Mildie was to sleep with her mother in Mrs. Urquhart's room to-night. But before she began to undress she went into that other room which had changed its character so strangely since morning from a commonplace bedroom to a stately presence-chamber. It was empty when Mildie entered, except for the still form that lay on the bed, its features sharpened already, showing under the white sheet that covered it. Mildie did not put back the folds or look at the face; alas! of late years, it had not been a lovable or loving sight to her. A great cloud of something had veiled all its fatherliness from her more thickly than the white sheet shrouded the irresponsive features now, and to bring back the father she could honestly weep for, she must look back a long way. She knelt by the bed, and, covering her face with her hands, searched her memory for old, old recollections that could wake up the filial regrets she hated herself for not experiencing more vividly. That time, when, a very little thing, she had fallen down on the stairs, and her father had picked her up tenderly and carried her to the nursery; and that summer vacation, when they had all gone into the country together, before their misfortunes began, and he had been very good to them all. Mildie was sure she could quite recollect a ride on his shoulders, and that she had helped to bury him in a sand mausoleum on the shore. On one of her birthdays he had called her to him and kissed her quite of his own accord, and he had praised her diligence only the other day when, coming by chance into the schoolroom, he had found her absorbed in a German book. Yes, yes; there was this time and that, little sparklets of gold, gems of love and kindness showing among all that blank darkness, to be remembered forever, to live on in memory now that an end had come to all else, now that no opportunity could come for another such word, for another claim on a daughter's love to be made by him who lay there, her father, the only earthly father she could ever have, though this was all she knew of him. Mildie bowed her head and thanked God for the little store she had culled, the precious store, the few words and looks and thoughts her father had been able to spare to his child from that daily and nightly absorption in sordid cares which the world had exacted of him, and repaid him for yielding it by emptying his life of all true life, and breaking his heart at last. From The Fortnightly Review. AN AMERICAN VIEW OF AMERICAN COMPETITION. THE Competition between the United States and the manufacturing nations of Europe, and especially Great Britain, for the leading places in supplying with machine-made fabrics those nations that do not yet use modern machinery is a subject that just now excites great interest. It is not only important in reference to the peculiar circumstances of the present time, but much more important when we consider the momentous consequences that might follow the establishment on the part of the United States of a permanent manufacturing supremacy. If any such permanent change is indicated by existing circumstances, the cause for it must be looked for in radical and important differences in the competing nations, and not in any temporary and abnormal circumstances peculiar to the present time. It is some of these permanent differences which we will more especially consider in the present paper. In comparing our power to compete with England we may claim advantages of one kind, and with the nations of Continental Europe advantages of another, in some respects of a different order. In competition with England it is often claimed that our chief advantage lies in a certain alleged versatility and power of adapting means to ends, and in great quickness of perception on the part of working-people in respect to the advantages to be gained by the adop tion of new processes or inventions. If we have this advantage, there must be special causes for it in the influences that are brought to bear upon the operatives and artisans who do the work, for a very large portion of them are foreign-born or are the children of foreign immigrants. Why should they work with any more zeal or judgment here than in the countries whence they have come? Why are Irish and French Canadian factory hands to be relied on for more steady work, larger product, better discipline, and more cleanly and wholesome conditions of life, than the operatives of England, Belgium, and Germany? To the writer it appears evident that these advantages, so far as they exist, are due mainly to the following circumstances. First. Our system of common and purely secular schools, attended by the children of rich and poor alike. Second. Manhood suffrage. Third. The easy acquisition of land. induced by the establishment of savings-vised by a committee of nine members. banks throughout the manufacturing states. Fifth. The absence of a standing army, and the application of the revenue derived from taxes on the whole to useful purposes. On the present committee are the clergymen of the Unitarian, Episcopal, and Swedenborgian societies, and among the lay members are members of the Orthodox, Baptist, and Catholic societies. The In respect to the first of these influences, absence of sectarian prejudice was lately the public school system, the foreign ob- illustrated in a notable way in St. Louis, server generally takes notice only of the Missouri. One of the principal Baptist quality of the instruction given, and though churches was burned; the next day the he may find something to praise, he finds pastor received offers from eight Christian also much to criticise; he finds in many congregations of several denominations to cases the instruction bad and the subjects use their churches half of each Sunday, often ill-chosen, and he wonders at the but all these were declined in favor of the misdirection of a force that might be so offer of the Jews, whose rabbi urged the much more wisely applied. What he fails use of their synagogue on the ground that to notice is that the school itself, entirely his own congregation did not need it on apart from its instruction, is the great Sunday at all; and in the Jewish Synaeducator of the children who attend it. gogue, on the following Sunday and since, The school is, first of all, no respecter of the worship of the God of Jew and Gentile persons; the stupid son of a rich man led has been conducted under Christian forms. in every class by the son of a mechanic In another way the discipline of the cannot in after life look down on him schools affects the processes of manufacas an inferior, whatever the conventional ture. In the schools, cleanliness, order, position of the two may be. Or if the and regular habits are enforced, with defrich man's son have brains as well as erence to the teachers and respect for aufortune, the poor man's son can never thority; and in these later years coupled attribute to fortune only the lead that he with the teaching of music and drawing in may take in after life. The school is all the principal towns and cities. When thoroughly democratic, and each pupil children thus trained are removed to the learns in it that it depends on himself mill or the workshop, habits of order and alone what place he may take in after life, cleanliness, with some æsthetic taste, are and that although society may be divided already established. Nothing strikes an into planes, there is no system of caste American manufacturer with so much surand no barrier in the way of social success, prise as the extreme untidiness of the except the want of character and ability to large textile mills of England, and the attain it. The associations of the common dreariness of the factory towns. In this school utterly prevent anything like servil- respect, however, it must be confessed ity in the relation of classes in after life, that the managers of the New England and although it is sometimes made a little mills are greatly aided by the absence of too manifest that "one man is as good as smoke, the coal commonly used being ananother, and a little better," on the part of thracite. Much surprise is often expressed those who are more eager than discreet in by our foreign visitors at the amount of their effort to rise, yet on the whole the decoration permitted in the fitting of starelation of the various classes which must tionary and locomotive engines, and in in the nature of things always and every much of our machinery, but bad as the where exist, is that of mutual respect, and taste displayed may sometimes be, it is anything like the old-world distinctions of nevertheless a fact that such engines or caste and rank would seem about as absurd machines are better cared for and kept in to one as to the other. The common better repair than where no individuality, school is the solvent of race, creed, nation- | ality, and condition. Americans note with amazement the difficulties which occur in England on sectarian grounds in the establishment of secular schools. The school committees with us are apt to include members of every denomination, and usually the clergymen of each denomination serve their turn. In the town where the present writer lives there are about eleven hundred pupils in the free schools, which are super so to speak, is permitted. On one of our great railways the attempt was not long since made to despatch the locomotives as they happened to arrive at the central station, sometimes with one, and sometimes with another engine-driver; but the immediate and great increase in the repair account caused the corporation to return very soon to the customary plan of giving each driver his own locomotive with which he may be identified. The instruction of the school also gives every pupil a superficial knowledge, if no the problem of the self-government of more, of the geography and resources of great cities where voters do not meet each the country, which the universal habit of other, as in the town meeting, face to face, reading newspapers keeps up. Hence but where the powers of government are comes the almost entire absence of any of necessity delegated to men of whom fixed character in the labor of the country the voters can have little personal knowl – every boy believes that he can achieve edge, yet works distinctly in the direction success somewhere else if not at home. of the safety, stability, and order of the No congestion of labor can last long-community. Outside of two or three of the war and the succeeding railway mania the very largest cities, where there are combined concentrated population at cer- concentrated great masses of illiterate fortain points to a greater extent than ever happened before, and it has taken five years to overcome the difficulty; but within these five years a million new inhabitants in Texas, half a million in Kansas, and probably a million and a half added to the population of Nebraska, Colorado, Minnesota, and the far north-west indicate that the evil has already found a remedy. eign-born citizens, it would be difficult to find a case of serious abuse of the power of taxation except in the South since the war, where the evil is now mainly abated. The writer of this paper lives in a small but very rich town containing about seven thousand people, adjacent to a great city; in this town one-half of the voters pay It is already apparent that a very slight only a poll-tax, having no property of increase in the demand for skilled work- their own liable to taxation, and of the men in certain branches of employment poll-tax payers, again, a very large portion, would not easily be met in the Eastern if not a majority, are of Irish birth or exStates except by drawing upon England traction. The town has been guilty of and Germany. During the years of de- many acts of extravagance during these pression the cessation of railway building, late years of delusive prosperity, and is and the use of the excess of railway plant burthened with a heavy debt; but not a existing in 1873, has caused the dispersion single one of these acts of extravagance of a large portion of the trained mechanics has ever originated with the poll-tax payand artisans who then did the work of ers; they may have sustained such meassupplying this demand; but these are not ures, but they have been led into them by the men who have crowded the eastern men of property and influence. Onecities and caused the apparent excess of fourth part of the population of Massalaborers out of work-such men have chusetts, the manufacturing state par exgone back to the land, or in the new states cellence, are foreign-born, mostly Irish and and territories have found other ways in French Canadians, yet nowhere is propwhich to apply their skill and energy, and erty more safe, state and municipal credit they will not return. It may be that the higher, or elections more orderly and more greatest danger to the manufacturers of free from violence. To the man who England will not be in our competition in thinks he can correct the abuses under the sale of goods in neutral markets, but which he suffers, or supposes that he sufin our competition for the skilled work-fers, by his ballot, any other method seems men and artisans who make these goods, when we again offer them equal or higher wages and better conditions of life in the work that will very soon need to be done to supply the increasing demand in our own country. The patent system may here be cited also as a factor in our industrial system. It has been carried to an almost absurd extreme, so that it is not safe for any one to adopt a new method, machine, or part of a machine, and attempt to use it quietly and without taking out a patent, lest some sharp person seeing it in use and not published, shall himself secure a patent and come back to the real inventor with a claim for royalty. Manhood suffrage, subject as it is to great abuses, and difficult as it has made beneath his dignity, and violent acts like the riots in Pennsylvania a year or two since excite little general uneasiness, because it is felt that there must have been, as indeed there were, special and local causes for them, even though such causes may not be positively or publicly defined. The easy acquisition of land throughout the country under simple forms of conveyance registered in every county gives a motive to economy, and induces habits of saving that are of supreme importance in their effect on society. In the town to which the writer has referred, - and in which he himself can remember the coming of the first Irishman, who became a landowner, - out of about one thousand owners of real estate over two hundred are of Irish birth or extraction. The richest one among them came from Ireland in | on well-earned confidence, and offers an 1846, a steerage passenger. He now pays easy means of saving the smallest sums taxes on property of the value of fifty thou- to every man, woman, and child in the sand dollars, almost all in real estate; his state. son is superintendent of the repairs of highways and one of the most efficient members of the school committee. During the last thirty years the factory population of New England has passed through three phases. First came the sons and daughters of the New England farmer, but as the sewing-machine and other inventions opened new demands for women's work, women of American birth passed out to easier or better-paid employments, while the men took up other branches requiring more individual skill. Their places were taken mainly by Irish, with a few Germans and English; but the Irish saved their earnings, and as the New England yeomen emigrated to the richer lands of the great West, they passed out of the mills to buy up the deserted farms of the poorer north-eastern states, where by their persistent industry and manual labor they achieve success and gain a position which satisfies them, but with which the native New Englander is no longer contented. Their places in the mills are now being more and more taken by the French Canadians, who in their new conditions and surroundings show little of the stolid and unprogressive character which have kept them so long contented on their little strips of land on the St. Lawrence River. In the very air they breathe they seem to imbibe a new and restless energy, while the intelligence shown by their children in the schools augurs well for their future progress. On the whole, the simplicity of our system of land tenure, and the ease with which small parcels may be obtained, must be rated among the most important factors in considering our possible advantage over other countries. Next in our list comes the savings-bank. In 1875, out of the sixteen hundred and fifty-two thousand inhabitants of Massachusetts, seven hundred and twenty thousand were depositors in savings-banks to the amount of two hundred and thirtyeight million dollars (£49,000,000). During the late years of depression the deposit has decreased somewhat in amount, but the decrease has been chiefly owing to the withdrawal of money for other investment, especially in United States bonds. There have been some failures of banks and some losses, as might well have been expected, but they have been less than in any other branch of business, and the savings-bank system stands firmly based To these causes of quick adaptation to any conditions that may arise, or to any necessity for the application of new methods or devices, may be added the custom, which has almost the force of law, of an equal distribution of estates among the children of the testator. Tools to him who can use them is the unwritten law, and neither land nor capital can remain long in the possession of him who cannot direct or use them wisely. Liberty to distribute is esteemed as important a factor in our body politic as liberty to accumulate, even though the liberty may sometimes lead to the apparent waste of great fortunes. Finally, it must be held that our freedom from the blood-tax of a standing army, and the fact that the proceeds of taxation are on the whole usefully and productively expended are among our greatest advantages, and this is asserted with confidence, notwithstanding the misgovernment of some great cities and of several of the Southern States. What are these failures but proofs of the general confidence of the people in local self-government? Great frauds and great abuses can only happen where integrity is the common rule; where each man distrusts his neighbor, or each town, city, or state distrusts the next, the opportunity for fraud or breach of trust cannot occur. The use of inconvertible paper-money during late years has not been without its necessary malign result upon the character of the people, and the newspapers are filled with the fraud and corruption that have come to light, but no newspaper has ever yet recorded one fact that offsets many frauds. In the great Boston fire one of the Boston banks' lost, not only every book of account, but every security and note that was in its vaults, amounting to over twelve hundred and fifty thousand dollars. On the morning after the fire its officers had no evidence or record by which any of the persons or corporators who owed it money could be held to their contracts, yet within a very short time duplicate notes were voluntarily brought in by its debtors, many of whom knew not whether they could ever pay them, because the fire had destroyed their own property, and the ultimate loss of that bank from the burning of its books and securities was less than ten thousand dollars. Our army is but a border police, and although its officers are held in honor and esteem, military life is not a career that very many seek, and as time goes on it will become less and less an occupation to be desired. Although officers of the army have several times been the candidates whom political parties have found it expedient to adopt for the highest executive offices, army influence in legislation has been very slight, and any attempt to increase it is more a cause of jealousy and suspicion than of favor. If the Indian question were not at once the shame of all our past administrations, and the problem most difficult of solution among all that are now pressing upon us, it is doubt ful if our army would consist of more than its corps of trained officers with a few soldiers to keep our useless old forts in repair. Thus we are spared not only the tax for its support, but the worse tax of the withdrawal of its members from useful and productive pursuits. It is in this respect that we claim our greatest advantage over the nations of Continental Europe. What have we to fear from the competition of Germany, if we really undertake to beat her in the neutral markets which we can reach as readily as she can? For a little while the better instruction of her merchants in her technical and commercial schools may give her advantage, but that can be overcome in a single generation, or as soon as the need is felt with us, as it is now beginning to be felt; after we shall have supplied our present want of technical education, the mere difference between the presence of her great army on her soil and its necessary support, and the absence of such a tax on us, will constitute the difference on which modern commerce turns, when the traffic of the world turns on half a cent a yard, a cent a bushel, or a halfpenny a pound on the great staples; no nation can long succeed in holding the traffic that is handicapped with a standing army. The protection of Germany from our competition in neutral markets may be offset in our yet more dangerous competition for men. The German already knows Texas, and in the one block of sixty thousand square miles of land by which the State of Texas exceeds the area of the German empire, we offer room and healthy conditions of life for millions of immigrants, and on that single square of land if they come in sufficient numbers they can raise as much cotton as is now raised in the whole South, that is to say, five million bales, and as much wheat as is now raised in the whole North, that is to say, four hundred million bushels, and yet subsist themselves besides on what is left of this little patch that will not be needed for these two crops. It will be obvious that even the least imaginative cannot but be moved by the influences that have been designated, and that versatility and readiness to adopt every labor-saving device will not only be promoted, but absolutely forced into action when such vast areas are to be occupied, and when even the dullest boy is educated in the belief that he also is to be one of those who are to build up this nation to the full measure of its high calling. We may not dare to boast in view of all we have passed through, but we know that slavery has been destroyed, and that the nation lives stronger, truer, and more vigorous than ever before. We know that it has been reserved for a democratic republic to be the first among nations that, having issued government notes and made them legal tender, has resumed payment in coin without repudiation or reduction of the promise. We know that we have paid a third of our great national debt already, and that the rest is now mainly held by our own citizens. We know that within the lives of men of middle age now living the nation will number one hundred millions, and that in whatever else we may be found wanting, we cannot long be kept back in our career of material prosperity, which shall be shared with absolute certainty by every one who brings to the work health, integrity, and energy. If there is any force in this reasoning, our competition with other manufacturing countries in supplying neutral markets with manufactured goods will not be compassed by low rates of wages paid to our factory operatives or to the working-people engaged in our metal works and other occupations, but first by obtaining and keeping such an advanced position in the application and use of improved tools and machinery as shall make high wages consistent with a low cost of production; secondly, by our ability to obtain the raw materials at as low or lower cost. Every employer knows that among employées who are paid by the piece, it is the operative that gains the largest earnings whose production costs the least, because under the control of such operatives the machinery is most effectively guided during working-hours. As it is with single operatives, so is it with large masses - if well instructed and working under the incentives to industry and frugality that have been named, their large product will earn for them ample wages, and yet re |