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In 1879 prosperity had come back with a whoop, and, as she usually does after a long absence, had quickly exhausted herself by fantastic economic excesses. By the time I undertook to annotate the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle’s readings the country had begun to suffer again from its wanton speculation and reckless overbuilding of railroads. Factories and mines and mills shut down; and when work stopped disorder began, particularly on the railroads of the Southwest, the awful massacre of Chinese in Wyoming—more awful, the Haymarket riot in Chicago followed as it was by the execution of four men, all counselors of violence to be sure, but no one of them found guilty either of making or of throwing the bomb.

The eighties dripped with blood, and men struggled to get at causes, to find corrections, to humanize and socialize the country; for then as now there were those who dreamed of a good world although at times it seemed to them to be going mad.

The Chautauquan interested itself in all of this turbulent and confused life. Indeed, it rapidly became my particular editorial concern. We noted and discussed practically every item of the social program which has been so steadily developing in the last fifty years, the items which have crystallized into the Square Deal, the New Freedom, the New Deal.