any product, the heightened price would at once set labor and capital to work to produce more of it. No one can monopolize wealth or capital by itself, because it is a product easily duplicated; nor can any one monopolize labor, except by paying higher wages than the laborers could make working for themselves or for others. The only thing left to monopolize is the source of wealth-the land. Such monopoly is an evil, the only evil of trusts; for it leaves labor and capital helpless, with nothing to work upon.

For capital to combine, or for labor to combine or coöperate, is not an evil, but a good, for such combinations can succeed only by giving better or cheaper service than any other combinations of labor, or of capital, or of labor with capital, can give. If they fail to do that, other combinations will take away their business; but if they control the foundation of the business, the grazing or coal or oil fields, or the mines or roads and harbors by which things must be shipped, then they can prevent competition and are able to charge "all that the traffic will bear," no matter who is robbed thereby.

We have learned to work together on the earth, and there is enough earth for all. The single State of Texas could take in all the people of the United States, leaving the rest of the country vacant and empty, and still be less thickly settled than agricultural Holland. All that is needed for the support of all the people is that they should be allowed to get at this earth; then the divine law of competition would prevent men from taking advantage of one another.

But, now that tyranny and slavery have gone, monopoly has taken their places, strangling competition; and men have to struggle, not to produce the most wealth for the benefit of themselves and others, but to get a chance to produce at all.

The evil of the Trust, then, may be summed up in these words that it does not give the workers the benefit of the increased efficiency of their own work. Monopoly, principally of the source of the materials for work and the place for work, is the cause of this. The workers, shut out from the opportunity of employing themselves, individually or coöperatively, have to

accept what terms the monopolizers offer or starve. The workers find employment harder to get, and the savings of labor go to the monopolists through rent and what is known as "exploitation of labor."

The remedy is as clear as the evil. It is to destroy all monopolies, and especially the mother of monopoly-monopoly of the sources of supply: and so to give men equal opportunity for profitable employment.

At present those who own the valuable lands have all available opportunities in their control and are able to charge prices that are often prohibitive for the use of these opportunities of work and for the products of work. Those who wish to understand all that Single Taxers claim for their method of securing such liberty will find it and all that can be urged against it clearly set forth in the little book written by Louis F. Post, editor of the Chicago Public, called "The Single Tax.” It is therefore enough for the present to say that the Single Tax proposes to take the whole value of land for the public benefit by taxation, so that it will be impossible, because unprofitable, to hold any land that is not used to its full capacity, and thereby to open to labor the boundless resources of the earth, to raise wages, and reduce rents.

If we were to tax Mr. Rockefeller up to the full value of the oil wells, iron mines, and rights of way that his company holds, the prices of oil and the value of Standard Oil stock would fall as fast as wages of Standard Oil workers would rise, and the fangs of that trust would be drawn.

New York.

BOLTON HALL.

THE WHITE LIGHT OF CIVILIZED DEMOCRACY.

E have seen that some primitive peoples possessed

WE democracy, and that the growth of civilization swept

it away. It must not be thought, however, that civilization opposes democracy. On the contrary, after the first misunderstanding, they go hand in hand, with an ever-deepening sympathy and union. The primitive democracy was rude, unstable, without firm basis or intelligent comprehension. The early developments of civilization, with its organization of ignorant masses under vigorous and ambitious leaders, naturally carried the unthinking peoples into despotism. But as civilization rose to nobler heights and the people became intelligent their governments became more democratic, till at last the civilization of England transplanted to the virgin soil of America bloomed into government by and for the people.

The highest civilization and mature democracy are mutually interdependent, each creating the other and unable to exist without it. Throughout the history of the world the essential relation between higher civilization and the development of democracy is evident. Athens attained the highest civilization of the ancient world, and her government was the most democratic. Her civilization reached its summit in the age of Pericles, and that was the time of her nearest approach to political equality. Rome was the next in civilization and the next in liberty also. Her days of development were the days when she came so near to political justice that in contrast with a world full of concentrated despotisms she was called a "Republic." The free cities of the Middle Ages were the most civilized communities of the times, far ahead of the rest of Europe in commerce, literature, and art as well as in freedom-shining like stars from the depths of those dark centuries. And Florence, the freest of all, was also the foremost in science, literature, and art. England and France and Germany to-day are far more civilized than Russia and Turkey,

and far more democratic. The Swiss are the best educated people in Europe, and the most democratic. The United States and New Zealand are the most progressive countries in the world, both physically and intellectually, and, with Switzerland, they lead the world in the development of political equality.

The nineteenth century has attained a civilization infinitely surpassing any former age, and it has developed democracy to an extent undreamed of in any former time. It is the Century of Democracy and the Century of Civilization. The relation rests on the deepest laws. Democracy educates, aids justice, wards off aggression, favors equality of opportunity, stimulates invention and discovery, develops industry, evolves civilization. Civilization awakens energy, lifts education, increases intercourse, gives vigor to the pen and the press, develops and diffuses thought, and leads to democracy by the path of knowledge. An intelligent people will demand political equality. "A thinking peasant means a tottering throne."

Keeping in mind the close connection of civilization and democracy as interacting causes, let us sum up the nineteenthcentury movement toward political equality, expressing the net results at first in words and then in terms of light and shade.

Condensing the principal facts evoked in the preceding paper, we have the following generalizations:

IN 1800.

Only one country, the United States, with less than one-hundredth (1000) of the population of the globe, and less than onefiftieth of its land area (or about 880,000 square miles, and 5,308,000 people), enjoyed the blessings of popular government, free of despotic control. Throughout the rest of the world, with varying forms of government, the actual rule, internal and external, was despotic.

IN 1900.

About fifty countries, with more than a quarter ("/100) of the population of the world, and over 2 of its land area (or 20,000,000 square miles, and 465,000,000 people), possessed constitutional governments with the fundamental powers of legislation and taxation in the hands of the people, or their representatives: more than 80-fold growth of freedom as to population and 30-fold as to population ratios, 50fold as to countries and over 20-fold as to areas.

A hundred years ago, less than two-thousandths of the land and people of the globe were controlled by free governments, and clear of the taint of slavery-one650th of the people to be exact, and one-830th of the land, comprising the States of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts (which included Maine), with a total area of 61,000 square miles, and a population of 920,000 persons.

Now, more than half ("/20) of the people in the world, with nearly two-thirds ("/") of its land area, and almost the whole water surface of the globe are included in, or controlled by, countries having constitutional governments and laws prohibiting slavery and serfdom. The dominance of free institutions has grown 540-fold in respect to land, and 350-fold in respect to population-a gain 140 times as great as the growth of the world's population in the same period.

Now, let us sum the century in terms of light and shade. I will take two maps and shade them broadly, according to the tabulated facts referred to in the preceding chapter-two maps of the world with the light in proportion to civilization and democracy, while the heavy shadows picture the depths of barbarism and despotism. See how the light has spread since 1800! All the continents were dark a hundred years ago, with only a patch of light in America and a glimmer of the dawn in Europe. To-day three continents are in the light, with portions of two others; and even the Asiatic nations have been reached, for constitutional government is established in Japan. Another century of such glorious advance and freedom will enfold the world. Another age of such beneficent expansion, and the territory of free government will include all lands and all the nations will rest beneath the guaranties of constitutional liberty.

In medical records we find now and then a case occurs in which some tiny white spots have appeared on a negro's body and have grown larger and larger till the whole man became white. A little more than a hundred years ago, the world was black with oppression and absolute government; but one who could have followed it from some companion planet with a telescope sensitive to political changes would have seen a little spot of white, and then another and another, expanding and growing more luminous till nearly the whole civilized