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captained "lobby." Behind them and more or less openly in sympathy with them, stood the Republican stalwarts proclaiming that in Cuban reciprocity they detected the cloven hoof of "tariff-revision." The Democrats seized gleefully on the chance to drive a wedge into their opponents' ranks, and in the end relief was witheld, the President beaten, and his party torn in two. The most popular President that the United States has yet possessed had failed to pass through Congress a simple act of justice which had the enthusiastic backing of nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand Americans. This, too, in spite of the fact that both Houses were controlled by his own party. Roosevelt alone came out of the discreditable fiasco strengthened in the esteem of the people. He fought for the right with unwavering firmness; he is fighting for it still; and in the long run, no doubt, he will triumph. But he has not triumphed yet.

Mr.

Neither

This gives some measure of the difficulties ahead of him in raising the far more hazardous question of the Trusts. In spite of all we hear of them, the Trusts are not a political issue. Both parties, Republicans no less heartily than Democrats, abuse them in public and pummel them in their State and national "platforms," and both parties support and are supported by them in private. dare take too open a line for fear of alienating the campaign contributions of which these gigantic corporations may well afford to be prodigal. Neither party up to the present has evolved anything that could be called a Trust policy. Both are playing for position. At the same time the connection between the Trusts and the Republican party is popularly supposed to be more intimate than between the Trusts and the Democrats. This is partly because the Republicans are,

broadly speaking, the rich man's party, the friends of capital if not its slaves, and the upholders of a tariff for protection. Whatever vague fear there is of the Trusts, and there is a good deal, all the ignorance of them and, therefore, all the prejudice against them, all the tales that are told of their "conscienceless" methods and underground influence on politics, give aid and comfort to the Democrats rather than to their opponents. And on paper and during election time the Democrats are undoubtedly the more violently hostile of the two. Whether the responsibilities of office, if they could get it, would not soften down their enmity is another question. In their present position of greater freedom they have at any rate put forward one proposal that within certain narrow limits might be efficacious, had they the chance and the courage to apply it. They suggest that the import duties should be taken off every article the production and distribution of which are controlled by a Trust. There is at least something definite in this proposal, something indeed far more definite than the Republicans, if left to themselves, would venture to suggest. Their instinct, or the instinct of their leaders, is to let well enough alone, to do nothing that will "disturb business." It is their attitude both towards Trusts and Tariff Revision; and President Roosevelt never gave clearer proof of his boldness than when he declined to allow his party to be muzzled on either question. Mr. Bryan's appeals to fear and hatred, his furious yell of "Destroy the Trusts!" his avowed ambition to "put stripes on the millionaires," are things that the Trust magnates, knowing the conservatism of their countrymen, can afford to laugh at. It is different when a man of Roosevelt's character and position, sanely and conservatively but with a terrible resoluteness,

brings the question on to the carpet. The President knew well enough what he was risking, the enmity of capitalists, disaffection and possibly revolt in his party, perhaps his own chance of re-election. But he saw the danger of leaving the Anti-Trust movement to be exploited by the fanaticism of Mr. Bryan and his followers; and he saw that that danger was increased by the silence and inactivity of the Republicans and the bewildered state of the public mind. He therefore took up the question himself not as an enemy of capital, but in the interests of capital, to save it from an unjust and disastrous assault. His general view of the evolution of modern business has been expressed over and over again. He does not believe that it is possible or desirable to go back from the large organizations to small ones in ordinary industry, nor yet from large railway systems to a discordant tangle of ill-connecting and desperately competing small lines. The age of competition, he realizes, has passed or is passing. At the same time he has come to the conclusion that the natural tendency towards amalgamation has been proceeding too rapidly, that there is serious danger in the prevalence of over-capitalization; and that "methods of governmental regulation" ought to proceed step by step with the development of new business conditions. "Governmental regulation," because State regulation has been tried and proved useless. What then does he advocate? Nothing new, nothing revolutionary. The one definite proposal he has put forward is that the same publicity should be demanded of the Trusts as is now exacted from banks and insurance companies. "The first thing to do," he has said, "is to find out the facts; and for this purpose publicity as to capitalization, profits and all else of importance to the public, is the most useful measure.

The mere fact of this publicity would of itself remedy certain evils, and as to the others, it would in some cases point out the remedies, and would at least enable us to tell whether or not certain proposed remedies would be useful. The State acting in its collective capacity would thus first find out the facts, and then be able to take such measures as wisdom dictated." Whether the State has the power to demand such publicity is a matter for the Supreme Court to decide. Complete authority to regulate and control the affairs of great industrial corporations would seem to require a Constitutional amendment. If so, the President advocates such an amendment; and that is as far in the way of positive suggestion as he has gone. That there is nothing very radical in all this may be shown by two facts. One is that the House of Representatives has already expressed itself in favor of the sort of Constitutional amendment that the President desires to see passed. The other is that one of the biggest corporations of all, the Steel Trust, has voluntarily discarded the old policy of mystery, and now presents to the public each year а straightforward and intelligible statement of its gross earnings by months, its expenditures, its profits, and its disposition of the net gains. At the same time, the President does not hesitate to use such powers as are conferred on him by the Sherman AntiTrust Act. He has already haled the Northern Securities Company before the Courts on the ground that its consolidation of two competing railway systems was "an unlawful combination or conspiracy to monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, trade or commerce"; and he has also directed the Attorney-General to inquire into the so-called Beef Trust. "I am far," he admirably said, "from being against property when I ask that the question

of Trusts be taken up. I am acting in the most conservative sense in property's interest. When a great corporation is sued for violating the AntiTrust law, it is not a move against property; it is a move in favor of property, because when you can make it evident that all men, big and small alike, have to obey the law, you are putting the safeguard of law around all men." And from the same sober standpoint he defeds the proposed Constitutional amendment. "I am well aware that the process of Constitutional amendment is necessarily a slow one, and one into which our people are reluctant to enter, save for the best of reasons; but I am confident that in this instance the reasons exist. I am also aware that there will be difficulty in framing an amendment which will meet the objects of the case and yet will secure the necessary support. The very fact that there must be delay in securing the adoption of such an amendment ensures full discussion and calm consideration on the whole subject and will prevent any ill-considered action."

This is the entire sum of the President's policy, and obviously it does not carry us very far. Could it be put into practice it would combat but one of the Trust evils, that of over-capitalization. It would protect the stock holder and the investing public, but it would hardly touch the consumer. And it is as a consumer and purchaser of the Trust's goods and products that the average American is chiefly interested in the problem. What he dreads more than anything else is the power of the Trusts to raise the prices of the prime necessaries of life; and it is for this reason that he is gravitating more and more towards the possibility of hitting them by means of the tariff. The President, however, while not opposed to a mild form of tariff revision per se,

emphatically maintains that it has nothing to do with the Trusts. "The question of regulating the trusts with a view to minimizing or abolishing the evil existent in them is separate and apart from the question of tariff revision. . . . The real evils connected with the Trusts cannot be remedied by any change in the tariff laws." That is trenchant, but is it true? Granted that the smaller competitors-very few of the Trusts are complete monopolies-would be swallowed up by a removal of the tariff duties on their industries, and that the Trusts would thereby become monopolies in fact, it is still possible to think that the unrestricted competition of foreign goods and products would force a certain maximum of prices beyond which it would be dangerous to advance. On the whole the chief value of the President's intervention in the Trust issue is this: he has brought sobriety, caution and sincerity to bear on a question in the discussion of which these three qualities have been woefully deficient. He does his own thinking, and he means: business; and the people, who are at once anxious and utterly befogged, be lieve in him implicitly. Whether as the result of his campaign anything will get itself written on the Statute Book is quite another matter. The people, as I have said, dearly love a leader; but the politicians do not, and' I am not sure that the Constitution wholly approves of one. It will be oneof the most interesting features of Mr. Roosevelt's Presidency to see whether his methods succeed in getting things done as speedily as Mr. McKinley's. That they are more inspiriting to watch is beyond argument; but the Presidential disabilities set forth at the beginning of this article make one question whether there is really room. in the American system for a Presi dent of Mr. Roosevelt's resoluteness: and vigor. So far it must be said that

the first year of President Roosevelt has been a personal rather than a political triumph. But that personal triumph is so supreme that the victory The Monthly Review.

of his party in the forthcoming elections ought properly to be called a Rooseveltian and not a Republican victory.

Sydney Brooks.

OWLS.

There is no bird which, in view of its strange and solitary character, its weird and hollow cries, the grotesque solemnity of its appearance, the timehonored beliefs and superstititions which cluster round it, the large part it plays in poetry ancient and modern, as well as in its sister arts, sculpture and painting, the marvellous adaptations of its structure to its mode of life, or its mode of life to its structure ---above all, perhaps I ought to add, in these days of agricultural depression and of armies of destroying rats, its usefulness to the struggling cultivator of the soil-possesses so peculiar a fascination, and ought to enjoy so jealous and zealous a protection, as the various species of the owl.

I purpose in this paper to touch lightly on some of these points of interest, in the hope that I may be able to impart to those who read it some fragments of the pleasure which a loving and life-long observation of its subject has given to me, and may induce all who are connected directly or indirectly with the land, to befriend a bird which, in spite of many prejudices and some appearances to the contrary, is, in the truest sense, the friend of man.

I will premise only that my field of observation has been chiefly confined to the county of Dorset, to the neighborhood of the little village in which I was born and bred, West Staffordto the grammar school at Blandford

where I received the first part of my education, and whose headmaster, the Rev. J. Penny, encouraged all his pupils, both by precept and example, to become, in their measure, observers. of Nature-and to the old-world manor house of Bingham's Melcombe, in which, now that the main work of my life as a master at Harrow is over, I hope to end my days, a veritable sauctuary of wild life and of "my feathered friends." I shall confine what I have to say chiefly to the three more familiar varieties of the bird which are to be found in England-the white, the brown, and the long-eared owl. Nature varies indeed, but within strict limits; and what is true of the owl in the county of Dorset is true, with very slight modifications, of the owl in all parts of England-and, indeed, in all parts of the world.

All owls have much in common. The difference in their appearance-caused by the fact that some of their number (as, for instance, the eagle, the longeared, and the short-eared owl) have little tufts of feathers on the top of their heads which they can raise or depress at pleasure, and which look like ears or horns or egrets-is a merely superficial difference. They are, each and all of them, unlike all other birds. A child who has never seen one except in a picture, and who knows perhaps hardly any birds beyond the sparrow, the robin, and the barndoor fowl, never fails instantly to recognize an

owl. An English child, perhaps I ought rather to say; for "the child is father of the man," and a German child could hardly be expected to recognize an owl at sight, if it be true, as the story goes, that a German professor on a visit to England, who had somehow succeeded in shooting an owl, holding up his trophy in triumph, exclaimed, "Zee, I have shot a schnipe mit einem face Push-cats."

The nocturnal movements of the owl tribe; the upright position in which they habitually hold themselves; the big, rounded head; the full, round, prominent eyes, which, except when they are glazed with sleep, look you full in the face, for the simple reason that, unlike those of all other birds, they are planted in front, rather than at the side of the head; the successive bands of short soft feathers which surround the eye, all pointing inwards, and so making it the centre, as it were, not of one, but of many circles; the fluffy feathers of the body, which make the whole appear twice as large as it really is (for an owl, though he will gorge, or try to gorge, a full-sized rat, is always thin-nothing, in fact, but skin and bones and feathers); the sleepy air of contemplation or of wisdom, which probably made the Athenians regard it as the sacred bird of Pallas; the eyelid behind eyelid which passes swiftly, now one, now another, over the eye, shielding it from the garish light of day, and tempering the apparent gravity of its thought by a suspicious though superficial resemblance to a wink; all mark off the subject of this paper in all its species from all other birds.

The white owl is so called because, though the whole of his upper plumage is of a delicate buff or yellow speckled with gray (as his Latin name, Strix flammea implies), it is the pure white of the lower plumage which most strikes the eye as he sails noise

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lessly over a stubble field or along a hedge. He is known also as the barn and the screech owl-the barn owl from one of his favorite haunts; the screech owl because of his rasping, piercing shriek, so unlike to the deep, mellow, musical hoot of his nearest relations. As he is the best known, so he is the best worth knowing, and the most useful of all his tribe. When left unmolested, as he ought to be, he becomes almost domestic in his habits, cruising around the rickyard or the homestead in search of his prey, and often taking temporary refuge, should the morning light surprise him, in any tumble-down shed which is near at hand. The resort which he most frequents is a dark cobwebbed barn in which corn or newly or badly threshed straw is stored, for thither troop rats by scores and mice by hundreds, and there, ready for the farmer's greatest foe, is the farmer's truest friend, prepared to destroy the destroyers. There he stands, bolt upright, perched on one leg, perfectly motionless, in some dark niche or on some lofty rafter, to all appearance fast asleep. But he sleeps with one eye or one ear open. There is a slight movement, invisible to the human eye-a slight rustle, inaudible to the human ear, in the straw below. In a moment he is all eye, all ear. The tucked-up leg joins the other; the head is bent forward and downward; the dark, bright eyes gaze with an almost painful intensity on the spot from which the rustle comes. The mouse or rat shows itself, and in a moment again, without one movement of his wings and without one tremor of the air, he "drops" upon his prey. There is hardly a struggle or a cry; his long, strong, sharp talons and no bird of his size has such long, such strong, and such sharp talons)-have met in the vitals of his victim, and he flies back with it grasped tightly in them to his coign of vantage, after a fitting

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