Morocco, and ultimately in the Far East. His celebrated walk of more than two thousand miles across Australia was rivaled by a three-thousand-mile walk across China, and then by a walk across Manchuria to Vladivostok on the Pacific. Dr. Morrison traveled alone, dressed as a native. These and Dr. Morrison's other journeys were undertaken, not to satisfy a restless spirit, but to acquire knowledge at first hand. The result, so far as China was concerned, was that he knew the country better than did any Chinese statesman, for no one of these had studied it from as many angles. One has but to read Dr. Morrison's An Australian in China " to realize this. Little by little he came to be consulted as one who could speak with comprehensive knowledge, and he was frequently consulted, especially during the three critical years before the Boxer atrocities startled the world in 1900, and also during the anxious time just before the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. The following year, at the Russo-Japanese Peace Conference at Portsmouth, no one among the one hundred and twenty newspaper correspondents awakened more sympathetic respect than did Dr. Morrison. The appointment of such a man is a significant sign of President Yuan Shi-kai's recognition of the fact that a young Republic like China would do better with a tutor than without one.

Is Unsightliness Nuisance"?

a

The immense growth of billboard advertising in New York City has emphasized the imperative need of regulation. But when any thoroughgoing legislation is discussed or proposed, the backwardness of New York's courts in recognizing the true extent of the police power of a city stands in the way. It is, of course, possible to regulate the billboards so far as they are dangerous in construction, or are allowed to become a menace to health, or are likely to spread a conflagration. But the real indictment against the billboard is that it is ugly, that it offends the æsthetic sense, and that it injures the city because it is unsightly and offensive. The Commissioner of Accounts in New York, Mr. Fosdick, has been impelled by the increasing moral nuisance, if not the physical nuisance, of the billboard, to make a thorough investigation into the subject: and his report, just published, is a model of what a city investigation should be. It is most especially notable because of the numerous pic

tures which bring the offense and ugliness of the billboard directly before the reader's eye. Mr. Fosdick points out that there are over three thousand locations for billboard advertising in New York, exclusive of sky signs; and altogether there are about four thousand facings for advertisements, while eight of the leading concerns in the business have together a capital of about two million dollars. There is a city ordinance regulating both billboards and sky signs, but some of the provisions regarding the latter have been declared unconstitutional by the New York Court of Appeals on the ground that "æsthetic considerations are a matter of luxury and indulgence rather than of necessity; and it is necessity alone which justifies the exercise of the police power to take private property without compensation." Other States and other cities have shown a more enlightened view, although the right of a city to make itself decent to the eye is perhaps nowhere so well established as it will be in the future. The New York Court of Appeals, however, in this matter as in others, has taken pains to place itself explicitly in the rear of such advance as has been made. Apart from the question of the æsthetic principles involved, Mr. Fosdick shows plainly that the law is being violated constantly and offensively, and that there are nuisances about which there is no question, which the city can and should instantly abate. As to the rest, we can only hope that the time will soon come when the law will recognize the common-sense theory that an offense to the eye is just as much a nuisance as an offense to the nose, and that the State or city must have power to promote beauty and attractiveness as well as safety and cleanliness.

Putting the Guilt in

the Right Place

A Federal judicial decision which is in line with the basic ideas of social justice has just been rendered by Judge Noyes, of the New York Circuit Court. A German woman who had been made ill by eating canned meat which contained the germs of trichinosis brought suit against the great packing company in Chicago which had put up the meat. Thereupon these meat-packers, Armour & Company, set up the legal defense that they did not deal directly with the consumer of the meat, but only with the storekeeper or middleman who sold the meat to the consumer, and that the middleman must be held

In

responsible for damages, even although the carelessness or recklessness which brought about the injury lay with the packing company and not with the middleman. short, it was asserted that the packer owed the consumer no duty whatever except that which we all owe to all citizens-to refrain from knowingly and willingly inflicting injury. The argument adduced to support this contention was ingenious, and had a show of precedent and analogy behind it. But Judge Noyes quickly and finally rejected the plea, and he did so in the interest of humanity and because such a contention would remove a safeguard to life and health which ought to exist. If the individual citi zen is to have no remedy for poisoning caused by selling him rotten or diseased meat, merely because it has passed through the hands of a local dealer, a danger which should be slight and almost non-existent would become portentous. Judge Noyes recognized this and said: "In my opinion every consideration of law and public policy requires that the consumer have a remedy. If there are no authorities that grant one, it is high time for an authority."

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts is making an important and valuable. addition to its noble buildings. The contract for construction was let last April, and the work is already well advanced. This Evans Memorial Building will contain the galleries for paintings, all of which will be removed from their present position in the main building to the new addition on the main floor. Large top-lighted galleries on one side, with smaller galleries with top or side lights on the other side, will form a continuous circuit for the exhibition of paintings, while a corridor through the middle of the building will afford space for water-colors, drawings, and miniatures. On the lower floor will be the print department. This improvement will not only give additional room, but will give that room in galleries especially fitted for the exhibition of pictures. We note in this connection that the Fine Arts Museum has procured a series of forty-five water-colors by John S. Sargent. In some of these pictures Mr. Sargent appears to us to have attempted themes which can be dealt with adequately only in oils, but most of them are exceedingly beautiful illustrations of what can be achieved in water-colors.

THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT

I. SOCIAL JUSTICE

The Outlook proposes, in a series of editorial articles, to interpret to its readers the Progressive Movement-a movement which has created one of our political parties and modified the platforms and principles of the other two, a movement which is more than political and more than National, a movement which is transforming the religious, the educational, and the industrial as well as the political creeds and institutions of the world. These articles will be primarily interpretation, not advocacy, but will frankly, though incidentally, indicate the reasons why The Outlook gives its support to the Progressive party in the present political campaign.

How to prevent the concentration of wealth and the widespread extent of poverty has been the theme of political students for centuries. The social injustice which this wealth concentration causes has for centuries created in the oppressed classes a discontent varying in degree from a dull despair to a furious outburst of wrath, and has aroused in humane souls a fiery indignation, expressed sometimes in fierce invective, sometimes in open war.

It is eloquent in the pages of the Hebrew prophets-Isaiah, Micah, Amos, Hosea.

It

is expressed in the writings of the Christian Fathers in language radical even for the radical democracy of our time. It inspired the ministry of Francis of Assisi. It sharpened the sword of Oliver Cromwell. It kindled and fed the devastating fires of the French Revolution. It gave our fathers the audacity to declare their independence of Great Britain. It was the creator of the emancipation movement in America, the West Indies, Russia.

It has in these latter days inspired efforts to discover some quick and easy panacea— in Anarchism, because government has fostered injustice; in Socialism, because capitalists have been often callous and sometimes unjust; in the Single Tax, because land tenure has promoted monopoly. The Progressive Movement of our time is one phase of this world-wide demand for an order of society which will give to all God's children a fair opportunity to live a life worth living.

This discontent is not due to "sensational journalism and unjust and unprincipled muck

raking." Were Isaiah and Micah and Amos and Hosea muck-rakers or unprincipled journalists ?

It cannot be cured by the successive failures of some rich men and the successive deaths of all rich men and a consequent distribution of their property. Rich men have been failing and dying ever since the days of Solomon and Croesus, and still there are the two classes in society-some with incomes so great that they cannot spend them, and others with incomes so small that they cannot live on them.

Charity has done much to relieve the more distressing conditions of the intolerably poor; but it has done nothing to abolish the twofold social evil of hungry poverty and irresponsible wealth.

The tariff has not caused the evil, and the abolition of the tariff cannot cure it. For the poverty is more abject, the discontent deeper, the social injustice greater, in free-trade England than in tariff-protected America.

The Christian churches cannot cure the evil. They can inspire the will to cure it, and wherever there's a will there's a way. But the will, once inspired, must find the way. Christianity inspires the spirit of human brotherhood. But how to realize human brotherhood in a reorganized society humanity must learn by study and experiment.

To realize this human brotherhood—a brotherhood in which every child will have a fair opportunity to grow to a noble manhood, and every man will have a fair opportunity to live a rich, free, useful, happy life, is the object of the Progressive Movement, in whatever country and under whatever form it appears. It is more, far more, than a cry for bread or work or rent or houses or employment; it is a cry of growing humanity for fullness of life. Take off these swaddling-clothes and give me liberty, is the demand of the twentieth century.

The Outlook supports the Progressive party, primarily because it is the one party which clearly sees and frankly recognizes the social injustice in democratic America, and courageously sets itself the task of studying and removing the causes which produce it. This the new party does with the intelligence of men and women of wide culture and with the enthusiasm of men and women unselfishly devoted to the welfare of their fellows. That its understanding of causes and its prescription of remedies may in some

respects be mistaken is immaterial. Sincerity of purpose and courage of conviction, coupled with intelligence and an open mind, will correct such errors if they exist.

The remedies which the Progressive party proposes are, for the most part, those which The Outlook has been urging on the American public for over thirty years. Of course we welcome the party which is created for the purpose of making those remedies efficient. With most of the purposes of the Progressive party as they are outlined in its platform, and with its entire spirit as manifested in its National Convention, we are in hearty accord.

We wish to see an educational system which will educate our boys and girls for life, not merely for college, which will give as much honor and as much attention to industrial as to academic education, which will give a fair opportunity for development to every boy and girl in America, and which will do this by educating them for their life, not away from it.

We wish to see an industrial system which will give to those who carry on our organized industries some share in the profits and some share in the control of the industry; incomes so far equalized that every willing worker can earn a livelihood adequate for the comfortable support of himself and his family, and no healthy man living on an unearned income for which he renders no equivalent to society; hours of labor so adjusted that every workingman, whether he works with his hands or his head, can have a reasonable time for rest, recreation, and his home life; eight hours made the normal working day and six days the normal working week in all organized industries; laws enacted which shall make the consequences of ordinary accidents fall automatically on the industry, not, as now, on the workingmen, and which shall protect the children in their right to childhood and the mothers in their right to motherhood; and the government of the Nation and of the State equipped to protect and promote the health of the people.

We wish to see the problem of promoting our agricultural interests studied with the same care with which the Nation has studied the promotion of our mining and manufacturing interests, and more of the profits left to the farmer and less paid to the transportation systems and the middlemen.

We wish to see the railways fully recognized as highways of the Nation, and so carried on as to be of equal benefit to the

smallest and the biggest shipper; our great industrial organizations, whether of capitalists or workingmen, not disorganized or discour aged, nor made illegal, but recognized by law, encouraged by public opinion, and brought under such legal regulation and control as will make them beneficial, not prejudicial, to the public.

We wish to see a thorough reorganization of our tax methods, State, municipal, and National, so that what is now a chaos shall become a system, and so that the taxes shall be proportioned to the extent and value of the property protected by the Government.

We wish to see the past and present alliance between special interests and corrupt politicians destroyed, and government in all its phases administered for the equal benefit of the many, not for the special benefit of the few.

We wish to see the courts of justice so officered and organized that the poor man shall have an equal chance with the rich man, Ahab no advantage over Naboth, the rich criminal no immunity from punishment and no delay in receiving it.

We wish to see an end put to grants of the people's property to private owners; the mineral and forest lands and the great water powers now belonging to the people kept in their control; and measures studied for the purpose of regaining for the people the control of the public property of which they have been deprived, partly by their own carelessness.

We wish to see the people unmanacled ; free to nominate as well as to elect their representatives; free to re-elect them as long as they are satisfied with the service rendered; free, either by long terms with recall or short terms without recall, to dismiss them when the service is not satisfactory: and free, when the Legislature and the Courts disagree respecting the authority of the Legislature, to decide between the two.

This is not Anarchism. The Anarchists wish for a weak government or none at all. The Progressives wish for a strong govern

ment.

This is not Socialism. The Socialists wish to abolish private capital. The Progressives wish to retain private capital, but to bring it under Government regulation and control.

Some, perhaps many, of our readers, may not sympathize with this movement. But it is at least well that they should understand it.

The movement is not due to the politi

LETTERS TO UNKNOWN
FRIENDS

Early evening. A young mother sitting before an open fire in the parlor, day-dreaming of love. Upstairs the little girl whom she has just tucked in bed. A little stirring in the room overhead, the mother's ear alert to listen. Then a patter of little feet upon the stairs and along the hall, and the mother, through the portière which separates the parlor from the dining-room, sees this childish Eve climb on a chair, take a big, rosy apple from the fruit dish in the center of the table, and patter back through the hall and slowly climb the stairs again.

It would have been so easy to stop the theft before it was completed, or detect the culprit with her booty in her hand. But this is a wise mother. She does not care to stop the uncompleted theft or to detect the culprit and compel her to a shamefaced but reluctant confession. She wishes, not to stop the child from committing a sin, but to prevent her from becoming a sinner. She wishes, not to control her daughter, but to create in her daughter a power of self-control. She wishes any confession to be not compelled but voluntary, not reluctant but spontaneous. She waits and thinks. She is accustomed to think first and act afterward. Wise mother!

And as she waits, still all alert, she hears a stirring again in the room overhead, and again the patter of little feet upon the stair and along the hall. What? Is the child going to take another apple? No! she climbs into the chair, puts the purloined apple back into the fruit dish, and through the curtained doorway the gladdened mother hears the childish voice say softly, with what was half a sigh and half a chuckle, "That's one on you, Satan." And then the feet patter along the hall and climb the stairway, and all is still. And the mother is thankful in her

heart that she did not follow her first impulse and interfere.

This true story, as it has been told to me, suggests the answer to certain questions which some of my Unknown Friends have lately put to me. For it contains four of the elements of life's continuous drama-temptation, sin, repentance, victory. The fifth element is not there-redemption. For the mother did not save the child; the child saved herself.

Temptation is not sin. The childish desire for the apple was a perfectly innocent desire. Temptation involves no sin. Gluttony is sin, but appetite is not. Stealing is sin, but the desire to acquire property is not. The child desired the apple-that was quite right. She also desired to be an honest little girl and to be worthy of her mother's approbation. That was of course quite right. She sinned when the desire for the apple mastered the desire to be an honest little girl and to be worthy of her mother's approbation.

Taking the apple was not the sin; it was a consequence of the sin. The sin began when she began to indulge in the wish to get the apple which was not hers, and which she knew her mother would disapprove her taking. It was consummated when she resolved to disobey her conscience and disregard her mother's wish and take the apple. In this resolve, this act of the will, the sin was committed. If when she got downstairs she had found that the maid had locked the apples up in the closet and there was no apple there, still she would have sinned. If she had resolved to wait until her mother went out to make an evening call and then go down without fear of detection, and instead had fallen asleep and had wakened in the morning disappointed that she had not been able to complete her purpose, still she would have sinned. A sin is completed when the resolve to complete it is made. lessness." It is the conscious disregard of a higher law for the gratification of a desire which in itself may be entirely innocent. It is entirely innocent for the little child to wish the apple. It is not innocent for her to desire the apple more than she wished to obey the voice of her conscience telling her not to take it.

"Sin is law

Being sorry for having done wrong is not repentance, though repentance involves being sorry for the wrong done. If the little girl had taken the apple and carried it upstairs, and then had begun to be afraid

No

that the apple would be missed and she herself detected, or, without that fear, had begun to feel ashamed of herself and had even wished that she had not taken the apple, that would not have been repentance. She repented when she resolved to take the apple back and put it in its place in the fruit basket. Repentance is not feeling, though it involves feeling; it is not action, though it generally involves action. Repentance is the resolve not to repeat the wrong done, and to do all that one can do to repair its effects. repentance is genuine which does not involve an earnest desire, and, when repair is possi ble, a serious endeavor, to undo the wrong committed. Peter's repentance was not completed when he went out and wept bitterly. It never would have been completed had he not accepted from his Master his recommission and gone out to acknowledge his Lord and confess his faith in him, always at the peril and eventually at the cost of his life. Judas Iscariot was sorry that he had betrayed his Master-so sorry that he committed suicide. But Judas Iscariot did not repent.

When undoing the wrong which we have done involves confession, repentance involves confession. When undoing the wrong we have done does not involve confession, repentance does not involve confession. The little girl completed her repentance when she put the apple back. She might never tell her mother of her temptation, her sin, her repentance, her victory; she might even think that to do so would seem more like boasting than confessing.

The child was a better child for her experience, and better equipped for life because she had passed through it. The mother might well feel a new pride in her little girl because her little girl had won such a victory; and the child herself might well experience a feeling of exultation in that she had won so hard a battle.

This incident may not, probably will not, suffice to answer the questions of several of my Unknown Friends respecting the nature of temptation, sin, and repentance. But it may suggest to them trains of thought which will lead them to some light on their questions.

And some light also on another question which in different forms several of them ask: Why does God allow this terrible drama of sin to go on unchecked when he might so easily stop it? Perhaps for the same reason