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The Housing of the People.

engaged in any department who are older than fifty years of age. Any men already in the employ of the company in excess of this age may be retained, but in case of their leaving they are not to be re-engaged. In the event of any one being injured and receiving compensation from the company for same, he is not to be re-engaged without first having the approval of the General Manager. This circular of the Barrow Hematite Company brings into prominence one of the unexpected consequences which follow attempts to improve the social condition of the people by legislation. It is the consciousness that the indirect results of legislation may be far more serious than the direct, and that these indirect results may also be in absolute opposition to the object aimed at by law, that causes many social reformers to think twice, and even thrice, before using the lever of an Act of Parliament. Take for instance the case of the housing of the poor in London. There is no doubt whatever that the condition of the masses of the people in London from the point of view of house accommodation is a disgrace to civilisation. It is equally indubitable that an expenditure of less than half the sum which will be wasted in the next five years in providing for armaments, over and above the enormous sum at present required, would, judiciously applied, effect a transformation of whole dreary districts in London. But the moment the County Council or any public authority proposes to do anything, they are met by the cry, emanating last month from as distinguished an authority as Miss Octavia Hill, that for a public authority to do anything in the matter is to cripple at once private enterprise. Stated roughly, it comes to this, that if the County Council builds a good house for one man, it stands in the way of half a dozen other good houses being built for six other men. This may be true, but it will be impossible for civilisation much longer to sit with folded hands in front of the continually increasing pressure of the housing question. It is simply exasperating to be compelled to admit day after day (1) that there is any amount of capital wasting for want of remunerative employment, and (2) that there are any number of millions of people who are only too anxious to pay rents that would pay a handsome return on that capital, and yet the capital is not employed, and the houses of the people are a disgrace to the capital of the Empire. Some day some statesman or social reformer will arise who has both the knowledge and the power to bring this question home to the hearts and consciences of the people. Then something will get done; but till then we all sit under a kind of doleful enchantment, seeing things grow worse and not able to mend them, even so much as by a hand's turn.

Closely allied to the housing question Municipal Trams is that of railway and tram fares.

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South London. present London is woefully behind almost any second-rate American city in the matter of rapid transit. There is nothing in London that approaches either for speed or for cheapness to the long-distance fares on the trolly-cars which are rapidly becoming the universal means of transit in the Transatlantic cities. The street railway ! companies of the United States have no doubt plundered the public and corrupted municipalities to any extent; but they have succeeded in carrying the public for long distances at a rate which would make a London tramway manager faint on the spot. We English, who are supposed to have invented the saying that "Time is money," waste time more recklessly than we waste any other commodity that has a monetary equivalent. It is to be hoped that the County Council, which at the beginning of this year came into possession of twenty-four miles of tramway in South London, will be able to make an improvement. Last year the companies whose lines have been taken over carried 109 millions of passengers, running over 9,700,000 miles. With the exception of a small section from Brixton Road to Streatham, the whole of the trams were drawn by horses, of which the County Council is now the possessor of four thousand. The cost per tram-mile run last year was 8d., and there was a net profit of 2d. per mile, The net profit last year was £85,000. It is hoped that by spreading the repayment of capital with interest over sixty years, the County Council will have, as a contribution to the rates, £40,000 a year from its new acquisition. If it is well advised, it will spend every penny of that in substituting electricity for horse-traction, and cheapening fares for outlying suburbs.

Chicago and its

years.

Apropos of street traction, there has been a battle royal raging this last Street Railways. month in Chicago over the attempt of the street railway companies, headed by Mr. Yerkes, to steal the streets for the next fifty The value of the franchise, which was in the gift of the City Council, was estimated at ten millions sterling. In order to obtain it Mr. Yerkes is said to have promised boodle to the aldermen to the extent of £300,000. I read the following paragraph in a press despatch dated Chicago, December 11th, with a certain grim satisfaction :--

When a few years ago W. T. Stead, the noted English journalist, wrote his not-soon-to-be-forgotten "If Christ came to Chicago "--an expose of the methods used in conducting the affairs of the great city-he expressed the opinion that ere many years the people would rise in their

might and drive the boodlers out of the City Hall as the money-changers were driven out of the Temple. That time has apparently come, but the process is apt to be amended. The masses do not favour scourging; they favour Judge Lynch's methods, and to-night hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans, irrespective of party allegiance, are wearing badges bearing on them the imprint of a gibbet.

After several days of very angry agitation, the boodlers were defeated by a majority of one, and the contest transferred from the City Council to the Legislature of Illinois. As Mr. Yerkes is a man with millions at his back, and has grown grey in the art of manipulating legislatures and municipalities, the legislators at Springfield are expecting a feast of fat things.

Allied to the question of street railCheap ways is the question of railway rates. Railway Rates. The London Reform Union has demanded the concession of 113 additional workmen's trains, which, they maintain, are indispensably needed if the service is to be rendered at all adequate. The intervention of Parliament is invoked by the Workmen's Train Association, whose bill proposes to compel all railway companies to run a proper service of trains into London up to eight o'clock every morning at the rate of twelve miles for twopence. The railway companies protest that it is impossible; but where there's a will there's a way. There is one great difficulty undoubtedly, and that is that the amount of traffic carried at the rush hours when people are coming to town in the morning and leaving it in the evening, comes very near, if it does not come up to, the maximum that can be carried on the existing lines with the present terminal stations. But that is only another way of saying that more lines must be laid down and more accommodation provided at the stations. In relation to the Underground, immediate relief could be obtained by constructing a tunnel underneath the existing line of rail. This has been much talked of, and some day will be accomplished. Altogether there seems to be good reason for believing that, unless the railway directors wake up and show more consideration for the needs of the public, they will have a very bad time before long.

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out of anybody. Speaking at Cambridge on December 11th, he put very clearly and forcibly before his hearers the necessity for doing something practical and at once for the improvement of our agricultural population. It is a task, he admitted, of very great difficulty, but it was not insoluble if the energy and thought of the very best people in the country were devoted to it. The first thing to be done was to improve elementary education; otherwise you would have pupils sent up to technical schools so deficient in arithmetic that they could not keep up with their classes. After improving elementary education, there should be established a central local authority, which he suggested might be found in the Technical Instruction Committee of the County Council, which only wanted a little more money and a little more legal power to be a very useful body. He did not think it wise to take the management of rural schools out of the hands of the rural clergy, who, he thought, as a rule, were the best managers you could find. Further, he thought there should be a night school established within reach of every one, and that it should be compulsory to attend them. He said he was strongly in favour of a law by which young people, after going to work, should be able to spend certain hours in the night school. Then they wanted a great many more higher agricultural schools, over which there should be technical schools in every part of the country; but he finished by reminding his hearers once more of the fundamental truth which governs everything—viz., that without public opinion at the back of the Education Department nothing can be done. Even in such a life-and-death matter as this of enabling our people to hold their own against foreign competition, everybody is paralysed until you can get up steam.

Trouble in

In the British Colonies the year is closing with comparative tranquillity. the Transvaal. The only exception is a slight recrudescence of the trouble in Johannesburg. A British subject, of the name of Edgar, has been shot by one of the Transvaal policemen, who appears to have acted very unceremoniously. As the policeman is to be tried for murder, the question may be regarded as adjourned; but the incident was made the occasion for an impressive demonstration, in which five thousand of the Uitlanders made a protest in silence and appealed to the Queen in dumb show, for the law prohibits all political gatherings of the kind. The silence of the assembly and their uplifted hands testified more picturesquely than any amount of speaking would have done as to the reality of the

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Speech.

In foreign affairs, the most remarkable Sir E. Monson's of the month was the speech made by Sir Edmund Monson at the banquet in the British Chamber of Commerce in Paris. Sir Edmund Monson is one of the steadiest and most sane of British diplomatists. No one deplored more than he the excessive amount of public speaking over the Fashoda incident, which placed such difficulties in his path as a diplomatist charged with keeping the peace. But no sooner had he got upon his legs at the Chamber of Commerce than he made a speech calculated to irritate the French to the last degree. It is over now, and no friend of Sir Edmund Monson wishes to dwell upon an incident which he himself must regret as much as any one. The worst of it was that the very excellence of his previous reputation added to the mischief of his observations, for nothing he could say could induce the French to believe that he had not acted under orders. "We know Sir Edmund Monson too well," they said, "to believe it possible that he could have made such a speech except under orders."

The fact probably is that

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The Old Deacon's diplomatists, like old elephants, One Day Off. sometimes go must. The British public must not be too hard on its servants under such circumstances. There is an American story to the effect that a New England minister on returning home one day was scandalised to discover his senior deacon rolling drunk in the middle of the road. The man had been an exemplary citizen and pillar of the church for more than forty years. Hardly able to believe his eyes, the minister stepped up to his deacon in the gutter and began, "Deacon Jones, this is terrible. I could not have believed it possible, were it not for the evidence of my own eyes. To think that after forty years' faithful serviceAt

this point he was interrupted by the deacon, who, hiccupping, severely burst in, "Just so, and after forty years' faithful service, do you think God Almighty won't let a fellow have a day off?" Sir Edmund Monson has had his day off, and the incident seems fortunately to have passed over without making things much worse than they were between us and the French.

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The French and Fashoda.

They are bad enough in all conscience. Fashoda has been evacuated by Marchand, and the French flag no longer flies over that pestilential island; but nothing has been done towards arriving at any understanding concerning the western frontiers of the Soudan. Nor do the French manifest any particular anxiety to come to an arrangement. They have increased their naval estimates by nearly threequarters of a million, they are concentrating their troops at the coast towns, and they are diligently exercising their fleet, which at this time of the year is usually laid up in winter quarters. There is even a movement perceptible in favour of making it up with Germany, in order to have a better hope of paying us out for what they consider to be the altogether unnecessary insolence with which we kicked them down the front steps in the matter of Fashoda. They were willing to go out of the back door quietly; but to be bundled out neck and crop was an indignity for which they mean to make us smart. At present they are biding their time.

Coup d'États Addled

or

Hatching?

Excepting for their ill-humour with England, the French are still thinking of little or nothing but the Dreyfus case and its results. Last month was full of rumours that as soon as Dreyfus arrives in France, General Zurlinden will send the President and the Ministry packing, establish a provisional Government, and summon Prince Victor Bonaparte to found the Fourth Empire. It is even stated that the Pretender raised as much as 200,000 from Catholic families in England for the purpose of carrying out his nefarious conspiracy against the French Republic. The Duc d'Orleans is also all on tiptoe with expectation. Both these worthy Pretenders profess to be equally confident as to the unpopularity of the Republic and the readiness of the French nation and the French Army to accept some form of monarchical government. The best thing that could happen would probably be for Prince Victor and the Duc d'Orleans to make a simultaneous landing on the coast of France and polish each other off after the fashion of the Kilkenny cats. The world would shed no tributary tear, whilst most quiet-going people would heave a sigh of relief. Whatever happens, we cannot expect that the new French Government would be any more easy to get on with than the Third Republic. There may be more temporary stability in the new régime, but although ministries. may last longer, the Monarchy or the Empire will not last so long as the Third Republic.

Trouble Ahead in Italy.

From Italy disquieting rumours come to hand as to an alleged understanding between the Vatican and the Garibaldians, by which the House of Savoy is to be dethroned and the Italian Republic installed, with Rome as its capital. If the Blacks and the Reds join hands, they will undoubtedly be able to give the Italian Government a very bad time. But the difficulty of establishing any agreement between the Revolutionaries and the Clericals is so great that. King Humbert may probably see another new year at the Quirinal. It is noteworthy that Garibaldi, like Signor Sonnino, believes that the only way of salvation for the House of Savoy lies in the assertion of the monarchical prerogative. King Humbert, however, shrinks from using the powers which he possesses under the Italian constitution.

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to the moment of writing two duels had been fought and more were still to come. The Hungarian Parliament closed amid a ene of the wildest disorder, and now both in Austra and Hungary there is no lega warrant for the continuance of the fiscal and other arrangements. Fortunately, Francis Joseph is stil alive, and while he lives these legal troubles will be regarded only as a kind of whooping-cough or measles. After he goes, they will be treated as the signs of malignant small-pox.

Peace

in the United States.

Peace between Spain and the United

and Imperialism States having been formally concluded, the Peace Commissioners have left Paris for Washington, bearing with them the Treaty of Peace, and the Americans are now free to consider what they will do with the Philippines. The movement against the expansion of the dominions of the Republic has now taken definite shape in the formation of an Anti-Imperialist League, to which adhesions are coming in thick and fast from all quarters. Mr. Carnegie, stout Republican and gold-bug as he is, declares his intention to support Mr. W. J. Bryan as candidate for the Presidency next election. There is, however, a section of the Democrats, led by Mr. Hearst, of the New York Journal which is much more vehemently in favour of expansion than President McKinley, who, indeed, may be regarded as a very reluctant recruit.

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The Opening of the Reichstag.

In Germany the Emperor has got home from his tour in Palestine. The Reichstag has been opened with an announcement that the army is to be increased by some 24.000 men, and we have had a long exposition of ministerial policy by Herr von Bulow. The speech was eminently pacific, the object of the speaker being to soothe rather than to excite the susceptibilities of its neighbours. On the subject of the relations between Germany and England, he said:

All that I should like to say to-day on this subjectbut I think that I am saying a great deal-is that there are all sorts of questions, and a great variety of points, in which we can act together with England, and do gladly act together with England, without prejudice, and while completely maintaining our other valuable connections.

What that means no one has ventured to explain authoritatively, but it is generally taken as referring to the arrangement by which Germany leaves the Transvaal alone, in return for England's support in the German purchase of Portuguese territory should the Portuguese Government decide to put their colonies up to auction.

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