places and industrial centers; but these had not yet gone further than the principle of combination for strikes and mutual aid in time of distress. After the French war, the whole character of the movement changed. It became revolutionary and concrete. So cialistic ideas worked from philosophers, professors, university students, downward among the toiling masses. Secret societies were formed throughout Germany for the avowed object of overturning the existing social and political condition of things. In these, not only extreme, but bloody doctrines were preached. Added to this powerful agency were the newspapers, which sprang up here and there to openly avow and preach Socialistic doctrines. Socialistic candidates for the German Parliament boldly presented themselves to the electors, and some of them were actually chosen. A Socialist party, led by able and courageous men, made its appearance at Berlin, a "Mountain" sitting under the very shadow of the new Empire. And finally, we witness two deliberate attempts made upon the life of the venerable Emperor; one by a rude man of the people ignorant, loud, desperate and cynical-Hödel; the other, by a quiet, cool, scholarly man of science-Nöbiling; both Socialists to the core, and obeying the extreme and desperate law to which the later doctrines of Socialism inevitably lead. The German Socialists now number, as has been said, one twenty-fifth of all grown Germans; or something like half a million of the Emperor's subjects. Prince Bismarck stated his belief, in the recent debate on the bill to suppress Socialism, that in Berlin alone there are at least sixty thousand Socialists. Forty-one newspapers are published in the Empire devoted to their ideas, and their subscribers number nearly two hundred thousand. Of the German Socialists, no less than ninety-five per cent. are workingmen; the rest are professors, students, speculative rather than practical Socialists; though the instance of Nobiling shows that in the latter class are some men who are ready, at the risk of life itself, to assert their doctrines by dastardly deeds. Of course there are very many men included in the swelling ranks of Socialism who ab hor assassination, and who stop far short of bloodshed as a remedy for the ills from which they suffer. They all believe themselves oppressed; all seek for effectual means to get rid of this oppression. They do not, however, all believe in attaining this end by violent means. The more moderate rather aim to procure a radical change in the laws by the legitimate methods of agitation and legislation. Yet the more extreme Socialists are the more powerful. The Jacobin element overtops and swamps the Girondin; and the revolutionary spirit is that which, after all, gives its vim and force to this remarkable movement. The reasons why Socialism has grown thus rapidly and become thus formidable are not very far to seek. The German laborer is usually a thoughtful and intelligent man. He cogitates upon the effect of institutions and laws, and upon their bearing on his own situation. He sees himself invested with only two rights in the exercise of which he is the equal of the higher classes. One of these is the right to vote at parliamentary elections; the other, the right, which as often as not he would be quite willing to waive, of serving in the Imperial armies for a certain period. But this is a right that he is forced to exercise, being a prescribed duty also, from which he cannot escape. On the other hand, he finds and feels that he is grievously taxed by a government that does not help him, to support an army which he is very much inclined to regard as his natural enemy, and for a brilliant and luxurious court which perpetually obtrudes upon him the contrast between its lavish splendors and his own poverty. "Every private carriage," says a recent English writer, describing the disaffected German proletary, "that he sees rolling swiftly along the streets, every well-dressed man and woman he meets, obviously in the enjoyment of mundane good things, he regards as a wrong done him by society as at present constituted; and he burns with a desire to upset arrangements and annihilate institutions which plainly result in his exclusion from every material advantage that makes up comfort and happiness in this life." And this life in which he has so hard a lot unhappily seems to the Socialist workingman of Germany all there is worth striving for. The immense majority of this class have no religious belief. They either doubt whether there is a future existence, or are convinced that there is none. Atheism is taught by the Socialistic newspapers and orators. The faith of the workingman, therefore, his aims and hopes, his strivings and struggles, his alliances and hatreds, are confined to the bettering of himself and his during this life. He seeks material well-being, physical comfort; and, having no concern about future punishment, and but a vague conception of the moral distinctions of things, he is ready to accept and use those means that are likely to prove effectual, to attain a more satisfactory worldly position. Socialism in Germany is thus seen to be the very creed of despair; but it derives its sustenance from the repression, the tyranny, the favoritism and the ambition of the government. Never could responsibility be more directly and clearly traced than that of the German Empire for this giant evil which threatens its existence. That Socialism is a present, serious, and increasing peril to the German Empire, is attested by the arbitrary measures which have just been taken to suppress it. Immediately after the attempt on the Emperor's life, Prince Bismarck introduced a "Repressive Bill" into the Reichstag. This bill, by a combination between the Liberals and Socialists, was rejected. The Chancellor at once dissolved the body, and ordered new elections. The new Reichstag met; the Repressive Bill was once more introduced, and after some amendments has at last become a law. See how stringent the German Government thinks it necessary to be, in order to put down this organized rebellion against the State. Power is given to the police to dissolve, without warning, all secret organizations suspected of being connected with Socialism; and the property of their members may become confiscated, without trial by jury, and "distributed among the poor." In the discretion of the police, any Socialist speaker or writer, and even anyone who lets apartments for Socialist meetings, may be summarily impris oned, or fined, or both. Newspapers, after one warning, may be suppressed. The keepers of bookstores or libraries, who keep Socialistic books or pamphlets, may be treated with equal abruptness and severity. A man suspected of being a Socialist may be banished from the district where he dwells; and foreign Socialists are to be conducted without ceremony beyond the frontier. The only two modifications which the Liberals could compel Bismarck to accept were, that newspapers should be once warned, before being doomed to extinction; and that the operation of the law should be limited to two and a half years. As Wendell Phillips once said of the attempts to put down the abolition propaganda, this measure is simply “guarding a powder magazine with a lighted torch." Only when the German Government begins at the other end, by giving the people real liberty, by disarming, by reducing taxation, by permitting emigration to flow free, and by reforms which will transform Germany into a constitutional polity, will it strike at the true causes of Socialism, and probe the disease in its seat and center. If we mistake not, the Repressive Bill is a blunder. It will breed, not stifle, Socialism. It will drive it into greater secresy, and more desperate resolves. Already there are abundant signs that the Socialists, far from being dismayed or overawed, are more resolved than ever to pursue their agitations and proselytism. The lighted torch is much too near the powder magazine; and may, at an unsuspected moment, kindle an explosion fatal to monarchy in the Fatherland. Nihilism in Russia is all the more dark, secret, and dangerous than Socialism in Germany, as the government of Russia is more despotic, autocratic, extravagant, and corrupt than is that of Germany. There is still another and potent reason why Nihilism should flourish with a yet ranker growth in the Czar's dominions, than that of Socialism in the Fatherland. It has recently been shown by Mr. Wallace, a very able writer on Russia, that the commune-economic life in common-is the basis of the rural organism throughout the Empire. Taxes are levied, not on the individual, but on the ru ral district, or village; the community gether, cooking their own food, and waiting makes contracts for work on behalf of its upon themselves, and who yet proved to be laborers; the village, in some sort, owns the of gentle blood and highly intelligent. land that the peasant and the freedman serf They were operatives in the factory. In till. The idea of the tribe, of the holding of their closet was found a mass of printed all property for the common good, is famil- treason, forged passports, all the parapheriar to the "moujik." Here, then, is a most nalia of conspiracy. Forty-seven members congenial soil for the seed of Socialism; of this society were arrested and condemned; and added to it are two other grounds of and among them were eleven nobles, seven propagation. The Russians, both educated sons of priests, and local officials, farmers, and ignorant, both high class and low class, and peasants. Fifteen were women, and of have been latterly drifting fast from their these a majority were under twenty-two ancient creed into outright materialism: years of age. Some of them were young opinion and faith are passing through an era ladies of family, lovely in person, refined in of revolutionary change. Again, when the manner, accomplished in feminine arts. Socialist agitator points to the grinding taxation, to the wide-spread corruption in the government, to the despotic will of the Czar, often cruelly and relentlessly exercised, to the wholesale conscription, he makes an appeal to a population, almost every individual of which is, or has at some time been, a direct sufferer from these evils. From these, and other less conspicuous causes, there has rapidly spread in recent years a dangerous element of Socialistic ideas, blank atheism, and radical democracy. This element, moreover, is very far from being confined to the lower strata of the Czar's subjects. Not long ago, a plot was unearthed, implicating dukes, princesses, bankers, merchants, scholars, and even government officials, in a conspiracy directed against the throne. Another discovery made by the police, within two years, was yet more startling. A peasant reported the existence of a formidable organization, which was busily engaged in spreading incendiary pamphlets among the laboring classes, and produced some of these pamphlets as a proof of the tale he unfolded. An investigation brought to light the fact that a number of young men and women, educated and of good birth, had gone to work in the factories, for the sole purpose of mingling with the operatives, and disseminating seditious papers. Their arrest revealed the existence of a secret organization, with its center at Moscow, and branches in various other large towns. In one instance, the police found three young men and four girls living in a single room to This society was undoubtedly a section of the great Nihilist organization, which is stated, at this moment, to comprise at least three millions of Russian subjects. Its character and purposes may be judged from the rules found by the police. According to these, the members were absolutely equal; mutually responsible; and must have entire confidence in each other and in the society. They were sworn to devote themselves exclusively to the purposes of revolution; to be ready to sever every tie of blood or friendship in the cause; to sacrifice self, and keep secrets; and to submit blindly to every command of the organization. Each member held office in turn, and for a month only; there was no official superiority. The aim of the conspiracy was to destroy society as it is, and replace it by a social form in which there should be no private property, and no distinction of class or wealth. The means by which these objects were to be obtained were, by circulating Socialistic pamphlets, by talking with the artisans and peasants, by stirring up discontent, by forming cabals, by founding funds and libraries; and by constant and persistent agitation. It may be added, that assassination undoubtedly finds a place among the methods by which the Nihilist hopes to achieve his revolutionary ends. Within the past two years, and since the startling discovery which first awoke the Russian Government to a consciousness of the formidable extent and purposes of Nihilism, many further evidences of its strength, rapid growth, and fanatical in tents have been betrayed. An English correspondent not long ago wrote from St. Petersburg to a London paper: "Many persons in the highest circles do not hesitate, in select company, to express their sympathy with political exiles and criminals. Concerts are given for the benefit of the families of Siberian convicts; and the wives of high officials are known to be sympathizers with the democratic conspiracy." That this conspiracy is in deadly earnest, may be judged from the assassinations which, within a year, have demonstrated their presence and their resolve. General Trepoff, Prefect of the Imperial police, was shot down in his own office by a handsome and elegant young woman, Vera Sussalitch, and died within twenty-four hours. Vera Sussalitch was tried by a jury, several of whom were government officials, and she was accquitted. No fact could be more significant or more startling. Later, another high officer of police, as he was taking his morning walk in St. Petersburg, was approached by two men, one of whom stabbed and killed him without a word. Both escaped and have not been found. There is no sort of doubt that they were Nihilists. To-day the Czar of Russia is afraid to go abroad unattended by a numerous force, in the streets of his own capitol. He is literally in perpetual danger from the pistol and the dagger of the Nihilist. Not long ago, it transpired that in Switzerland there existed a society of no less than two hundred Russian female students, ardently devoted and giving all their time and energies to the cause of revolution. "A tradesman named Voinoralski," says an English account, "of Penza, who was the natural son of a Russian princess, and happened to be very wealthy, devoted his large pecuniary resources to the aid of the societies, and organized an extensive staff of traveling propagandists; who, disguised as nuns, doctors, tutors, factory girls, mountebanks and what not, traversed the Empire from end to end; circulating incendiary pamphlets, and assuring the people that if they would combine to massacre the upper classes, and to sieze their property, they might live in ease and luxury on the plunder." The discovery of Voinoralski's operations resulted in the arrest of no less than two hundred persons. An analysis of these two hundred is most suggestive. There were sixty gentlemen and twenty-two ladies of rank, some of title, all "belonging to the aristocracy;" four army officers; thirty-one sons of priests; ten merchants; twenty-three shop-keepers; seventeen peasants; four Germans. They were kept in prison two years without a trial. Then justice took cognizance of their existence, arraigned them, judged them, and sentenced the entire body to perpetual exile amid the desolate wastes of Siberia. If in Berlin there are sixty thousand Socialists, there are, without a doubt, one hundred thousand Nihilists in St. Petersburg. The methods employed by the Russian autocracy to suspress this wide-spread infection of conspiracy against the State, are far more brief and peremptory than those of Germany. The offenders are simply consigned to the mercies of martial law. The Czar has no parliament to hamper his action, and for public opinion the Winter Palace has a lofty contempt. That, however, the government is no longer willing to entrust the trial of prisoners, as in the case of Vera Sussalitch, to a jury, even a jury packed by men of property and officials of the administration, shows how rapidly, in its estimation, Nihilism has grown formidable. Nihilist prisoners are now taken before what are simply and virtually courts martial. They are tried in secret, and as often as not the public, including their relatives, never know what their sentence is, or what has become their fate. It is but too probable that the destination of those who every week mysteriously disappear, is the bleak and desolate wastes of Siberia. It becomes, under the state of things which has been briefly described, a matter of intense interest to speculate whether the governments of despotic Russia and semidespotic Germany will awake in time, and discover what the true remedy for the evil of Socialism is, as it has been discovered by France. It seems to us, who look on at this distance, and from this vantage ground, that that true remedy lies, not in repression, but in reform. It is a problem, indeed, whether reform is yet possible, without revolution. We have seen that Socialism and Nihilism feed upon real grievances in these two Empires. Are those grievances so firmly rooted that they cannot be torn up by the roots; or has Socialism proceeded so far that amid such convulsions as a radical reform would arouse it would still desperately assert itself, and perhaps conquer ? This can only be solved by the future; but it seems clear that the only thing that can yet save Germany and Russia is the adoption of constitutions, which will replace Imperial despotism by a reign of the popular will. George M. Towle. A LOCAL HABITATION AND A NAME. ONE often searches a long time for something which he has had all the while in his hand. auce. The question what to do with our poor has suddenly assumed an alarming importThe depression of the industries and the corruption of morals have given us new classes of paupers and new forms of pauperism. What to do with poverty, especially as it assumes the tramp form, is a serious puzzle. Now if any one will take the statutes of his State and read all the provisions therein contained relative to the maintenance of the poor, he will take the first step toward forming a clear judgment in the premises. A long line of human experience is embodied in these statutory provisions-experience which has covered greatly varied conditions. Whoever will read the statutory provisions I am sure will be convinced that he has in hand much for which he has been searching. I shall not quote or even give a summary of the statutes on this subject; I prefer simply to recommend the reading of them in situ. But there are some evident principles underlying this legislation to which I wish to call attention. The first one is that all poor people belong somewhere. If the statutes represent human experience, then human experience has judged it best that the poor be localized pinned down pretty rigidly to where they belong. The great trouble which we have is not, what to do with our own poor, but what to do with everybody else's poor. The difficulties of trampism, so far as it is poverty, are already met in the statutes. So far as it is criminality, we do have a new demonstration which it may tax our wisdom more seriously to meet. The law says every man belongs somewhere. Every man has a right somewhere. If industry fails him for support he has a right to support from the wealth of the town or county where he belongs; and the right and manly thing for him to do is to claim such support there and not elsewhere. The first and best thing that can be done for the poor is to make them exhaust the possibilities of the industries of their own locality, and on failure of that, if it comes to the matter of charity, to try the charities of their own locality. The sole and sufficient answer to the tramp is "Go where you belong." That is an answer which can and ought to be given "out of a pure heart" and with charity "unfeigned." We have had so much to eat and drink in this country that we have not minded giving a meal to any man, irrespective of his habitat. But now we find that this careless course has raised up for us an army of wanderers who are useless for all purposes of work and open to all opportunities of crime. The way to disband this army is to stop its supplies. If we have anything to give, let it be given to some person whom we can definitely locate. The truth is that very few tramps do exhaust the possibilities of industry in their own localities. There is and has been room almost anywhere in this country for a man |