that there "arose for the first time in England a true proletariat divorced from the soil and dependent entirely upon wages, with no resources against old age, sickness, or lack of employment. The misery of the masses was perhaps never greater."* The author of "Utopia" points out that while in other countries the laborers know they will starve when age comes unless they can scrape some money together, no matter how much the commonwealth in which they live may flourish, in Utopia things are very different, for there "There is no less provision for them that were once laborers, but who are now weak and impotent, than for those who do labor." A comparison is next made by Sir Thomas More in which the justice and wisdom of the Utopians in providing for an insurance or pension for the aged laborers, are set over against the murderous, selfish, and shortsighted system which was then in practice and which unhappily has been intensified rather than weakened with the flight of centuries.

For what justice is this, that a rich goldsmith or a usurer, or in short any of them which do nothing at all, or if they do anything, it is of a kind not necessary for the commonwealth, should have pleasant and wealthy lives, either by idleness or by unnecessary business, when in the meantime poor laborers, carters, ironsmiths, carpenters, and ploughmen by so great and continual toil be scarcely able to live through their work by necessary toil, without which no commonwealth could endure, and yet they have so hard and poor a living and live so wretched and miserable a life that the state and conditions of the laboring beasts be much better. Moreover, these poor wretches be persistently tormented with barren and unfruitful labor, and the thought of their poor, indigent, and beggarly old age killeth them. For their daily wages be so little that it will not suffice for the same day, much less it yieldeth any overplus that may be laid up for the relief of old age.

More than three centuries have passed, and yet this vivid picture of unjust and unequal social conditions is a graphic characterization of present-day society throughout the Christian world.

Is it not an unjust and unkind public weal [continues the author of "Utopia"] which gives great fees and rewards to gentlemen as they call them, to such as be either idle persons, flatterers, or devisers of vain pleasures, while it makes no provision for poor ploughmen, colliers, laborers, carters, ironsmiths, and carpenters, without whom no commonwealth can continue? But after it hath abused the laborers of their lusty and flowering age, at the last when they be oppressed with old age and sickness, forgets their labor and leaveth them most unkindly with miserable death.

After this vivid and painfully true picture of the essential injustice of governments manipulated by caste and * Maurice Adams, in Introduction to "Utopia."

gold, or the fiction of birth and the cunning of capital. Sir Thomas More makes a scorching arraignment of the soulless capitalism of his time, which is even more applicable to our age of trusts, monopolies, syndicates and multimillionaires:

The rich men not only by private fraud, but also by common laws do every day pluck away from the poor some part of their daily living. Therefore, when I consider all these commonwealths which nowadays do flourish, I can perceive nothing but ascertain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth. They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely without fear of losing that which they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labor of the poor for as little money as may be. These most wicked and vicious men by their insatiable covetousness divide among themselves those things which would have sufficed for all men.

Again, he compares the murderous merciless reign of the titled and the capitalistic classes, who had become well-nigh all-powerful through special privileges, with the operation of different conditions in the land he is describing:

How far be they from the wealth and felicity of the Utopian commonwealth, where all the desire for money with the use thereof is banished. How great the occasion of wretchedness and mischief is plucked up by the roots, for who knoweth not that fraud, theft, rapine, brawling, quarrelling, strife, treason, and murder, which by daily punishments are rather revenged than restrained, do die when money dieth. And also that fear, care, labor, and watching do perish when money perisheth.

Sir Thomas More further emphasizes the wisdom of the Utopian provisions by calling attention to the fact that after failure of crops in England it was no uncommon thing for thousands to starve for food while the rich possessed abundant stores of food to have afforded plenty for all, and by a just distribution of wealth, whereby the wealth producers might have had their own, no industrious man, woman, or child need have died by starvation or the plague which not infrequently accompanied the famine.

From the foregoing we see how high an altitude Sir Thomas More had reached, even in his savage and selfabsorbed age. From his eminence he caught luminous glimpses which come only to prophet souls. There can be no doubt that the author of "Utopia" derived much inspiration from Plato, even as such prophets of our time as Edward Bellamy, William Morris, Joaquin Miller, and William Dean Howells have derived consciously and directly or unconsciously and indirectly much inspiration from Sir Thomas More. All these and many other earnest lovers of the race have reflected in a more or less true and

helpful way the persistent dream of the wisest and noblest spirits of all time-a dream which has haunted the aspiring soul since the first man faced the heavens with a question and a prayer.

Sir Thomas More failed in the details of his plan, but the soul of "Utopia" was purely altruistic and in alignment with the law of evolutionary growth, hence his work was in deed and truth a voice of dawn crying in the nighta prophet voice proclaiming the coming day. As Maurice Adams well says:

Sir Thomas More found the true commonwealth nowhere. But in so far as the social order he advocated is based on reason and justice, the nowhere must at length become somewhere, nay, everywhere. Some of the reforms which he perceived to be necessary have already been realized, others are being striven for to-day. May we not hope many more will at length be attained? Surely never before was there such a widespread revolt against social wrong and injustice, such a firm resolve to remove the preventable evils of life, or such a worldwide aspiration for a recognition of society on a juster basis. It cannot be that the promise of better things is forever to remain unfulfilled! From the summit of the hills of thought may we not catch the first faint streaks of the dawn of a nobler day? Can we not trace the dim outline of a real society slowly forming amongst us in which none shall be disinherited or trodden underfoot in a senseless or reckless race for wealth, but where all shall be truly free to develop the full capacity of their nature in cooperation with their fellows for a common good?

THE TELEGRAPH MONOPOLY.

BY PROF. FRANK PARSONS.

II.

§ 2. The Evils of our present Telegraph System are manifestly great. In the first place a large part of our people have no telegraphic facilities. A private company selects the best districts, builds its lines where the traffic will be large, and leaves the more thinly settled portions of the country without any service at all. A public enterprise, on the contrary, does not chiefly aim at dividends, but at efficient service of the public as a whole. The difference is strongly illustrated by the contrast between the Western Union and the Postoffice; the former has 21,000 offices, the latter 70,000. The policy of the Postoffice is the true one. Farmers and ranchmen are a benefit to the whole community. It is not their fault that it costs a little more to send a message 200 miles than 100. Distance is an accident entirely independent of the merit or demerit of the individual, and the burden of it should not be allowed to fall upon any individual, but should be borne by society. If any difference is to be made, it ought to be in favor of the country districts, not against them, for it should always be an ob ject of solicitude with the statesman to add to the advantages of country life, so as to counteract, as far as possible, the tendency to overcrowd the cities.

In the second place the rates are very high-so high that the telegraph is beyond the reach of the majority even of those who live in the favored localities where the companies condescend to open their offices. The private telegraph

• The offices of rival telegraph companies are not included because they are mere duplications and do not represent new localities supplied with telegraph facilities; indeed the figures 21,000 and 70,000 do not disclose the full superiority of the postoffice in respect to universality of service, because the 21,000 telegraph offices include all the offices in the cities, where it is often the case that a considerable number of telegraph offices are maintained in the district served by one postoffice-the whole cluster of telegraph offices being really entitled to count only as one in a fair comparison of the extent of country and population served by the telegraph and the postoffice respectively.

!

charges of America are more than double the public telegraph rates of Europe.1

1 Telegraph rates in this country are 25 cents to $1 for 10 words and 2 to 7 cents for each word in addition. The night rates are somewhat less; for example:

In Europe the usual rate is about 10 cents for 20 words and a cent to a cent for each further word (H. Rep. 114, p. 1, Switzerland; p. 2, Belgium; p. 4, France). See also Blair Committee, vol. 2, p. 982, and Professor Ely in December ARENA, 1895, p. 50. In Belgium the rate for additional words is less than a cent each, being 2 cents for each 5 words (10th Census, vol. 4). In Great Britain the rate is 6 d. for 12 words and ¿d. for each added word (P. M. Genl.'s Rep. 1895, p. 35). In France the charge is 10 cents for 20 words and 1 cent for each further word regardless of distance, except that messages to the French possessions in Africa pay 1 cent a word from the first word - 20 words 2000 miles for 20 cents (10th Census, vol. 4; H. Rep. 114, p. 4; Sen. Rep. 577, part 2, p. 22.) The ordinary charge per message in Germany is 12 cents (Professor Ely in ARENA for December, 1895, p. 50). The 20 words include address and signature, which President Green says will average 7 words, leaving 13 words clear message for 10 to 12 cents, with additional words at the rate of a cent to 1 cent a word, as against 25 cents for 10 words and 2 to 7 cents per word in addition. The average charge per message in Great Britain is 154 cents, about half the average in this country. A comparison of average tolls, however, does not do full justice to the low-tariff country, because low rates increase the length of messages, as was clearly shown by the history of the B. & O. company, the average of whose messages under the 10-cent rate ran up to 16 words (Bingham Hearings, p. 76, testimony of D. H. Bates).

A comparison of city rates leads to the same result. In Boston a city message costs 20 cents plus 1 cent per word beyond 10, or 90 words for a dollar. In Berlin the charge is 5 cents (initial fee) plus a cent a word, or 190 words for a dollar, which is more than double the Boston service for the same money after subtracting the 7 words for address and signature.

The Western Union is no better off when we compare its press rates with those across the sea. President Green told the Senate Committee on Postoffice and Postroads, that the press rate was 63 cents per 100 words (Sen. Rep. 577, part 2, p. 23). Like most of his statistics this does not agree either with the facts or with the rest of his testimony. Some papers in large cities where there are a number to divide the expense of the same despatch may get part of their news for 64 cents a hundred words, but that is not the average rate paid by newspapers throughout the country, much less the average rate received by the Western Union per message of 100 words, which is the question at issue now. On the very same page 23 the same President Green illustrated the accuracy of his statement by saying: "We charge the New York Associated Press about 24 cents a word from New York to New Orleans, and of a cent for each drop (22 of them), so that they get 1500 words a day for about $1.87 at each of those places." $1.87 for 1500 words is 12 cents per 100, instead of 64 cents. But even this is not correct. Counsel for the People in this case went to the office of