THE CONSUMMATE FLOWER.

"The American Beauty Rose can be produced in all its splendor only by sacrificing the early buds that grow up around it."-John D. Rockfeller, Jr.

ness of their successful rival. In trade, in politics, as well as in religion, the Golden Rule is the only solution of the problem of the keen commercialism of the age.

The get-rich-quick mania of the times is well illustrated by the above cartoon. Men rush into speculation, and often into peculation, exceeding the frenzy of the Darien and Mississippi Bubble. The excitement of the wheat pit and stock markets of Chicago and New York resemble more the orgies of the devotees of Diana of Ephesus than rational business methods. The gambling spirit of the racecourse and the card table are carried into the counting-house and the council boards of great fiduciary companies. Witness the plunging of Banker Bigelow and the frenzied finance of the in-Equitable Life and other stock companies. Such "swooping the swoops leads to inevitable disaster, as is vividly shown in our instructive cartoon.

The remark above quoted is said to have been made by the millionaire Sunday-school teacher to his Bible-class. However true this may be in floriculture, its analogue is not true in trade. The multitude of victims of the Standard Oil Company can scarcely contemplate with satisfaction their sacrifice to the great

The recent revelations of civic corruption in St. Louis, Philadelphia, and San Francisco show the great and widespread evil with which most civilized communities have to grapple. The graft and greed and fraud, which, vampire-like, suck the life-blood of the community for selfish and unrighteous gain, is one of the most menacing perils of the times. success of Mayor Weaver in Philadelphia shows also how the snake of graft may be scotched if not killed. If one brave, bold man will use the big stick of law and authority, the people will rally around him, and the coward brood will skulk away in darkness and defeat.

The

LABOR UNIONS AS CAPITALISTS.

THE WHOLE THING IN A NUTSHELL.

Labor: "Hello, you get off of that!"
Capital: "What for?"

Labor: "I want it myself, see!"-Our Day.

That the working together in harmony of capital and labor for their mutual interests, says a writer in Cassier's Magazine, is the desired panacea for strikes and other difficulties is acknowledged by all. To attain this end some large manufacturing establishments have offered shares of stock to their employees at tempting prices, while others have arranged for bonuses of stock to be given to their workmen after certain periods of service. Profit-sharing plans in the form of gifts of stock would be attractive in a marked degree if the owning of the stock would in any way benefit them other than by the small profits they might receive on the stock. Regardless of the donations of any stock which manufacturers sometimes make, trade unionists could soon own a large interest if they would form a financial plan for obtaining shares regularly through the stock market, by forming stockholders' associations in their unions. Even if a controlling interest is not obtained, they would be entitled to a representative on the Board of Directors, owning collectively, perhaps, as large a block of stock as any of the largest stockholders.

It is only by making their interests common that both manufacturer and workman can work together to the best advantage. If there were no dividends, and losses instead of profits, then the men would, for their own good, be more satisfied to accept a cut in wages; but, as

Now it is fresalaries of the

stockholders, they could demand that all of the salaries be cut, from the president down through the entire list to the poorest paid man or boy. quently different; the officials usually remain the same, and the cutting is done only at the pay-roll of wages to the laboring man.

There is another feature to this labor union financial plan which is well worth mentioning. At present, large insurance funds are raised in many unions for sick benefits, death claims, and funeral expenses. Large accumulations are also made for use as defence funds in times of strikes. Now, if the cause of strikes were largely done

these funds would buy a vast amount of away with, stock and bonds of the works with which the men are identified. The interest from the stocks and bonds could be used for sick benefits, and, if a workman died, the union Purchasing Committee could buy his stock and pay the money to his widow or his heirs. This plan means to a workman a protection in time of sickness and accident, and it means an income for him in his old age when he can work no longer.

From the standpoint of the officers of the union and the present business agent, walking delegate, and agitator, so-called, the plan may be opposed; but if looked at right it means a still more secure position for him, with added duties. He then becomes the business agent of the union workman in a new and truer sense of the word. From the standpoint of the employer and capitalist at the works, it means better work from the entire labor force of the shop, as each man watches his neighbor to see that he does not shirk. If all the men have an interest in the stock of the concern, it means a greater output, and the saving of that vast loss to the business man whenever there is a strike. It means union of strength, of labor and capital. Their interests become one, and all alike are benefited.

In New York alone two millions and a half dollars per month in wages are lost to the wage-earners by the strike in the building trades, quite apart from the injury done to that business and to other businesses. One result noted is the increasing procession of discouraged and dejected men, women, and children who present themselves nightly for the dole of free bread at the New York bakery. At the same time, deposits in the savings

QUIT ROCKING THE BOAT.

banks are being rapidly withdrawn, while the prospect of a coming hard winter, when work in many lines must neces sarily be suspended, gives rise to the most gloomy apprehensions. Capital and labor are urged to get together and end these pitiful conditions, but so far each party regards the demands of the other as intolerable. Such is industrial civil war, as wasteful and bitterly cruel to the innocent as any war could be.Witness.

The cartoonist, in a somewhat exag.. gerated way, has shown the encroachments of greed upon one of the grandest exhibitions of natural beauty in the world. It was a wise thing when a few years ago the two countries, which are the national custodians of the Falls, agreed to preserve its immediate surroundings as a public park for ever, But the possibilities of long distance transmission of electric power is leading to a subversion of that plan. It is predicted that in a few years the American Fall will be entirely dry, and the Canadian fall very much diminished by the diversion of their waters to underground conduits. The erection of huge manufacturing establishments may add to the desecration of this great temple of nature.

Of course, no one wants to prevent the utilization of this enormous source of energy, which has been going to waste

for ages. But it should be done with reverence to the rights of future generations of worshippers of beauty; that the energy of the cataract may be used to run the machinery of Toronto, Buffalo, and, perhaps, New York, and thus increase the dividends of the plutocrats, is no warrant for destroying the dividend of beauty beyond all price of those, who, in its contemplation, look from nature up to nature's God.

"The travelling platform appears to be the logical evolution of efforts to provide for continual increasing traffic. When the separate train or tram service is first installed, the trains are few and far between; as the numbers increase, the headway is reduced and the cars follow each other closer and closer; so that the introduction of the moving platform is really the merging of separate trains into one great train, covering the entire roadway, and rendered capable of ascent or descent without interruption of motion.

"It was Pascal who first defined a river as a travelling highway, and possibly the flow of the river may be repeated in the mechanical stream of the travelling roadway as the solution of a problem in transport which has become perplexingly difficult in many places."

THE INTERNATIONAL SUNDAY-SCHOOL

CONVENTION.

A great convention-great numerically, great financially, great spiritually-was the International Sunday-school Convention, held in Toronto, with its delegation reaching well up to 2,000. The largest delegation on record previous to this is the Denver Convention's, 1,168. Just at noon as the bells of the city struck forth their chimes, one of Canada's most revered men, the Hon. Justice Maclaren, was called to the President's chair. It was a far call, he said, from lighting the fires in a log school-house of Quebec, in his boyhood, to the Presidency of the International Sunday-school Association. "You represent on this continent one and a third million workers-a greater force than the combined armies of Russia and Japan."

From the first a deeply spiritual tone prevaded the convention. The first service was a consecration meeting in the Metropolitan Church, led by the Rev. Dr. Tomkins, of Holy Trinity Church, Philadelphia. It was an hour not to be forgotten in a lifetime. Great stress was laid on silent communion with God, and to it great place was given. The quiet half-hour was observed at noon during convention days. On Sunday morning at nine o'clock Dr. Tomkins conducted a prayer and praise service in the Metropolitan.

If any one can Church has no place for the class-meeting, and no capacity for using it, they should have been present at this memorable service.

thinks that the Angli

As some one has said, it would be poor policy on the part of Methodism to begin to loosen her grip on our institution just when other churches are beginning to recognize its value.

We believe that these great gatherings where the lines of nation and denomination and even the color line is lost-we believe such gatherings have a greater place than any one realizes in the educative influences of the world.

"It beats any crowd to raise money I've ever seen," we overheard a New York delegate say, as subscriptions were being called out from every part of the floor and gallery. The convention had been asked to give $50,000 annually for the next triennium, that the work might be greatly enlarged. Field workers were needed, particularly in Japan, Mexico, and among the negroes of the South. At midnight of the day the appeal was made subscriptions had come in to the amount of $66,000.

"Make it $75,000!" was the call when the announcement was made next morning, and in ones, and tens, and hundreds, and a few thousands, the answers poured in till the $75,000 mark was overstepped in a very few minutes. Indeed, it seemed as though the flow of subscriptions could hardly be stopped. Clearly the Sundayschool is getting at the heart of the world.

One million five hundred thousand trained teachers for North America was one of the watchwords of the convention. The need of systematic training for such a line of work was much dwelt on. The relation of the pastor to the Sunday-school was another weighty theme. The seminary should give a large place to the Sundayschool in its training. The pastor ought to know what good teaching is, and how to train the teachers in his Sundayschool.

The most difficult problem for settleIment was the adoption of the supplemental, or 'advanced," lesson system. It is to be regretted that the uniform lesson system that united the Englishspeaking world, that united the several generations of the family in the study

of one lesson, should have its influence in any way impaired. But though those desiring the option of supplemental lessons were in the minority, yet as Dr. Potts said, they were an aggressive minority." It was a generous concession on the part of the convention to grant this option.

The temperance and missionary pulsa

tions were strongly felt in the various meetings.

After an interesting "pull" between San Francisco and Louisville, it was decided to accept Kentuckian hospitality for the next convention in 1908. The next World's Sunday-school Convention will be in Rome in 1907.

GREAT WORLD CONVENTION IN EUROPE.

Among the notable assemblages of this summer was the World's Student Christian Federation, held in Zeist, Holland. Leaders of student work in thirty nations from the five continents and Australia were present. John R. Mott, in a decennial review, said the organization had united in one movement over one hundred thousand students and professors belonging to nearly forty nations. emphasized the need of Russia's fortyseven thousand students, as yet largely untouched by pure Christianity, the accessibility of higher institutions China, India, and Japan, and the inviting field offered for work among schoolboys and schoolgirls, toward whom the movement has only just begun to be directed.

He

in

Another notable gathering was the World Y.M.C.A. Conference, held in Paris, to which the United States and Canada sent forty delegates, Britain one hundred and seventy-five, and Germany headed the list with three hundred. Many of the addresses at the convention were delivered in three languages-French, German, and English-and the time taken to translate paragraph after paragraph necessarily retarded the usually lively movement of Y.M.C.A. gatherings. But when all, led by the German delegates, united in singing Luther's hymn, A might fortress is our God," feeling rose to a high pitch, while the offering of prayers during the sessions, in Japanese, Italian, Greek, Swedish, Finnish, and Chinese made more apparent the international reach of the movement than even significant statistics could do.

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a half-century ago was stirring Wales as a boy preacher.

It was during this period of his life that he came in contact with David Griffith, a hero of Madagascar, and became fired with missionary zeal. He. forthwith consecrated himself to Madagascar, but God's purpose was China.

Griffith John was married to David Griffith's daughter, and arrived in Shanghai in 1855. In a twelvemonth he had such a grip on the language as enabled him to preach the Gospel without foreign aid. From the first he was animated by the Pauline spirit, casting the eager eyes of a conqueror over the innermost provinces of unknown China.

In 1861 he fixed on Hankow as his headquarters. It has continued such for forty-four years, though his zeal never allowed Hankow to limit his labors elsewhere. His many-sidedness has been shown throughout his life. From the first he saw the importance of converting the lower classes; yet no one has shown greater tact in dealing with the official classes. No one has won more privileges from them.

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Out of his work has grown a medical school, a girls' school, a high school, a divinity school, a normal institution, and many day-schools. Nor has he forgotten his own countrymen coming to China. The sailors receive from him a ready welcome. A homelike building in his own English garden, bearing the name, "The Rest," has grown up in this connection. But, says Dr. Harlan P. Beach, 'his widest contribution to the uplifting of China has been through his literary gifts. The extent of this influence may be judged from the fact that last year, of some 2,500,000 copies of the publications of the Central China Religious Tract Society that were put in circulation, more than half were from his pen; while during the same period, nearly a million copies of his translations of the New Testament and of other parts of the Bible were circulated."

He has shown himself a Christian statesman, but, more than his intellectual gifts, it is his spirituality that makes him the power he is in China today, both among the natives and among the other missionaries, whose inspiration he has ever been.

DR. ABBOTT.

was created lately, not only in the columns of the religious but also of the secular press,

Considerable discussion