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10 THE ATLANTIAN National Topliners Prices and Wages HOKE SMITH AS SEEN BY JAMES HAY, JR. When Hoke Smith was a young man ho was the, best boxer in Atlanta, Ga.; which place, being Southern anil full of hot-headed, impetuous gentlemen, had more pugilistic ability to the square yard than any city in this hemisphere. More over, it is a matter of indisputable rec ord that in all the fights he won his seconds never had to mop off his face or pry open a bunged-up eye. When it came to shutting up an orb or giving a handsome Southern chevalier a cauliflow er ear, Hoke was the fellow who filled all orders. He was fairly good on up per cuts and short-arm jabs to the jaw; but the thing in which he excelled was shooting out his right hand like a can non-ball and hitting has opponent di rectly over the most sensitive part of the human heart, thereby inducing in the helping man a fine lino of angina pec toris, acute indigestion, lean degeneration of the heart, and valvular vacumms. This brings us to a paradox. Lead Hoke to a public platform today, give him a sad and patriotic subject on which to speak, and he, suddenly convinced that his organs of vision aro bath towels, wrings enough tears out of them to float a torpedoboat destroyer. Hoke is a great fighter when fighting is necessary or ad vantageous; but, when kindness and gen erosity aro possible, his whole system is inhabited by strenuous desires to do good work. At the present time his six feet two and a half inches of height and two hun dred and forty pounds of weight are anchored in the Senate of the United States—all this accumulation of physique representing half of Georgia’s member ship in that body. But lie has boon many other things, such ns Secretary of the Interior in Grover Cleveland’s adminis tration and twice Governor of his Stnte, not to mention a law praetico that for many years has thrown into liis capa cious pockots an nnnual income of thirty thousand dollars. When it comes to shak ing down the money tree nnd picking up baskets full of the golden fruit, Hoke takes and wears with splendor the belt of the heavyweight championship. One day not many years ago a little boy came into Mr. Smith’s offico in At lanta on an errand. Hoke had never scon him before; but something prompt ed an inquiry as to whether the boy went to school. He, replied that ho did not go to school, as ho was confronted with the solemn business of trying to subju gate enough of the world to yield him three square meals a day. “You come in here every evening,” said the legal giant, “and I’ll teach you a little something.” Why should prices in England during the last ten years have risen to a smaller degree than in any other country for which comprehensive statistics are available? And why to a greater degree in the United States? Tariff can hardly account for it all; and England is as much af fected by increased gold production as any other country. This is one of the knotty but important questions an international inquiry into the cost of living may solve. Tt is important, because the well-being of a great part of the population of every industrial country is tied up with it. In spite of greatly expanded payrolls there has been little if any real increase in wages in the United States in fifteen years. Increased cost of living has absorbed increased pay, leaving real wages where they were before. On the other hand—in England at least—labor nominally benefited greatly by the big fall in prices between 1865 and 1896. Prices fell by two-fifths and wages rose by one-quarter. In forty years real wages almost doubled. No doubt real wages have risen greatly in the United States since 1865; but the gain was made while prices were falling, not while they were rising—and when prices are falling employment is apt to be uncertain. Can real wages rise only when prices fall and labor is party idle? There are some large subjects here, and it is high time we knew more about them. That international in quiry can not start too soon.—Ex. HON. HOKE SMITH, Junior Senator From Georgia. And he did—which is sufficient guar antee that his service of many years as president of the Board of Education of Atlanta was prompted by his real inter est in schools and the tuition of the young. But it is as the advocate of the rights of the working man that Hoke has al ways glittered, glistened, and gleamed. Give him a case involving this question, and he thunders and weeps,—thunders with such volcanic energy that the county clerk runs out and rigs up a lightning rod on top of the courthouse; weeps with such volume and vehemence that every single member of the jury puts on his mackintosh and thigh boots and screams lustily for an umbrella. Smith was admitted to the bar when he was only eighteen years old, and prior to that lie had made enough money teach ing school to pay for his legal educa tion. Let that rumble around in your cranial cavity for a moment. At eighteen he began to practice law, and fifty dol lars was his entire capital. At the age of thirty-six he won a case that yielded him a fee of seventy thousand dollars. One of his first big jobs was for a rail road engineer whose leg had been cut off when he was on duty. Several other attorneys had refused to represent the man because there was involved in the case the negligence of a cocinployee. The youthful and mountainous Smith grabbed the case like a hot cake, pushed it through the courts, and grabbed from an unwill ing railroad company sixteen thousand dollars for the injured man. That was the beginning of his interest in legisla tion, both State and national, to protect working men. If you drop into the Senate at almost any time, you arc likely to see a per son who looks liko Hercules discoursing rampantly and distinctly about laborers. Incidentally, there are flocks of laborers in Georgia, and every time the belligerent brow of Hoke is pushed above the politi cal horizon in search of a job they drop their tools, leap from their scaffolds, de sert their locomotives, and stampede to the polls to vote for him. Whenever he is not working or writing pr speaking for more safety devices on railroads or greater compensation for in jured employees of corporations, he is apt to be campaigning for a friend or delivering an address that starts out with something as silvery and delicate as the extreme ends of the new moon and con cludes with something else as proud, tri umphant, and gorgeous as “The Star- Spangled Banner. ’ ’ They beat him for the governorship once down in Georgia. The blow came after his first term. When the next campaign rolled round Hoke was there like a bunch of wildcats. In that fight he used to work until one o’clock in the morning and catch a six o’clock train for a long day’s campaigning and speaking. And he trimmed the fellows who were trying to beat him. Pugilist, school teacher, lawyer, human itarian, Cabinet officer, Governor, United States Senator,—that’s his biography in eleven words. But there’s one thing you must see if you have to travel all the way to Georgia to do it. Catch one glimpse of him when he weeps—and weeps—and weeps 1