394 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



nomic writers admit this, and I never heard it questioned before. 

 Under the present system of taxation taxes are shifted from the 

 landlord to the tenant, from the creditor to the debtor, from the 

 manufacturer to the consumer, from the corporations to their pa- 

 trons — in a word, from capital to labor. 



The second proposition, that the rich create their wealth, is 

 equally untenable. Manipulation and production are totally dif- 

 ferent. No person can add to the actual wealth of the nation, 

 unless he be an inventor, a million dollars ; it is beyond the power 

 of production ; but by manipulation, by donations, and by legisla- 

 tion, men may possess millions, but they never created them. In- 

 stead of the rich adding to the nation's wealth they take from it, 

 by depriving the producers of the capital which they need to make 

 their work effective; there is a limited amount of money, and 

 when concentrated in the hands of a few the real workers are at a 

 disadvantage, and the amount of wealth produced by them is per- 

 ceptibly lessened. This applies to the farmers, to most manufac- 

 turers, and to business men generally. 



Neither in the statement of the question nor in the argument 

 is there a distinction made between business men. The tradesman 

 who with difficulty keeps from insolvency, or actually fails, is 

 classed by Mr. Mann with the Stewarts and the Vanderbilts. No 

 one complains of the great body of business men. As a rule, their 

 profits are not too large. They would make more money if the 

 farmers and the wage-earners were prosperous. Those who are 

 responsible for all the complaints, for all the injustice, for agri- 

 cultural depression, are the seventy-five thousand who own more 

 than half the wealth of the country, and whose wealth is due to 

 class legislation, to a vicious system of taxation, to national and 

 State donations, to swindling the people through the agency of 

 corporations and limited partnerships, and to gambling in securi- 

 ties and the necessaries of life. 



Lieutenant Peaky reports as results of his Arctic Expedition, that he deter- 

 mined the northern coast of Greenland and found the ice cape ending south of 

 Victoria Inlet; and that he reached, at 34° west longitude, the latitude 82° north. 

 This is the highest latitude ever reached on the east coast of Greenland, and has 

 heen exceeded in all the annals of arctic exploration only hy the attainment by 

 Lieutenant Lockwood, of Greely's expedition, of S3 20' on the west coast. 



According to an address by the Rev. C. J. Ball at the recent International 

 Oriental Congress, the vocabulary and the grammar of the ancient language of 

 China are now being traced back to the yet more ancient speech of the early 

 civilizers of Babylonia. The identity of the two systems of writing is established 

 by detailed comparisons of selected characters ; of Chinese terms referred to Acca- 

 dian originals; of numerals and pronouns; and of features of syntactical arrange- 

 ment. 



