Knowledge that Transforms

THE report of the Massachusetts Tax Commission" of I 896, recently subrmitted, is a noteworthy document. It marks the highest point yet reached by an American commission in the discussion of problems of state and local taxation. Among the two score of American reports on taxation it is distinguished by its statesmanlike grasp of fundamiiental problems and principles, and its scholarly acquaintance with modern ideas. Other reports occasionally surpass it in the treatment of special questions. The New York report of I871 went much deeper into the legal intricacies of taxation. The Ohio report of I893 treats miore fully of the methods of taxing corporations. But none has gone so directly to the heart of the whole subject and occupied itself so exclusively with salient features. This was, no doubt, chiefly due to the character of the commission, in the composition of which rare judgmnent was shown. The coimmission was not a comimittee of the legislature, but was appointed by the governor from persons who seemed particularly suited to help in its work. The bench, the business comimiunity, the farmiers, the workingmnen, the professional students of taxation, were, each, represented by a memnber on the commission -the last named through Professor Taussig, of Harvard University.2 It was an unusual commission, therefore; and, having undertaken its work in a large spirit, its conclusions are of m-lore than local interest. No apology seem-is necessary for presesenting themi to the readers of the

GERAIANY has become the classic land of modern socialism. As Engels triumphantly wrote shortly before his death, the German workingmen's party forms the real, "massive force" of the large international proletarian arnmy, and, as their conceptions of history and the larger, general ideas of modern socialism were first formulated in their organic connection by German thinkers, by Marx and Engels, these thoughts, which at present enter more and more into the workingmen's parties of all countries, have found in Germany by far the most powerful echo, and have here imprinted upon the entire movement their characteristic stamp. Finally, to repeat again the words of the veteran, Frederick Engels, more than in any other country, this German movement has shown "how the right of universal suffrage is used," and has thus by its example furnished " a new weapon, and one of the most incisive," to the movement in foreign