oduction" and keep on inventing machines and refuse to
shorten the hours. What does our party say? The rich can take
care of themselves if the mob will let them alone, and there will
be no mob if there is no widespread want. Hunger is a communist.
The next candidate of the Republican party must be big enough and
courageous enough to answer these questions. If we find that kind
of a candidate we shall succeed--if we do not, we ought not.

--_Chicago Inter-Ocean_, February, 1886.

ATHEISM AND CITIZENSHIP.

_Question_. Have you noticed the decision of Mr. Nathaniel Jarvis,
Jr., clerk of the Naturalization Bureau of the Court of Common
Pleas, that an Atheist cannot become a citizen?

_Answer_. Yes, but I do not think it necessary for a man to be a
theist in order to become or to remain a citizen of this country.
The various laws, from 1790 up to 1828, provided that the person
wishing to be naturalized might make oath or affirmation. The
first exception you will find in the Revised Statutes of the United
States passed in 1873-74, section 2,165, as follows:--"An alien
may be admitted to become a citizen of the United States in the
following manner, and not otherwise:--First, he shall declare on
oath, before a Circuit or District Court of the United States,
etc." I suppose Mr. Jarvis felt it to be his duty to comply with
this section. In this section there is nothing about affirmation
--only the word "oath" is used--and Mr. Jarvis came to the conclusion
that an Atheist could not take an oath, and, therefore, could not
declare his intention legally to become a citizen of the United
States. Undoubtedly Mr. Jarvis felt it his duty to stand by the
law and to see to it that nobody should become a citizen of this
country who had not a well defined belief in the existence of a
being that he could not define and that no man has ever been able
to define. In other words, that he should be perfectly convinced
that there is a being "without body, parts or passions," who presides
over the destinies of this world, and more especially those of New
York in and about that part known as City Hall Park.

_Question_. Was not Mr. Jarvis right in standing by the law?

_Answer_. If Mr. Jarvis is right, neither Humboldt nor Darwin
could have become a citizen of the United States. Wagner, the
greatest of musicians, not being able to take an oath, would have
been left an alien. Under this ruling Haeckel, Spencer and Tyndall
wou