titudes. In 1899 thirty-four persons made donations ranging from $100,000 to $28,000,000. The value of education as an important factor in the welfare of our country was recognized by many of these millionaires through the munificent donation of $55,500,000 to colleges, universities and academies. There could be no better testimony to the value of an education, and whether the millionaire believes that a college education pays or not he is satisfied that the institution of learning is worth supporting and helping along.

The ambition to rise in the world and to carve out a fortune in a legitimate and honest business is a worthy one; but unless we know how to share our rewards wisely with the rest of the world we can never attain to our fullest and best development. The man who inherits a fortune has also entailed upon him a responsibility as heavy and momentous as another who finds that he must struggle for his daily living. Nature never intended that any should shirk the burden of life, and he who thinks he is exempt. from life's responsibilities is a victim of vain delusions.

EDITORIAL CRUCIBLE

WHAT HAS BECOME of the prophecy about the ruin of Cuban industries and starvation of Cuban laborers? We were told that if congress did not immediately lower the duty on Cuban sugar, starvation, ruin and revolution would infest the island. The duty was not reduced, the summer has passed, and no word of ruin and starvation has arrived, nor is there any evidence that bankruptcy has increased or paupers multiplied.

Nothing more discreditable has happened in years than the effort to make it appear that the American people are cruel, heartless, and dishonorable to the point of downright hypocrisy because they refused to destroy a rising American industry. The utter fallacy of all predictions regarding Cuban calamity, made before the adjournment of congress, ought to be a sufficient answer to those who clamor for a reopening of the subject in the coming session.

SECRETARY of the Treasury Shaw has been making some investigations into the trust question. Among other things he has discovered that the United States Steel Corporation produces only 43.9 per cent. of the iron ore dug in this country, 42.9 per cent. of the pig iron, 66.3 per cent. of the steel ingots and castings, 50.1 per cent. of the rolled products, such as steel rails, structural shapes, plates, etc., and only 65.8 per cent. of the wire nails; and this proportion is less than it was a year ago. Since the steel corporation was organized, the output of these products has very much increased; so that, instead of having monopoly, it does not control half the products in its own line. There is no danger of monopoly from a corporation, however, large, which represents no more than 50 per cent. of the industry. The competition in iron and steel products is more close and more effective to-day than it ever was, because it is now a competition between giants.

MR. CLEVELAND volunteers the advice to the American people that the important reform now most needed is a reduction of the tariff. He is an expert on all prosperity diseases; a past master, in fact, in the extermination of prosperity microbes. He is specially adapted to this profession, because no amount of suffering checks the application of his remedies. The last time he was called in he killed more prosperity in three months than any other living American was able to do in as many years. The fact that throughout the country prosperity was replaced by bankruptcy, panic and soup kitchens, did not phaze him in the least. And, moreover, he is impervious to experience; he is proof against learning new ideas of unlearning old errors. The havoc and desolation of 1893 made no more impression upon his thinking than would the falling of snowflakes upon the back of a crocodile. He is ready to repeat the whole performance, without a quiver or squirm. Mr. Cleveland is clearly a case for Tom Moore's formula for patriotism: "Find out what the Tories want, and vote against it."

IT IS DOUBTFUL if there was ever a strike in which the consensus of public opinion was so thoroughly turned against the employers as in the coal strike just brought to a close. In their conduct of the controversy, from beginning to end, the coal operators have acted so uniformly upon wrong principles that the ground has gradually slipped from under their feet as the days and weeks passed by. None of their predictions have been verified. Their declarations of principle have come to naught; most of their statements of fact have been challenged, and the very thing which they declared to be absolutely impossible, namely, to arbitrate the difficulties, has proved to be the final basis of settlement. In fact, they have gradually lost the support of the entire press of the country (with perhaps the single exception of the New York Sun), and all the respectable conservative opinion. This is unfortunate because it tends to bring the management of large corporate

concerns into public disrepute. But, as there is no evil without some good, it may have a wholesome effect, if only to induce large corporations to put more sensible and larger caliber men than President Baer at the head of great business interests.

IT IS VERY Satisfying to observe that even in politics demagogy does not always pay. In trying to make political capital out of the coal strike by declaring in favor of national ownership and control of the coal mines, David B. Hill and the New York democracy overshot the mark. Their hypocrisy was too obvious to fool anybody, and instead of catching votes it is proving to be a boomerang. Everybody can see that this was a blatant bid for the vote of the laborers, and now, as if by malice aforethought, by the settlement of the strike cruel fate has deprived the dishonest scheme of every vestige of virtue.

With the strike settlement in sight, Mr. Hill's candidate for governor did not dare sustain the public-ownership plank of the platform upon which he was nominated. Such cheap dishonesty and insult to the intelligence of the workingman should and doubtless will receive its proper answer at the polls. There are many reasons why the Platt-Quigg-Gibbs influence in the republican party of New York should be voted to the rear, but such bald hypocrisy as exhibited by this public-ownership bid for popularity should take precedence of all other political offences. Its authors should be retired so effectively as to destroy their future influence in their own party.

FOR HIS HEROIC and finally successful efforts to bring about a settlement of the coal strike, President Roosevelt has earned and will receive the hearty congratulations of the entire country. Most men, for politic reasons, would have desisted in the face of such opposition as the corporations at first presented. Courage and push, when accompanied by good sense, usually win. The president has done more than settle the largest strike in history, he has

introduced, and done much to establish, the principle of arbitration. In this outcome, the flippant phrase "There is nothing to arbitrate"-has received its death-blow. Hereafter, no amount of respectability will induce the public to take that plea seriously. In this case, as in all others, the settlement has finally been reached by compromise and reasonable agreement. It might have come in the first week as easily as in the twenty-second, and the laborers. have been spared the loss of wages, the public the burden of high prices and soft coal nuisance, and the corporations the humiliation of having to accept what they solemnly declared to be impossible.

In bringing about the settlement of the coal strike by arbitration, President Roosevelt has made a lasting contribution to the peaceful methods of adjusting labor disputes.

THE COAL STRIKE revealed the fact that, after all, there is a duty on anthracite coal, although it was supposed to have been on the free list. The clause in the Dingley bill making the tariff 67 cents a ton on bituminous coal also applied to all coals containing less than 92 per cent. of fixed carbon, and really affects nearly all foreign anthracite coal.

A great ado has been made about this, as if the duty were a great burden to the consumers. The fact is that, except in a case like the present strike, a duty on anthracite coal would be absolutely without effect, as no anthracite coal would come to this country if it were on the free list. As to bituminous coal, the duty is purely a revenue duty. If the 67 cents duty were removed, it would not affect the price of coal in the least. It would simply let Nova Scotia. coal come into New England and sell at the same price as Pennsylvania bituminous coal. The American product, being indispensable, would fix the price, and Nova Scotia operators would get the advantage in profits, and the United States treasury would lose the revenue. That was tried under the Wilson bill, and the only effect was to increase the profits of the Nova Scotia mine owners and reduce the revenue for the United States. The price of coal in the