It is an old truism that “every rose hath its thorn.” The advance of civilization and knowledge has its drawbacks as well as its advantages. This is manifested very distinctly in one direction in our own country. The rapid invention and introduction of labor-saving machinery has had a very marked tendency to draw the laboring population from the rural districts, and congregate it at the manufacturing centers. This, although it may be attended with many important advantages, has some very serious disadvantages, and is, perhaps, in part the cause of the serious contests we have seen of late years between capital and labor. It increases the population of the cities, and proportionately decreases that of the rural districts, and, as a consequence, increases the cost of living, as it advances the price of property in the cities. It also tends very largely to increase the power and influence of corporations, monopolies, and other associations of this kind. The single item of transportation is vastly enlarged by this fact, and thus is increased the necessity for, and the power of, the railroads of our country. The effect of bringing together at these manufacturing centers large bodies of employés is, that for self-protection, combinations of labor, as against the encroachments of capital, are formed. Irritation and contests follow. It is from these facts that we are confronted with one of the most difficult problems forced upon any nation for solution—a problem which thus far seems to be beyond the reach of legislation. To check the advance of scientific and inventive genius, or to stop the progress of knowledge, is neither desirable, practicable, nor possible. The only possible solution of this perplexing problem would seem to lie in the education of the masses, and thus elevating the laboring population as nearly as may be to the educational level of the capitalists—the rural districts to the educational level of the cities. By adequate national and state legislation, very marked and important progress in this respect may be secured. Should the government adopt the policy of adequate national aid to education, its distribution according to the number of persons under twenty-one years of age would perhaps be the best basis for such distribution at the start, but future experience and more exact knowledge would, no doubt, enable the remedy to be applied, in due time, more exactly to our needs. At present the statistics of illiteracy are not sufficiently definite and thorough to take them as a reliable guide in determining the basis for the distribution of so large an amount of funds. One means, however, of meeting the difficulty named—one possible step toward the solution of this puzzling problem—is certainly within our reach. Educate the masses, elevate the laboring and producing population, and bring them up as nearly as possible to the educational plane already reached by those who hold and wield the moneyed power.