What are all these deviations from sound principles of government and taxation but " Socialism," as much so as the State Socialism of Germany or the giving work to the unemployed in France. I condemn all such efforts as calculated to bring down the "better" men to the level of the lower. The real friends of the working man, of humanity, are those who tell the people plainly that the only way to ameliorate permanently the condition of any people is by inculcating a more general desire to raise the status of the masses to a higher standard-to elevate the lower, not to degrade the higher. "Competition" I assert to be God's remedy to compel men to be equal to the age they live in; it means in every trade and occupation an inexorable law ever going on, that weeds out by bankruptcy or otherwise the "incompetent;" it works so accurately that in time, in every occupation, only those equal to the demands of their age Survive; in everything Nature's law of the " survival of the fittest " may be traced. If you " cannot show a profit, or earn a wage that others can, you must retire before those better adapted. You may say it is hard and inhuman; I can only say it is natural. There is no evading the law; you must observe it, or sink before it. It may sacrifice the few, but it is for the benefit of the many. "Necessity" is the Creator's great motive-power for rousing the energy of mankind. Necessity is said to be "the mother of invention; " it is so; in every age, at every epoch of man's history-at any crisis in his destiny-the difficulties that surrounded him have forced man to use his brain and discover a way out of the struggle. Competition now is very keen, and the "productive and distributive" agencies must be prepared for harder times. No power on earth can force nations to buy our