STEAM IS NOT AN ARISTOCRAT.
One of the careless outcries of dissatisfied persons is that the “rich are growing richer and the poor poorer.” This is half true. The rich are growing richer—and so, too, are the poor. The wealth of the world has been enormously increased, and all classes have profited by it. Even paupers fare better at public expense than they did fifty years ago. Steam has multiplied the world’s wealth. The increase is most conspicuous in the bank accounts of the rich. But the poor live in better houses, have better food and clothing, and get a good many things once considered luxuries. Doubtless some who cry “the poor are growing poorer,” have an honest fear that the tendency of things is to crush down into bitter poverty all but the few rich. They see the growth of large fortunes, but they fail to see the greater growth of general wealth, nor do they stop to figure out the problem. For example: Suppose Vanderbilt has $150,000,000. Then suppose it divided among 50,000,000 of people. We should get just three dollars apiece! Suppose that the very rich of the country are equal in wealth to twenty Vanderbilts—a very large estimate. Then, their united wealth, if distributed, would give us only sixty dollars apiece! That is the most we could get out of dividing up the big piles of wealth. Any one sees that it would not pay to divide. The rich have not a great deal of our money in their pockets—if they have any. For, an honest inquiry will show that the general average of wealth, and of all that wealth brings to us, is higher by a much larger proportion than that sixty dollars apiece represents. The worst view we can possibly take of it is that we have paid sixty dollars apiece, out of a vast increase in wealth, to men who have managed great enterprises that have enriched us all. Perhaps these men have taken it all for nothing. Nobody believes it; but suppose they have. Then we have still obtained a great gain at small cost. We get, on the average, twice as much for our labor as people did fifty years ago. We live in more comfort than people used to do. We are not growing poorer. We raise here no question of monopolies. Our point now is that the poor are not growing poorer, but richer—that there is no such tendency at work in modern society as the one honestly feared by many—this piling up of all wealth in few hands. Steam is not an aristocrat, but a plain Republican who impartially helps us all when we help ourselves.
THE PRESENT POLITICAL OUTLOOK.
In a very few months we shall know the names of the presidential candidates, one of whom, in all probability, will be the next chief executive of the nation. The Republican National Convention has been called to meet in Chicago June 3, next. The calling of other conventions will soon follow. In a short time we shall have the candidates, and then will ensue a contest of which it is safe to predict that it will be close, exciting, and warmly fought. In contemplating the present political situation, we see it is little different from that of 1880. Less change has come in the quadrennium than might have been anticipated. The same two great parties confront each other, and their apparent relative strength is much the same as it was when last in the national arena they measured swords; it can hardly be said that there is greater likelihood of the success of either than there was four years ago. For years there has been no little talk about the old parties having done their work, and the time having come for them to die and new parties to succeed them; and yet, we enter the presidential campaign of 1884 with the two old parties in the field as influential as ever. Small progress, if any, has been made during the past four years in the work of bringing new parties to strength and prominence. The supersession of the parties which for so many years have been competitors for the reins of government is a thing of the future still, and seems a thing not of the near future. Of the new political organizations which from time to time have arisen, it is to be said that, generally, their strength is evidently waning rather than increasing. Some of them, in state elections, have held the balance of power and been important factors, but there is no probability that such will be the case in the approaching presidential contest. The influential parties of the past are the influential parties of the present. One of them is to win in November next, and both now appear with about the same chances of success as in 1880.
The fall elections of 1882 gave great confidence to the Democratic party. Their ticket in New York received 192,000 majority, in Pennsylvania 40,000, and in Massachusetts 14,000. They had some grounds certainly for the assurance that in the next presidential fight they would wrest from their opponents the power which had been theirs for more than a score of years. But the situation has taken on a decidedly changed aspect. From the state elections of October last, indeed, Democrats might still derive courage and hope. They carried Ohio, and showed much greater strength in Iowa than in former years; though, to be sure, causes for these results of a local and temporary character were not wanting. But the November elections served to render the prospects more dubious. In New York the Republicans elected their candidate for Secretary of State by 17,000 majority; in Pennsylvania their state ticket was carried by a majority of 16,000; and in Massachusetts Mr. Robinson was elected Governor over General Butler by a majority of 10,000. Virginia was carried by the Democrats; but this Democratic victory, it is well argued by a keen political writer, is to prove a real blessing to the Republicans by breaking the complications of their party with “Mahoneism” and repudiation. All things considered, then, neither party can be seen to have gained since the last presidential election, and to stand a better chance of success than four years ago. The “Solid South” is still solid. Not an electoral vote from the states once in rebellion will be given to the Republican candidates. Among many doubtful things, this at least is certain. The solid vote of the South is secure in the hands of the Democrats. In addition to this, they will need, to win, forty-five electoral votes from the North. If they are successful in securing these, the next incumbent of the presidential office will be a Democrat. The result of the approaching contest, since party issues of account are now notably wanting, must turn very much upon the character of the party candidates and the personal and official conduct of the representatives of the two parties at Washington in the intervening time. From what has been seen in New York, Pennsylvania, and other states, it is evident that there is a very large and growing body of voters in the land who will not be fettered to party, whether right or wrong. They claim the right to turn their backs upon their party when its action becomes offensive, and take an independent position. These “independents” hold the balance of power at the present time. They can give New York and Pennsylvania to either party; they can fix the result of the presidential election. If good behavior on the part of party leaders and the choice of unexceptionable candidates will secure their votes, it will certainly be good policy to make use of the measures.
SPANISH BULL FIGHTS.
There are found, even where we have the best civilization, some degraded classes who delight in cruel, bloody sports, in witnessing scenes most revolting to persons of humane feelings and better culture. But desperadoes, pugilists, and other fighting men, with those who have a fiendish satisfaction in the sufferings and blood of the dumb animals they torture, are counted alien from our Christian civilization. Their characters and their crimes are detested by all good citizens. But when deeds of cruelty and blood are not only endured and condoned, but raised to the dignity of national sports, it shows a state of society that can hardly be called civilized. Ancient Rome had her gladiatorial shows for the gratification of those eager to witness the bloody spectacle. The tournaments of chivalrous knights in the mediæval times, who slew each other as an exhibition of their strength and skill, were of the same character. In Spain and Portugal even to the present day bull fights are a national amusement, in which nearly all classes find pleasure. Our attention is just now called to this. A suggestive note from a gentleman of culture and refined sensibilities, says: “A king of Spain brought home a young wife, whose first duty was to give the signal for the beginning of a bull fight. The same monarch is visited by a German prince, in whose honor these brutalities are perpetrated on a more magnificent scale than usual.” And so it is. Alas for European civilization in the nineteenth century!
The preparation for these sports is extensive. The ring is of vast dimensions, in the center of which is a pit, or wide area, sunk in terraced granite, with galleries rising on all sides, sufficient to seat at least ten thousand people who usually crowd the place on Sabbath afternoon. The fighters and their assistants are trained to their business, and handle their weapons skillfully. Some are mounted on horses with long slender spears, used simply to torture and exasperate, but to inflict no deadly wound. The “killer” is a swordsman on foot, who baffles and confuses the bull, drawing his attention this way and that, playing his red cloak before his eyes, and watching his opportunity to plunge the sword to the hilt into the neck of the animal. They are well paid, and often amass large fortunes. But no verbal account of a bull tourney can present the rapid changes, the dangers and escapes, the skill, the picturesqueness, and the horror of the actual thing. The acts, brilliant or repulsive, occur in rapid succession, presenting only glimpses of dramatic, ghastly pictures, which fade out instantly to re-form in new phases. The poor, gaunt, dilapidated horses used are a cheap contribution to the occasion, and forced into position to be killed by the horns of the bull, as he, in turn, is doomed to die by the sword of the killer, with not the slightest chance to survive the bloody fray. A fierce, powerful bull has been known to kill five horses in ten minutes. The first rush against a horse is a sight horrible to witness. You hear the horns tearing the tough hide, crashing the ribs, dragging the entrails from the quivering body. When two or more of the poor animals are struggling on the earth in the ring, now reeking with blood, others, with bandaged eyes, and hideously gashed sides, are spurred and goaded on to a similar fate. A witness tells of seeing “a horse and rider lifted bodily on the horns, and so tossed that the horseman was flung from his saddle, hurtled over the bull, and landed solidly on his back, senseless.” The grooms bore him off white and rigid, but the eager spectators heeded him not. They were wildly cheering the bull’s strength and prowess. Occasionally a man is horribly mangled, killed in the ring, or maimed for life; so a surgeon attends in the ante-room, and (alas! the mockery,) a priest is at hand, with his holy wafer for the last sacrament in case of any accident to a good bull-fighting Catholic. Yet things so unutterably repulsive are witnessed with apparent delight by richly dressed Spanish gentlemen and ladies of the highest rank.