The Folly of Competition.—We live under a ruinous system of competition instead of co-operation, in which the weakest sink into poverty, beggary, disease, crime, and suicide. Every day the horrors of our social system are recognized and commented on, but how little is done, and how little thought for its amendment. According to Bradstreet, during the first six weeks of this year the loss of wages by strikers has amounted to three millions of dollars. This damage falls on those who cannot afford it, the most of whom find themselves in a worse and more hopeless condition in consequence of the strike, if not entirely out of employment. It has been a matter of comparatively little importance to the parties against whom the strikes were made. The Journal will pay some attention to the remedial measures which are being introduced.
Insanities of War.—Senator Vest recently stated to the Senate that “there was not in the history of the civilized world a page of maladministration equal to that of the Navy Department of the United States since 1865…. There had been expended for naval purposes since the close of the war over $419,000,000.” Query: How much over $5,000,000 would it all bring if sold out to-day? Would it bring that much?
The Sinaloa Colony has had too great an influx already, and Mr. Owen positively prohibits any more arrivals. If any more come they will not be received until due preparation has been made. The colony has a splendid harbor in a delightful climate, and large tracts of fertile land, capable of producing everything belonging to semi-tropical and temperate climates.
Other attempts by societies to solve the great social question are beginning. A society with the same objects and principles as the Sinaloa colony is now organizing to found a colony in Florida on the margin of a beautiful harbor.
Another scheme has been proposed by a company of Chicago Knights of Labor, who “have gone to Tennessee to found a co-operative colony. The purpose is the establishment of a manufacturing community in which the rule shall be ‘eight hours and fair wages,’ and the spot chosen is represented as a salubrious table land of 120,000 acres, 2,000 feet above sea level, abounding in iron, timber, and limestone. Here it is intended to set up an iron furnace, a nail factory, and the sash, door, and blind industry, to build 200 houses within 30 days, put up a city hall, public school and engine house at once, and secure incorporation as a city within two weeks. They have begun to sell choice locations at $7 to $10 per acre.”
Medical Despotism. The bill which has been introduced into the Rhode Island Legislature for the suppression of independent physicians by confining all practice to those licensed by a medical board, is so great an outrage on common sense and justice, that it meets with strenuous opposition. The editor of the Journal made an address in opposition to the bill in the hall of the House of Representatives on the sixteenth of February, occupying about an hour and a half, showing that the proposed legislation was more despotic and unjust than the laws under European despotisms. The Providence Star, in reporting the address, spoke of it as the most eloquent ever delivered in the House on any subject.
“Mind in Nature,” the best monthly publication of its kind in the world and the nearest approach in its character to the Journal of Man, has just expired at Chicago after issuing two volumes. A few bound copies may be obtained at $1.25 per single volume, or $2.25 for two volumes, by addressing the editor, J. E. Woodhead, Chicago.
Physiological Discoveries in the College of Therapeutics.
The resolutions of my most recent class in Boston are the same in spirit as have been expressed during forty years, and will no doubt be expressed again by my students in May, 1887. They not only know the truth of the science but recognize sarcognomy as “the most important addition ever made to physiological science by any individual,” and their testimony was based on their own personal experience. To the students of sarcognomy this is a familiar idea, but to others some explanation may be necessary.