consider the subject of wages, rents, etc.'

"At that time the main question was the condition of the public
finances, and our agitation was directed chiefly against granting
charters to private banks of circulation. We condemned these as
monopolies, for we were hostile to all monopolies--that is to say, to
the use of public funds or the enjoyment of public exclusive
privileges by any man or association or class of men for their
private profit."

We interrupt our direct quotation from this article in order to
relate one of the humors of the period, so far as these brothers were
concerned, in the words of the late Mr. George Hecker:

"When we were bakers the money in common use was the old-fashioned
paper issued by private banks under State charters. We were regularly
against it. So we bought a hand printing-press and set it up in the
garret of our establishment. All the bills we received from our
customers, some thousands sometimes every week, we smoothed out and
put in a pile, and then printed on their backs a saying we took from
Daniel Webster (though I believe it was not quite authentic): 'Of all
the contrivances to impoverish the laboring classes of mankind, paper
money is the most effective. It fertilizes the rich man's field with
the poor man's sweat.' They tried to punish us for defacing money,
but we beat them. We didn't deface it; we only printed something on
the back of it. Isaac and I often worked all night putting up
handbills for our meetings, for in those days there were no
professional bill-posters."

Father' Hecker's acquaintance with Dr. Brownson, which had so
powerful an effect upon his future career, began in 1834, when
Brownson was invited to lecture in New York in favor of the
principles and aims of this party. Isaac was then in his fifteenth
year. Among the conversations recorded in the memoranda we find this
reference to their earliest interview:

"I first met Dr. Brownson in New York, in our house. I was then
reading the Washington _Globe,_ Benton's speeches, Calhoun's, etc.
The elder Blair was its editor; its motto was, 'The world is governed
too much'--a motto in whose spirit there could be no great movement
except in the way of revolution. After the establishment of the
American Government the principle expressed in that motto could only
be abandoned or pushed into revolution and anarchy.

"I put this question to Brownson: 'How can I become certain of the
objective reality of the opera