ductive and into unproductive channels, is for legitimate public purposes, including the elevation of the public taste; that wealth that goes to any individual unearned must be the intercepted earnings of others, and that the only moral title the recipient of it can have is based upon his making good use of it and of the leisure that he acquires by it; that the phrase "parasite of industry" is descriptive of all those who live in absolute idleness or are devoted simply to sport; that when Carlyle exclaimed, "The only monster on earth is an idler," he meant to include all kinds of trifling activity as well as idleness.

That these laws and axioms of wealth, of which a popular knowledge has now become so important, are not familiar either to the "multis" or to their critics is evidenced by the character of the defences that were made by the "multis as well as by the attacks of the critics themselves. The most prominent of the Newport leaders who was interviewed stated that such expenditures of money were better than keeping it in bank. The interviews of the others imply the same belief. One of their most prominent critics also stated that their one virtue was that they did spend money. During the public discussion of unproductive consumption and expenditure which occurred at the time of the Bradley Martin ball it was shown how little the economic side of these questions was understood. Nearly all the critics on that occasion discussed the subject from the point of view either of its morality or of its good or bad taste. Very few even touched upon the economic phase of the question; and those who did commonly fell into the old fallacy of the mercantile system that such expenditure was good because it employed labor and circulated money. Bishop Potter, a gentleman whose profession and mental training are far removed from the science of political economy, was, so far as I know, the only one who expressed sound views on the economic phase of the question. Mills, in his chapter on the unproductive consumption, proves, in my opinion conclusively, that money left in bank is aiding society by directing wealth into reproductive channels, and that taking it from the bank for expenditure such as we are discussing is a dissipation of it and a subtraction from the reproductive powers of labor.

If our English writers on economics had taken as much pains to make this subject clear as some of the French economists have done, correct ideas in regard to it would be more diffused in America to-day. While the loss of wealth to society occasioned by this expenditure and

the bad example set to others by such expenditures are very great, the economic effects are not the only ones to be considered. It creates class hatred, perverts education, deteriorates manners, and lowers the standard of taste in the fine arts, not to mention many other deleterious effects upon society at large.

Since the science of economics gives no justification for the present tendency to lavish expenditure, the only other reason for it - the expenditures of the corresponding class in European countries would be found, with a little education in the origin and history of European institutions, to be equally unsound. An unfair and unfriendly critic has said of Americans that they are the only people who go from rawness to rottenness without passing through the intervening stages of growth. Although this statement is both unfair and untrue, as there are many Americans who have acquired vast wealth and have led the world in great public charities while retaining the simplicity of their private lives, there is a tendency, nevertheless, in many of the possessors of the newly acquired fortunes of this country to skip over several phases in the course of the evolution from the useful to the purely ornamental. One of our great writers on education has given us a linear classification of what a natural education should be, viz., (1) the education of those faculties that tend to sustentation; (2) the education directed to the rearing and bringing up of offspring; (3) the education necessary to perform well our civic duties; and (4) the education of taste in the fine arts. While our nouveaux riches do not all consider it necessary to drink themselves to death on gin in order properly to distribute their wealth, like the one mentioned by Leslie Stephen, nevertheless, nearly all of them spend it in many ways hardly more useful to themselves and society. They almost invariably skip the second and third heads in the educational classification, and very frequently entirely overlook the fourth, although to be a connoisseur of the fine arts strikes them more frequently as part of the education of a fine gentleman than do the other two. If they were thoroughly educated in the history and origin of the ceremonial institutions abroad; if they were taught that the retinues of servants in knee breeches and plush forming part of a nobleman's household were the degenerate descendants, sociologically speaking, of the men-atarms; that his display and expenditures were at one time the necessary insignia of his military, and later of his political, powers; that they are survivals and encumbrances that have outlived their usefulness, and which the nobleman would probably be glad to shake off, then

our newly enriched would not be so anxious to tangle himself up with the impedimenta of nobility until he becomes as much their prisoner as their proprietor. It would only require a little of the right kind of study to make him choose the highest, if not always the most conspicuous, type abroad for imitation.

In countries like England, where the type evolved by the traditions of militarism exists side by side with the modern industrial type, each being equally conspicuous, it is easy to see by what we expect of both which of them we really consider the higher. For instance, we should not consider it at all infra dig. for the Prince of Wales, or any other English nobleman who is partly the product of the traditions of militarism, to lead his own horse off the race track, if he should happen to win the Derby. But what educated American could see a John Bright or a Mr. Gladstone do such a thing without feeling that there was something in it unworthy of the man? In this day, when the study of sociology has become so common among all classes, it will be necessary, if we wish to continue to live under the system of private property, to keep it free from all Old World objections to it. History, as we know, gives no justification for its existence. It is only on grounds of public utility that it can continue to be maintained, and if the "multi" does not make the most important part of his education a knowledge of the relation that his wealth bears to the public weal, many on this side of the Atlantic will say what Mill was provoked into saying a half a century ago in England, that if the abuses under the sytem of private property cannot be pruned from it, that "if it be this or communism that is to be the alternative, all the difficulties, great or small, of communities would be as dust in the balance."

Nothing in this article is intended to suggest that it is desirable for a rich American to live with all the Spartan severity of "the economic man. As an author who has recently written on the United States has said, "No man in America objects to another's living like a gentleman." But there are sound reasons against engrafting upon the system of private property here the excrescences which have grown upon it in the Old World, as a result of historical conditions from which we have been happily freed.

TRUXTUN BEALE.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF BRITISH SHIPPING.

More than one Scottish clan claims to have had a boat of its own at the time of the Flood, which may, perhaps, in the eternal fitness of things, account for the fact that Scotland is now the hub of the world's shipbuilding. There is, however, rather a long step from Noah's cattleship to a Clyde-built battleship; and it is only through the fairy tales of science and by the long results of time that the world's sea-commerce has passed into the hands which now hold it. No more fascinating study presents itself to modern intelligence than that of the history of commerce, and certainly no branch of that study is more full of interest and importance than the history of the development of shipbuilding and shipping. The dug-outs of the early Indians and the skin coracles of the early Scandinavians were the precursors of our ocean liners and armored cruisers; for there can be no doubt that in their coracles the hardy Norsemen crossed the North Sea to Iceland, as in their later galleys they crossed the Atlantic to America, long before Columbus was thought of. Even the ships of Columbus were thimbles compared with our Campania, Oceanic, and Cymric.

When Queen Victoria ascended the throne there were only a few small wooden paddle-steamers afloat on the Clyde and the Thames and on some short coasting runs. All the over-sea trade was done in wooden sailing ships, and the voyage then from Liverpool to New York occupied from thirty to forty days. The first steamers crossed the Atlantic in 1838, and the Cunard line was inaugurated by the historic Britannia in 1840. In that In that year the total tonnage of merchant vessels on the British register was 3,311,538 tons, comprised in 28,138 sailing vessels and 824 steamers. In 1899 there were 12,926,924 tons on the British register, all in vessels over 100 tons, of which 6,920 were steamers and only 2,053 were sailers. A development so enormous as these figures indicate merits some close attention.

Americans have been so busy during the last thirty years in de

veloping the manufacturing and other industries adapted to the resources and needs of their continent that only a very small proportion of them seem to have paid any attention to shipping, or to realize what a very great industry it is. Elsewhere I have shown that the business of sea-carrying is the most important trade in the world. "Those who go down to the sea in ships, those who do business on the great waters, those who labor directly or indirectly in association with shipping, and those who are more or less dependent on it, number three-fourths of the world's population." And, of course, the most important part of this vast industry is that which is concerned with the building of ships. Longfellow, we may be sure, saw very clearly what the not far distant future had in store when he wrote:

"There's not a ship that sails the ocean

But every climate, every soil

Must bring its tribute great or small
And help to build the wooden wall."

Only, of course, we do not build wooden walls now, and instead of scouring the forests for teak and oak we delve into the mines for metalliferous ores. But the joy of the successful designer of the ocean greyhound is not less great than that of the New England masterbuilder, while he calls into active play an infinitely greater variety, as well as greater amount, of human skill and energy. To my mind, a perfectly equipped modern steamer is the most wonderful and admirable production of the brain and hand of man that the world contains. Familiarity has dulled our perception of its wonders and, let me add, its beauties; for the beauty of a stately liner is not less than, though different from, that of the old-time Baltimore clipper, with her lovely curves and billowy canvas. In the poetry of motion, however, the clipper had no peer, as she walked the waters like a thing of life; and in point of speed she held her own for a long time against the clumsy contrivances of the early days of steam. She served her day faithfully and well, and her memory will be always green with those who delight in naval architecture and who venerate the records of maritime enterprise.

Mr. Eugene T. Chamberlain, in the course of his article on "The Shipping Subsidy Bill," in THE FORUM for July, 1900, remarks that from 1840 to the present time Great Britain and her colonies have expended directly $240,552,292 on merchant steamships, and that by this policy, steadily pursued for many years, Great Britain has fairly