s aimless,
monotonous march. But the good mother sees the bleeding feet of her
children, she hears their moans, and she is ever calling to them that
she is theirs.

To the contemporaries of George Washington, Thomas Paine and Thomas
Jefferson, America appeared vast, boundless, full of promise. Mother
Earth, with the sources of vast wealth hidden within the folds of her
ample bosom, extended her inviting and hospitable arms to all those who
came to her from arbitrary and despotic lands--Mother Earth ready to
give herself alike to all her children. But soon she was seized by the
few, stripped of her freedom, fenced in, a prey to those who were
endowed with cunning and unscrupulous shrewdness. They, who had fought
for independence from the British yoke, soon became dependent among
themselves; dependent on possessions, on wealth, on power. Liberty
escaped into the wilderness, and the old battle between the patrician
and the plebeian broke out in the new world, with greater bitterness and
vehemence. A period of but a hundred years had sufficed to turn a great
republic, once gloriously established, into an arbitrary state which
subdued a vast number of its people into material and intellectual
slavery, while enabling the privileged few to monopolize every material
and mental resource.

During the last few years, American journalists have had much to say
about the terrible conditions in Russia and the supremacy of the Russian
censor. Have they forgotten the censor here? a censor far more powerful
than him of Russia. Have they forgotten that every line they write is
dictated by the political color of the paper they write for; by the
advertising firms; by the money power; by the power of respectability;
by Comstock? Have they forgotten that the literary taste and critical
judgment of the mass of the people have been successfully moulded to
suit the will of these dictators, and to serve as a good business basis
for shrewd literary speculators? The number of Rip Van Winkles in life,
science, morality, art, and literature is very large. Innumerable
ghosts, such as Ibsen saw when he analyzed the moral and social
conditions of our life, still keep the majority of the human race in
awe.

MOTHER EARTH will endeavor to attract and appeal to all those who
oppose encroachment on public and individual life. It will appeal to
those who strive for something higher, weary of the commonplace; to
those who feel that stagnation is a deadweig