million.[AH] Throughout all Europe, through cooeperative effort, there have been erected hundreds of splendid "Houses of the People," "Labor Temples," and similar places of meeting and recreation. The entire labor, socialist, and cooeperative press, numbering many thousands of monthly and weekly journals, and hundreds of daily papers, is also usually owned cooeperatively. Unfortunately, the statistics dealing with this phase of the labor movement have never been gathered with any idea of completeness, and there is little use in trying even to estimate the immense wealth that is now owned by these organizations of workingmen. America lags somewhat behind the other countries, but nowhere else have such difficulties faced the labor movement. With a working class made up of many races, nationalities, and creeds, trade-union organization is excessively difficult. Moreover, where the railroads secretly rebate certain industries and help to destroy the competitors of those industries, and where the trusts exercise enormous power, a cooeperative movement is well-nigh impossible. Furthermore, where vast numbers of the working class are still disfranchised, and where elections are notoriously corrupt and more or less under the control of a hireling class of professional political manipulators, an independent political movement faces almost insurmountable obstacles. Nor is this all. No other country allows its ruling classes to employ private armies, thugs, and assassins; and no other country makes such an effort to prevent the working classes from acting peaceably and legally. While nearly everywhere else the unions may strike, picket, and boycott, in America there are laws to prevent both picketing and boycotting, and even some forms of strikes. The most extraordinary despotic judicial powers are exercised to crush the unions, to break strikes, and to imprison union men. And, if paid professional armies of detectives deal with the unions, so paid professional armies of politicians deal with the socialists. By every form of debauchery, lawlessness, and corruption they are beaten back, and, although it is absolutely incredible, not a single representative of a great party polling nearly a million votes sits in the Congress of the United States.