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together with their families and numerous employés.

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Let us suppose a railroad about to be built from New York to Buffalo, a distance of four hundred and fifty miles. Sufficient capital to complete the undertaking has been subscribed, but the stockholders require a remunerative dividend upon their investment. insure economy of outlay and render success to the enterprise a probable condition, how would the superintendent or chief contractor of the work be likely to proceed? He might abandon this immense undertaking to the supreme merits of unrestricted private competition. A crowd of rival blacksmiths might be allowed to erect their forges and tinker away at spikes and bedplates; competing carpenters might hew at ties and bridge-timbers, and the process of grading be made a general scramble. Is not the reader amused at the absurdity of such an idea? Yet the building of this five hundred miles of railroad, involving the outlay of thirty or forty million dollars, which would employ the best engineering skill and highest financial ability the world affords, and require the utmost diligence and attention on the part of all subordinate officers to ensure success, becomes a mere bagatelle beside the immense trust of feeding a nation's hunger.

We have shown that our foreign trade, as compared with the extent of our domestic interchange, bears a less proportion than one to twelve. Yet, in the economy of time and labor resulting from aggregations of operations, mainly lies the prospect of profit to the speculator. Take the business of packing provisions for the Liverpool market as an instance. Here large purchases are made direct of the producer; every mechanical contrivance is provided to facilitate the work of slaughtering, cutting and packing; mechanics of approved skill perform the

various processes; and the staple, when shipped, is sent by the most direct route to the foreign port.

Can not a similar economy in preparation and transfer be introduced into the system whereby we obtain the loaf of bread and the roast of beef for our private tables? The social chaos, the business incapacity, the waste of time, labor and material, which mark all the operations of retail trade, are not only painful to witness, but are absolutely a disgrace to our civilization. We will briefly expose the evils which we so strongly condemn. Let us take a city of one hundred thousand inhabitants. One half the population bake their own bread, the remainder purchase of the baker. The average consumption of bread to each individual is eight ounces a day; the weekly consumption, then, of fifty thousand persons would be one hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds of bread, or seven hundred and twenty-nine barrels of flour.* In New York and Philadelphia, a baker's average consumption is sixteen barrels weekly. This we will adopt as a standard. To supply a city, then, with seven hundred and twenty-nine barrels of flour baked into bread weekly, requires forty-five retail establishments. Each tradesman has his rent to pay, his family to support, one or more journeymen with a delivery wagon to maintain, fuel for his furnace, gas bills, and other incidental expenses. To meet all this outlay, a profit of three dollars per barrel is the lowest he can carry on business with; many impose more. What service does this tradesman render to the community for this considerable enhancement in the prime staple of life? No two hours of consecutive labor. His operations being so minimized, two small batches a day are all he can find sale for. The industry of himself and

* A barrel of flour is fourteen stone, British, or one hundred and ninety-six pounds. This makes 280 lbs. of dough, which bakes into 240 lbs. of bread.

journeymen are thus employed: To set sponge in the evening, a task employing them half an hour, and then sleep or loiter about four hours until it is risen sufficiently to be made into dough. This work of equal duration again leaves them four hours' interval for sleep. By four in the morning the dough is ready to mold, and this done, another hour's interval is required before the loaves are ready to bake. This batch out of the way by six, the second sponge is set, and the day devoted to the same intermittent employ. Were these men engaged in baking hard bread for the army and navy, a greater economy of time would be observed. Machinery for mixing dough, for rolling it into plates and stamping out the bread, would save half the time of the workman; and a constant succession of batches enables the operatives to put in a fair day of continuous work, and have their evenings and nights for rest. By a proper arrangement, four bakeries could perform the work that is now performed by forty-five, and be equally eligible of access to their custom

ers.

The money saved by direct purchases, together with the saving in time, labor, fuel and other expenses, would enable these larger establishments to bake bread at one dollar per barrel profit, and still pay fair wages and a good dividend upon capital invested.

This waste is repeated in the shambles. While the butcher spends his time in buying three horned cattle for his weeks' sales, he might buy thirty. The half-day he devotes to slaughtering one steer would suffice for slaughtering ten. Then there is the uncertainty of sales. In hot weather a butcher loses five per cent. of his stock, loses time in waiting for customers, makes bad debts, and has numerous other drawbacks in business. A painful feature may be mentioned here belonging to our prevailing antagonism of interests,

growing out of the fluctuations of market. With a scarce supply, the dealers demand extortionate prices. Equity and fair remuneration are scouted at; a chance is now afforded them to indulge their rapacity, and they "lay it on" without stint or measure. But the whirligig of time brings about its own revenges. During the summer heat, a glut in the market will occur; the popular appetite is affected, and the dealers stand with their rapidly perishing goods, vainly appealing to the public to buy. Occasionally a housewife will stop and cheapen the price of a joint of meat or a measure of vegetables. The tradesman is anxious to secure his customer and demands a reduced price, less than he paid for the article; but his customer knows that the position is now reversed, that there is a competition among all the dealers in market to sell their goods at some price or throw them away, and she makes the most of her advantage. The piratical raids made upon dealers by the bargain-hunting community in a dull market, fill their mouths with cursing and render them enemies to their race.

Those who can conceive no better system of interchange than private competition, may see no harm in this; to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market is an approved axiom in business. But we regard it as chaos, barbarism, a crude state of natureone man preying upon his fellow. Interests are opposed, selfishness is accepted as the rule, and a tradesman is compelled to pursue a course of conduct in his daily affairs which he feels to be harsh, unjust and anti-social, and which can scarcely be reconciled with the teachings of our religion. We train our children to be unselfish, to love one another, to do as they would be done by; but we pursue a system of business where all this training has to be unlearned, and where selfishness, disregard for our fellows, and an une

qual measure of justice, are the qualities best adapted to win success.

Herein have we held up to the reader's observation the two systems of compe

tition and coöperation, as applied to the business of domestic interchange. Now choose ye, which ye will serve!

MASTER-SINGERS OF GERMANY.

BY ALICE ASBURY.

OWING by the soft light of the

ROWING on the winding, tiny Elster,

during the long evenings of the latter part of May, it was our delight, skirting along the lovely Rosenthal-a dense wood on one hand, a meadow or occasional country-house on the other—to rest on our oars to listen to the nightingale, the only sound breaking the profound silence, unless it chanced to be one of the evenings when the distant notes of a band in one of the many public gardens served seemingly but to pique the singer to victorious rivalry in melody.

For this greatest of the master-singers is jealous and ambitious, tolerating no rival even in his own tribe. Having marked out his territory and enthroned his love, he allows no encroachment; and should it chance some neighboring tree has been chosen as a nestling-place by another amorous pair of his own kin, the two fathers of prospective families, perched on outermost branches, throwing up their throats to the moon, will strive to outdo each other with an almost insane spirit of rivalry.

There is but one more delightful hour to hear these children of the gods: just as the heavens are glowing with the soft, up-coming lights of the dawn. Then, wandering through the broad paths of this same Rosenthal park, the very air trembles with the quintettes and terzetts of these marvels of the bird kingdom; for in quintettes and

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terzetts the master-singers always express their musical nature- -it is the general characteristic of bird song. These players of the great roles warble or sing; occasionally they descend to the twitter-that form of music to be compared to the monotonous recitative of the Italian operatic school. Some fourteen royal birds claim to be ranked as master-singers; a countless host of less pretentious warblers form the chorus of the German wood. Among these great original singers some well-known German ornithologist has declared he has discovered every prominent rhythm of the art of music, and that by such measure the characteristics of each tiny species are expressed. The quick, dashing finches, and all varieties of the hedge sparrow, are allegro singers; the despondent missel-thrush, the melancholy ousel or blackbird, and elegiac robin, find voice in a largo, adegio or andante; while the tender wood-lark warbles an allegretto of delight. Then there are others who appear to restrict themselves to no particular measure, like the yellow thrush; while a rare songster is occasionally found who has all rhythms at his command.

The genius of song is born with them all, but the genius does not attain the end without guidance. The first-born brood are carefully trained by a proud father, keenly alive to the talent of his family; but by the time the second swarm comes it is an old story: the

unlucky young ones are left to pick up what schooling they can, with only an occasional lesson; and often, before the neglected virtuosi can master a simple canzonet without being laughed at by the critics of his race, the time comes for flight to sunnier climes.

Some of these notable birds bring but one brood each season into the world-others, two. They are of poetic, sentimental natures, our mastersingers, and delight us with their harmony only during their love-making and short honeymoons. The nightingale warbles his song of songs while in devoted attendance upon the lady of his love; but so soon as the brood appear he sinks into moody silence. From the latter part of April until the end of June he is heard

"Nur so lang sie liebten, waren sie."

There is little variation in the form of the nests built by these birds; they are mainly round, containing from four to six eggs. To the painstaking modest little mother is left the chief care of the household. The devoted consort merely makes life merry for her by cultivation of her esthetic taste; when it comes to practical provision for the wants of the family, the lord, like many another genius gifted of the gods, is too much absorbed in his art. The search for dainty spiders, deliciously delicate worms, with now and then a berry or a seed as dessert, but not much cared for, falls to the lot of the feminine head of the house. It is a rare exception when the joint partner assists in furnishing the family table. Alas! are there no revolutionists in the bird world, no itinerant lecturers, to make clear to these toil-worn mothers their wrongs and their rights?

These healthily - sentimental mastersingers are one and all birds of prey. They scorn a vegetable diet, feeding almost exclusively upon the inferior insect kingdom; hence the necessity for

their annual migration. As the days draw near when the snails, the spiders and the worms creep into their winter homes, there is nothing left for our singers but to depart for warmer regions, where a sunnier atmosphere tempts the coveted prey abroad.

There is another glorious bird seen in many parts of southern and middle Germany, and bearing a striking resemblance to the nightingale. It has the same grayish-brown black, the same rusty-red tail; but the breast varies, that of the nightingale being a dingy white, while the sprosser has a mottled brown throat, dotted with half-moon shaped spots. The sprosser is no other than the famous bulbul of Turkey and Persia, figuring in the romantic and sentimental poetry of those countries, as the nightingale does in the rhythmic literature of the west. There is a delicate difference in the song of the two, somewhere fancifully described by Brehm: "The nightingale has the melting tenderness, the sprosser fullness and strength; his warble is a majestic andante, the song of the nightingale a tender allegro; the sprosser represents in his melody the consciousness of manly strength, the nightingale true feminine grace. In wealth of tone and rhythm, each rivals the other." But the bird-wise have discovered that the strophe of the sprosser is shorter and divided by longer pauses or rests, richer also in bell-notes, than the song of the nightingale. The conversational tones of these first cousins vary widely enough. When the sprosser goes a-courting, he coaxes his love by quickly-repeated "Glock, glock," warns her of danger by "Davit," sharp and shrill, expresses his rage by a whirring "Arr;" the nightingale calls by a whistling "Vid," warns by "Zarr," expresses his satisfaction by "Tack, tack," and shows his anger by "Rah" and "Shrak."

These are all the tones left to either

singer after the broods appear. From that time until the latter part of the summer or early autumn, when they disappear, not a note of their earlier glorious melody is heard.

The two birds are rarely found in the same region-the nightingale generally choosing a wood on the side of a stream, the sprosser never seen beyond the low bushes of meadow land. Where they are found together, the sprosser becomes a mocking-bird, adding many of the tender notes of the nightingale to his répertoire.

Earliest of the grand solos, the singing-thrush, with his nearest blood relations, the ousel and missel-thrush, are heard on foggy spring mornings, or in the early twilight, when the earth is scarce free from the last snow or recovered from the ravages of the driving storm. The ousel, in fact, is the sole member of the race which abides through the winter in the fir forests of Germany. Even in the bitter cold of February the flute-like tones of the cautious little creature greet us occasionally, and the countryman or common artisan cage him as willingly for the sake of his song as the higher classes prize the more expensive singing and misselthrush.

The Jäger welcomes no sign of spring so enthusiastically as the song of the thrush, while visions of snipeshooting dance through his head, for the note is sure herald of the coming of his game. Unluckily, among the vari ous branches of the thrush family the epicure makes fearful havoc as the autumn draws near; even the mastersinger is not spared, unless he brings a higher price when caged.

Next in order come the glorious family of the larks-the enthusiastic untiring field-lark, which there, as on our Western prairies, trills his delightful melody, soaring up to the sun, and the charming member which haunts the woods, deriving thence his name. Foster

child of the muses, there is not a note given forth by the field-lark which is not instinct with a rollicking joy in existence. Daring, dashing, and absolutely jolly, he is not a bit of a snob, but pure artist every inch. Seven months of the year he delights German youth with his melody, and during that time does not shun the society of man, as do most of our master-singers. Alas! how his confidence is betrayed when he gathers his clan on the broad plains of Leipsic toward the end of September! By thousands they are entrapped to swell the tide of praise of this noted Leipsic dainty. To have eaten larks in that Saxon city, is the ne plus ultra of the traveler's delights. Think of it!— the foster-child of Euterpe and Melpomene roasted or turned upon a spit !

In Germany, as in the West, the wood-lark is smaller than the denizen of the fields and meadows, not more than six inches from the bill to the end of the tail. The golden brown plumage of the meadow lark, in his shy country brother becomes a grayish black. The little body is not so sienderly graceful in the latter. From eye to eye, round the back of the head, runs a delicate white ring, giving the little forester rather a professional air-suggesting white-cowled monks, tonsured gray-headed priests, or a baker bʊy in his linen cap. Shunning the noisy haunts of men, he is found in the depths of the quiet forests, and, lark-fashion, prefers the ground as an abiding-place. His song is simpler than that of the field lark -a slowly modulated strophe of perhaps a dozen tones, followed after a short rest by a high trill in accelerated time. There is an earnestness in the melody and in the song of those which do not cease at nightfall-a more varied trill, for this wood-lark is otten as melodiously inspired by the bright light of the moon as the king of singers, the nightingale.

Early in April, the clear, piping, yet

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