EDITOR'S TABLE. 



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 

 matter. 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 land, 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 department 

 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 

 required 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 philanthro- 

 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 



