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in the play. In truth, his foolish imprudences have knocked him out of practical republican politics, the true leaders of which are one with the moneyed men of the land, one with the tariff-fed robbers oi Pennsylvania, one with the trusts and corporations, one with all the schemers of the United States Empire, with much of which we ourselves are in sympathy, but the President is not in it, in spite of the fact that the newspapers interpreted the Republican victories in the Fall elections as an endorsement of Roosevelt's policy. Roosevelt has had no policy for three months in succession since he became President. That the part he played in appointing the Strike Commission was intended to make him sound with the people, there can be no doubt. He is a union man. Quay and Penrose and Stone and lots of the Pennsylvania judges, sheriffs, etc., are union men. Nevertheless, gendemen, the next President of the United States will not be a union man, and will not be nominated by union men. Mr. Hanna understands all this and he holds the whip hand. Theodore Roosevelt will be relegated to private life, and such hack literature as his strenuous and noisy soul can manufacture. But we will wait for the Commission, as we said.

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December 17th. We have waited till this day, but the only decision of the Commission recorded so far is to the effect that they are in favor of fair wages. Wonderful! We are all in favor of fair wages. The only question at issue is what constitutes fair wages.

The Morgan-Roosevelt Commission will prove a failure. The principle of arbitration is inimical to our genius. In France, England and Germany, arbitration commissions have constantly failed. No decisions of any tribunal are of any account except the tribunal has the power to enforce them—at the front of the bayonet, I mean. Arbitration has been preached as a successful factor of government in Australia and New Zealand, but on careful examination I find that arbitration succeeds there as here, when there is practically nothing to arbitrate. But here, as elsewhere, and here particularly, we must try every scheme except the one scheme of doing unto others as we would that they should do unto us.

While this issue is going to press the world is agog over the action of England and Germany in trying to shoot a little common honesty into the head of Venezuela. On our part we are trying to fit the absurd and extinct Monroe doctrine so-called, into some adaptation to the case, but I think that Admiral Dewey will hardly shoot back at England and Germany. Ii is not a worn-out Spanish fleet this time.

Mr. Hanna is still saying that he is not a candidate for the Presidency, and it is plain truth that he has not yet been nominated. Meanwhile the Hon. Thomas B. Reed has passed to a tribunal that may prove as unrelenting as his own rulings in Congress used to be. The miners are at work, and coal is anywhere from $8 to $11 a ton. The miners are millions out of pocket and the people have to pay their back wages and Mitchell's salary besides. Still, prelates, priestsand newspaper editors seem to consider Mitchell adecent man. God save us.

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We congratulate the New World, of Chicago, in that it has secured the services of our old friend, Mr. Charles J. O'Mally, as Editor-in-chief, and we congratulate Mr. O'Mally in that he has the honor of succeeding the able and gifted Mr. William Dillon, who took hold of the paper when it was in its infancy, and by steady good sense, excellent judgment and varied ability, brought it into a position of one of the few well-edited Catholic papers in the country. We wish for the paper and its new editor all the success that its past record deserves.

—william Henry Thorne.

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