is society _in nuce_: it is the kernel from which, so soon as the will and the power shall be there, the social change will radiate. How can justice be done to-day, when private interests dominate and the interests of the commonweal are made subservient? Such, in short, is the state of things in the nation and in the municipality. They are both but the reflection of the economic life of society. * * * * * The struggle for existence in our economic life grows daily more gigantic. The war of all against all has broken out with virulence; it is conducted pitilessly, often regardless of the weapon used. The well-known French expression: "_ote-toi de la, que je m'y mette_." (Get away, that I may step in) is carried out in practice with vigorous elbowings, cuffings, and pinchings. The weaker must yield to the stronger. Where physical strength--which here is the power of money, of property--does not suffice, the most cunning and unworthy means are resorted to. Lying, swindle, deceit, forgery, perjury--the very blackest crimes are often committed in order to reach the coveted object. As in this struggle for existence one individual transgresses against the other, the same happens with class against class, sex against sex, age against age. Profit is the sole regulator of human feelings; all other considerations must yield. Thousands upon thousands of workingmen and working-women are, the moment profit demands it, thrown upon the sidewalk, and, after their last savings have been spent, turned to public charity or forced to emigrate. Workingmen travel, so to speak, in herds from place to place, criss-cross across the country, and are regarded by "decent" society with all the more fear and horror, seeing that the continuity of their enforced idleness deteriorates their external appearance, and, as a consequence, demoralizes them internally. Decent society has no inkling of what it means to be forced, for months at a stretch, to be denied the simplest exigencies of order and cleanliness, to wander from place to place with a hungry stomach, and to earn, generally, nothing but ill-concealed fear and contempt, especially from those quarters that are the very props of this system. The families of these wretches suffer all along utmost distress--a distress that not infrequently drives the parents, out of desperation, to frightful crimes upon their own children and themselves. The last years have furnished numerous shocking instances of whole families falling a prey to murder and suicide. Let one instance do for many. The private correspondent, S----, in Berlin, 45 years of age, with a still handsome wife 39 years old, and a daughter of 12, is without work and starving. The wife decides, with the consent of her husband, to turn prostitute. The police gets wind thereof. The wife is placed under moral control. The family, overcome with shame and desperate, agree, all three, to poison