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VOL. XV., NO. XXI
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VOOVi
OBSERVATIONS.
1
'
The Milk Trust.
The Five States Milk Producers
Association for the purpose of raising
the price of milk to New York con
sumers has tested the sincerity of
farmers' disapproval of trusts. Sev
eral thousand farmers have combined
to raise the price of milk, either from
a desire to get even with the vendors
of oil, barbed wire, agricultural ma
chinery, and binding twine, or from
the love of money, which most farm
ers are green enough to declare them
selves uninfected with. The New
York distributors of milk claim a
daily shortage of from 1,500 to 2,000
cans of milk, yet the price has not
been forced up. Nobody has de
nounced trusts so loudly as the farm
ers. The party that can prove its
willingness and ability to destroy
them can count upon a solid farmer
vote. The milk trust and the eager
ness with which the farmers have
accepted its conditions and oppor
tunities shows why the farmer dis
approves. If the milk trust gradual
ly raises the price of milk it may not
be impossible to form a farmere' cat
tle trust. Absolute concert in action
would raise the price of meat before
ft reaches the packers and the farm
ers themselves might experience the
effects of a corner. The time may
come when the food producers will
organize but it will scarcely be before
the next presidential election, wise
and precocious as the farmers are.
When the producers of staple food3
are protectively organized, the trades
unions, the trusts, and all sorts of
combinations formed for the benefit
of the few and the taxing of the
many will find themselves just where
they started.
Napoleon.
One of the most original and dar
ing minds that ever thought, a mind
whose owner overturned Europe and
finally united it in opposition to him
self, yet it was only great when he was
doingsomething. When its owner was
exiled to St. Helena the mind lost its
sparkle and power of self illumina
tion. A search through the Boswell
ian diary, that was kept by his phy
sician on the island, for a remark in
dicating extraordinary insight has
been fruitless. Commonplace opin
ions, a vulgar and commonplace sus
picion and jealousy of the officials who
surrounded him, are the striking
characteristics of Napoleon at St.
Helena. Far from standing on a bluff
in a monumental attitude gazing
towards the empires he had won and
lost, the diary shows him after fatty
degeneration of the brain and the
heart had begun and it is a mournful,
inexpressibly depressing spectacle
Boswell's memoirs of Doctor Johnson
are photographs of a powerful, if not
especially keen or original mind in
action, and it is interesting reading.
Napoleon's conversation was the fee
ble echo of a mind from which every
thing but the memory of the cere
monial deference paid to an emperor
was fled. Not the memory of his bat
tles, nor the careful arrangement of
his forces.and his knowledge of every
stream of water, of the location of
timber, and of low and high ground,
occupied him in his exile. He did
not fight his battles over again. He
regretted the loss of his outward
magnificence, the homage of men and
women, their fear of him, his rights
of bullying, the isolated apex where
he sat alone with a sceptre in his
hand and ruled. France and French
men were but names to him.
''Tommy and GrizeL"
Mr. Barrie's sequel to "Sentimental
Tommy" now appearing in one of the
monthly magazines is an example of
what uninteresting, inconsequential
stuff a publisher will accept from a
popular writer. The author is .con
stantly making apologies for standing
off and admiring Tommy who is a
poseur, an egotist and himself Bar
rie. Tommy, is to himself the most
interesting and mo?t lovable object
in the world, the greatest writer, the
most adored of women, their constant
and worthiest hero. He is an en
tirely subjective study. As a hero
he is as interesting as those portraits
of artists who have not painted any
other particularly striking likeness.
Mr. Barrie has presumed the interest
in himself greater than it- is. Many
writers make this mistake. But I
know of no modern example where a
man has taken so much for granted.
He has already made a long story of
his feelings, his thoughts about his
thoughts, and his Impressions of the
impressions he has made on men and
women and those he might have
made. What the demagogue is in
politics Tommy is in literature
every avenue is closed with a figure
of himself, his opinion of every sub
ject is an adjustment of himself In
a new position and under a different
light. The autobiography of a man
who is still young and still alive
should have some other excuse than
a publisher's willingness to print and
pay for it. Mr. Barrie's story, while
it is not a diary of dates the weather
and events is a still more intimate
dissection of his own character. As
one reads he can see the author in
front of the looking glass drawing his
own inconspicuous, unattractive ego
and the spectacle is irritating.
Paul Kruger.
If Paul Kruger had known that the
world revolved on its axis and in its
orbit and that no human power could
make it stationary the outlanders and
the Boers might still be living in
peace in the land beyond the Vaal.
In that case the outlanders would not
have been a majority of outlanders
for only the newcomers who had
come to visit would have no part in
the government. Augmented con
stantly by emigrants from all coun
tries and refused representation in a
government to which they contrib
uted nine tenths of the taxes, the
position of the outlanders who had
settled in the Transvaal was un
natural. To the pressure from the
outside of increasingly overwhelming
numbers the Boers on the inside were
forced to yield. The sort of govern
ment the Dutch in Africa attempted
to maintain was outworn long ago.
The conduct of the Dutch envoys
who are visiting this country now,
in joining the enemies of the admin
istration to which they were sent for
sympathy, is a replica of Kruger's
blunders in his treatment of English
overtures for justice to the outland
ers before the war.
For many years before the war
President Kruger foresaw that the
only result of his policy of exclusion
of settlers and absorption of their
taxes was war. He prepared for it
by secretly organizing the Boer farm
ers into militia companies and train
ing them to shoot and by Importing
arms into the Transvaal country. To
succeed by war he knew he must have
the aid of the men of the Orange
Free State and of Cape Colony and
finally of some other country. To
establish and maintain a republic in
the Transvaal, President Kruger knew
that the bona fide settlers and tax
payers must be admitted to a rep
resentative share in It. So great
was his prejudice towards all blood
not Dutch, that he preferred the al
ternative of war against the greatest
military power In the world, and in
evitable defeat unless outside aid was
offered. Hence the declaration of
war from the Transvaal to England,
the widespread appeal through the
newspapers of this country for help.
A republic which was not a republic,
and a president who is an antiquated
autocrat posed as an example of the
struggle of the American Colonics In
1776 for liberty or death. Historical
parallels are rare. The English and
most Americans insist that the Eng
lish and not the Dutch are fighting
for the cause of liberty and democ
racy in the Transvaal. Moreover,
every country must fight its own bat
tle. Ambassador Genet was toasted
and received with more or less en
thusiasm by some Americans, but the
United States did not form an alli
ance with the French Republic. Kos
suth was the rage and the toast of a
day, but the United States did not
interfere In the affairs of the Austro
Hungarian empire. Fortunately the
President of the United States at the
present time Is a man, whose mis
takes are not those of a demagogue.
He is the president of this country
and he does not feel called upon to
pose as the champion of every weak
nation that chooses to attribute its
misfortunes to the persecutions of a
tyrant rather than to Its own lack of
modern and common sense. The es
tablishment of order, the revival of
business in the Transvaal, the begin
nings of a real republic will follow, in
accordance with English precedent,
hard upon English victory. The
peace and prosperity of the Transvaal
have been interrupted and obstructed
by Boer legislation. As soon as the
Boers realize that none of their liber
ties are destroyed by the war, that
they have lost only their power to
tyrannize over their neighbors and
fellow citizens and that for all the
satisfaction in such tyranny, pros
perity is greater without it, they will
begin to reflect upon the mistakes of
Kruger while they herd their sheep
among fragments of shell and cannon
balls. By that time the Americans
who are always looking for an under
deg to weep over and extend a maud
lin sympathy to, will begin to ex
perience the peculiar embarrassment
of a misdirected and unwise condo
lence. They will remember that on
the whole, history does not record an
instance of the success of a small
nation, calling itself a republic, and
bankrupt except for the taxes col
lected from emigrant settlers, exclud
ing those settlers for fifteen years
from all share in the government,
taxing them to the limit of their
power to pay, and vesting all author
ity in the person of one man. Na
poleon tried something like this, but
all the nations objected. He thought
it was none of their business and sent
