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8 ' THEATLANTiAN rF= ^ CENTRAL BANK AND TRUST CORPORATION Candler Building Capital, Five Hundred Thousand Dollars Deposits, Three Million and Five Hundred Thousand Dollars A STRONG, WELL EQUIPPED, CON SERVATIVELY MANAGED BANK 4 % on Savings Deposits Your Account is Invited. BRANCH, CORNER MITCHELL AND FORSYTH STREETS Asa G. Candler, President. THE SOCIAL SETTLER. Tlio Raison d’Etre of Socialism. The astute editor of the Saturday Eve ning. Post makes a shrewd observation apropos to the remark of a former may or of New York, who declared that our large cities were rapidly progressing to ward Socialism. The editor of the Post remarks that the private lessees of the municipally constructed New York sub way have made immense profits on their fifty-year contract and have issued a vast quantity of watered stock thereon, while for several years the city has been try ing ineffectually to get the subway ex tended. He also mentions the fact that the city of Chicago went through a ten year’s struggle with the owners of the street railways, enduring abominable service all the while, before it could bring them to reasonable terms. “It is numberless experiences of this sort,’’ he adds, “and not the political dogmas of Karl Marx that have brought the inhabi tants of large American cities to that attitude of public service corporations that the ex-mayor of New York describes ns socialistic. ’ ’ This is an absolutely correct diagno sis. The Socialism of today is not a theory ‘made in Germany’ or even a conspiracy hatched by revolutionary agi- tntora. It is a movement that has grown inevitably out of certain underlying so cial conditions. The chief factor in the spread of Socialism in this country is undoubtedly the rise of trusts and mo nopolies. On the one hand, the short comings and far-reachings of the na tional combinations of capital, and on the other hand the depredation and cor ruptions of the municipal monopolies have made supporters for Socialism. The concentration of industry in monopolies and trusts has naturally led to a demand that the people undertake collectively the management of industry in order to protect themselves from exploitation by the capitalistic combination. At the‘ same time this concentration of industry has created the conditions for easy tran sition to a socialistic state. The closer the concentration, the easier it is for the people to substitute a single people’s trust for the few private trusts remain ing in the field. Thus the trust move ment has fostered Socialism. There are, of course, other causes of growth of Socialism besides the influ ence of monopolies and trusts. The dis tinguished German economist, the late Professor William Roscher, gave an analysis of these causes, which has be come classic. He points out five social conditions that have combined to pro duce the socialistic movement. 1. The first condition is “a well-defin ed confrontation of rich and poor. So long as there is a middle class of con siderable numbers between them, the two extremes are kept, by its moral force, from coming into collision. There is no greater preservative against envy of tho superior classes and contempt for the inferior than the gradual and unbroken fading of one class of society into an other. . . . But when tho rich and the poor are separated by an abyss which there is no hope of over crossing, bow pride, on the one side, and envy, on tho other, rage! and especially in the cen tres of industry, the great cities, where the deepest misery is found side by side with the most brazen-faced luxury, und where the wretched themselves, conscious of their numbers, mutually excite their own bad passions. It can not, unfor tunately, be denied that when a nation has attained the acme of its develop ment we find a multitude of tendencies prevailing to make the rich richer and the poor, at least relatively, poorer, and thus to diminish the number of the mid dle class from both sides; unless, in deed, remedial influences are brought to bear and to operate in a contrary direc tion. ’ ’ 2. “A high degree of the division of labor, by which, on the one hand, tho mutual dependence of man on man grows ever greater, but by which, at the same time, the eye of the uncultured man be comes less and less able to perceive the connection existing between merit and reward, or service and remuneration. Let us betake ourselves in imagination to Crusoe’s Island. There, when one man, after the labor of many months, has hol lowed out a tree into a canoe, with no tools but an animal’s tooth, it does not occur to another, who, in the meantime, was, it may be, sleeping on the skin of some wild animal, to contest the right of the former to the fruit of his labor. How different this form the condition of things where civilization is advanced, as it is in our day; where the banker by a single stroke of his pen seems to earn a thousand times more than a day-labor er in a week; where, in the case of those who lend money on interest, their debtors too frequently forget now laborious was the process of acquiring the capital by the possessors, or ti.eir predecessors in ownership. More especially, we have in times of over-population whole masses of honest men asking not alms, but only work—an opportunity to earn their bread, and yet on the verge of starva tion. ’ ’ 3. “ A violent shaking or perplexing of public opinion in its relation to the feeling of right by revolutions especial ly when they follow rapidly one oh the heels of another, and take opposite di rections. On such occasions both parties have generally prostituted themselves for the sake of the favor of the masses. ... In this wav they are stirred up tc- the making of pretentious claims which it is afterward very difficult to silence. ’ ’ 4. * ‘ Pretensions of the lower classes in consequence of a democratic constitu tion. Communism is the logically not inconsistent exaggeration of the princi ples of equality. Political equality, in the course of time, very naturally leads to thoughts of economic equality—equal ity in the enjoyment of spiritual and material goods. ’ ’ 5. “A general decay of religion and morality in the people. When everyone regards wealth as a sacred trust or office, coming from God, and poverty as a di vine dispensation, intended to educate and develop those afflicted thereby, and considers all men as brothers, and this earthly life only as a preparation for eternity, even extreme differences of property lose their irritating and de moralizing power. On the other hand the atheist and materialist becomes only too readily a mammonist, and the poor mammonist falls only too easily into that despair which would gladly kindle a universal conflagration, in order either to plunder or lose his own life,” The last proposition is questionable. It may be doubted whether any decline of religion and morality in the deeper sense has really taken place. Unques tionably, however, formal religion and ecclesiastical authority have lost much of their control over the working class. And this change has contributed to the spread of social discontent. ON CHOOSING A CLAIRVOY- ANT. One can not be too careful in choos- a clairvoyant, says Judge. When one wants to peer into the future, a clear rision is required. Tradition, supported strongly by popular practice, says the best results are to be expected from the most disreputable-looking objects of hu man dereliction; hence, gypsies. ■ A gypsy (usually of the feminine gender) accomplishes her proper attributes by living along the roadside, avoiding laun dries, sleeping in a covered wagon with seventeen children and about the same number of dogs. But it is not necessary to le a gypsy. One can accomplish the greasy complex ion in other ways, and the garb may be procured at slight expense from a cos tumer or from the wardrobe woman in almost any musical comedy. It is customary for clairvoyants to claim to be the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, but it is not necesasry to produce genealogical proof in support of the claim. Beyond that, it is only necessary for a clairvoyant to be vague and to place her perdictions far enough in the future to enable her to get out of town in the interim. The profession of a clairvoyant is easy, because any person who will go to clairvoyants is credulous enough to be lieve anything that they tell, even when their words do not mean anything. WHEN DO BIRDS WAKE UP? An elderly person afflicted with in somnia and forced to lie awake all night has sent to the London Spectator some observations which he made of the hab its of birds. He found that the black bird was the last of the feathered kind to go to bed, while the robin was the first to awaken in the morning. Tho latter’8 song with heard at half past 2 a. m., while at a quarter to 3 a thrush flew up to a bare branch, and, after stretching and brushing himself, also be gan to sing. By 4 o'clock all the trees were alive with the songs of many and various birds, the medley of voices form ing 11 general harmony. At 5 a. m. there was an intermission in the musical pro gramme, the birds seeking their break fasts in the shape of early worms. At twenty minutes to 6 a cuckoo alighted in a leafless branch and sang with great vigor for a short time. The observer then felt disposed to sleep, but a young sparrow in the ivy near his window awoke and chirruped so loudly that he became as wakeful as ever.—Leslie’s Weekly. • -V’ WHY IT IS OFF. She—Will you- love me just the same when l am oldt • Ho—Ah, darling, see how soon I shall prove it to you!—Judge.