or anything
going on but the natural legitimate and healthful development of trade;
and the medical corporations called colleges in seizing a stern monopoly
of the healing art, assure us that it is only for the benefit and
protection of the dear people who have not sense enough to distinguish
between a successful and an unsuccessful doctor, and have so
unpardonable a partiality for those who cure them cheaply without
college permission. There is nothing too small for monopoly to grasp,
not even the cheap dispensing of established remedies from the
druggist's counter.

It is a just and patriotic sentiment which looks with apprehension upon
the great and irresponsible power developed by extreme wealth, which
lifts the wealthy far above society, enabling them to indulge in
profligate luxury, and to squander in a single evening's pleasure (or
display without pleasure) an amount that would make life prosperous to a
hundred suffering families, or on a single piece of architectural
splendor, enough to complete the education of the entire youth of a
city--wealth enabling them to rival the despots of Europe in social
ostentation, while almost within hearing of their revelry, ten or twenty
thousand are suffering from want of employment, want of health, want of
education, want of industrial skill, which society did not give them,
suffering the slow death that comes through debility, emaciation, and
disease, from toil and poverty, the sufferer being sometimes a woman in
whom all the virtues have blossomed only to perish in the chilling
atmosphere of poverty.[16] This may be utterly senseless talk to those
in whom the sentiment of brotherhood is dead, but it expresses
sentiments to which millions respond, and it is refreshing to see that
these statements, which at last have found free expression through THE
ARENA, are also beginning to find a home in the minds of public leaders,
whose voices will compel attention. I allude to the philanthropic
expressions of the Emperor of Germany, and to the language of Mr.
Gladstone, who shows that the necessity of philanthropic action on the
part of the wealthy is increased by their changed attitude, as they are
becoming more isolated from the people, and no longer take that friendly
personal interest in their tenants and employes of every grade, which
was formerly common. In this country, social ostentation is a great
power to increase this separation of ranks, and the book of Jacob A.
Riis, "H