It is clear then that the franchise is valuable only as it serves as an accurate measure of the force which is behind any party or proposition. If it cannot be depended upon to do this, it will inevitably be superseded by something else. That this happens, the unhappy southern states again furnish proof. Give the negro the ballot, and the white man takes down his rifle. This is very shocking, but nothing is to be gained by blinking the brutal truth. Of course, force rules in the northern states as well as in the South; only in the South a distinct element, which could not exercise force in proportion to its numbers, was admitted to the polling booth. "The counting of noses" thus became no test of the local force behind this or that party; so force got itself counted in another way.

The conditions existing in the southern states brought out this display of force much sooner and with more determination than an equal dilution of the franchise might have accomplished elsewhere. The community was still unsettled after a vast debauch of obvious force-rule during the war; there was comparatively little business for force to upset, and very little likelihood that the forceless majority party would make a fight for it anyway; and there was the natural antipathy of the ex-slave owner against being outvoted by his late slave. Consequently, consciously superior force was less long-suffering than it might generally be; but the example serves to demonstrate what will follow the discrediting of the ballot box.

The position of the woman suffragist now becomes clear. She is crying for the moon. She is asking for what she cannot possibly get. With all the good will in the world, man cannot give her the ballot; he can only, in his chivalrous good nature, let her spoil it as a measure of force. It is not a question of intelligence, as advocates of woman suffrage contend, but of fighting power; and when we are invited to contrast the lady lecturer with the hodcarrier, we may accept the invitation with the proviso that they are to be pitted against each other in the trenches, and not in the debating society. At the present time, the ballot

box makes a workable force-meter, recording the amount of force on each side; but if we run a stream of non-force ballots through it, the record becomes unreliable. When we are told that woman suffrage obtains in certain communities without bringing in mob rule, we are only told that it has not yet arrayed the ballot box against obvious force on a question worth fighting over.

This principle of force rule comes into play very plainly in relations of conquering powers toward the conquered peoples; though a notion that government by force is barbaric and uncivilized, leads highly humane and civilized communities to cheat themselves pleasantly with pharisaical pretences at obtaining a measure of consent from the governed. But this is only a masking of the battery which will belch death if the subject peoples take too seriously the recognition of their "rights," with which their conquerors have salved their highly-organized consciences. Britain rules India, as the United States will rule the Philippines, by force; and the only difference between the Hindoo and the Filipino who does not like it, and the British. subject or American citizen at home who disapproves of the government of the day, is that the force which rules the former comes from outside his national boundaries, while that which rules the latter lives in the same street with him. The human instinct is very strongly in favor of the latter kind of force rule; probably because experience has taught us that it is far the easier to overcome by persuasion and far the gentler in dealing with us while it rules. But to call it anything else than force rule is to soothe ourselves with a sweet delusion.

The question, then, of what measure of self-rule is to be allowed the conquered people is simply one of expediency. If the conqueror recognizes for a moment any right on their part to rule themselves, he would withdraw his forces and pull down his flag. But, as a matter of fact, he is a representative of superior force; and he rules the spoils of his prowess precisely as the lion rules the jungle. But he has a finer nature than the lion-and a keener intelligence.

The lion cares little for the agonies of his victims; and he knows of no way of keeping his kingdom quiet except by fear. The British and American peoples want to see their vassal kingdoms happier and more prosperous for their rule; they cannot bear the thought of suffering inflicted upon any creature; and they have learned that self-interest will breed more loyalty than fear. So they are both kinder and shrewder than the lion; but let a hill-tribe or the denizens of a Philippine swamp endeavor to escape that kindness, and the lion will show his teeth.

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Will the world ever escape the rule of force? pleasant to say "yes," but it is harder to see how. The rule of wisdom has an attractive sound, though the discord of oligarchy may be heard through it; so that the rule of all the people, guided by wisdom, has a pleasanter cadence. And there is no reason why this should not be coincident with the rule of force. As a matter of fact, are we not approaching it now by the only sure road? In France, in the United States, in the self-governing British communities, in a growing measure in Germany, are not a majority of all the people taken to represent superior force; and would it not, in almost any conceivable instance, be practically impossible for the minority to appeal successfully to arms against this theory? That weighty class which dislikes civil war beyond most things would be solidly against any attempt to destroy the peaceful and orderly method of measuring force by "counting noses." Of course, "the rule of all the people" will be secure only when a majority of all the people, no matter how made up, will have at its command superior force. We would seem to have reached that state in Britain and her self-governing colonies, and in the United States; but are we quite sure that England and the military class would permit themselves to be out-voted on some vital question of empire by the lesser partners? And did no one hear any talk of resistance in case Mr. Bryan had been elected with a "free silver" Congress in 1896?

But this will not be the end of rule by force. It will only be the complete democratization of force. Force was

once the monopoly of the man in steel armor; then gunpowder came and the franchise was broadened to so many as could purchase guns. Governments equipped their soldiers with guns; and the French Revolution showed that the soldiers would on occasion vote against the government. The conditions of the new world required that every citizen have a gun; from which manhood suffrage followed as an inevitable corollary. France, and not a French king, made her army; so France controls it. The German emperor and his army had much to do with the making of Germany; so there is a power in Germany distinct from the German people. But in a community where every man is a soldier, or where an overwhelming majority stand ready to fight for peace, no matter how good cause the minority may have to appeal from the verdict of the ballot box, popular rule coincides with force rule; and the last possible step in the evolution of government has been taken-unless there is something better than democracy and something stronger than force.

Thus is natural law leading us to the highest altitudes of freedom and equal citizenship and assured peace, of which the doctrinaires dream. The franchise itself will become in some sense a "right" when it is co-equal with citizenship, and overwhelming force is committed beforehand to endorse the verdict of the ballot box. But it will remain a "right" only so long as we keep faith with the force which accepts its orderly arbitrament, and do not attempt to juggle with the instrument by which it consents to be measured. The day we try to outwit force by stuffing the ballot box with votes which lack its virile stamp, we need not be shocked if natural law reminds us of its existence. Yet we have built up more than one graceful system of ethics on the supposition that the rule of force was buried in one red grave with barbarism. The occasions upon which we successfully supersede natural law with a daintier substitute, made either in the library or the chapel, are about as rare as those upon which we oppose it with satisfactory results.

IS THE COAL STRIKE A CONSPIRACY?

The strike of the anthracite coal miners is one of the most extraordinary industrial suspensions that has ever occurred. There are many features of this strike that raise the question of good faith. In the first place, it is a significant fact that practically all the anthracite coal mining is in the hands of the railroads, and these railroads are in thorough unity of action. They not only act upon the same lines, but they confer and act together by agreement, which is neither more nor less than a definite association. For all practical purposes, this places the entire anthracite coal supply under the control of associated corporations acting together and enjoying exclusive franchises as common carriers.

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Of course, the digging of coal is a private enterprise, the same as the making of shirts, and it properly may be said that when it does not pay to make shirts, the manufacturer has the right to quit making them. So, likewise, when it does not pay to mine coal, the operators have a right to refuse to mine it. But that does not state the whole In the present state of society coal is a domestic and business necessity, therefore the supply of coal is a matter beyond the mere private concern of the coal operators. people are interested, financially as well as socially, in this matter, because it is vital. To cut off the supply of coal so as to paralyze business, and subject the people to individual hardship, and a large amount of privation, is equivalent to creating an industrial depression, which is a positive infliction upon the whole people. No private interest ought, nor will it long be permitted to needlessly, not to say purposely, inflict that kind of injury upon the public.

It is of course a part of the spirit of freedom and individual enterprise that the use of property shall be left to the control of those who own it. Self-interest, in the long run, is a sufficient incentive to impel the most economic use of productive property. This is the great principle which permeates the whole fiber