Many expressions of socialistic or quasi-socialistic opinion have lately been written and spoken by men and women whose opinions are worth reading and hearing. From among these expressions the following letter by the Rev. Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst may be selected as typical of American socialistic idealism. It accepts a principle; it proposes no method. It was written to Charles Sprague Smith, director of the People's Institute, at Cooper Union, New York, to be read before the institute in lieu of an address.
The one doctrine I would specialize (meaning one to be dwelt on in the institute work) is that of the solidarity of the race, or, to revert to your own more usual way of stating it, the brotherhood of man.
You stand for a great truth every time you put it before your people that we are not our own, but that we belong to each other; that we are all children of one household; that we belong to the family and the family belongs to us; that the assets of the family are the joint property of all the children; and that any man, rich or poor, who treats his particular holdings, large or small, as though they were not in the truest sense a part of the common holdings of the entire household is a renegade and a traitor to the household.
If it is charged upon me that this smacks of socialism, all I can say is that I do not care what you call it; it is the doctrine that I preach in the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, and if it is good for Madison Square it is good for Cooper Union; anyhow, it is biblical, and contains in it a good deal of the genius of the teaching of Jesus Christ.
Brotherhood involves reciprocity of rights and duties, but it means that we all need each other, are all debtors to each other, and are all intended to be trustees of the common assets, and that any man who cuts an underground conduit between the common treasury and his own pocket is a modern reproduction of the original Judas, who carried the bag and drew from it to meet his personal expenses.
WHAT A CHINESE SAYS ABOUT CHINA'S FUTURE.
Waves of Progress Are Now Sweeping
Over the Long Somnolent Flowery
Kingdom, Says Kang Yu Wan.
That there is in China a growing reform movement directed by leaders of the younger and more progressive generation is coming to be quite generally known. Kang Yu Wan, the president of the reform association, has been traveling through the United States on his way from Mexico to Europe. In his flowered silk jacket and blue-and-pink cap he looks like a veritable teacup politician. But it will not do to judge the Chinese by their apparel. Mr. Kang is an active reformer, and he is leading an active movement. In a New York interview he talked freely of the new spirit in China, saying, in part:
China is no longer in the Dark Ages. She has already reached the point where Japan was only twenty years ago.
We have now, for example, more than twenty thousand Chinese students pursuing advanced modern courses of study. As to common schools, some five thousand have been started in the one province of Canton. There are now four million Chinese who can speak English. Our courts are being remodeled after the English system.