ese are the
so-called "coffin-ships," not unknown in Germany, either. The steamer
"Braunschweig," for instance, that sank in 1881 near Helgoland, and
belonged to the firm Rocholl & Co., of Bremen, proved to have been put
to sea in a wholly unseaworthy condition. The same fate befell, in 1889,
the steamer "Leda" of the same firm; hardly out at sea, she went to the
bottom. The boat was insured with the Russian Lloyd for 55,000 rubles;
the prospect of 8,500 rubles were held out to the captain, if he took
her safe to Odessa; and the captain, in turn, paid the pilot the
comparatively high wage of 180 rubles a month. The verdict of the Court
of Admiralty was that _the accident was due to the fact that the "Leda"
was unseaworthy and unfit to be taken to Odessa_. The license was
withdrawn from the captain. According to existing laws, the real guilty
parties could not be reached. No year goes by without our Court of
Admiralty having to pass upon a larger number of accidents at sea, to
the effect that the accident was due to vessels being too old, or too
heavily loaded, or in defective condition, or insufficiently equipped;
sometimes to several of these causes combined. With a good many of the
lost ships, the cause of accident can not be established: they have gone
down in midocean, and no survivor remains to tell the tale. Likewise are
the coast provisions for the saving of shipwrecked lives both defective
and insufficient; they are dependent mainly upon private charity. The
case is even more disconsolate along distant and foreign coasts. A
commonwealth that makes the promotion of the well-being of all its
highest mission will not fail to so improve navigation, and provide it
with protective measures that these accidents would be of rare
occurrence. But the modern economic system of rapine, that weighs men as
it weighs figures, to the end of whacking out the largest possible
amount of profit, not infrequently destroys a human life if thereby
there be in it but the profit of a dollar. With the change of society in
the Socialist sense, immigration, in its present shape, also would drop;
the flight from military service would cease; suicide in the Army would
be no more.

The picture drawn from our political and economic life shows that woman
also is deeply interested therein. Whether the period of military
service be shortened or not; whether the Army be increased or not;
whether the country pursues a policy of peace or one of war;