BEBEL 



643 



BECKY SHARP 



bridges, automobile accessories, enamel signs, 

 chemicals, glass, clay products, axes, shorels, 

 tubing and gas engines. 



Settled in 1801 and first called Brighton, 

 Beaver Falls was chartered as a borough in 

 1868. The commission form of government 

 adopted in 1913. The city has a Carnegie 

 Library and Providence Hospital. In College 

 Hill borough, one mile north, is Geneva Col- 

 lege (Reformed Presbyterian). 



BEBEL, bay'bd, FERDINAND AUGUST (1840- 

 19i:> !:irx. the greatest of German 



Socialists, the man who made the Social 

 Democrats a great political party in Germany. 

 II :i ordinary eloquence, both with tongue 

 and pen, made him even as a young man a 

 leader among the working classes. He was at 

 first opposed to Socialism, but under the influ- 

 of Marx and Liebknecht became a con- 

 In 1867 he was chosen chairman of the 

 permanent committee of the German working- 

 men's unions, and two years later he was one 

 of the organizers of the Social-Democratic 

 party. 



Meanwhile he had been elected to the North 

 German Diet, and in 1871 was chosen to the 

 Imperial Reichstag. He was repeatedly re- 

 elected, and with the exception of two years 

 was a member until his death. He was the 

 first Socialist elected to the Reichstag and for 

 a time was the only Socialist member. Al- 

 though the rules of the party do not recognize 

 a leader, Bebel was for years its unquestioned 

 :'. A man of great moral courage, he 

 Stated to express his opinions freely 

 and forcibly. Three years of his life v. 

 spent in prison because some of these opinions 

 were ln-M by tin- courts to constitute l&sc 

 majcstc and intended trraxm. He contributed 

 numerous articles to Vorwarts, the Berlin 

 Socialists, and wrote a variety of 

 books an : ts on political and economic 



M iiinisconces have been trans- 



-h Milder the lit!,- M / | 



BECK, Sin AH\M MS,",7- ), a Cm 



iror and legislator, best ki 

 efforts to secure the conservation and 

 dev* ' i-owor in On- 



tario. He was born at Baden, Ont., and 

 attended school there and at ( T a 



successful career as a manui lie became 



interested in ; (Taira. He was elected 



I 'iidon, Ont., for the term b 

 HX)2. and al-o m the .*ame year was 



was still a member in 1 n 1905 to 1916 



he was a minister without portfolio in the 

 provincial Cabinet, first under the leadership 

 of Sir James P. Whitney and later of W. H. 

 Hearst. In the legislature in 1906 Beck intro- 

 duced legislation creating the Ontario hj'dro- 

 electric power commission, of which he became 

 chairman. 



BECKET, THOMAS A. (about 1118-1170), 

 archbishop of Canterbury, famous for the man- 

 ner of his death and its effects on English his- 

 tory, no less than for the achievements of 

 his life. He was born in London, educated at 

 Oxford and Paris and studied civil law at 

 Bologna in Italy. Returning, he held various 

 offices in the Church before his appointment by 

 Henry II in 1155 as chancellor of England. At 

 this time Becket lived in a luxurious manner, 

 was a liberal entertainer and the king's favor- 

 ite companion, but after he was consecrated 

 archbishop in 1162 he gave up his luxurious 

 habits and became a zealous champion of the 

 Church, liberal only in charities. 



A series of bitter conflicts with the king fol- 

 lowed, ending in Becket's flight to France, but 

 a reconciliation took place in 1170, and Becket 

 returned to England, resumed his office and 

 renewed his defiance of the royal authority. 

 At length the king, irritated at some new defi- 

 ance, exclaimed in the hearing of his knights, 

 "Have I not about me one man of spirit 

 enough to rid me of a single insolent prelate? 1 ' 

 Four of his barons, taking this as their com- 

 mission, went to Canterbury and murdered the 

 archbishop while he was at vespers in the 

 cathedral, December 2'.. 1170. He was canon- 

 ized in 1172, and the splendid shrine erected at 

 Canterbury for his remains was a favorite 

 place of pilgrimage. Chaucer's Canterbury 

 told by a number of people going on 

 a pilgrimaue to this >hrinr. 



BECKY SHARP, the chief character m 

 Thackeray's Vanity Fair, one of the most con- 

 vincing <!. .nlv-poit! t \, d :.d\ nturesses in all 

 fiction. As the personification of intellect 

 without 1 is set over against Amelia 



Sedley, the other heroine of this "novel with- 

 out a hero," who represents heart without 

 intellect Becky is not beautiful, but she is 

 so clever and so unscrupulous that few can 

 escape her net. Having married Rawdon 

 Crawley, whom she does not love, merely 

 because she wants an assured position in the 

 world, she risks and loses that position and 

 own reputation m her efforts to entangle tin- 

 wealthy Marquis of Stoyne. At the close of 

 long story she is left alone, practically 



