de in the material comforts of life--improvements
in lighting and heating, in locomotion and intercommunication. The
progress of applied science has been so rapid that some of its most
notable achievements have come within the memory of young persons still
at school. Telephonic conversation between New York and St. Louis is
only a thing of yesterday; aerial navigation is evidently near at hand;
and already daring scientists speak hopefully of electric communication
with the planets.

But it is not only in this line that the world has advanced. To note
great changes in social customs, we need not go back to the last
century. Sir Algernon West in a recent magazine article refers to the
matter-of-course manner in which his chief was in the habit of
announcing to the head clerk that he would not be at the office the
following day, as he was to dine out that evening. As an indication of
the social changes brought about in his lifetime, he quotes this
significant sentence of Mr. Charles Villiers: "In his young days," said
Mr. Villiers, "every young man, even if he was busy, pretended to be
idle; now every young man, even if he is idle, pretends to be busy."
There is great import in this. When every member of society is usefully
employed, our social problems will be well on the way to solution.

To note progress in another direction we need not turn back to the acts
of the 14th century, which made it a crime to give or receive more than
the wretched wage fixed by law. At the beginning of the Victorian era
boys and girls as young as six years worked in mines and factories
longer hours than are now required of strong men; and the masses of
people were compelled to pay an artificially high price for their bread,
in order to increase the unearned wealth of the few.

And in our own country we need not go back to the Salem witchcraft or
the persecution of the Quakers. There are still eye-witnesses to tell us
that men and women in this "land of the free," were lawfully sold like
cattle or flogged to death at the will of their owners. It was a few
months after Queen Victoria's accession to the throne that Elijah Parish
Lovejoy was killed for daring to say that human slavery was wrong--for
advocating, not forcible abolition, but gradual emancipation as "the
free, voluntary act of the master, performed from a conviction of its
propriety." For maintaining his right to express his opinions on this or
any other public question, he was dr