the aphides, which of course, until they come to maturity, are quite useless.

The species polyergus rufescens present a striking lesson of the degrading tendency of slavery, for these ants have become entirely dependent on their slaves. Even their bodily structure

has undergone a change: the mandibles have lost their teeth, and have become mere nippers, deadly weapons, indeed, but useless except in war; they have lost the greater part of their instincts; their art, that is, the power of building; their domestic habits, for they show no care for their own young, all this being done by the slaves; their industry, they take no part in providing the daily supplies; if the colony changes the situation of its nest, the masters are all carried by the slaves on their backs to the new one; nay, they have even lost the habit of feeding. Huber placed thirty of them, with some larvæ and pupæ* and a supply of honey, in a box. "At first," he says, they appeared to pay some little attention to the larvæ; they carried them here and there, but presently replaced them. More than one half of the amazons died of hunger in less than two days. They had not even traced out a dwelling, and the few ants still in existence were languid and without strength. I commiserated their condition, and gave them one of their black companions. This individual, unassisted, established order, formed a chamber in the earth, gathered together the larvæ, extricated several young ants that were ready to quit the condition of pupæ, and preserved the life of the remaining amazons. This observation has been fully confirmed by other naturalists. However small the prison, however large the quantity of food, these stupid creatures will starve in the midst of plenty rather than feed themselves.

M. Forel was kind enough to send me a nest of polyergus, and I kept it under observation for more than four years. My specimens of polyergus certainly never fed themselves; and when the community changed its nest, which they did several times, the mistresses were carried from the one to the other by the slaves. I was even able to observe one of their marauding expeditions, in which, however, the slaves took a part.

I do not doubt that, as Huber tells us, specimens of polyergus

"Larvæ and pupa "-insects in the caterpillar and chrysalis states. Huber, a celebrated Swiss naturalist (1750-1831), blind, but most successful in his researches, which were prosecuted with the aid of his wife and a domestic.

if kept by themselves in a box would soon die of starvation, even if supplied with food. I have, however, kept isolated specimens for three months by giving them a slave for an hour or two a day to clean and feed them; under these circumstances they remained in perfect health, while, but for the slaves, they would have perished in two or three days.

Ants, Bees, and Wasps (1882).

SONNET LX.

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE (1564-1616).

[This magnificent sonnet, for the perception of its full beauty, requires earnest study. The following analysis may prove helpful in fixing the student's attention on the development of the theme, which is, Time; its Changes and Devastations:—

First Quatrain. Image of the heaving ocean (Time) with successive waves toiling ("sequent toil") towards the pebbled shore.

Second Quatrain. As the hours pass by, the sun emerges from this dark waste of waters into the ocean of the sky ("main of light "), slowly climbs ("crawls") to the zenith ("maturity"); but no sooner there than his noontide splendor is quenched by a shadow athwart his disk ("crooked eclipse"), for Time, which brings the sunlight, brings also eclipses, and thus confounds his own gift.

Third Quatrain. Here remark that the metaphor of a husbandman is continuous and consistent: Time, a rude hind, strikes his spade through the flower and bloom of youth, digs trenches in beauty's brow; makes his meal of the rarest natural charms; and nothing escapes his scythe.

Couplet. But, despite the ravages of Time thus seen in the bright sun and felt in ourselves, my verses praising thy worth shall survive to future ages ("times in hope").]

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;

Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

4

Nativity, once in the main of light,

Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,

Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned

And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,

And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,

Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,

And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow;
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth despite his cruel hand.

12

THE LABOR MOVEMENT.

GOLDWIN SMITH, M.A., LL.D. (b. 1823).

The

The unions are confedThey are the offspring of

The Trade Unions are new things in industrial history. guilds of the middle ages, with which the unions are often identified, were confederations of all engaged in the trade, masters as well as men, against outsiders. erations of men against the masters. an age of great capitalists, employing large bodies of hired workmen. The workmen, needy, and obliged to sell their labor without reserve that they might eat bread, found themselves, in their isolation, very much at the mercy of their masters, and resorted to union as a source of strength. Capital, by collecting in the centres of manufacture masses of operatives, who thus became conscious of their number and their force, gave birth to a power which now countervails its own. To talk of a war of labor against capital generally would, of course, be absurd. Capital is nothing but the means of undertaking any industrial or commercial enterprise-of setting up an Allan line of steamships, or setting up a costermonger's cart. We might as well talk of a war of labor against water-power. Capital is the fruit of labor past, the condition of labor present; without it no man could do a stroke of work, at least of work requiring tools or food for him who uses them. Let us dismiss from our language and our minds these impersonations which, though mere creations of fancy playing with abstract nouns, end by depraving our sentiments and misdirecting our actions; let us think and speak of capital impersonally and sensibly as an economical force and as we would think and speak of the force of gravitation. Relieve the poor word of the big C, which is a greatness thrust upon it; its tyranny and the burning hatred of its tyranny will at once cease. Nevertheless, the fact remains that a working-man, standing alone and without a breakfast for himself and his family, is not in a position to obtain the best terms from a rich employer, who can hold out as long as he likes or hire other labor on the spot. Whether unionism has had much effect in producing a general rise of wages is very doubtful. Mr. Brassey's book "Work and Wages" goes far to prove that it has not, and that while, on the one hand, the unionists have been in a fool's paradise, the masters, on the other, have been crying out before they were hurt. No doubt the general rise of

wages is mainly and fundamentally due to internal causes-the accumulation of capital, the extension of commercial enterprise, and the opening up of new countries—which have greatly increased the competition for labor, and consequently raised the price; while the nominal price of labor, as well as of all other commodities, has been raised by the influx of gold. What unionism, as I think, has evidently effected, is the economical emancipation of the working-man. It has rendered him independent instead of dependent, and, in some cases, almost a serf, as he was before. It has placed him on an equal footing with his employer, and enabled him to make the best terms for himself in every respect. There is no employer who does not feel that this is so, or whom Mr. Brassey's statistics, or any statistics, would convince that it is not.

Fundamentally, value determines the price the community will give for any article or any kind of work; just so much as it is worth. But there is no economical deity who, in each individual case, exactly adjusts the price to the value; we may make a good or a bad bargain, as many of us know to our cost. One source of bad bargains is ignorance. Before unions, which have diffused the intelligence of the labor market, and by so doing have equalized prices, the workmen hardly knew the rate wages in the next town. If this was true of the mechanic, it was still more true of the farm-laborer. Practically speaking, the farm-laborers in each parish of England, ignorant of everything beyond the parish, isolated and therefore dependent, had to take what the employers chose to give them. And what the employers chose to give them over large districts was ten shillings a week for themselves and their families, out of which they paid, perhaps, eighteen pence for rent.

of

The general rise of wages may at first bring economical disturbance and pressure on certain classes; but in the end it brings general prosperity, diffused civilization, public happiness, security to society, which can never be secure while the few are feasting and the many are starving. In the end, also, it brings an increase of production and greater plenty. Not that we can assent without reserve to the pleasant aphorism that increase of wages in itself makes a better workman, which is probably true only where the workman has been under-fed, as in the case of the farm-laborers of England. But the dearness of labor leads to the adoption of improved methods of production, and

especially to the invention of machinery, which gives back to the community what it has paid in increased wages a hundred or a thousand fold. In Illinois, towards the close of the war, a large proportion of the male population had been drafted or had volunteered; labor had become scarce and wages had risen; but the invention of machinery had been so much stimulated that the harvest that year was greater than it had ever been before. Machinery will now be used to a greater extent on the English farms; more will be produced by fewer hands; laborers will be set free for the production of other kinds of food, perhaps for the cultivation of our North-West; and the British peasant will rise from the industrial and intellectual level of a mere laborer to that of the guider of a machine. Machinery worked by relays of men is, no doubt, one of the principal solutions of our industrial problems, and of the social problems connected with them. Some seem to fancy that it is the universal solution; but we cannot run reaping-machines in the winter or in the dark.

High wages and the independence of the laborers compel economy of labor. Economize labor, cries Lord Derby, the cool-headed mentor of the rich; we must give up our second under-butler. When the laborer is dependent and his wages are low the most precious of commodities-that commodity the husbanding of which is the chief condition of increased production and of the growth of national wealth-is squandered with reckless prodigality. Thirty years the laborers of Egypt wrought by gangs of a hundred thousand at a time to build the great pyramid which was to hold a despot's dust. Even now,

when everybody is complaining of the dearness of labor and the insufferable independence of the working-class, a piece of fine lace, we are told, consumes the labor of seven persons, each employed on a distinct portion of the work; and the thread, of exquisite fineness, is spun in dark rooms under ground, not without injury, we may suppose, to the eyesight or health of those employed. So that the labor movement does not seem to have yet trenched materially even on the elegancies of life. Would it be very detrimental to real civilization if we were forced by the dearness of labor to give up all the trades in which human life or health is sacrificed to mere fancy? In London the bakers have struck. They are kept up from midnight to noon, sometimes far even into the afternoon, sleepless or only snatching broken slumbers, that London may indulge