Parsons, and I have reason to believe that he possesses unusual power as an instructor. His retirement from the faculty of the Kansas State Agricultural College was occasioned by considerations affecting in no way his character as a man or his ability as a teacher."

I cite these testimonials to Professor Parsons's ability as a teacher because they illustrate the universal feeling among those best acquainted with his work. All in a position to speak authoritatively, even those most bitterly opposed to his economic views, accorded him the highest place in efficiency as a teacher and single-heartedness as a man.

V.

Subsequently Professor Parsons was called to the chairs of history and political science in Ruskin College, Trenton, Missouri. This institution has recently acquired the services of Professor Will and several other master thinkers, and has adopted a broad, constructive, progressive, and well-rounded curriculum, which includes industrial training and ethical culture in addition to the regular college courses. Professor Parsons, while still holding his chair in the Boston University, spends the parts of the school year when not required in Boston at Trenton, as he formerly did at the Kansas Agricultural College.

During other months he works indefatigably, doing much public lecturing, and in this work he has few if any superiors in America, as his address is engaging and his method of presenting his thought clear, entertaining, and effective. He is by no means devoid of a sense of humor, but is not given to dragging in humorous stories, as more prosaic lecturers feel called upon to do. One thing is very noticeable in his platform work: After a masterly presentation of a subject, he will give a clear, epigrammatic summary that cannot fail to stick in the mind of the hearer. The following paragraph will serve to illustrate this fact:

"If one man possesses a franchise that yields an enormous revenue, and another man has no such advantage, the way to diffuse the monopolized wealth is to make the two men joint

owners of the franchise. If a few men own a street railway system that yields vast power and income, while a city full of people own no roads, but must pay tribute to the monopolists, the way to a just diffusion of power and profit is to make the whole city full of people copartners in the street railways. If an emperor (or 'boss') owns the government and the people are political paupers, the way to equalize power is to transfer the ownership of the government to the whole body of citizens on the basis of an equal partnership or democracy. If a railway monarch holds sway over a thousand miles of road, a hundred cities and towns, and thousands of workingmen, draws millions of profit from the traffic of a dozen States, and, with a few fellow-potentates, rules the commerce of a continent, the way to diffuse wealth and equalize power is to transfer the ownership of the railways to the nation."

His services are being sought in all parts of the land where public interest in vital economic issues is aroused. Recently he accepted an engagement to lecture next autumn for the University Association in the ten chief cities of the Pacific Coast.

VI.

Great and invaluable as are his services to the cause of human advancement, as a teacher and a public lecturer, it is through his writing that he has reached the widest constituency and has compelled thoughtful people everywhere to consider subjects which in many instances they had never seriously thought upon before. It was in 1894 that Professor Parsons contributed to THE ARENA one of the most notable economic papers that have appeared in years, entitled "The Philosophy of Mutualism." It attracted wide attention. The late Bishop Phillips Brooks of Massachusetts, the most brilliant and popular of the modern clergymen of Boston, in a letter to Professor Parsons said:

"I am in heartiest sympathy with your 'Philosophy of Mutualism.' Our conversations about it have been a delight to me. The 'Law of Development' and the 'Historic Parallel' are worthy, I think, of the emphasis you give them. All your underlying principles I fully accept. They are simply 'brother

love and justice put into practise,' as you say; and how can a minister withhold his support from that?"

In 1895 and 1896 there appeared in THE ARENA the powerful series of papers on "The Electric Lighting and Telegraph Monopoly," which have been I think justly characterized as the most powerful indictment of monopoly that has yet appeared.

Since 1894 Professor Parsons has been one of the most valued contributors to THE ARENA. He has also written extensively for other leading magazines, while his economic books are rightly regarded as indispensable to students of present-day social and political questions. Of these works the most important are "The City for the People," "The Telegraph Monopoly," "Direct Legislation," "Rational Money," and "The Bondage of the Cities," all of which are published by Dr. C. F. Taylor, of Philadelphia.

Space renders it impossible for us to notice, even briefly, more than one of these distinctly vital and authoritative works. In "The City for the People" we have a large cloth-bound volume of about six hundred pages, in which all the great problems that intimately relate to the right government of modern municipalities are more exhaustively and lucidly discussed than in any other existing treatise. The volume has called forth the highest encomiums from the governors of different States and from scores of educators, professors, and mayors of leading American municipalities. The consensus of opinion in regard to this work is well reflected in the following extracts from an extended review of the work made by Professor Charles Zueblin, of Chicago University, in the International Journal of Ethics for January, 1901:

Pro

"A valuable book, encyclopedic in character. fessor Parsons has brought together an immense mass of valuable material from both original and secondary sources. His tables of statistics and comparative statements are invaluable and represent an astounding amount of work for which the municipal student must be truly grateful. . . . One can only wish that the immense number of students of municipal reform may evidence their appreciation of this strictly educa

tional endeavor to circulate as widely as possible this volume.

. . The ethical phase of the work is manifested in its zealous defense of the popular interests as evidenced in the title and its consistent advocacy of the enlargement of the municipal life."

The Municipal Ownership League of St. Louis placed "The City for the People" first in its list of the six best books on public ownership.

VII.

It has been my fortune to know Professor Parsons for about ten years, and during this time I have had ample opportunity to study him under various conditions and circumstances-in a word, to become acquainted with the real man; and, knowing him as I do, it is a pleasure to be able to state unhesitatingly that among my wide acquaintance I know of no more self-forgetful and truly unselfish person, no kindlier, sweeter, more generous, candid or sincere man, than he. In the service or help of a friend, or at the call of duty, he is ever quick to respond, and no task is too arduous, even though it takes him from his needed rest or deprives him of the opportunity to accept highly remunerative work, if by his service he may assist in enriching the life of some fellow-man or further the great cause of human brotherhood to which he has consecrated the best energies of his life. He is one of the rapidly increasing body of leaders who are helping to inaugurate the Golden Age by living the Golden Rule.

Boston, Mass.

B. O. FLOWER.

WOMEN AND THE WAGE SYSTEM.

HERE is no problem of religion, or politics, or philosophy

THERE

that has been so widely and earnestly discussed as the question of women's work, and in no other discussion has there been so general a disregard of facts that might be in every one's possession. We are shown pictures of desolated hearthstones and riotous bachelor clubs, and exhorted to return to the old days of the "domestic" woman. We have presented to our consideration the suffering of household slaves and are exhorted to emancipate them from cruel taskmasters, and we have been led by one party or another over all the ground between these two extremes-and always exhorted. Each side holds its doctrines as tenaciously as its religion, and feels that if it could but convince its opponents of the righteousness of its position there would be an immediate change in the relations of men and women. In all this passionate outcry they have not paused to consider the nature of the question, or it would be seen to be not a matter of ethics but of economics. Would it not be well to abandon the effort to prove what ought to be long enough to discover what is?

If the great army of wage-earning women were asked individually why they do not stay at home and employ themselves in domestic tasks, as their grandmothers did, almost invariably the answer would be, "I must support myself," or in many cases, "I must help support the family." Whatever opinion such a woman may hold as to the relative merits of home work and wage work for women in general, for her personally there is no such question. It is a matter of finding the best wages and conditions of labor. The exceptions are too few to need attention in an economic discussion. Certainly there are more men than women of independent incomes engaged in lucrative employment, and the necessity of making a living is easily recognized as the force that compels men to labor.

Is there, then, a common cause forcing so many women into