deducted from the rapid interchange of views which took place is, that Mr. Cleveland's message has produced a favorable impression, and that if the project he has presented does not assure the solution of the labor troubles, it embraces, at least, a sufficient surface to give satisfaction to the general need of pacification. At the moment, it would be difficult to say what will remain of the first impression when the project comes on for discussion in the House, after having passed the committee. The intervention of party politics is always to be apprehended even in ques. tions which commend themselves most imperiously to an independent judgment. It must also be remembered that Congress has quite recently adopted a bill authorizing the establishment of a special commission of arbitration for each particular case. But the measure proposed by the President is regarded as much better conceived, as broader, and presenting more guarantees, and hence it could, with advantage, be substituted for it.

Baltimore Herald (Ind.), April 24.

THE strict constructionists, of whom the great majority appear to be in the President's own party, are likely to find a number of objections to all plans for Federal interference in labor matters. Other people may question the propriety of the President stepping beyond his function as a purely executive officer to volunteer advice to Congress upon a subject which they have under consideration at the time. Still, others will be able to see in the President's message the essential elements of a piece of political clap-trap and a first-rate Democratic campaign document, which will be used to immense advantage at the Congressional elections next fall. Whether Mr. Cleveland and his party advisers so designed it or not, there is no doubt that his message, if dexterously utilized, might be used to turn the scale in many doubtful districts, where the majority are liable to go with the party that can show the most sympathetic record on the labor question. Be that as it is, the message is fair and temperate in tone, and on its face it does not bear the impress of having been written with any other motive than that of securing legislation that will in the future diminish the chances of those widely-spread strikes that have so often in the past seriously interrupted the business of the country. As such it deserve the careful attention of Congress, and the President is to be commended for having written it.

Omaha Bee (Ind.), April 24.

THE message of President Cleveland upon the existing labor trouble is chiefly interesting as an evidence of the national importance attained by the present disturbance in the relations of capital and labor. Voluntary arbitration sounds well, but the only arbitration which will prove effective in the adjustment of great disputes, such as those which are now seriously injuring the country, is an arbitrament which will carry the means of enforcing its decisions with it. The objection that constitutional restrictions stand in the way of such a method of settlement can be removed. If the Government has no right to deal with such questions now it should be given the right. Sixty millions of people will take the view that if there is no constitutional remedy for the disastrous complications which railroad management and railroad strikes have developed, some remedy must be provided. Voluntary arbitration may do for questions of local importance, but where the whole internal commerce of the land is affected and every day of disturbance means hundreds of thousands of dollars of loss to the nation, a more effective means must be sought.

National Republican (Rep.), April 24.

MR. PRESIDENT: Your recent message to Congress on the labor problem is wise and excellent, but long delayed and incomplete. The organized white labor of the country come to Congress with the power of the ballot in their hands; a power that can legally revolutionize the personnel and the policy of government. Such a power will not long remain unheeded in a republican form of government. Organized capital may complain of strikes of organized labor, yet organized capital strikes every hour in the day for all they can obtain for the security of capital and its use; the two parties, organizing themselves for power and for gain, naturally come in conflict—a natural result for self-preservation and for greed. When the issue comes, it must be adjusted under the provisions of wise laws. The plan of arbitration is older than written law, and it therefore appears to be a just mode of solution of disputes between the two organizations, organized labor and organized capital.

New York World (Dem.), April 24

WE DOUBT the expediency of the plan proposed by the President for various reasons. The very essence of arbitration is the confidence each party feels that its side of the case will be properly represented and fairly protected. Would this confidence be felt in a Government commission? Have Federal officials heretofore been distinguished for capacity and impartiality? Could a Government commissioner arbitrate half a dozen labor troubles at the same time, each distinct from the other and each requiring a speedy settlement? What sort of arbitrators would these Federal commissioners make in local troubles? What peculiar knowledge or capacity would their Federal appointment give them superior to that enjoyed by arbitrators chosen by each side to a controversy because of their especial familiarity with the interests involved?

Boston Advertiser (Ind.), April 24.

If the Executivé desired to exert a useful influence upon the action of Congress, the time to give advice was before any action had been taken. But a bill authorizing and sanctioning a system of arbitration was passed by the House of Representatives sometime ago, almost without opposition. It is unlikely to be reconsidered and remodelled because the President has tardily waked up to the fact that the industrial conditions are in a state of agitation, and has thought proper to make an exhibition of anxious concern for the workingman's welfare.

Brooklyn Eagle (Dem.), April 24.

MR. CLEVELAND'S message on the labor question bothers the politicians on the other side. If he had said nothing, they would have charged him with being in sympathy with the grinding monopolists. Now that he has said something, pro

posing voluntary arbitration, under Federal auspices, as a solution of industrial troubles, they accuse him of trying to commend himself to the working people with plausible propositions. The only way Mr. Cleveland could please his Republican critics would be to lie down and die. The criticism which damns him if he does and damns him if he does not is accounted for by the close relations between puerility and journalism. Mr. Cleveland's propositions will have to be met for what is in them of right or wrong.

Cleveland Plain-Dealer (Dem.), April 24.

THE President's suggestion of a national commission to arbitrate disputes between employés and employers is good as far as goes. Undoubtedly something may be accomplished by arbitration, and if the principle of arbitration shall once come to be generally recognized one very important point in the settlement of the whole controversy will have been attained. But the remedy proposed will not reach the real difficulty. The arbitration proposed must be voluntary, since there is no power vested in Congress or any State Legislature to set up a board of arbitration clothed with absolute authority to compel parties to agree in a dispute where one or the other will not submit to arbitration. What is to be done in these cases is the real problem.

Charleston News and Courier (Dem.), April 24.

THERE is nothing objectionable in the President's plan and it contains much to commend it. The workingmen have asked for nothing more than a court where their complaints shall be patiently and fairly heard, and the corporations cannot refuse to submit their claims to an impartial tribunal whose decisions, besides commanding respect and obedience from the parties interested, would be accepted as satisfactory and final by the whole country, and would be enforced, if necessary, by public sentiment.

Washington Post (Dem.), April 24.

THE President appears to concede that the usefulness of a Commission might be doubted, because of a lack of power to enforce its decisions. In our judgment, if such power were given a Commission by statute, there would not be usefulness enough connected with it to hang a doubt on. The first requisite of an arbitration is a voluntary submission by two or more parties of matters in controversy between them. Compulsory arbitration is an absurdity.

Memphis Appeal (Dem.), April 24.

MR. CLEVELAND has performed a genuine public service in sending his able and well-timed message to Congress. The whole tone of his paper is in sympathy with the laboring classes. Indeed, his message is an eloquent plea for them. At the same time he sets his face firmly against the lawless mob which seeks to accomplish its purpose by the destruction of other people's property.

Minneapolis Evening Journal (Ind.), April 24.

THE Journal has frequently expressed itself as heartily in favor of the proposed national arbitration scheme, and it trusts that the message of the President will have the effect to spur Congress to immediate action. That body has a grave duty to perform in the present emergency, and it should discharge it speedily, and without a vestige of partizanship in its deliberations.

Atlanta Constitution (Dem.), April 24.

THE President takes precisely the same view of the matter that the Globe did in the beginning, that the time had come when an arbitration court was necessary to protect the business interests of the country. If Congress is wise and has the public welfare at heart, it will promptly act upon the suggestion_made by the President.

Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette (Ind.), April 24.

THERE is ample occasion for President Cleveland's message to Congress, and, as a whole, its tone and matter will meet with popular approval. The strength with which he sets forth the claims of labor will be acceptable to trades unions, and his condemnation of the spirit of lawlessness will be satisfactory to the public at large.

New York Sunday News (Ind.), April 25.

IT MAY be that President Cleveland's proposition presents but little promise of a remedy for the existing trouble, but there is much gained in the fact that the nation's Chief Magistrate has given his attention in such form to the necessity for remedial intervention on the part of the Government in one shape or another. It may be that the bills already presented in Congress and in State Legislatures to inaugurate a system of official arbitration may make no adequate provision for the attainment of the desired end, but legislative action to that purpose is indubitably a step in the right direction. It may be that the influence of public opinion may be ineffective for a while against the arrogance of corporations long accustomed to dictate terms, and that the voice of the public press, which is generally favorable to the rights of labor, may have no immediately absolute effect upon the situation. But all those things together show that the spirit of our republicanism is asserting itself at this time with remarkable energy for the equitable adjustment of the relations between capital and labor, and the concentration of national ideas, principles, and movements to that purpose must ultimately, and within a reasonable measurement of time, prevail.

Troy Press (Ind.), April 26.

SENATOR BECK, of Kentucky, has made a very excellent suggestion. He is delighted with the President's message on the labor question and heartily approves

of the establishment of an arbitration commission. He suggests Allen G. Thurman, Joseph E. Mc Donald, and Roscoe Conkling as such commission, with a salary of $10,000 each per year. A commission formed of such men would satisfy everybody, and a decision made by them would stand. It would have the force and arms of the country to back it, and the party that should refuse to submit to the decree of this court would be in rebellion against the authority of the United States, and rebellion is a very serious business.

New York Sun (Dem.), April 26.

THE several States have ability and wisdom enough to protect themselves against domestic violence so far as this can be done by providing for arbitration or other methods of conciliation in labor disputes, the consequences of which are confined to their own territory. They do not need the assistance of the Federal power in this respect Even the offer of such assistance is a step in the direction of centralization, opposed to all the best traditions of Democracy, and we are surprised that the President did not perceive this plain fact in writing a message so clearly prompted by praiseworthy motives.

Philadelphia Record (Ind.), April 26.

PERHAPS the best thing for Congress to do in legislating for the benefit of the laboring man is to undo what it has already wrongfully done. Instead of following the advice of the President to establish a Federal Bureau of Arbitration to settle matters which fall within the province either of private persons or of the State governments, it would be well to consider "the alleged discrimination in favor of capital" to which he calls the attention of Congress, and to take measures to put an end to it.

Representative Butterworth, of Ohio, October 23.

Now, what I desire in this country, feeling interested as a toiler among my fellow-men, is that our children shall have a fair chance in the battle of life under equal and impartial laws; what I desire, Mr. Speaker, is that this House shall, at the earliest practicable day, give intelligent consideration to the great question to which attention is called in the message before us, instead of referring it to a committee which, without investigation, so far as appears, indicated its appreciation of the subject to an extent which enabled it in four hours to draft a bill, and in ten minutes to formulate a report on a question which had engaged the attention of the leading thinkers and workers of the world for more than a century; a bill which at most recognized that the struggling millions of our people had the right to arbitrate differences, a right as old as the Pandects and code of Justinian, which was formulated that far back, and, having hinted at that right, the bill then proceeded to render it expedient to resort to it; and finally it was provided that if the parties did arbitrate it should not amount to anything. This House, in the midst of threatened labor struggles in this country, growing out of alleged invasion of the just claims of the wage-workers, will have to study coolly the situation out of which grow the grievances we are called upon to redress. I had hoped, sir, by referring the President's message to this House sitting in Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, that we would secure that full, free, and fair discussion and consideration of the subject-matter of the message as its importance deserves, and that from such deliberation there might be evolved legislative action adequate to the needs of the hour, and not simply material deemed essential to meet the exigencies of the approaching campaign.

Representative Springer, of Illinois, October 23.

I MADE the motion to commit this message of the President to the Committee on Labor for the reason that that committee was created for the express purpose of considering propositions of this kind. I made the motion to commit with instructions because I desire to respond promptly to the recommendations of the President of the United States contained in the message which is under consideration. This is the first instance, I believe, in the history of our country in which the President of the United States has made the rights and welfare of workingmen the subject of a special message to Congress. He has grasped the whole problem of labor, and asked the representatives of the people to meet, by appropriate legislation, immediately and thoughtfully, the problem which recent events and the present condition of the country have thrust upon us. Will Congress respond in the spirit which has actuated the President in calling attention to this important subject? That is the question which is involved in my motion. An ordinary reference of the message to the Committee on Labor would not enable the committee to secure a consideration of its report during this session, owing to the crowded condition of our calendars; a reference to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union would consign it to the tomb of dead legislative measures; but by referring, as my motion proposes, with instructions to report thereon by bill, or otherwise, on or before the 15th of May next, the bill or measure reported will be before the House for final consideration and adoption. I desire to meet this wise and thoughtful message of the Executive in the proper spirit, and for the purpose of having it considered with the view of reporting legislation I have made the motion now pending before the House.

MR. GARLAND AND THE TELEPHONE STOCKS.
The Washington Post (Dem.).

THE country has needed no assurance that there was nothing corrupt in the relations of Mr. Garland to the Pan-Electric Company. It has never, for a moment, believed that there was. So far as there can be a justification where nothing tangible has been charged, and where the whole case rests on impalpable and uncred ited innuendo, the investigation which was ordered has proved an absolute vindication. Such flimsy tissue of insinuation as has been made is wholly of newspaper origin. Even these have never dared to charge a single fact of active corruption. The utmost they have ventured on is a suggestion of the possibilities of an intention in the passive state. But that has apparently been sufficient to move the House of Representatives to undertake an investigation, There probably never

was an investigation ordered upon so slight a foundation. Not an allegation was made that had responsible backing. The only approach to form and body in the matter was in the anonymous statement of three newspapers which, disagreeing in regard to all else, became suddenly and suspiciously unanimous in regard to this. Yet on such unsupportable statements the House ordered a committee to investigate, and, as if under some potent influence, the investigation has assumed the appearance and manner of a prosecution. It is hardly to be wondered at that in this strange direction of things some observant persons should imagine they detect the presence of a cunning hand, a selfish purpose and a sinister motive. Very generally the impression prevails that the telephone monopoly has adopted a prac tical method of inspiring whatever has been done. And if this opinion should be found to be well grounded, it may be regarded as monumental evidence of the power which can be exerted by a desperate monopoly clutching with tenacious grip its endangered privilege, that it not only won over an influential section of the press, but that it induced the National Legislature, consciously or unconsciously, to play a part in its game. As there was nothing to establish, the investigation has established nothing. Mr. Garland's testimony has finally cleared away from every honest mind any shade of doubt, mistrust or misapprehension which could possibly exist.

Burlington Hawkeye (Rep.).

MR. GARLAND Conveyed the impression that nothing unusual had occurred, and that his explanations ought to clear up all the rumors and doubts of his action. But he did not exactly tell how he came by his telephone stock. He did not purchase it and it was not given to him. He secured it by means that could not exactly be described. On the whole, public sentiment will not say that he is convicted of any crime, but it will certainly adjudge him guilty of exceedingly blind moral perceptions, and there will be a very general desire and demand for him to go as soon as the President can get through with the necessary preliminaries. He certainly is not an ornament to the Cabinet nor to his party. His influence is bad and his presence in the Cabinet does not cast good reflections upon the other members. He ought to have left it long ago.

New York Sun (Dem.), April 24.

Ir really makes little difference what tint of kalsomine is spread by the report of the investigating committee over Mr. Garland's part in the Pan-Electric scandal. The search for the bottom facts has not been very thorough, but enough has been disclosed to justify every criticism that has been made upon the impropriety of his continued presence in the Cabinet of a Democratic administration. On Mr. Garland's own testimony, he occupies a position which would be humiliating in the extreme to a statesman with a nice sense of personal honor. If these facts had been uncovered fourteen months ago, Mr. Cleveland would not have ventured to invite Mr. Garland to a seat in his Cabinet. No President would dream of nominating Mr. Garland for Attorney-General in the light of present knowledge as to his views of official duty. No Senate in its senses would think of confirming him as Attorney-General, or of consenting to his elevation to the bench of the Supreme Court. Having obtained this sort of a vindication, Mr. Garland, we suppose, will now disembarrass the administration by resigning.

Boston Advertiser (Ind.).

EVEN if the Attorney-General is acquitted of personal responsibility for the ordering of the suit, the grave fact remains that he had got himself into such a plight that he was obliged to appear before a committee of Congress to exculpate himself from the serious charge which the circumstances formulated against him in the judgment of the people. Several of the most prominent organs of his party have recognized the indiscretion involved in the undisputed facts of this business. Mr. Garland keeps his grip on the stock, and holds his chance for a fortune for whatever it may be worth. In this game the United States has taken his cards, and is putting up the money to enable him to win. This is less risky to his fortunes than the games he flippantly says that he has formerly played, and he does not seem to have taken account of the effect on his reputation. It is now too late. The time when Mr. Garland might have abandoned with honor either his interest in the Pan-Electric Company or his place in the Cabinet has gone by. The affair is a blot upon the administration, and upon the fame of Mr. Garland, no matter what may be the issue of the litigation.

Boston Post (Dem.).

NONE of the developments of this celebrated case, up to date, have compromised in the slightest the integrity of the Attorney-General. His association with the company, considering his official position, was unfortunate, but the assaults that have been made upon him have had their inspiration largely among the schemers of the concern because Mr. Garland would not use that association to do their work and advance their interests. They counted upon his self-interest to bend him to the wishes of the corruptionists, but they counted upon it in vain, and became furiously malignant in consequence. These men are the right and left bowers of the promoters of party onslaughts, who hailed a scent of scandal with ghoulish delight as a political godsend. But their attacks were so tightly keyed that they finally fell in pieces from the overstrain, and they pass with but little authority and interest even in the ranks of the Republicans. Mr. Garland's testimony was certainly di rect, straightforward and candid. It stated nothing that challenges facts already made public, yet the New York Tribune borrows the arts of a Buzfuz in trying this Pickwickian case, and characterizes the Attorney-General's statements as a cunning game of bluff. It is the duty of public men to hold themselves above suspicion. Conscious of his own upright intentions, Mr. Garland did not pay sufficient attention to the construction that the eager partisan prospectors for scandal in administration circles would put upon relations, innocent enough in themselves, but giving an opportunity to the voice of detraction and slander to pitch itself in a very high key. But when this suspicion was published it was the duty of the AttorneyGeneral to run it down and show its baselessness, which, from present indications, he will have no trouble in accomplishing. Had Mr. Garland's enemies been a little

more diplomatic they would have proceeded with less violence and more prudence; but the public has certainly lost confidence in their representations, for the revelations that it seems possible for them to make bear no comparison with the advertisement.

Harper's Weekly (Ind.).

THE Attorney-General's testimony does not seem to us to explain his action satisfactorily. The charge against him is a disregard of the proprieties of his official position, which necessarily impairs public confidence. It is unfortunate that the Attorney-General of the United States in such a position should have chosen to give his testimony before a committee of Congress in a tone which showed his singular unconsciousness of the gravity of the situation. His remarks that he had made little money at poker, and that he wished that the efforts of "the impecunious gentlemen" had panned out better, were very far from facetious, and tended only to confirm the conviction that a public man of such extraordinary want of perception is wholly out of place in the Cabinet.

New York Tribune (Rep.).

A FEW days ago the Boston Herald indulged in the remarkable assertion that "Mr. Cleveland makes exactly the kind of President that all honest men who believed him to be likewise honest ought to have expected he would." The Tribune, in order to lay bare the folly of such an assertion, inquired if the Herald believed that Mr. Cleveland was treating the Garland case exactly as the honest men who had faith in him ought to have expected he would treat it. Whereupon the Herald replies: "We do not understand that the President has anything to do with the Garland case." Truly an edifying answer. Mr. Garland is Attorney-General of the United States by the grace of President Cleveland, and yet the Herald does not understand that the President has anything to do with the Garland case-the Garland case being confessedly one of the greatest scandals in the history of the Government. The Herald evidently has his own ideas (patented) of the scope of the Presidential function. We are afraid, however, that the majority of the honest men to whom it so confidently referred will emphatically dissent from its view. It will strike them that the President has a good deal to do with the Garland case. The retention of Garland in the Cabinet is rightfully construed by the people as an indorsement-or at all events as a condonation-from the White House of the use to which the Department of Justice has been put by the PanElectric ring. How can it be otherwise? The public sentiment of the country long ago decided that Garland must go. But Garland does not go, simply because Cleveland retains him in office. There is only one theory on which the Herald's It must be that it believes queer position in this matter is to be accounted for. Mr. Cleveland has no influence with this administration. Of course if the President labors under such an embarrassment, then, as likely as not, he has nothing to do with the Garland case, because Garland will not suffer him to have anything to do with it.

JEFFERSON DAVIS AT MONTGOMERY.

New York Times (Ind.), April 28.

This mag

JEFFERSON DAVIS will serve a patriotic purpose by his appearance to-day at He will do this, it is needless to say, in Montgomery and on Saturday at Atlanta. spite of himself. It is not clear, probably, even to his own mind what he would like to achieve by dwelling upon the misfortunes of the Confederacy that collapsed twenty years ago. A Democratic Administration is in power at Washington. The Senators and Representatives of the Southern States at the National Capital are for the most part men who served under him in the Confederacy, and who have made no recantation. They are living examples, as indeed, and even more conspicuously is the orator himself, of the magnanimity of the American people. That magnanimity has never been equaled or approached in the history of any other nation. The annals of no other nation contain the story of a great rebellion, or, if Mr. Davis likes it better, of a great civil war, after the close of which in the field no person suffered punishment for the share he had taken in it unless he had gone beyond the bounds of what would have been lawful or tolerable in a foreign war. nanimity has not been without its reward. There is not a single Southerner who would renew the conflict if he could. There is scarcely a Southerner who does not recognize that it is better for the South that the Union was restored. Jefferson Davis himself is the one conspicuous exception to this rule since the death of Robert Toombs. Davis would vehemently protest, that the South is worse off than if it had succeeded in founding a nation of masters and slaves, the business of which was to grow cotton. Yet even he will find it difficult to suggest what the Southerners could now do better than to play their parts faithfully as American citizens and to assist in developing the resources of a reunited country. In fact, he will probably say nothing at all pertinent to any issue in which his hearers can take a real interest. It is natural enough that he should magnify the importance of a revolt in which he himself bore a part so conspicuous that his only chance of being remembered is to be remembered by it. For twenty years he alone has been looking backward while all about him have been looking forward. The attempt to establish a Southern Confederacy is to him the most important event in the history of mankind. To the majority of his hearers it will be known only by tradition, and even those who know it by recollection must now recognize that it was the terrible but indispensable process by which the element that could not be assimilated with national progress and national civilization was cast out of the nation. The people of Alabama and Georgia are proud, and have a right to be proud, of the valor which was displayed in their efforts to perpetuate the incongruous element and to give it the ascendency. But it will seem as queer and remote to them as to the people in the North to hear an orator who buried all his interest in human affairs in the grave of the Confederacy advising them to bury their own there also, and speaking with a passionate and present interest

"Of old unhappy far-off things

And battles long ago."

No doubt the orator will again maintain his thesis that the cause of the Confed

eracy was "right," but the thesis will not be so much repugnant as simply unmeaning to his hearers. It is as if some Tory of a century ago were to arise and to repeat with emotions the arguments by which the supporters of Lord North justified the stamp tax. An argument that the States had a "right" to secede, and that slaveholders had a " right" to carry their slaves in the Territories, is entitled to the same consideration as an argument that the right to tax colonists was a necessary incident of the sovereignty of Parliament. To sustain such a proposition, in this year 1886, twenty years after it has all been settled by the last arbitrament, by citing opinions of early statesmen and producing analogies from the Constitution, is a performance which must be seen in Alabama and Georgia as clearly as it would be seen in Massachusetts and New Jersey to be merely a melancholy exhibition of senile pedantry. By making this painfully clear the President of the Confederacy will do the only service he has it now in his power to render his country.

Philadelphia Press (Rep.), April 28.

TUESDAY Jefferson Davis arrived in Montgomery, Ala., and was received with a salute of one hundred guns and a grand display of fireworks. To-day he will make a public address in one of the public parks of the city, and on Thursday he will lay the corner-stone of the Alabama Confederate monument on Capitol Hill. He will then visit Atlanta, and, after reviewing a procession, the main feature of which is to be 5,000 ex-Confederate soldiers, he will unveil a statue erected to the memory of the late Senator Benjamin H. Hill. Before returning home Mr. Davis is expected also to appear in Mobile, and aid by his presence and endorsement the project to raise a memorial to the late Raphael Semmes, of Alabama fame. Mr. Davis' journey will, therefore, be one of the most notable he has made since he retired to his plantation at Beauvoir, and as he is now nearly 78 years old and in feeble health, it will probably be his last effort to aid in keeping alive Confederate memories. He will stand where he stood twenty-five years ago and took the oath as President of the Southern Confederacy, and pledged himself to uphold a constitution, the corner stone of which was human slavery. It would need a man with an intellect much less keen than that which the ex-leader of the Southern oligarchy undoubtedly possesses not to be stirred by the thronging recollections and by the changes brought about by a quarter of a century. The cheers to greet him may be vociferous, and his figure as he poses as a martyr may be impressive, but he knows in his inmost soul that his life has been a wretched failure, and that the principles for which he plotted and deluged the land in blood are dead beyond resurrection. Some of the Southern Democratic papers have endeavored to make it appear that the North was in a state of trepidation over this new attempt to apotheosize Mr. Davis, and they have worked themselves into an unnecessary heat to demonstrate their purpose to "have him," as they say, whether it was objectionable or not. If it will add one iota to the pleasure of the people among whom Mr. Davis will show himself this week, they can know that the North views with a quiet indifference this journey of the ex-president of a defunct conspiracy. It can even smile when it reads such remarks as this from the Charleston News and Courier, that, "counting Hayes and Jefferson Davis, there are only three ex-Presidents now living." The North has as little fear or thought of Jefferson Davis today as the country had of Aaron Burr when it was pitifully allowing him to earn a precarious living by the practice of his profession. If there is any emotion excited in this section by this momentary appearance on the surface of events of a disappointed old man trembling on the brink of the grave, it is not of anger, but of sorrow that a life endowed with so many possibilities for good should have been worse than wasted by its possessor.

N. Y. World (Dem.), April 28.

A LITTLE more than a quarter of a century ago, on February 18th, 1861, Jefferson Davis, then elected President of the Southern Confederacy, delivered his Inaugural Address from the steps of the old State House at Montgomery, Ala. "I enter upon the duties of the office to which I have been chosen," he then said, "with the hope that the beginning of our career as a Confederacy may not be obstructed by hostile opposition to our enjoyment of the separate existence and independence we have asserted, and which, with the blessing of Providence, we intend to maintain." To-day, standing on the same spot, Jefferson Davis will deliver a funeral oration over the, dead Confederacy. It was doomed to an early grave, despite the hopeful auguries at its birth. But it was a well-nurtured child, and its venerable parent may be allowed to indulge in reminiscences of its beauty and its graces without being roughly told by partizan newspapers that his darling was hideous and misshapen. Jefferson Davis is an old man. He has passed the allotted "three-score years and ten." It did not seem by any means certain a little When crowds more than twenty years ago that his life would stretch out so far.

in the streets of Northern cities went about singing "We'll hang Jeff. Davis on a sour apple tree," the words bore a deeper significance than as the burden of a musical refrain. There was a sentiment at the North, by no means to be slighted, which protested against the idea of exacting no penalty for the war of the rebellion, and which insisted that the head of the Confederacy was the person from whom payment ought in justice to be exacted. Yet here is the rebel ex-President, on the very threshold of octogenarianism, tolling the knell of his still idolized Confederacy after it has been in the tomb for more than twenty years. He has out-lived Lincoln, the faithful head of the Union Government, Stanton, the iron Secretary of War who had no mercy for the rebellion; Grant, the victorious leader of the Union armies; Seward, whose "higher law" doctrine would have justified the South in interpreting the Constitution by the light of individual con. science; Wendell Phillips and Garrison, who long before the war preached against a Union which justified slavery; Hancock and McClelland, who struck stout blows for the National cause, and Horace Greeley, who hated slavery and became Jeff. Davis's bondsman. He has seen his friends as well as his opponents pass away. General Lee has gone to the grave. Stonewall Jackson, Alexander Stephens, Robert Toombs, Judah P. Benjamin are in the spirit-land. Yet the old man lives on and hugs to his breast the belief that the cause whose sepulchre he finally closes to-day was one of the loftiest and holiest for which men ever struggled, and one for which it was heroism and sanctification to die.

CAPITAL AND LABOR.

BOYCOTTING.

The Courrier des Etats-Unis (New York), April 21.

[Translated expressly for PUBLIC OPINION.]

THE Conflict existing between the association of the Knights of Labor, represented by Mr. Powderly, and the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company, represented by Mr. Jay Gould, has just entered upon a critical phase. Matters have reached a point on both sides where ideas of justice are obliterated. Each of the two parties is intent upon maintaining, before every other consideration, its own position; and the public peace is imperiled by impudent threats, which, at any moment, may lead to acts of violence. The two letters published yesterday in our columns, one from Mr. Powderly, the other from Mr. Gould, present the two opposing sides in a situation which from hour to hour is becoming more envenomed, and which at its present stage appears incapable of solution. It cannot be controverted that the position of the Knights of Labor has been singularly weakened; such is the general sentiment manifest in the comments of the Press, even the most kindly disposed towards them. It is only after several weeks' continuance of the strike, entailing a suspension of the company's traffic, that they have presented complaints of anything like a defined character. This is assuredly a weak point, which, while not invalidating the legitimate claims of the strikers, gives to the company a right to complain, on its part, of the engineers, which it has sustained, at a time too when it would have been possible to avert them by an effort to arrive at a preliminary understanding. Other points are equally questionable, and it would not be difficult to make them manifest any more than it would be to show how Mr. Gould, under an appearance of conciliation, which easily deceived the confidence of the Central Committee, has withdrawn one by one his concessions, in order to gain time and organize resistance. But it is not our purpose to retrace the course of events, or to take sides in the controversy which has arisen. We wish merely to demonstrate the dangers of the situation at the point to which it has arrived. These dangers have already been sufficiently accentuated by the numerous acts of intimidation that have marked the period of the strike to the overt acts of violence, culminating in the conflagrations and the butcheries of East St. Louis and of Fort Worth. These disorders took place at a moment when the attitude of the Knights of Labor had been pacific and conciliatory. To-day affairs wear quite a different aspect. There is but one way of viewing the correspondence interchanged between Mr. Powderly and Mr. Gould; it is, on the one side, an ultimatum; a categorical resistance on the other. A legal warfare, it is true: Mr. Gould had threatened the Knights of Labor with the judicial tribunals, Mr. Powderly has responded, defying Mr. Gould to fire the first shot, and menacing him personally, not in his security, but in his past-in the sources of his fortune, his responsibilities for the miseries accumulated by his acts and his influence. These threats and recriminations are so many firebrands, of a nature to inflame the passions just as a rocket thrown into a powder magazine. Who would dare to say that the best intentions in the world could acquire the mastery over a fire once lighted? But it is not alone the violence and unruleness of the strikers, as leading to dangerous excesses, which is to be dreaded. The wild fusilade of East St. Louis proves that the danger is alike to both sides, and that the authorities have no more power over their instruments than has Mr. Powderly himself. Rash, indeed, would be the man to predict from which side the spark will come that may light the conflagration, or where, once lighted, it could be arrested. It is only, we repeat, that by an extreme prudence and an extreme moderation it can be averted; and that the country has a right to exact; and to exact further, that the strongest exertions should be made on both sides to put an immediate end to a crisis which is pregnant with such untold calamity and ruin.

From Der Deutsche Correspondent, Baltimore, April 22.
[Translated expressly for PUBLIC OPINION.]

THE "boycott" is a potent and dangerous weapon in the hands of the organized workingmen, but even the keenest weapon becomes blunted when one makes too frequent use of it or employs it upon improper occasions. Powderly, several weeks ago, protested against its misuse, for in the same manner as it is a misuse of the cannon when one discharges them against sparrows is it a misuse of the "boycott" whenever the workingmen resort to it in order to correct or avenge a real or sup posed grievance. In social warfare the "boycott" is the same thing that the blockade is in a war between nations. In respect to the latter it is a principle of public law that it must be efficient-that is to say, no mere paper blockade, because such is not recognized. In like manner, a "boycott" must be effective, and, above all, guard itself against the curse of ridicule, which is fatal, as is well known, in this as other things. The comic papers have already held up to the ridicule and amusement of the public the absurdities of the system; but this is not the worst. In several States-for instance, New York and Ohio-laws have already been proposed against it, and many persons, by unjustifiable acts, have influenced the public judgment against its use. The workingmen, therefore, should be carefully on their guard. Strong as are their organizations, public opinion is yet stronger, and the latter will not suffer itself to be challenged with impunity.

The Nation, April 22.

JUSTICE DUFFY, who has been fining Mrs. Gray's boycotters, and at the same time giving them good advice, has besides his courage one excellent qualification for dealing with this class of cases, and that is a strong sense of humor. He sees the absurd or comic side of it. His observation that not the boycotters only, but all of us, himself included, want our wages raised, goes to the root of the matter. There is no desire so prevalent among men of all trades and callings as the desire for more pay. The readiness to strike for it, if striking will produce the desired effect, is very widespread. There is no calling in which striking for a raise of wages is not common, except the clerical calling. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, editors, engineers, as well as mechanics and laborers, strike whenever they feel con

fident that striking will increase their income-that is, they insist on working for those who will pay them best, and for no one else. But they do not follow the man who refuses to give them their price, around the streets, with libelling placards on their backs, or hang around his door trying to frighten away the butcher and grocer, or take the nuts off his wagon, or poison his dog. It is not striking that is shameful, but these savage and silly attacks on property and peace.

The Christian at Work, April 22.

THE boycott was originally instituted as a legal method of intimidation. However its spirit may be deprecated, and however foreign that spirit may be to the teachings of Christ, there can be no denial of the right of a man or any set of men to withhold their patronage at pleasure from those against whom they have a grievance, fancied or real; but when the boycotter passes this limit, and seeks by means of intimidation to prevent others from exercising the free bestowal of their patronage, or when he seeks to crush out a boycotted establishment by means of offensive placards and handbills distributed in the vicinity, thus making it unpleasant for many, and impossible for some to enter the boycotted house, then it is about time to cry a halt; then the law may properly assert itself: it may justly protect the public and guarantee the boycotted his just rights. Such a phase of boycotting involves nothing less than a conspiracy against private rights, and makes the offender liable to conviction of misdemeanor, and therefore incurring the penalty of fine and imprisonment.

Boston Traveller (Rep.), April 22.

THE utter failure of the attempt to boycott Mrs. Gray, the New York baker, the demonstration against her business only resulting in increasing it, is an illustration of how quickly the American people, especially those whom Abraham Lincoln was accustomed to call the plain people, resent anything which looks like an act of tyranny or an infringement upon their personal liberty. The change which has taken place in public sentiment regarding the Knights of Labor during the past month is also another notable illustration of the same fact. So long as that organization sought only legitimate ends, or to enforce its demands of capitalists without at the same time attempting to tyrannize others, the sympathies of the public were with it, and it had behind it a powerful backing in the support given by public sentiment.

Denver News (Rep.), April 22.

THE boycott is an unlawful conspiracy to destroy those who refuse to be coerced into the surrender of their legal rights, and it invites an equally unlawful combination on the part of its present and prospective victims to coerce or to crush the boycotters. It is time to get back to first principles in these matters. It is time that the majesty of the law should be recognized and vindicated. The public welfare should not be made the football of conflicting conspiracies formed for selfish ends, and carried on in open defiance of the letter and spirit of our Constitution and laws. The right of free competition should be respected and enforced in all things as it is in most things in this country.

Indianapolis Journal (Rep.), April 22.

Ir is about time the Masons should essay to boycott all who presume to join other secret orders, or who fail to join any. No man has a right to do as he pleases, and the Masons should not be slow to enforce their rights in this matter. The various religious denominations might do a little in this direction, too. The Presbyterians might assert that no man has the right to be a Baptist, and the Methodists might set up the rule that no man shall be allowed to cast his lot with the Lutherans. If any man should presume to question this modern inquisition, the boycott could be ordered against him, and thus the right could be speedily vindicated.

Chicago Journal (Rep.), April 22.

BOYCOTTS, lockouts, demands of labor organizations, and the eight-hour movement have checked and interrupted the prospective waves of prosperity in every direction. Every form of business and industrial enterprise has been attacked or threatened. A mere railroad strike would not have produced a profound effect. A mere strike of mechanics employed in building would not have been felt everywhere. A mere strike of mill operatives would have caused a standstill at but one remote extremity of business, but when all combine to stop the wheels of labor the paralysis must, of course, become general.

Pittsburgh Commercial-Gazette (Ind.), April 22.

If the principles which underly the boycott are to rule in settling disputes between employers and employed, then the Bill of Rights has no place in American Constitutions, and we may as well prepare for the despotism of the mob. It is time for preachers and teachers of all classes to set their faces against the boycott, and to denounce that and every other means which may be employed to break down the barriers which protect the citizen in his sacred rights of person and property.

The Savannah News (Dem.), April 22.

INDEED, the boycott and strike are a worse form of tyranny than are any of the means employed by capital to accomplish it ends, because capital does not attempt by violence and lawlessness to rob labor of its freedom. When labor uses the boycott and strike, however, it aims not only to control itself, but to control capital by coercion, if not by actual force. If the boycott is carried out to its legitimate conclusions, it will bring the business and industries of the country to a standstill. New York Mail and Express (Ind.), April 22.

AGAINST the boycott as an institution employed to enforce the will of groups of discontented persons upon all who differ from them, there is apparently to be a moral revolt all along the line, and the people generally take up the fight with proper spirit.

Chicago Inter-Ocean (Rep.), April 22.

No fact is plainer than the growing impatience of the people at large over the chicanery and the heartless trickery by which business is disturbed and the good

order of society menaced, and the inevitable result will be that the people, losing patience, will lose sympathy with those engaged in strikes and insist on measures that will protect them against this constant tampering with individual and public rights.

The Philadelphia Times (Ind.), April 22.

Ir even the slightest penalty provided by the statute should be inflicted upon any or all of the indicted boycotters, the boycott will be likely to take itself to some other land where the law is not quite so explicit in its declarations.

The Chicago Journal (Rep.), April 22.

THE boycott is a foreigner and has never been lawfully naturalized. It has no rights under a government of peace, law, and human liberty, which demands allegiance everywhere within its jurisdiction.

New York Commercial Advertiser (Ind.), April 22.

IN the direction of boycotting the strikers are very palpably overdoing it. Boycotting can only succeed where a strong public sentiment already exists that only waits some one to formulate and direct it.

The Norristown Herald (Ind.), April 22.

"THE Boycott Does Not Work" is the head of an article in an exchange. And this, by the way, is what is the matter with the boycotter. He neither works nor wants anybody else to work.

Chicago Inter-Ocean (Rep.), April 23.

AT a gathering of Presbyterian ministers at Pittsburgh on Wednesday strong resolutions against boycotting were adopted. In the course of the discussion it appeared that the severe condemnation of boycotters touched some of the ministers themselves who had advised the boycotting of Sunday papers, or the boycotting of those who differed from them in regard to prohibition and temperance. This raises the question of who are responsible for the prevalence of the boycotting spirit. Long before any labor organization had put itself on record as favoring boycotting measures, there was much loud talk among ministers of the Gospel, among temperance advocates and woman suffragists, intimating that there were cases in which ministers and church members should join and boycott certain publishing houses or certain organizations or certain individuals. It came to pass that ministers credited with earnest support of law and large measure of patriotism spoke to their congregations in an advisory way about boycotting. These ministers, like the prohibitionists and the woman suffragists, it is charitable to suppose, did not know that they were advising illegal measures, or that they were advising those who listened to them to commit offenses punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary. It is charitable to suppose that they did not know that in this careless talk about boycott measures they were really advising defiance of law, but the fact remains that they were almost the pioneers in the West in advising recourse to illegal measures; and now, when it is plainly stated and when all people know that boycotting is but another name for conspiracy, and that both boycotting and conspiracy are punishable offenses, these people, so free to offer advice, must share the responsibility with those who have carried the principle of boycotting to an extreme possibly not contemplated in the beginning.

New Haven Journal (Rep.), April 23.

IT IS becoming very plain that it is for the interest of all good American citizens to boycott the boycott. The boycott is a scheme of organized revenge. Those who take part in it in obedience to the commands of its organizers are guilty of wrong toward those against whom it is directed. A business man doing a reputable business would not feel justified in yielding to a call from a committee to throw a stone at the plate-glass window of another business man against whom he had no grievance. Does the man who joins the boycotters in their attack on another man's business do a more defensible deed? What honorable business man can do it and respect himself?

Detroit Evening Journal, April 23.

BOYCOTTING did originate in America, but it was started long before the slavery troubles became annoying. The boycott originated with Thomas Jefferson. It will be remembered that by the embargo we boycotted every species of English goods; we neither bought of that country nor sold to her. The ships of New England were suffered to lie rotting at the wharves, and American foreign trade was at a complete standstill. The Hartford Convention was the result of that boycott, and the lukewarmness of the East in the war of 1812 may be traced to it. It was not a highly successful boycott, but it occupied a pretty big place in history.

Boston Journal (Ind.), April 23.

THE boycott is fast becoming odious with the people. The right to strike is everywhere admitted, and the public is patient with the exercise of it when the stopping of street cars and the like causes serious inconvenience, and even sometimes tolerant, in a curious way, when there comes law-breaking and violence; but boycotting is a different matter, and is coming to be sharply condemned upon all hands. The boycotts start for all sorts of reasons, and often for no reason whatever, and are, at best, attempts to coerce people and corporations in their own business, and an outrage upon principles which are generally considered sacred. Philadelphia Evening Call (Ind.), April 23.

THE press, moral suasion, and political action must take the place of boycotts, strikes, and mob violence, and the rest is easy. It is the dawn of a brighter day for labor and the laborer has but to look up to see the sunlight.

into their hands, and it is gratifying to find that many of the stronger organization of workingmen are disposed to fight shy of it.

Boston Advertiser (Ind.), April 23.

THE boycotters might boycott all persons who refuse to join bringing refractory business men to terms, and so on until the circle is complete and they boycott themselves.

Harper's Weekly, April 24.

THE boycott is not a new controversial weapon, although that name has recently been adopted, and the scope of the ban has been greatly extended. It was practised against the Tories in this country during the Revolution, and the nonimportation leagues were leagues of boycotters against English manufactures. But it was revived in its present form by Parnell. In a speech at Ennis four or five years ago he said :

"Now what are you to do to a tenant who bids for a farm from which another has been evicted? You must shun him on the road-side when you meet him; you must shun him in the shop; you must shun him in the fair-green and in the market-place and in the place of worship. By leaving him severely alone, by putting him in a moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of his countrymen as if he were the leper of old, you must show him your detestation of the crime he has committed."

Three days afterward the ban was applied to Captain Boycott, an agent of Lord Erne, and so rigorously that he could hire no laborer, and his crops were saved only by a body of Ulster Orangemen under an escort of seven thousand soldiers and police. The boycott is a new form of terrorism, but within the letter of the law. It seeks to destroy its victims, not by the guillotine or the dagger, but by depriving them of the means of support. It is intended to show that if a man does not do what an organized body of other men demand, however outrageous the demand may be, he and his family will be ruined. It is the annihilation of individual freedom, and forbids a man to follow his conscientious convictions in the discharge of his own duty. Of course we do not mean that this is always its intention. But it is a two-edged sword. It is a tremendous weapon for wrong as well as for right, and there is no security that it will not be used by the worst of men for the worst of purposes. We are not saying that the boycotters are the only offenders. Public condemnation ought to fall upon combinations of capital against the public welfare quite as much as upon those of labor. A pool of great corporations to raise the price of any necessary article-bread, or coal, or salt, or sugaris a crime against society as heinous as the combination of some workingmen to prevent other men from working. The power of organized and consolidated capital is one of the most threatening perils of modern society. The arbitrary will, whether of an individual or of an association, of a railroad corporation or of a labor union, which is so situated that it can enforce its decrees, is simple tyranny, and justly alarms all thoughtful men. It is therefore a fact of the highest significance and encouragement that the leaders of the most extensive and powerful labor organization in the country declare that their methods are absolutely peaceful, and that they condemn violence and injustice. They will command general sympathy if in any emergency they add wise and timely warning to avoid the paths that lead to violence and injustice, and if they punish peremptorily and adequately all offenders. Corporate combinations of capital, on the other hand, are not tempted Their to break the law. Their offence is corrupting legislatures and courts. offence may be plainly much more dangerous to society than the open violation of law.

Mr.

Dear Sir: We, undersigned, beg leave to inform you that Furniture Workers' Union No. 7, in conjunction with the Central Labor Union of New York and vicinity are boycotting the New York Lumber and Woodworking Company. The said concern has been organized with the avowed purpose of monopolizing the cabinet-making trade of the city of New York, by the cheapest possible wholesale production, and ignoring the just and equita ble demands of their workmen. The firm refuses to recognize the organization of their employés, and to discharge all those who have been guilty of treason to the cause of labor, by offering their services as scabs and refusing to join the Union. We ask you to do us the favor of not doing any business with the said concern, until the just and fair demands of the workmen will be granted. Unless our suggestion be accepted, we would be compelled to extend the boycott upon all those who refuse to heed our warning. We are going to do our utmost in preventing that houses built by the scab labor of the said company be sold or rented.

tion of the union.

By order of

THE CENTRAL LABOR UNION OF NEW YORK AND VICINITY, and
THE FURNITURE WORKERS' UNION No. 7, OF NEW YORK.
The Boycott Committee.

Now the public attention is so much occupied with this great question, we print Withthis circular to show to what lengths the trades-unions are prepared to go. out reference to the dealings of the boycotted company, it is instructive to notice that the causes of the boycott are declared to be: (1) cheap production, (2) refusal to recognize the trade-union, and (3) refusing to discharge men at the dictaIt almost surpasses belief that the labor-unions dare thus prominently declare what every fair-minded man must pronounce most abominable doctrines-doctrines really subversive of human liberty. The threat to boycott architects is absurd. While our sympathies are with the workingmen in general, we cannot approve of the use of threatening language in case of any strike, and we utterly condemn "boycotting," which we consider tyrannical, un-American, and opposed to the liberty and freedom which constitute the characteristic institutions of a true republic. Be it ever remembered that "boycotting," in other words, the attempt to interfere with anybody's legitimate business, with the avowed purpose of hurting the latter, by threats, by violence or otherwise, is a criminal offense, an