miserable places as many of them often were for human dwellings, there were certain forces at work which have done as much for humanity, and for modern civilization as any that can be named. Cities have always been nurseries of freem.en. The Rev. Dr. James W. Cooper, in a recent address, says:

"It is a significant fact that in the development of society productive industry and political liberty have always gone together. There has been no manufacturing or trading people known to history, from the ancient Tyrians to the mediaval Florentines and the modern English, which has not also been a free people. Business enterprise demands freedom and developes it. Men must have liberty if they are to combine in business ventures, and through such combinations they learn also to unite their interests in other than mere business ways for the common weal. There is a close connection between the private fortune of each and the property of all, if it can only be discerned; and practical, pushing men are ordinarily the first to discern it."

* *

"If you go back to the fourteenth or fifteenth century, you will find the seeds of modern civilization in the little towns and free cities which were just then beginning to develop an independent life all over England and on the Continent. With the introduction of manufactures came the town, and with the town there came insistence on personal rights, a self-respecting, self-governing, compact community was developed, the castle was defied, the old feudal system of the Middle Ages gave way before the new civilization, and the modern era was ushered in. This was accomplished by the towns. It is the habit just now to praise the country and decry the town. We quote Cowper, and say, 'God made the country, man made the town.' But God also made man who made the town, I suppose this is true. * and, while the beginning of things was a garden in the paradise of Eden, the end of things, as prophesied in the Book of Revelation, is a city, magnificent and populous, the new Jerusalem."

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In a paper read before this association in 1885 on city and country schools, Mr. W. M. Beckner says: "Cities have played a noble part in the struggle for light and progress. In Europe they were the first to rebel against the feudal system. In England, London always led the fight against tyranny." Indeed there is plenty of historical proof of this fact. "The ordering of secular matters appertaineth not to the Pope," said the burghers of London in the year 1215, a time when the Pope himself and a great many other people thought that the ordering of everything that was worth ordering appertained to him. I find also the following in a book of parliamantary usages: "At the first meeting of a new Parliament the members for the city of London, in court dress or uniform, take seats on the treasury bench, which are afterwards vacated for the ministers of the day. This privilege is accorded to them in commemoration of the part taken by the city in 1642 in defense of the privilege of Parliament and the protection given to the five members who took refuge in the city when their arrest had been attempted by King Charles. This usage was observed," it says, "at the meeting of Parliament in April, 1880." London and Bristol were the sympathizers and stanch friends of America in our own Revolution. It is remarked, too, I think, by Mr. J. R. Green, that the important part in all public matters played by the trade guilds, which were only found in cities, and their influence as a whole toward freedom, although at times despotic within themselves, is too well known to need any lengthy reference.

Prof. George Burton Adams, in his History of Medieval Civilization, says: "It is in Italy, however, that the most revolutionary changes which mark the new age are to be seen. There Frederick found himself opposed by an entirely new and most determined energy-the cities.'

And in the history of freedom the very names of Utrecht, Dort, Haarlem, Leyden, Magdeburg, Hamburg, Bruges, Wittenberg, Eisenach, and Worms, of Padua, Bologna, and Florence, of Warsaw, Prague, and Buda-Pesth, to which may be added London, Bristol, and Boston, ring with the story of popular rights and human liberty. Frederic Harrison says: "The life that men live in the city gives the type and measure of their civilization. The word 'civilization' means the manner of life of the civilized part of the community-that is, of the city men, not of the countrymen, who are called rustics, and were once called pagans (pagani), or the heathen of the villages." And another says: "A great and beautiful city surely draws to her the observant and thoughtful souls from every district, and, if she does not keep them, sends them home refined and transmuted."

Some modern woman is quoted as saying that, if one has to run the gauntlet of two or three hundred pair of sharply scrutinizing eyes, the consciousness of a Paris dress is worth any amount of moral principle. And Sappho, who sang six or seven hundred years before the Christian era, says:

What country maiden charms thee,

However fair her face,

Who knows not how to gather

Her dress with artless grace!

If they "didn't know everything down in Judee," it is clear that in Lesbos they knew two or three.

In contrast with the statements of Nordau and of others in regard to the unfavorable sanitary conditions of city life, it must be noticed that it is always in cities that those who can afford it get the best food; and, if you are living in the country, you are largely dependent on the city for your supply. The summer seashore visitor usually finds, if he takes the trouble to investigate, that his fresh fish comes from the nearest great city, also his meat, and quite likely his butter and eggs, and nearly everything except perhaps his milk. To be sure, they came from the country first in many cases; but they seek the best market, and are to be best found at it.

It is also only in great cities, as a rule, that the best medical skill can be obtained There we all go or send to have our most serious diseases treated and our most critical surgical operations performed. It is almost wholly owing to the unsanitary condition among the children of the very poor that the city death rate is so high. Mr. C. F. Wingate, in a paper read here in 1885, quotes Dr. Sargent as saying that "life in towns is, on the whole, more healthful than in the country;" also Sir Charles Dilke, in speaking of recent sanitary improvements in England, as saying that "the exceptions are mostly found in the rural districts." This apparent discrepancy between these statements and some of the others is doubtless to be accounted for by the fact that the former had in mind the very poor, while the latter doubtless referred to the better conditioned.

I have been fairly familiar with the streets of New York and Boston for the last fifty years, and there is no fact in that connection with which I have been more impressed than the physical improvement which has taken place in both men and women during that period. The men are more robust and more erect, the women have greatly improved both in feature and carriage; and in the care and condition of the teeth in both sexes a surprising change has taken place. In Boston streets and street cars it seems to me that you see a hundred good-looking women where you formerly saw one. Whether this would hold good in the slums and low parts of the town may be doubted, but there of course one looks for the refuse and cast-off material of society.

A few years since I stood by the grave of a prominent man in one of our rural towns. By my side stood a man who had achieved a reputation both in literature and law. He said to me, "Who is that man opposite?" calling my attention to a tall, fine-looking man. "That," I replied, "is General H." "Ah!" said my friend, with accents of enthusiasm, "one needs to come into the rural districts to see the finest specimens of manhood." I said, "Look about, and see if you find any more." He did not find them. Then I said, "You have picked out the one man here who is in no sense a rural product. It is true this is his home, but his life is metropolitan or cosmopolitan; and those prematurely old, bowed, rheumatic, decrepid, and uninteresting people who make up most of the gathering are the true representatives of our rural population." I think I shattered an ideal, but the logic of facts was too strong to be resisted.

Perhaps this is as good a place as any to remark that when any occupation or calling in life or in a community becomes relatively less remunerative than the average, there begins at once, by natural selection, a process of personal deterioration of those engaged in it. In other words, success is the stepping stone to improvement. And in the rural districts of the Eastern States this deterioration has been going on now for fifty years.

Rev. Dr. Greer has recently said, speaking of clerical work in city and country: "I think I should say that the difficulties in the country are greater than those in the city. There is more, I think, in common village life to lower and degrade and demoralize than in the city. Take the matter of amusements in the city. There are good ones, and we can make a choice. In the country one can not make a choice. If a theatrical company comes to a village, it is a poor company. If a concert is given, it is a poor concert. The entertainment is of a poor character. Then, again, there is a loneliness, an isolation in the country life; and this tends to lower and depreciate that life. I believe statistics show that a large contingent of the insane in our asyJums come from the farms. That hard drudgery of struggle with the clod and the soil from early morning to evening twilight is a lonely and bitter struggle. There is a want of idealism."

I think it is Dr. Strong who says: "When population decreases and roads deteriorate, there is an increasing isolation, with which comes a tendency toward demoralization and degeneration. The mountain whites of the South afford an illustration of the results of such a tendency operating through several generations. Their heathenish degradation is not due to their antecedents, but primarily to their isolation." He also mentions communities in New England where like causes have produced a similar result. I think isolated rural life, where people seldom come in contact with dwellers in large towns, always tends to barbarism. I believe that ED 9541*

poorer people in our cities, if planted in isolated situations in the country, would deteriorate and grow barbaric in habit and thought, even though they might be physically in better condition. What very unattractive people most of our rural population are!

It is to be noted that the attrition and constant opportunity for comparison which city life makes possible, and even compulsory, tend to make all the people who are subjected to its influence alike. They do and see and hear and smell and eat the same things. They wear similar clothes, they read the same books, and their minds are occupied with the same objects of thought. In the end they even come to look alike, as married people are sometimes said to do, so that they are at once recognized when they are seen in some other place; while people who live isolated lives think their own thoughts, pursue different objects, and are compelled to depend upon their own judgments and wills for the conduct of their daily lives. The consequence is that they develop and increase peculiarities of character and conduct to the verge of eccentricity, if not beyond it, and present all that variety and freshness of typo which we call originality or individuality. They are much more dramatic, picturesque, and interesting in literature, perhaps not always in real life. I mention this in passing, without any attempt to estimate fully the value of either development. Doubtless something is lost and something gained in either case, and probably much could be said in favor of each. Many persons have a great desire to get, as they say, "back to nature," while others prefer mankind in the improved state, even with some

sameness.

The ideal life, time out of mind, for all who could afford it, has been the city for action, the country for repose, tranquillity, recuperation, rest. When Joab, the mighty captain of Judea, quarreled with King David, he retired to his country seat, in what was called the Wilderness." When Cicero tired of the excitement of Rome, he found rest and quiet in Tusculum. When things went badly with Cardinal Wolsey, he sought refuge and repose in the Abbey of Leicester. Prince Bismarck retires from the frown of young Kaiser Wilhelm to Friedrichsruhe. The country is a good place to rest in, especially if one can control his surroundings. The quiet, the calm, the peace, the pleasant color, the idyllic sights and sounds, all tend to allay nervous irritation, to tranquilize the soul, to repress the intellectual, and to invigorate the animal functions in a very remarkable degree. But this is not rustic life; it is only the country life of the city resident. But the tranquil appearance of a country town, the apparent simplicity and serenity of rural life, the sweet idyllic harmony of rural surroundings are, as everyone must know who has much experience, very deceptive. I remember in one of Dickens's stories a man who lives the life of a traveling showman, one Dr. Marigold, says, in substance, that temper is bad enough anywhere, but temper in a cart is beyond all endurance. The small jealousies and rivalries, the ambitions, the bickerings and strifes of a small rural community, are greatly intensified by the circumscribed area in which they find their vent, and compared with the same human frailties in a larger sphere have all the drawbacks of temper in a cart.

Mr. (Lacon) Colton says: "If you would be known and not know, vegetate in a village. If you would know and not be known, live in a city." But to this it may be added that those who are known in a city are very much more widely known than they can be in the country. A happy fituess between the size of the person and the size of the place is doubtless productive of the most desirable results.

Mr. Shaw says:

"I am not willing to deduce any pessimistic conclusions from this general tendency, whether exhibited in England, in Germany, or in America. I do not for a moment believe that modern cities are hastening on to bankruptcy, that they are becoming dangerously socialistic in the range of their municipal activities, or that the high and even higher rates of local taxation thus far indicate anything detrimental to the general welfare. It all means simply that the great towns are remaking themselves physically, and providing themselves with the appointments of civilization, because they have made the great discovery that their new masses of population are to remain permanently. They have in practice rejected the old view that the evils of city life were inevitable, and have begun to remedy them and to prove that city life can be made not tolerable only for workingmen and their fam ilies, but positively wholesome and desirable.”

It would seem then (1) that for economic reasons a large part of the work of the world must be done in cities, and the people who do that work must live in cities. (2) That almost everything that is best in life can be better had in the city than elsewhere, and that, with those who can command the means, physical comforts and favorable sanitary conditions are better obtained there. (3) That a certain amount of change from city to country is desirable, and is also very universally attainable to those who desire it, and is constantly growing more so. (4) That the city is growing a better place to live in year by year; that in regard to the degenerate portion of mankind, the very poor, the very wicked, or the very indifferent, it is a question

whether they are better off in the country; but, whether they are or not, their grogarious instincts will lead them to the city, and they must be dealt with there as part of the problem. (5) That efforts to relieve the congested conditions of the city poor by deportation of children to the country are good and praiseworthy, but only touch the surface of things, and that city degeneration must mainly be fought on its own ground.

Perhaps, too, the country needs some of our sympathy and care. It appears clear that here is a constant process of deterioration. Deserted farms and schools and churches mark the progress of ignorance and debasement, and threaten to again make the villagers pagani, as they were in the days of old. And improvement here is not the hopeless thing it might seem; but it must be on economic, and not on sentimental, lines.

The problems here discussed have but recently attracted general attention, and doubtless much is yet to be learned, but the progress already made is by no means small and all the signs are signs of promise.

GEORGIA.

[Address delivered October 31, 1893, by Hon. J. L. M. Curry, general agent of the Peabody and Slater funds, in response to an invitation of the general assembly of Georgia.]

Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Gentlemen of the Senate and House of Representatives of the General Assembly of Georgia:

I appreciate, I trust properly, the distinguished compliment of being invited to speak to you upon what the president of the senate has well characterized as the paramount subject of your deliberations. I count myself happy in appearing, also, in this magnificent hall of this magnificent capitol, which has, I understand, the rather exceptional merit of having been completed within the original appropriation, and of having been completed without stain or smirch resting upon anyone connected with it. I have the honor of appearing before men of distinguished ability, engaged in the most responsible work of lawmaking. Lawmaking is the attribute of sovereignty, and it is of the highest human honor and responsibility to be invested with this attribute. It would be carrying coals to Newcastle for me to say in this presence that the proper fulfilment of this function demands intelligence, patriotism, integrity, general acquaintance with law, political economy, and a thorough knowledge, not so much of what people desire or clamor for, as of what may be best for the people's needs and welfare. Divine law is the expression of omniscience and omnipotence; human law is the condition of civilization. Under the provocation of atrocious crimes, communities, aroused to indignation, have sometimes violated law. Sometimes, under the experiences of the law's delay and cheated justice, and burning with a desire to take vengeance upon odious malefactors, they have summarily, and sometimes with savage ferocity, deprived a suspected or guilty person of his life under the process of what is known as "lynch law." In pioneer and frontier life, communities have sometimes been compelled, for self-protection, to organize vigilance committees and take the law into their own hands. Such an extreme exigency does not exist at the South, nor excuse the illegal proceedings with which the papers are too often too full. The race of these criminals has not the possession of the government and is not charged with any of its functions. The white people, the race wronged and outraged, are in power, and control the legislative, executive, and judicial departments. As they are the judges, jurors, and executioners there is not the remotest possibility of one of these criminals, under just operation of law, going unwhipped of justice. A mob is a sudden revolution. It is enthroned anarchy. It is passion dominant, regnant. It usurps all the functions of government. It concentrates in itself all the rights and duties of lawmaker, judge, jury, counsel, and sheriff. A mob does not reason, has no conscience, is irresponsible, and its violence is unrestrained, whether it burns down an Ursuline convent, as in Massachusetts, or tortures a ruffian in Paris, Tex. A mob of infuriated men, or of hungry, enraged women, will violate all law, human and divine, and will be guilty of torturing, of quartering, of burning, of murder-enormities hardly surpassed by the most atrocious crimes. Life, property, person, character, perish as stubble before the flame, in the presence of a conscienceless, unthinking, aroused multitude. A rape is an individual crime, affecting disastrously, incurably, the person or the family; a mob saps the very foundations of society, uproots all government, regards not God nor man, is fructiferous of evil. The progress of mankind is to be found only along the lines of the higher organization of society. Our free institutions can not survive except on the condition of the union of enlightened liberty and stable law. Lawlessness and violence are the antipodes of liberty and social order. Obedience to the constituted authorities, to law, is of the essence of true freedom, of self-control, of civilization, of happiness, of masterful development. There probably is not a neighborhood in the United States which would not have summarily arrested and executed, without

a day's waiting, the fiend of Paris. But that infliction of merited punishment, coupled with vengeance, is not defensible, but is fruitful of manifold evils. To its disregard of law may be traced whitecapism in the West and South, in which selfconstituted bands mercilessly execute their unauthorized judgments as to martial rights and obligations, political economy, personal duties, etc. It is a very grave error that democracy means the right of the people anywhere and everywhere, and in any way, to execute their passionate will. Ours is a representative government. Our representatives are not chosen because the people can not assemble en masse to legislate, adjudicate, and execute; but because the people ought not to assemble en masse to execute these functions of a complex government. I can fortify myself before a Georgia audience by quoting the expression of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who said before the bar association of this State: "The people have no hands for unlawful work. Justice is in the hands of the people only when it is in the hands of their organized tribunals."

I

I think it but a natural transition from these preliminary remarks to say that there is a wrong estimate of the power and effects of legislation. Too much is often expected of the general assemblies, as if the legislature were a sort of second-hand providence; and I suspect that not a few of you heard when you were candidates, or when you were about to leave for Atlanta, such inquiries as "What are you going to do for us? What will you do for us when you get to Atlanta?" I heard this very often when I was in public life. The world is governed too much. Some political thinker has said that the best government is that which governs the least. would not altogether subscribe to the "let alone" theory, because it may be pushed to extremes. There are two great factors of modern, progressive, civilized life. They are wise social organizations and proper individual development. Bearing these two factors in mind, I think you will not fail to see the relativity of my introductory remarks to what will follow. In cases of commercial distress, agricultural depression, financial crisis, national bankruptcy, we are too prone to seek for legislative cures and political nostrums, but all the legislation that you could pass from now until next Christmas would not increase one iota the real returns of agriculture. There are some knaves-not in Georgia, I hope-more demagogues, and a good many fools, who are trying to find a short cut to national and individual prosperity by treating wealth as if it were a thing that could be created by statute without the intervention of labor, forgetting that the products of labor represent all that there is of wealth in a country. Now, there are some universally established truths in political and legislative economy. Great changes, new systems of finance and trade, are not to be ordered as if you were to order a new suit of clothes according to a certain pattern. History condemns South Sea bubbles, John Law schemes of finance, shin-plaster, and fiat currency. Building Chinese walls around your country and erecting barriers against foreign trade never made a nation prosperous any more than the absurd notion, revived in recent times, that what makes one nation rich impoverishes the other, what one gains another loses. Now, we have serious agricultural depression in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and in all the Southern States. The abolition of slavery was a gigantic revolution. Did it ever occur to you that there is not in the annals of history anything comparable to it in its unprecedented magnitude and suddenuess? This, with other effects of the war, paralyzed Southern industries and produced individual and general impoverishment.

African slavery was a great economic curse. I am not speaking of it politically, socially, or morally, but it brought upon the South the curse of ignorant, compulsory, uninventive labor, undiversified products of agriculture, and sparse population. It was an interdict effectual upon invention, thrift, development of varied resources, diversity of employments, large and profitable use of machinery, improvement of soil, construction of good country roads, establishment of free public schools. These were the results of African slavery as an economic force. Curse as it was, it suggests a remedy for its evils. What are we to do? We must increase and make more valuable and diversified our products, and we must improve our country roads. Whatever facilitates exchange of products is a blessing. It will not be worth while to produce unless we can exchange what is beyond our own consumption. What do you need in Georgia? You need intelligent, skilled labor. Many of your laborers are ignorant, stupidly so, of every element of art and science. I spoke to a negro the other day at a railway station about his future. His reply was characteristic: "I ain't got nothing, and I don't want nothing." What is the worth of a system which produces such men? What you want is an alliance of brains and hands, with habits of thrift and cleanliness, and increased capacity of production.

Now, Mr. President, I affirm that no ignorant people were ever prosperous or happy. You may measure the growth, the progress, development, and the prosperity of a people by their advance in culture, in intelligence, in skill; and you can measure the decline of a people by their decline in culture, intelligence, and skill. In the United States there are twenty millions of horsepower at work, lowering the cost of production, cheapening the necessaries of life, giving to toil a larger reward. Much