EDITOR'S TABLE. 



45 



being alone interpretative of the uni- 

 verse. We are only landed in blank 

 confusion and hopeless contradiction 

 if we try to assign a positive and un- 

 divided supremacy to either mind or 

 niatter. No one can doubt that the 

 Duke of Argyll is very sincere in 

 his attachment to pre-Darwinian 

 modes of thought; but it is no less 

 certain that the arguments which he 

 directs against the new philosophy 

 have a singularly unconvincing 

 quality. He is a writer who seems 

 to have exhausted all his intellectual 

 forces in convincing himself: the 

 more carefully we read him, the 

 more the impression grows that he 

 has compassed sea and laud, and laid 

 a vast amount of knowledge under 

 contribution, in a strenuous and suc- 

 cessful effort to be on the wrong side. 



A NEW SOCIAL PROBLEM. 



As must have been long apparent 

 to a critical observer of " the tenden- 

 cies of the times," the dei^ai'tment 

 store, to which so many master 

 minds applied themselves during 

 the legislative season just closed, 

 was bound, sooner or later, to rise 

 to the dignity and importance of a 

 new "social problem." It exhibited 

 precisely those traits that appeal so 

 powerfully to the shortsighted phi- 

 lanthropy and superficial knowledge 

 of the " new " social reformer. It 

 reqiiired a large concentration of 

 capital, which has come to be re- 

 garded as prima facie evidence of 

 "social peril." Because of certain 

 economies it was able to effect, it 

 brought about a reduction in prices, 

 which is likewise believed by a 

 well-known school of " uninstructed 

 economists" to be a deplorable evil. 

 Finally, it tended to crowd to the 

 wall smaller concerns dealing in the 

 same class of goods, that found them- 

 selves unable to compete with it. 



Here were all the elements that 



go to make up a first-class "social 

 problem." A vivid imagination, in- 

 flamed by a deep sympathy with im- 

 mediate inconvenience and suffer- 

 ing, drew a harrowing picture of 

 the distress to individuals and to so- 

 ciety. In the first place, there were 

 the small shopkeepers, high-spirited 

 and independent, driven out of busi- 

 ness and compelled to become " mere 

 clerks " under the roof of their mer- 

 ciless rival. In the second place, 

 there were the empty stores scat- 

 tered all over a city that had been 

 occupied to the advantage of their 

 owners. In the third place, there 

 were the loss of general knowledge 

 of any given business, the confine- 

 ment of the poor clerks to some spe- 

 cial department, and their reduction 

 to the humiliating and paralyzing 

 position of "only cogs in a great 

 piece of commercial machinery." Is 

 it any wonder that such a spectacle 

 moved the hearts of the j)hilanthro- 

 pists and statesmen in the Legisla- 

 tures of Missouri, Minnesota, Illinois, 

 and New York ? Was it not as plain 

 as a pikestaff that something was 

 wrong ? Was it not " the duty of 

 society " to remedy it ? Who could 

 be so ignorant and callous as to in- 

 sist that these questions were absurd 

 that they applied to the spinning 

 jenny and the power loom as well as 

 to the department store ? 



Yet such is the fact. The depart- 

 ment store is as much a labor-saving 

 device as a steam engine or the tele- 

 graph and telephone. One as much 

 as the other is a product of industrial 

 evolution. Like the mediaeval fair 

 or the modern market, the depart- 

 ment store is a segregation of com- 

 modities and of buyers and sellers. 

 Like the perfecting press also, which 

 unites in one machine several dis- 

 tinct processes, such as inking, print- 

 ing, cutting, and folding, it is an in- 

 tegration under one management of 

 a number of forms of trade carried 



