before we lapse into the

old, bad conditions. Campaigns can be “financed” with the money of the

voters. A multitude of small individual contributions will fill the

campaign chest, and candidates and party will be under no obligations

save to the people, and those it will be their highest duty to fulfil.

IF LINCOLN COULD RETURN

(FIFTY YEARS AFTER EMANCIPATION)

On Sunday, September 22, in negro churches everywhere, men and women of

dark skin celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the first Emancipation

Proclamation. It was an occasion which might well have been made a day

of heart-searching, to ask ourselves whether, in our treatment of the

negro, the nation as a whole is honoring the memory of Lincoln himself,

and of those who labored, fought, and died to abolish slavery. Are we,

as a nation, dealing fairly with the negro? Or is “The Independent”

correct when it declares that of all our ninety millions there are none

to-day so oppressed as the race that Lincoln freed?

In this number of ~The Century~ we group examples of the work

of four members of the race,--in prose, poetry, art, and musical

composition, the first being a paper of entire authoritativeness and

singular moderation of tone. In it Dr. Washington, with the dauntless

faith and courage which have carried him so far, sets forth his answer

to the question whether the American negro is having a fair chance.

Discouragement he will not admit; he fixes his eyes ever upon the

hopeful signs. When he goes abroad it seems to him the working-classes

of Europe are worse off than our own colored people, whose accessions

from abroad are proof to him that the negro fares nowhere else so well.

That Dr. Washington serves a useful purpose in ever presenting the

cheerful side, is obvious. But he who fifty years after Emancipation

would stop there would see but one side of the question. The shadows

upon the race which the head of Tuskegee glides over so lightly lie

heavily upon ever-growing numbers of intellectual colored people, who

are moved but little by figures of increased negro farm holdings, by

statistics about negro grocers, lawyers, physicians, and teachers.

Grateful as their hearts may be that they are to-day in possession of

their own bodies, they regard the future with troubled eyes.

Looking upon their children they ask with panic fear if these are to be

the children of the ghettos now being established, set apart as though

leprous, with one avenue of advancement after another closed to them,

denied the participation in government guaranteed to them by law, and

in some States put beyond the pale of law. They read that the American

Bar Association has virtually drawn the color line. They read almost

every week of men of their race burned at the stake, North and South;

of their women, done to death, ruthlessly shot out of semblance to

their Maker, by the mobs that destroy them in the name of the purity

of the white race! They read that even Northern communities where the

mob rules, like Coatesville, Pennsylvania, and Springfield, Illinois,

once the very home of Lincoln, fail to punish those who defy the laws

and slay the accused or the innocent with barbarities known in no

other land. They see themselves left out of account in the South by

a leader of a new political party that boasts its desire for “social

justice.” If their children, deprived of school by the thousands, and

depressed and ignorant, without a single influence to uplift, go wrong,

the imputed shame is that of the whole race. Every negro criminal

becomes a living indictment of his people. Bitterest of all, they

cannot defend themselves against official wrong-doing, for having only

a phantom ballot in their hands, the vilest sheriff is beyond their

reach. Moreover, to the injury of the whole body-politic, no adequate

education through self-government is provided for them in this Republic

of Lincoln.

This is the reverse of the picture and its pathos is beyond

description. What would Lincoln say? Would he, if reembodied, declare

that the negro, for all his progress, is having a fair chance, North or

South, to-day?

[Illustration: OPEN LETTERS]

ON THE RELATIVE CLAIMS OF SWEETNESS AND LIGHT

_To One who Thinks Women “Movement-Mad”_

_Dear Helen_:

A cowardly fear of being funny silenced me last night, but, now,

refreshed by sleep and by your absence, knowing that you are well on

your road, I mount my slow nag, and, armored to be dull, come pricking

after. I know that words are creatures of chance, subject to jeopardy

from all the winds that blow, and that in writing I am only increasing

the hazard of misunderstanding, “harnessing for a yet more perilous

adventure,” but despite this I follow soberly behind, your own words

upon my lips.

[Illustration]

You said, in part, you may recall, that our little group, and

especially the women among us, are movement-mad; that peaceful,

esthetic conversation has been done to death by furious talk on wrongs

and reforms; that the amenities of civilized society, so you said,

have fallen beneath the ax of chop-logic; that even at dinners we

women grow red and shrill over astonishing topics--eugenics, political

nominees, prison menus, and woman suffrage; that art, “the world’s

sweet inn,” has become a house of brawlers; that to speak of dancing

is to bring up in a dance-hall, and to discuss a play is to become

entangled in a wreckage of commandments. All of Pan’s gay world is

silenced, you declared, shut off with a cordon of linked question

marks; that the very laughter in our throats has become brazen and

controversial--the derisive laughter of the Hebrew Scriptures; that,

oh, dreadful climax, you will open your purse to no more reforms,

unless it be to a Society for the Reformation of Manners.

When you quote Falstaff’s plaint that “It were better to be eaten to

death with rust than scoured to nothing with perpetual motion,” I

understand what you mean--that is my misfortune in debate. But are you

really enamoured of rust? You, who would keep all talk in low relief,

sweet, level, and cool as the heads on a Greek frieze, are you not

turning from a world that is alive and alight to wander in a land of

shades?

Esthetic ideals were shaped for us by the centuries that lie between

us and Myron. What wonder that talk moves smoothly upon such age-worn

ways! Slave-owning Greeks and subtle Italians wrought out, in sweat

and toil, arts that were old when a social conscience was an amœba. In

sweat and strife men and women are blazing new trails to-day; and the

overcoming of inertia still generates heat. But, once more, something

comes forth, shining, from the lustration of fire.

Smile down upon us from your tranquil bleacher! It is quite true that

we are ravished by the dazzling, many-sided iridescence of what we take

for a new Truth, hailing its radiance with our uncouth cries. We buffet

hotly the ideas that each is driving toward his goal, but when, out

of the rush and turmoil, some one scores a touchdown the whole field

cheers.

When a new country is discovered--though it be a desert--the explorer

plants his flag with a shout; and there is as high authority, in the

authentic tribune of men’s hearts, for our passion as for your calm.

The “lark of aspiration” must sing as it mounts.

A modern master of friendship has said that, after all, there are only

two real subjects of conversation--love and conduct. As love is best in

tête-à-tête, that leaves us morals. Thinking of it in cold blood, it

seems as though we might be calmer talkers, but when have morals not

been associated with heat, here or hereafter? The part of your charge

that I find strangest is that this noisy super-heatedness, that you

impute to us, is a new evil. Where is your memory, Girl? Mine takes up

the thread about the year that you were born, when people were still

talking back over the questionable morality of one set of men freeing

the slaves of another set, and of the political right of the Southern

States to secede. I see a room, a hollow square of books, the air blue

with smoke, torn by lightning-jags of talk. Voices--raised voices, dear

Lady--talked of Predestination and Free Will. They talked as we poor

weaklings of this Laodicean age may never hope to talk, hurling Eternal

Damnation at each others’ heads and imputations of blasphemy, in horrid

whispers. Goethe’s Elective Affinities and the doctrine of one Thomas

Paine were discussed; Darwin, in relation to the osteoplastic romance

of Eve. Apostolic Succession, Infant Damnation, Predestination--these

are some of the live-wires of another day. I never hear the echo of

raised voices, down the long vista of my past, without realizing that

real talk is going forward--morals, preferably with a dash of love.

To-day, we, true children of those senior wranglers, have inescapably,

in our blood, the passion for moral research; “the invisible masters

that reign in our innermost cells” have predetermined our choice.

The names of all the protagonists have changed; the battleground

has shifted from skyey metaphysics to the slum street; from Infant

Damnation to Certified Milk for Babies; but we, too, are doing battle

for our realities. In the hospitals and the settlement houses are the

children and grandchildren of our old circuit-riders and militant

bishops. The children of those who warred for righteousness still seek

and serve.

Your quarrel is not with our little group of noisy talkers; your

quarrel, Madam, is with the leaven of the world, that froths and foams

and stirs because it is working. In the stormy schools of religious

controversy--in that old, warm talk on morals, when the souls of men

were the stake--we learned that we are our brothers’ keepers, and that

idea, once generated, will be conserved, generation by generation,

and the force of it will not be lost. As they strove to insure to men

eternal life, their children strive that men may inherit the earth.

Our contention, yours and mine, is the old Hellenic-Hebraic clash of

ideals.

“Beauty and Light!” you cry.

“Justice and Right!” comes the response.

We are both right, but my right is deeper and more elemental than

yours. Yours exists for a few, happy, chosen spirits; mine for the

whole, wide travailing world. Yours rests upon mine; mine does not

rest upon yours.

“Rest!” you jeer. “You people never rest, and you let no one else rest.”

“‘Restfulness,’” I cry, with inky vivacity, “Stevenson told us long ago

that ‘restfulness is a quality for cattle.’”

“Ah, Chantecler! Chantecler!” I hear you murmur, “when will you learn

the secret of the dawn.”

Well, you see I have given you the last word, at least.

As ever yours,

_Louise Herrick Wall_.

[Illustration: IN LIGHTER VEIN]

AFTER-DINNER STORIES

BY SYLVESTER MENLO

BEARDING WHISTLER IN HIS DEN

The following anecdote of Whistler was told by the painter himself.

One day when Whistler was absorbingly busy in painting the portrait of

a prominent American gentleman, a ring was heard at his studio bell,

and his man-servant appeared with the cards of a certain rich American

lady and her husband, saying they would like very much to see him. He

sent word that he was closely occupied with a sitter, and begged them

to excuse him. But the servant brought back word that the lady had come

from America for the distinct purpose of having him paint her portrait,

and that it was necessary for her to have an interview. He immediately

sent word down that interviews could be had only by appointment, and he

regretted that he could not receive her. But despite this rebuff, the

lady and her escort succeeded in passing the guard, and were soon heard

mounting the stairs; whereupon Whistler said to his sitter:

“Oh, Jack, for heaven’s sake, do go and send her away!”

At the top of the landing the sitter found the lady and her husband.

He expostulated with her on her intrusion, but was unable to make any

impression upon her, and so reported to the painter, who finally came

out with a handful of wet brushes between his fingers and advanced upon

the enemy with a determined manner, and, as he went toward her, pushing

his hand in front of him, to the imminent danger of spoiling a very

beautiful costume arranged for an effective portrait.

It was very amusing to see Whistler punctuating his remarks with

the jerks of his hand in which he had put two or three pencils to

illustrate the situation.

“My dear Madam,” he said [forward gesture], “you must know [gesture

repeated] that an artist [another gesture] cannot be interrupted in

his work [deprecatory gesture], and I must ask you kindly to desist

from this intrusion [forward gesture]. It is impossible for me to make

arrangements [gesture] except by appointment, and I am obliged to ask

you [gesture] to be so good as to excuse me.” As he approached her,

the lady was obliged to retire a few inches, until she reached the

top of the landing, when Whistler, seeing that she acknowledged her

discomfiture, bade her good morning as she took her leave. The painter

did not mention the lady’s name.

On the conclusion of the anecdote, one of his auditors said, “You must

have a great many such experiences with the _nouveaux riches_, Mr.

Whistler.”

“Ah, yes, ah, yes,” he said; “and it takes them a long time to grow up

to the portraits we make of them.”

“RULES ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN”

In the early days of a certain club of New York, when it was rather

harder sledding for the club than it is at the present time, in a

meeting of the council the question came up as to the arrears of

members’ dues, and the treasurer reported that one man was particularly

recreant in this regard. It was in the winter, and the club was

then maintaining throughout the day and evening beautifully heated

and lighted quarters. At this time the only person in the club

who frequented it every day was this delinquent, who, in addition

to doing a large portion of his writing there, was accustomed to

make considerable inroads upon the stationery of the club for home

consumption.

At the meeting of the council referred to, there was protest against

this state of affairs, and a determination was manifest to put an end

to it, and after discussion the secretary was instructed to notify the

member in question that his name had been dropped from the rolls of the

club.

The question then arose whether there was anybody else who was in

arrears, whereupon the treasurer reported that this was true of another

member.

“Who can that be? Let us make an example of them both,” remarked one

member, bringing his fist down on the table for emphasis. The reply was

that it was Mr. X----, the poet.

“Oh, heavens!” replied another. “We can’t let X---- go. He’s too

important to the club.”

Whereupon the resolution was amended to read as follows: “Resolved,

that the secretary be instructed to drop the name of Mr. Q---- from the

rolls of the club for non-payment of dues, and to retain the name of

Mr. X---- for the same reason.”

SERVICEABLE FRENCH

Some years ago a young American woman, Miss G----, met at a Paris

pension a compatriot, a spinster. One evening the conversation turned

upon the study of languages. Miss G----, though she had lived some time

in Paris, expressed an indifference to acquiring French, and said,

with an air of concluding the matter, that on the whole she thought a

knowledge of French took away very much from the feeling of strangeness

which one had in the country, to which Miss G---- warmly assented.

“But, Miss S----,” she said, “you certainly know _some_ French;

otherwise it would be very difficult for you to find your way about the

city.”

“Oh, yes,” responded the older lady, “I know some French--quite enough

for all practical purposes.”

“For instance,” pursued Miss G----, who herself spoke French very

beautifully, “what do you do when you wish a _cocher_ to drive

faster?”

“Oh,” was the response, “that’s easy enough. I simply rise, poke him

in the back with my parasol, and”--shaking her hands, palms forward,

nervously--“I say, ‘Rapidilly, rapidilly!’ Oh, I know French enough for

that.”

THE PLAINT OF THE SOREHEAD

BY JAMES D. CORROTHERS

’Twa’n’t ’zackly de ack o’ “de Pahty,”

’Twus slidin’ too quick f’om de fence,

Wid an appetite ovahly h’ahty--

An’ _dis_ am de quinsequence!

Nothin’ “comfo’tin’” visible!

Laud! but it’s suttainly tough!--

Mis’able, mis’able, mis’able!--

Mis’able enough!

I worked foh “de Pahty” last ’lection;

An’ winked at de Dimocrats, too,

Thinkin’ I’d “make a collection”

F’om _one_ uv ’em, sho!--wouldn’t you?

But heah I sets, sad an’ commis’able--

I _tell_ you dey’s treated me rough!

Mis’able, mis’able, mis’able!--

Mis’able, sho’ ’nough!

APE OWE ’EM

BY DEEMS TAYLOR

When fur stews can this sill leer I’m,

Toot rye tomb ache theme e’en ink Lear,

Youth inked wood butt bee weigh sting thyme;

Use eh, “It’s imp lean on scents, shear!”

Gnome attar; Anna lies align!

Nation mice lender verse says knot--

Fork rip tick poet real Ike mine,

How Aaron weal, demesnes allot.

THEN AND NOW

BY CAROLYN WELLS

When my jokes appeal to the editors’ mind,

And they send me word they’ve kept ’em;

I am so glad if they’re the kind

Who pay when they accept ’em.

Months later, when in print I find

My charming lucubration;

I am so glad if they’re the kind

Who pay on publication.

[Illustration: AMBIDEXTROUS

“Oh! Jack, I’m so sorry you’ve hurt your arm.”]

[Illustration: Copyright, 1912, by John T. McCutcheon

“WHEN IMMORTAL MEETS IMMORTAL”

A PROPHETIC CARTOON. BY JOHN T. McCUTCHEON

(Both Mr. Woodrow Wilson and Colonel Theodore Roosevelt are members of

the American Academy of Arts and Letters.)

This drawing, made for the Chicago “Tribune,” before the nomination of

either candidate, is here reprinted by permission.]

LIMERICKS

TEXT AND PICTURES BY OLIVER HERFORD

[Illustration]

XVII--THE FINANCIER FOX

There once was a plausible fox

Who explained that he dabbled in “stocks,”

But they found out one day

“Live stock” was his “lay,”

When he “cornered” ten prize Plymouth Rocks.

[Illustration]

XVIII--THE FASTIDIOUS YAK

There was once a fastidious yak

Who refused to eat hay from a stack.

“A haystack,” said he,

“Looks so very like me!”

(The haystack’s the one at the back.)

THE DE VINNE PRESS, NEW YORK

[Illustration]

How +did+ you make this pie so delicious?

“Why it was easy enough. I tried the new way that I found in my Libby’s

recipe booklet. Here it is--”

=Pumpkin Pie=: 1½ cups cooked and strained pumpkin, 2 eggs, ¾

cup sugar, ¼ cup molasses, ½ tablespoonful cinnamon, ½ tablespoonful

ginger, ¼ teaspoonful salt, 1 cup (½ can) Libby’s Evaporated Milk,

with 1 cupful water. Mix pumpkin, molasses, sugar and spices

together. Add the mixed milk and water, then add the eggs thoroughly

beaten. Mix well and put into deep pie tins lined with pastry. Bake

45 minutes in moderate oven.

_Libby’s_ Evaporated

Milk

[Illustration]

For pies and all baking, for soups, coffee, tea or cocoa Libby’s milk

gives an added richness and a delicious flavor.

Libby’s milk is evaporated in clean, sanitary condenseries, located in

the heart of the greatest dairy regions in the world. It is always pure

and when open will keep sweet longer than raw milk.

Buy Libby’s milk for convenience and satisfaction. It’s the brand you

can trust.

_Send for a copy of Libby’s Milk Recipe Booklet_

Libby, M^c.Neill & Libby

Chicago

[Illustration: _Have you smoked one lately?_

EL Principe de Gales

Havana

Cigars

]