rose pre-eminently characteristic of
the past decade among the uses of science, so architecture towered
above all other arts. Yet, for one problem solved after the
magnificent fashion of the Brooklyn bridge and the Dacotahs, hundreds
of plans were devised with delicate ingenuity for filling up with
bricks and mortar the small remaining air space in the rear of
tenement blocks. And this noblest and most humane of all the arts was
degraded in the service of millionnaire land-owners and sub-letting
agents until the problem of to-day is, how to kennel the greatest mass
of human beings upon the least area with smallest allowance of air,
and light, and water, without infringing the building laws. One of the
simplest solutions is superimposing floor upon floor, so compelling
tired women and puny children to mount narrow, dark, and gloomy
stairs, and increasing to its maximum the danger of fire. The Egyptian
pyramids and the catacombs of Rome centuries ago were not poorer in
healthful light and air than were these homes of our fellow-citizens
in our own decade of retrogression.

But does this mean that our civilization is a failure, and the prime
of life past for the Republic? Far from it. It means, I take it, that
capitalism has done its work, and has become a hindrance, that the
old industrial and social forms are inadequate to the new requirements
and must be remodelled, and that promptly. It is now nearly half a
century since Karl Marx wrote the following words, but they apply to
the New York of to-day, as though he were among us and suffering with
us:--

"It is the sad side which produces the movement that makes
history by engendering struggle.... From day to day it
becomes more clear that the conditions of production under
which the capitalist class exists, are not of a homogeneous
and simple character, but are two-sided, duplex; and that in
the same proportion in which wealth is produced, poverty is
produced also; that in the same proportion in which there is
development of the productive forces, there is also
developed a force that begets repression; that these
conditions only generate middle class wealth by continuously
destroying the wealth of individual members of that class,
and by producing an ever-growing proletariat."

OLD HICKORY'S BALL.

BY WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE.

It was in the year of our Lord 1806; the season, September; in the
State o