Part 11

It is, therefore, a matter of the very highest importance that citizens remote from our great cities be made sufficiently familiar with municipal needs to enable them to reach wiser conclusions as to the desirability or undesirability of special measures affecting their political, social, and industrial interests. Opinions based, as now, chiefly upon the statements of a partisan press, too often represent the interests of a party regardless of those of the municipalities directly concerned.

With the steady growth of our great cities in population and political power, the question of wholesome State legislation in matters affecting their civic and moral wellbeing, is one of no less importance to rural communities than to the cities themselves. Controlling power is already drifting cityward in many States, and rural voters who have not contributed to the creation of right civic conditions in our great municipalities may soon find this power used to their own serious injury. In this connection the New York _Christian Advocate_, referring to the possibilities of good and evil in the Greater New York, justly says:

The only balancing force in preventing the evil from triumphing over the good, will be the influence of the remainder of the Empire State. The morale of cities differs from that of rural regions in that the evil-minded can consort and conceal their deeds, can obtain great political power; and large cities are prone to legalize vice and admit of organized political corruption. Whereas elsewhere the laws are generally in harmony with morality, and the difficulty of concealment impedes the growth and the increase of the arrogance of vice.

The force of Greater New York in legislation and the administration of law, is something appalling to contemplate. Permanent antagonism between the Metropolis and the rest of the State will in itself be a demoralizing element. Yet unless the State watches this immense aggregation of heterogeneous peoples and cities, Greater New York may become a pervading source of corruption. If there be one tendency confirmed by history, it is that smaller cities imitate the greater, that towns imitate the smaller cities, and villages, the towns. Thus for good or ill the most populous centres become the controlling force.

VII. WOMAN'S WORK IN CIVICS.

The growth of organizations which are directed by women, wholly or chiefly devoted to reforms in civic conditions, has been paralleled by hardly any popular movement of recent years. The Women's Christian Temperance Union, although hardly more than a juvenile among other great organizations, is second to few of them in its potentiality for good. Women's clubs are found everywhere, and, wherever found, for the most part represent a serious purpose to find and apply right remedies to existing civic and social evils. The Federation of Women's Clubs brings all of these local movements into harmonious efforts for the upbuilding of unselfish patriotism in the community and the highest virtue in the home. The National Health Protective Association, whose second annual meeting was recently held in Philadelphia, has already made a record for itself, through its branches in many cities, which evidences not only a reason for its existence, but the capacity and success which women have brought to the solution of some of the most important problems of city life, such as protection from contagious diseases, the supply of pure water and pure milk, the prevention of food adulterations, improvements in tenement conditions, provisions affecting the health of working people, attention to the sick children of the very poor, and a score of equally important matters. The chairman of this organization is Mrs. Etta Osgood of Portland, Maine, and its leading members include Dr. Lozier of New York, Mrs. A. J. Perry of Brooklyn, Mrs. Theo. F. Seward of Orange, N. J., Mrs. Henry Birkenbine of Wayne, Pa., Mrs. L. E. Harvey of Dayton, O., Miss Florence Parsons of Yonkers, N. Y., Mrs. J. E Weiks of Buffalo, and Mrs. John H. Scribner of Philadelphia.

In the same city was also held, shortly after the meeting of the Health Protective Association, the Triennial Convention of Working Women's Societies. This gathering of earnest women was notable for the keenness which its members brought to the discussion of questions affecting the interests of working women, and the equal sincerity of their desire to reach only just conclusions. Here is an opportunity for the bright women who are at the head of the Federation of Women's Clubs to establish reciprocal relations which will be fruitful in great good.

VIII. MUNICIPAL REFORM ORGANIZATIONS.

The third year of the National Reform League has been completed with results full of encouragement to the members of the various social organizations of which it is composed. Its annual meeting at Louisville, Ky., was attended by one hundred and fifty delegates. Much of the success of the widely extended work represented by this national organization is due to the persistent and unselfish activities of its able secretary, Mr. Clinton Rogers Woodruff, of the Philadelphia bar, who closed his address before the convention with these encouraging words:

In every direction the outlook is bright and promising, not of the immediate fulfilment of all the hopes and desires of those who are most deeply interested perhaps, but of substantial progress and steady growth. The sentiment for better government is gaining day by day. It is not a movement for a particular form of local government or of specific panaceas for municipal evils, but rather one to bring the citizens, those who are primarily responsible, to a fuller appreciation and a more general discharge of the duties of citizenship--in short, a movement for citizenship reform. The indifference and apathy of the average voter have been a matter of general comment. To overcome this, and to replace it with that interest and that action without which no permanent reform can be accomplished, the realization that good government depends for its very existence upon good men, is the fundamental basis of municipal reform. Charter revision, civil-service rules and regulations, fair elections, and an honest count and return are all important; but they depend for their success upon sound public opinion, and that depends upon good citizenship. Good laws are important; good citizenship is essential.

The Good Citizenship League of Minneapolis adds to the means of its increasingly useful work by the publication of a carefully edited little periodical under the title of _Facts_, in which information that might not otherwise reach them in proper form is placed before all citizens. E. F. Waite is President, and Alfred Sherlock, Secretary, with offices at 254 Hennepin Avenue.

IX. CITY TAXPAYERS.

Mr. Charles Richardson, vice-president of the National Municipal League, in seeking the causes for the non-participation of large taxpayers in efforts to secure good government in cities, finds the following among other reasons:

1st. Because they fear that their opposition to influential politicians may be punished by an increase in their assessments for taxation, or by a loss of custom or employment, or by some other action injurious to their personal or business interests.

2nd. Because as investors, employees, or otherwise, they have or hope to have some pecuniary interests in corporations, contracts, or offices, which would be much less profitable under a government too pure to be corrupted, and too intelligent to be outwitted.

3rd. Because they believe that it pays better in dollars and cents to submit to existing abuses than to expend the time and money required for a long and difficult series of political contests.

4th. Because they consider that national legislation affects their personal interests far more than any probable action of their local government, and that their national party must therefore be supported in its efforts to strengthen itself by securing complete control of local affairs.

5th. Because they believe the local machine of the opposition party is still worse than their own, and that to promote its success by wasting their votes on a third ticket would only be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

6th. Because they have no faith in the possibility of subjecting politics to the principles of common honesty, or public affairs to the methods of intelligent business.

This list is not complete, but it is sufficiently formidable to show that the progress of reform principles among the taxpayers must continue to be slow and difficult, unless city government can be made to appear much more important and interesting than it has hitherto seemed to be.

X. CIVICS IN STATE UNIVERSITIES.

A writer in _Christian Work_, urging the importance of action such as the American Institute of Civics is devoted to, says:

With the new way of looking at Government, and with new tasks imposed upon it, must come preparation for the grave responsibilities of the present and future. Old ideas linger after they have subserved their purposes. We are living in an industrial age. Especially is it true in a country like the United States that the ordinary pursuits of peace outweigh a hundredfold the interests of war. Nevertheless, we have our well-equipped academy at West Point to prepare young men for the army, and our excellent academy at Annapolis to prepare young men for the navy; but we have no civil academy to give men careful preparation for the civil service, which is of inestimably more importance to us than either the army or navy so far as ordinary, everyday life is concerned. Even in his day, Washington saw the importance of a national university which should fulfil many of the purposes of such an academy. As a part of the remedy for trusts and combinations, and an important part, the writer would mention institutions designed to give the most careful training in preparation for every branch of the civil service. This should go hand in hand with the enlargement of this service. The progress which has already been made in the reformation of our civil service is gratifying, but something far more than has yet been advocated by any civil-service-reform association is needed. As part of the general programme of the solution of the problem of monopoly, the development of the State universities of the country along the line of civics may be mentioned. Each State university should, in addition to other things, be a civil academy.

XI. A BETRAYAL OF REFORM.

These are the words applied to an act of the Republican Governor of New York by one of the ablest and stanchest Republican journals of that State, the _Mail and Express_ of New York City. It goes on to say:

Gov. Black's approval of the bill to place the civil service of this State at the mercy of machine politics is a perversion of Republican principle and a betrayal of reform. There is not one legitimate public interest that this measure will benefit; not a single purpose of honest administration that it will strengthen, nor an object of sound party policy that it will help to accomplish.

The Governor's bill is a step backward from the advanced position of the party on the civil-service issue. It is a trick to nullify the merit principle in appointments to public office, and it opens the way for a full restoration of the spoils system. There is not a boss nor a machine politician in the State who does not indorse it. There is not an intelligent supporter of honest civil service who will not denounce it.

The rank and file of the Republican party repudiate the Governor's bill and disclaim all responsibility for it. Party sentiment has spoken against it in unmistakable terms. The Governor's reflections upon those who opposed the bill are neither well grounded nor in good taste. They mean nothing save that he is sensitive to the criticism which his ill-advised measure has provoked--criticism which, it may truthfully be said, is abundantly warranted by the character of the bill itself as well as by his own amazing advocacy of the spoils system in the public service.

XII. STATE AID TO INDUSTRIES.

Massachusetts has undertaken an interesting experiment in the way of promoting home industries. With the aim of producing in that State the finer grade of goods now produced only in foreign markets, the legislature two years ago appropriated $25,000 for the establishment of a textile school in any town which might make a like appropriation for the same object. This offer has now been accepted by the citizens of Lowell, and the first school of the character proposed is being established. It is hoped that this experiment may lead to results which will in some degree compensate for the industrial losses sustained by New England through the competition of the multiplying cotton mills in the South.

XIII. READING MATTER FOR PRISONERS.

Some time ago, in response to a need brought to its attention by one of the local officers in Texas, the American Institute of Civics offered to superintend the distribution among the prisons of the United States of literature suitable for the use of prisoners. Citizens were asked to cooeperate, and much good literature has thus been placed in the hands of those who have found it not only a source of entertainment, but, through its refining and elevating influences, a means of great benefit. This beneficent work can be indefinitely extended with a little cost if citizens who appreciate its importance will give to it their aid by contributions of literature, such as wholesome works of fiction, popular works of history, treatises on the useful arts and industries, popular periodicals, etc., etc.; or by assisting in the payment of the cost of collection and distribution. One of the Institute's councillors in the State of Washington, President Penrose of Whitman College, has recently made an appeal for such literature for the use of convicts in the Washington penitentiary. Inquiries as to methods of cooeperation, or gifts for the prison literature expense fund, may be sent to the American Institute of Civics, 203 Broadway, New York.

"THE TEMPEST" THE SEQUEL TO "HAMLET."

BY EMILY DICKEY BEERY.

"The Tempest" is a little enchanted world where play all the forces that are manifested in the larger creation from the lowest animalism to the highest manhood, harmonious with his invisible environment. This world in miniature--true to the laws of the macrocosm--begins in chaos, storm, and stress, but finds completion in supernal air and divine peace. We shall find by consecutive study of the dramas that the poet, in his creative work, has ever risen from lower manifestations to higher as his own soul soared on higher and higher wing. Prospero was his last, greatest, and divinest thought of man in his unfolding godward.

Nature in her evolution takes no vast strides, and her supreme poet follows her divine current of growth from the animal man to the grand manifestation of his ideal. He understood that in man's unfolding not a round could be missed of the "Jacob's Ladder" resting upon the earth, but reaching into the heavens.

In this ideal world of "The Tempest," Caliban stands upon the earth groping to attain the first step, while Prospero stands upon the summit with his face heavenward. This typical man comes upon the stage on a high plane of development. Long previously he had left the rank and file of humanity to tread the ever lonely path to higher achievement, therefore we must look below him to find, among the creations of the poet, the incarnation which was the chrysalis for this last ideal. Here our intuitive perception immediately descries Hamlet, that wonderful human mystery who was the first of Shakspere's sons to enter the precincts of the inner life and catch a glimpse of the godlike potentialities of the human soul.

In Hamlet was the struggle of birth; in Prospero, the glory of achievement, the fulfilment to some extent of the poet's ideal man, and the first to realize that the power of thought is the supreme force in the universe. Hamlet caught the first glimpse of this truth when he said, "There's nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so." He is the hero of spiritual birth and growth in man from the dawning of the soul-life, through its fierce struggles to dominate the lower self and rise into realms of clearer light and truth. The "godlike reason which was not left in him to rust unused," in its aspiration became illuminated by intuition and revealed to his awe-inspired gaze new worlds not dreamed of by the Horatios of his time.

Hamlet was lost in wonder at himself. The lower forces of his nature along the old inherited lines of thought, coming in contact with the higher thought-currents, newly created, caused the blended stream to "turn awry and lose the name of action," termed by the unseeing world lack of courage and will-power. Even he could not understand but that in some inexplicable way he _must_ be a coward, because he could not perceive the _why_ of his delaying vengeance. Yet he knew he was brave to the core of his being. When his military friends, "distilled almost to jelly with the act of fear," would have restrained him from following the spirit of his father, he cries out:

Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin's fee; and for my soul, what can it do to that, being a thing immortal as itself? ... My fate cries out, and makes each petty artery in this body as hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.

He was strong of will and resolute of purpose, but had reached the plane of development where his higher nature would not permit him to commit murder. Yet the strong current of popular opinion, as well as all hereditary and sub-conscious influences in himself, were ever impelling him to do the deed. In his soul-growth, Hamlet had passed the plane of revenge as a passion, but had not reached the divine heights of forgiveness. To avenge the murder of his father was to him a sacred command and duty coming in conflict with another equally sacred duty voiced by his higher self, and the mighty meeting of these two soul-forces always resulted in inaction. This moral battleground is the pivotal point of the drama, indirectly putting in motion all the forces which terminate in the final catastrophe.

In his thoughtful moods his disposition was ever shaken with "thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls," saying, "Why is this? wherefore? what should we do?" It was the unlaid ghost of his higher self that propounded these queries to the apparition. The birth-throes of thought were giving him entrance into a new world where he began to see "What a piece of work is man! how _infinite_ in faculty! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a God!"

The thoughts that Hamlet voices had passed through Shakspere's brain, and the wonderful powers manifested by Prospero had been apprehended by his own prophetic vision. Hamlet might have moved along on the lower plane successfully, but the law of spiritual growth, the divine force upheaving and uplifting his soul against the barriers of his sub-conscious mentality and his environment, finally ended in the sad tragedy. Yet in the defeat was a victory, for it was merely the turn of the spiral downward for a higher rise in evolution.

Prospero is first revealed to us at about the age of Hamlet when the curtain falls and hides him from our tear-dimmed eyes. Shakspere loved Hamlet. He was dearest to his heart of all his children, and he felt that he must not die, but must come into the full fruition of the immortals. The soul so nobly struggling from its swaddling clothes _must_ become a freed spirit of godlike power. Therefore he presents to us an ideal world where Hamlet sits upon the throne as Prospero, "transported and rapt in secret studies," "neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated to closeness and the bettering of his mind with that which o'erprized all popular rate." Prospero was born a higher type, therefore the divine in him had freer action. His soul opened to the over-soul like a flower to the sunlight.

The divine force in man is his will--his true will--and this force in its perfect exercise has no human limitation. It is only the _seeming_ will that is limited. This power, _manifested in thought_, is represented by Ariel.

The statement of Prospero that his studies bettered his mind to such high degree is proof that they were those not of the magician, but of the philosopher and true psychologist, for the study of magic darkens the soul and degrades the intellect. Prospero's power was not magical, and Shakspere used the word magician only to bring the drama within touch of his audience, knowing full well that the wise would understand, for "wisdom is justified of her children."

In the manifestation of soul-power we first perceive the true greatness of Prospero and the heights to which Shakspere's own soul had risen, for "the stream cannot rise higher than its source." The greatness of Julius Caesar is "weighed in the balance and found wanting," for every truly great nature must be the rounded out and harmonious development of the intellectual, moral, and spiritual. This is the measure of Prospero, and in his unfolding, unseen realms and previously unknown powers had opened, according to eternal law, to his demanding soul.

"The Tempest" is philosophical, psychological, and occult--philosophical because thought is the motor power. Le Conte says: "That deepest of all questions--the nature and origin of natural forces--is a question for philosophy and not for science." Thought is a natural force; yes, a dynamic force of the most intense power. It may be a search-light of the universe, a thunderbolt of destruction, or a messenger of light and love with healing in its wings. The mantle of Prospero is simply an emblem of power, and the word is so understood among the Orientals. In Scripture, when Elijah ascended in his fiery chariot, his mantle fell upon Elisha, who immediately caused the waters to retreat from its stroke and continued clothed with his master's power. So Prospero, robing himself in his mantle or laying it aside, means his exercise or non-exercise of what are termed supernatural powers.

Victor Hugo says that Shakspere "did not question the invisible world, he rehabilitated it. He did not deny man's supernatural power, he consecrated it." There is no reason why man in his higher estate should not have free intercourse with a world invisible to him in his lower conditions. Can the grub have the same companionship as the butterfly?